In January, it was stated that matchmaking in OW2 uses your hidden mmr, not your visible ranked mmr. My question is, why?
In a ranked system, the goal is to play, win, and increase your ranking. If a player successfully climbs out of bronze into silver, it theoretically symbolizes that they are more skilled than most bronze players. In order to accomplish this, they must win a majority of games when matched up against bronze players. And in fact imbalanced games where stomps occur will be relatively infrequent the longer a season goes, because that silver player will no longer be matched against those bronze players after climbing out, thus allowing those bronze players to play against other bronze players, which is a fairer game.
However, when matchmaking uses hidden mmr instead, a bronze 5 (visible rank) could match up against a Silver 1, but whose hidden mmr is the same. The odds of winning are 50/50, so it becomes difficult or impossible to climb out of bronze 5, because your winrate remains 50/50. You have more “fair” games, but you lose the ability to climb, which is the entire point of a ranked system.
Players use QuickPlay to play for fun. Players use Ranked to compete with each other and prove their skill. So I don’t understand why hidden mmr is used to matchmake, when it logically hinders any sort of rank climb.
about the bronze 5 vs silver 1 example… consider a system, if your mmr is above your rank, then you get awarded more rank for each win and penalized less rank for each loss. → in a system like that, one can climb even though the odds are 50/50.
i don’t think it’s been confirmed that’s how the current system works, but to me it feels implied
as to hidden mmr leading to imbalance i would say, imagine your visible mmr only system. take it, run it for a couple months, let everyone settle to their perfect rating. then change nothing else about it except you add a filter to how people see their ranks, now all they see is a weighted average of their mmr which is reduced by some % if they aren’t playing enough. run it for a few more months… same players, same matchmaking ratings, same matches being created… how different really is the health of the ecosystem?
The ranking system isn’t designed to “let” you climb, its designed to place you into games with similarly skilled people as quickly as possible. That’s it. Now, what you define as “similar” can be up for debate lol, but at the end of the day that’s its purpose.
Climbing is up to the individual to be the difference maker over the course of a bunch of matches, and the reason you have to play so many is because just like a scientific study testing a hypothesis, the more experiments you perform the more confidant you can be in your conclusion.
Every modern competitive game uses some kind of mmr system or modifier because mmr isn’t just a number, its an algorithm that if people knew exactly how it worked, could exploit.
to answer, there is no logic …in any of the entire system they made. SR literally means nothing and MMR just ranks you based on wins (as the devs confirmed in live stream the other day.
The original purpose is to enable them to change your SR based on factors other than your skill. For instance, if you get a penalty for leaving a game you would lose 50SR. Your skill hasn’t changed but your displayed SR would.
In OW2 it is primarily to allow them to drop your rating at the start of the season so you get some kind of progression whilst still being able to matchmake people some of whom will have played enough games that their SR is equivalent to their MMR whilst others haven’t.
Next season they are not dropping your SR so it is highly likely that after you have played 50 games next season that your MMR and SR will be identical unless for instance you have received a penalty.