Guys, I know all about the complaints of MMR. But I’ve come to realize if it wasn’t there, then casuals will lose too often and quit. Then the people that are a bit better than the quitters, will be the new casuals. They too will lose and quit. Starting a vicious cycle until only hardcore players are left.
My point is this. You can’t have repeated games of good players vs bad players. The good players will most likely feel satisfied and stop playing for the night, and the bad players will feel frustrated and stop playing with many dropping the game forever.
Always mixing the good and bad is best for retention. For example, a try-hard carries a game. They just helped some others rank up, increasing their fun.
Now, say the try-hard loses. They made the game competitive, and due to psychological experiments the loss gets them more engaged
Think of it as a tax. You tax the try-hards with tilting games to keep more casual people playing. This results in both the casuals and tryhards being more engaged with the game.
In other words, sacrificing game quality to prolong engagement. Is it worth the price??? I don’t know…
Good take. In another thread, I wrote up a list of reasons why the matchmaker might be designed to make less than optimal matches. I’ll paste it below. But I think your explanation is quite elegant.
I’m speculating wildly, but I can think of a few reasons why they don’t want most matches to be really close matches.
- Really close matches are exhausting to the average player (casuals), making them more likely to take a break. They are unavailable to the pool of matchmaking subjects and possibly more apprehensive about starting the game back up.
- Padding matches with one-sided stomps increases the number of matches a player needs to reach their natural skill “peak”. Keeping them in close proximity during the content development cycle.
- One-sided stomps end faster making more players available for the matchmaker pool, moving more players through the gameplay loop and dumping them back into proximity with the in-game shop.
- Players probably ruminate on unsavory losses for longer than they do really close, hard fought games. “Salting” the match sets with the occasional really close match gives ruminating players a sense that they are improving and gives them something to “chase” after which both encourage longer gaming sessions.
Again, I’m just speculating but these are business cases for an unscrupulous matchmaker.
Edit for one more: matchmaker volatility keeps the ranks from stratifying and exposes players to a wider pool of other players and of course keeps queue times lower for players at deviations far from the mean.
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It’s a fundamental problem at its core.
It is entirely unrealistic to flip a coin 10 times and land each time on heads or tails. Win or lose. Streaks should not exist. It’s a very simple problem. But it’s a problem they know they won’t fix.