Right, so the problem with this idea (that someone in Silver could be matched into Plat matches based on their MMR, not because they are grouped with a low Plat player and not because there aren’t enough Plat players currently queueing) is that if it were true we would see unranked to GM streams that simply bypassed one rank for a rank or two higher when the account was still lower rated. And that doesn’t happen.
They still play through the ranks.
I thought you meant boosted accounts when you said “bought accounts” before, but now I just don’t know what you mean. All accounts of OW1 are bought. My point was that in a boosted account, the MMR is still roughly equivalent to the SR- it’s just that the MMR is wrong until enough matches are played. What distinction are you making here?
This isn’t true though. When a GM gets reset to 3900 at the start of the season, they are still matched against players based on their MMR. And that means their MMR is still adjusting based on those matches. You can tell once someone starts getting into matches that are not evenly matched for them (based on their MMR) because their SR gains go down. Players competing at the top of the leaderboard (around 4.6k when we still had an active player base) would start to see SR gains of around 5 or 6 for their matches, because the matchmaker could not find appropriate enough matches to make any major adjustments to their MMR. The matchmaker wasn’t learning much from those matches when the top rated player won them. If they lost, however, their SR loss would be more significant precisely because their MMR would drop more than it would rise from those matches.
That’s why the SR gains of 2-3 that we’ve rarely seen from matches are so significant- those matches are even more lopsided than the matches top ranked (and I’m talking top 10 here) players routinely face. That’s what a zero change in MMR looks like.
But you seem to suggest that someone could be ranked in Silver but have an MMR that matches them with Plat players. And I’m saying that isn’t what we see. What I’m saying is that the reason someone is in Silver is because their current MMR is that of a Silver player.
This does not mean that their actual skill is that of a Silver player. We see Bronze to GM streams, for instance, where we know that the streamer is a skilled GM player. But the system at the time it matches them in those Bronze or Silver or Gold matches has assessed them (at that time) as a Bronze or Silver or Gold player- and that’s what their MMR is at that time.
Now, the system can be more or less certain of this. And if it is less certain of this it will loosen the amount that MMR can move up or down from a single match. So you can see someone progress quickly through the ranks.
But the actual MMR of that player is still progressing through those ranks- it doesn’t suddenly jump from Silver to Plat or whatever. If it did, that player would not be matched with Silver players. They would jump straight to Plat. And that is not what we see happen.
And, by the way, we do not want the system to push someone through several ranks without first checking with some matches at those ranks- that would cause way more problems than it solves.