MMR Is A Failed Outdated Concept

Competitive Discussion
1

First of all, showing us a fake rank then making matches based on some hidden rating is something truly diabolical only some snake in the boardroom could have thought up.

Second. 5v5 is horrible and if your tank sucks, good luck getting anything done, and then guess what? Your hidden rating is messed up, thanks to one bad player.

I remember one time, a couple of years ago, they said they had some “bug” with MMR. I suspect they just turned it off for a few days to test it out. Of course, high ranked players complained so they “fixed it” but us players in Silver/Gold started winning every single game. This tells that that it’s the MMR system that is holding most players back.

MMR was a bad idea for 2016. Now, it’s 6 years later and players are even smarter. We do not want fake ranks. We do not want to play Plats in our Silver games unless you give us the Plat ranking.

The entire philosophy of “win 50%, smile, don’t look at profiles, keep chasing that fake rank carrot on a stick” is an OLD, FAILED train of thought. Blizz basically thought they could fool everyone, and sell some skins.

We’re not fools.

Get rid of MMR, or greatly decrease it’s sway.
Then, and only then, would you get these elusive “even matches” because they’d happen naturally, rather than trying to force them.

37 Likes
2

Kapoof, let’s 1v1. You can pick any hero you want any role.

You vs Hanzo (me).

I want to show you the reality of Skill Differential.

I was where you were at and worse. That is, until I 1v1ed a GM and got absolutely obliterated. It opened my eyes and, since then, not only has my stance, perception, approach and mindset changed, I improved drastically and found even more joy in this game than ever before.

If you are open to the idea, lmk. It may help you as it did for me.

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This don’t work for me. I need to see my actual rank in a competitive game. They need another tier for really bad players and also place new players at the bottom. There is also a problem with hero balance. It’s way out of wack.

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Me going 1v1 vs you means nothing. They said themselves that they artificially raise your MMR if your win rate gets above 50%. Pretty much saying they force 50% win rate through making artificially hard games for people who they think have won too much.

I never said no one can ever rank up in that system, but what they describe, i should say, finally admit, is exactly what all of us have been saying is wrong the entire time.

It’s wrong to give people hard mode games without letting them rank up to meet those games.

Me, I’d call it straight up RIGGED.

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How is it “artificial” to raise your rank when you’re winning games? That’s the entire point of a ranking system.

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They don’t raise your rank. They raise your matchmaking rating. So, you get to play hard mode games… at the same rank.

That. Is. Rigged.

It’s like making the basketball hoop smaller. But worse, because it dynamically adjusts to screw you over when you win too much.

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Which is your actual rank. Your SR is just lagging behind. There’s nothing “rigged” about this.

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Except they don’t display your MMR. Most people, who don’t visit forums, would have no clue that their rank is FAKE. Why would you want a fake rank? Why would you want to play hard mode matches, prematurely? Before your visible rank even says i’m Plat… i get to play Plat matches? Yay?

You know its’ stupid. Give up trying to defend it.

1 Like
9

Rank is a trophy not your skill rating.

There is nothing rigged about the match maker, there is no magic. You are always matched against people of similar skill, period.

Frankly the match maker doesn’t care if you win or lose at all, it only cares about creating a fair match, which is by definition a match where both sides having an equal opportunity to win.

The game never “forces” a win or a loss upon anyone to maintain fair matches, the player is obviously always in control of their own hero and contribute to their own win or loss.

What the match maker can and will do however is change who you play against.

If you are on a roll, having a good night, getting win after win, then obviously you’re preforming better than you do normally, and for the matches you play in to remain fair, the system must adjust so you play against more skilled players.

This works in both directions as well, If you are having a bad day, not playing at your full potential and start losing, the same concepts apply. In this case, for matches to remain fair you must be adjusted to play against less skilled players, otherwise you would just throw match after match.

Also nothing stated here is done drastically, because in reality people don’t change in skill that quickly (or at all some times). So while your MMR is updated after every match, it’s only slightly nudged in one direction or another to keep matches fair.

To explain what was referenced earlier, normally if a player improves their skill, then their win rate will rise, as the system adjusts the player and matches them against people similar to their new skill, win rate will converge back to 50%. If however a player maintains a win rate above 50%, this indicates the system is not well calibrated to this player. As a result, the system will make larger nudges to get that player to their correct skill level quicker.

So over all, there is no magic, the system doesn’t like you, or hate you, it just wants things to be fair for everyone. Such a system is never perfect but a vast majority of the time it’s accurate enough for fun engaging game play.

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They’re still lying as well. They said rank is based on win rate and it’s clearly not. I went 7-2, which should have been 125sr, yet I go from G2 > G2.

If rank isn’t an indication of skill anymore they need to change how it’s awarded. a first to 7 system would work. So if you hit 7 wins before you hit 7 losses you rank up, or if not you rank down. The SR controlling your rank behind the scenes isn’t needed if matches are based off MMR. The name doesn’t even make sense any more as it’s no longer a “skill” rating.

The entire system really needs scrapping and start over. It wasn’t designed for role queue nor 5v5 and I think everyone can agree that it clearly doesn’t work for either.

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11

The core MMR system itself works fine,
However the ranking system built on top of it could use some work.

Blizzard is in a tough position involving rank.

The problem with knowing your MMR, (or something closely related to it) is it’s brutally honest for better or for worse.

Some people can handle watching their rank go up and down, others cannot. Some people will hyper focus on every single time the number goes down even a single point, but will completely ignore any time it goes up.

The current system tries to discourage people from focusing too closely on their rank, and to just focus on enjoying the experience. At the same time, they want people to have a sense of accomplishment in ranked play, so they have made a system where you have to work to earn your trophy each season.

In my own personal opinion, I would have no issue knowing what my raw MMR is, and as a result feel like the ranking system in place currently leans too far into the goal they’re trying to accomplish. I would appreciate more honesty but then again, I don’t let my rank in a game become a defining factor in my psyche, I cannot speak for others.

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12

most people have lives that do not revolve around a single video game. most people focus their energy on their family and career, most people do something with their life instead of raging on internet forums.

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I think you’re missing the point, well half of it.

OP just wants to vent without outright smack talking the devs directly in fear of being suspended or sumthin, which is immature sure but understandable if they love (are addicted to) the game as much as many others do.

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The question remains though : how do you make balanced matches then ?

I agree that MMR doesn’t suit a game like OW, especially since Role Queue. Yet, the game needs something to know how to make balanced and fun games.

15

Stop being silly.

/20

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I have an idea.
Think of a gladiator coliseum, where they pit all sorts of immortals against eachother:
Wretched Slaves
Ordinary Peasants
Arena Warriors
Seasoned Veterans
and Gladiator Champions.
They all fight to raise their status (SR) in brutal combat.

Now think of it as being a team-based gladiator coliseum.

Ideally, you wouldn’t want to be an Arena Warrior with a Wretched Slave on your team, all diseased and malnourished.
You’d want at least an Ordinary Peasant and hopefully with some luck, a Seasoned Veteran on your team.

Now, a fair emperor would try to even the odds by allowing only those of similar status team up, to face similar status enemies yet some variance is unavoidable due to participant pools.
With the winners eventually moving up in status, and the losers moving down.
Slaves promoted to peasants, peasants promoted to warriors, champions demoted to seasoned veteran, etc…

This is how it should be viewed and balanced as participants would say. The balance would come about from natural selection, the strong naturally weed out the weak, yet even the strong might be caught lackin (happens irl too).
If caught lackin you end up demoting one season, but you can bounce back.

Yet this is a coliseum, rigged matches are a given with tyrants for emperors making moving about the social statuses more difficult (yet not impossible, just more time consuming) to prevent the privileged (smurfs) or dirty commoners (boosted peeps) from abusing the system. Alas, this is done by asigning percieved bloodlines (MMR) to participants. Yet, this is proven to be unavoidable, just as it’s unavoidable to prevent the rich from stealing your taxes.

Blizz is the tyrant emperor who decides teams based on percieved Bloodlines (MMR) instead of current status (SR) (as of OW2). Having rid the healthy, competetive process of natural selection, instead replaceing it with their perverted theatrics in favor of amusing the masses (twitch/OWL viewers).
(Used to be decided by percieved bloodline AND current status in OW1)

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I don’t see the difference between your idea and how Blizzard are describing their MMR system.

I’m not sure I’m getting it right tbh. But for what I understand from Blizzard latest article about MMR ; MMR isn’t related to your Comp Rank displayed.
It seems MMR depends on your winrate (and maybe your skill, but essentially your winrate) ; which doesn’t seem the same for ranks (those seem considering your in-game stats rather than your winrate).

So its not SR has replaced MMR. Its more, they added SR to MMR to make competitive easier to read/ feels less frustrating to climb.

But that’s the actual problem it seems : people look at each other SR and think it is unbalanced but Blizzard just told in the article, the matchmaking uses the MMR, not the SR.

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But yee that’s just my 6am sleep deprived opinion :smiley:.

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Yee, they replaced the social status defined (SR) matches with percieved bloodline based (MMR) matches.
Wins and losses matter in both yes, it’s the same with either determining factor…sorta. Yet both deciding factors are 2 sides of a coin for a competitive setting.

MMR is looking more at your performance during the coliseum match deciding if you are actually of mightier blood, thus matching you against mightier opponents to furthur test you or possibly determining you’re of weaker blood thus matching you against weaker opponents, yet this in turn affects your teammates as they suffer/benefit from this match makers decision, so MMR sounds better for 1v1 settings.

The other is purely natural selection based but should in turn allow for a natural environment where competition should average out to being of similar level, thus better for team settings.

Currently, it doesn’t matter what rank it says you are, you’ll face someone at your skill who’s at a different rank yet you will climb at a different step of the ladder from eachother with MMR being the deciding factor for matchmaking.

People don’t like that comp has become “climbing our own ladder” now instead of “climbing THE ladder” like all competetive games advertise.
This is mainly due to not being able to see our MMR directly, instead being given an SR rank that doesnt matter in all honesty.

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FWIW: OW always used MMR with very little concern for SR.

The weird thing with OW2 is that they’ve added (arguably reintroduced) a mechanic that allows for there to be a significant divergence between SR & MMR. The two used to be roughly the same.