You posted this link 3 times and didn’t read it? It says right in there that Blizzard had contradicted itself at one point. It then decided on a “reasonable” (to that author) interpretation given the contradictions.
Clearly it’s incomplete and out-of-date – it’s based on scattered information that was said some time ago, it’s not an up-to-date affirmation from Blizzard on how it works NOW.
And it’s obviously incomplete, per our not knowing the precise metrics by which MMR is calculated.
How is e.g. MMR calculated, exactly? You don’t know. Why don’t you know? Is it because, perchance, Blizzard didn’t tell anyone? Hmmm?
Not to rank shame, but you are extraordinarily low rank. I think you need to learn to kill the things on your screen first before you worry about how your rank is calculated.
For you to be the rank you are, you need to look at yourself and not the system.
Why do people say “Not to X”, while they then proceed to do exactly X? Is it because they believe that admitting they are being hypocritical upfront somehow magically erases the hypocrisy? Please explain.
My rank has nothing to do with the veracity of my arguments, and your claim otherwise is rank ad hominem. Why do you feel that engaging in illogical arguments is OK?
Your rank is higher than mine, true. And in spite of the opaque matchmaker, I believe you’re the better player (the matchmaker is bad, but not that bad). Which only proves that being fair at playing Overwatch does not translate over into being able to make decent arguments.
My main point here isn’t even that it’s bad, it’s that it’s opaque (again, your average playing ability doesn’t magically mean you’re good at reading). At no point have I indicated that I’m at the wrong rank, other than pointing out that it has wild 500SR swings.
Exactly how is this relevant to the discussion? For you to be as bad as you are at following the logic here, you need to read more and write less.
I think the “contradictions” you’re referring to are the entire SR/MMR thing Kaawumba explained, where Scott Mercer sometimes uses SR in ways that made it sound like SR was being used in matchmaking.
The decay system is the main evidence that SR is NOT used in matchmaking at all. A GM at SR 4600 that decayed to SR 3000 solely through inactivity decay will immediately play at the exact same ranks he was playing at had he not decayed, even though the public-showing SR is 3000.
The matchmaker has functioned and still functions the same way as it always had, get people around the same MMR as you and in the same region, try its best to figure out how to manage non-solo-queuers (aka, stacks from 2-5, keep in mind the maximum difference allowed between the highest and lowest members), then randomly (yes, RANDOMLY) shuffle players onto two teams. Anyone who claims that Blizzard intentionally gives them “bad teammates” as punishment for winning needs to check their attitudes at the door. (You know who you are, in this topic)
Name a game that straight-up gives you EXACTLY that information. Blizzard has said that MMR works the same way as SR, in that your MMR “goes up” when you win and “goes down” when you lose. You could argue that the “personal performance” bit is a mistake and shouldn’t factor in, but that’s a minor factor in how much your MMR goes up or down after a match. The main focus is doing whatever you can to help your team win.
By the way, the last time they even gave a little hint (i.e, the Mercy mass-rez thing), people abused the hell out of it.
At this point I don’t know why you’re arguing. You’re straight up admitting that it’s opaque. You have a certain “the ends justifies the means” argument for why it’s opaque, but you don’t disagree that it’s opaque.
If what you’re doing is ripe for abuse when it’s found out then how about, I don’t know, not do that thing. Just a thought…
A decent system that respects players is going to be founded upon transparency and forthrightness. A bad system that abuses players is going to be founded on opacity and being coy and tight-lipped.
You’re asking for what basically amounts to source code. In this case, opacity/transparency is NOT a black/white issue. I’m saying that Blizzard said enough about how matchmaking works without going to source code.
Read those two posts. And no, NO COMPANY is going to be transparent to the point of literally posting source code. It’s up to you to decide if they’ve clarified enough about matchmaking for you.
Do you work for Blizzard? I ask because I see no particular difficulty in understanding why someone would want transparency in the matchmaker, so your inability to understand must be come kind of hangup? Please explain.
OPAQUE MATCHMAKER: DON’T LEGITIMATE ELECTRONIC SPORTS NEED TRANSPARENCY?
No.
eSports have organised leagues. The teams already exist. The league determines the match schedule (or fixture). There is no need for any matchmaker, transparent or otherwise.
I’ll admit to strawmanning your argument, but you’re strawmanning too when you bring accusations of “Blizzard employees” to the table.
As Kaawumba’s topic has explained via blue posts from Jeff Kaplan, MMR works the same as your public-facing SR, and the SR-inactivity-decay system shows this. It isn’t “performance metrics”, and it’s not something you exploit in order to get “better matches” or a “higher rank.” Basically, your MMR IS your rank. THAT is not opaque.
If you want to exactly know what statistics or what actions (say, "Ultimate Shutdown +50"s you accumulate in a game) affects how much you gain or lose on a win or loss, I’ll say this again: NO game does this. So if you want FULL transparency, no company is going to give that to you UNLESS the game is fully open-source. And as stated by the blues, the main factor of your gains and losses IS whether you won or lost.
As for points 1 and 3:
I’d say partially, yes. The entire point of “performance metrics” allowing someone to gain more than the base on a win or lose more than the base on a loss is to allow more rank mobility to someone that may skill-wise be misranked if they outperform statistically consistently, and it depends on their statistical performance compared to peers at the same rank. Medals are NOT factored in at all. When the Mercy rez factor was hinted to the public, many people tried to exploit the hell out of it.
That was the entire point. As far as the matchmaker is concerned, your teammates and your enemies are at the same general rank as you (examples of otherwise would be the very, very extreme ends of the SR spectrum, so the players that are way below SR<500, or players at SR 4500 and above).
I think you’re wildly exaggerating. E.g. see the WC3 ladder info FAQ and charts. (Apparently I’m not allowed to post a link.)
Again, I never asked for the source, that’s a straw man, remember?
So you think the information is dangerous for players to know, yet you’re OK that Blizzard player-employees can know it. How do you reconcile this contradiction?
You also think that knowing the information would have little impact on matches. Well if so, how is it dangerous?
I think if you’ve designed a matchmaker that judges performance based on metrics that are dangerous to disclose, then you obviously made a mistake somewhere. Players should be given an honest idea of what counts as being a well-performing player and what counts as being a poorly-performing one.
Saying “win games” is a dodge; the very point is that matchmaking isn’t solely a function of winning games. It should be, but you don’t get to pretend that it is when the argument is that it isn’t and should be.
How is it even remotely OK that Blizzard has designed a matchmaker that gives an unfair advantage to Blizzard employees?
Nope, it’s simply a reasonable policy to have regarding people behaving in untrustworthy ways. If you observed someone shoplifting, would you invite them to babysit your kids? Yes, because it’s “insane conspiracy theorist garbage” to judge behavior in one area and make estimates about their behaviors in others? Too bad for your kids.
