You claim to understand Match Making Rating better than I do, Kaawumba, but none of us have complete information about it. As I wrote the original post of this thread, I consulted all of the company statements that you reference.
Blizzard does not have a right to keep Match Making Rating a trade secret. Players do have a right to understand the terms of their engagement in Competitive Overwatch. And removing MMR would be best for everyone involved.
He does understand MMR better than you. Don’t hide behind “well no one knows for sure” bs.
Kind of off-topic, but what happened to the other thread?
It still exists on this forum, but it’s locked.
This is not a thing unless you suffer from decay. The devs have stated that SR closely follows MMR most of other time. If you are a “relatively skilled player for your SR” your SR will very quickly adjust to match your MMR. That’s why decayed GMs can gain a hundred SR for a single win.
For 99% of the playerbase, SR = MMR. Nothing is hidden, and when it is (decay) it’s really obvious.
Do you believe mmr should not be shown?
The thought experiment on this logic was done in another thread, but basically right now there is no benefit to hiding mmr if your assumption is right.
If mmr does not follow the pattern you assume, and indeed is used to balance matches behind the SR range of a game, it is then hindering the gameplay experience.
So if revealing it shows mmr and SR closely tied and all players in your game matching mmr to sr consistently, toxicity and anger towards the matchmaker will drop.
If it is revealed and mmr is all over the place, toxicity towards the game design and the mismatched “lower skewed mmr” players would increase.
It should be obvious why they don’t want to release it.
“But!” I hear you cry, “if mmr was visible players could then rig the system to gain more SR as they can see the changes in mmr!”
This is somewhat counter to any statement that SR is close to or correlated closely to mmr. If they are as close as you think, then this is already possible and would have been done. Its been 2 years, it should have been done by now. You can’t argue both ways like that. Either they are close or there is strong variance.
So, the point I want to make is for us all to want to have mmr visible. It will clearly show whether the game is messing with players and artificially forcing easier and harder games.
Or it will show nothing sinister at all, and that everything perceived by some players is purely observational bias and not coded into the game.
You’d think Cuth would have learned by now…
Bah.
Here we go again…
Yeah, I agree that they should just show MMR. All SR does is confuse people about how the matchmaker works.
I’m pretty sure the only reason they hide it is for things like decay, but everybody knows that’s meaningless anyway.
Man, when reading a forum post calls for a Sanity Check (1d6/1d10)
I’m starting to buy into the handicapping theory more since playing FFA. If I get first place too many times the FFA matchmaker would place me against opponents that obliterate me and I would go on a loss streak in high plat ranks. I couldn’t climb to diamond in FFA because of this.
What did I do? I started letting people take first place and I would take 2nd or 3rd instead and I made a steady climb to diamond as soon as I did this. Now I’m in Diamond FFA and still do not face opponents as difficult as I did in mid plat when I was getting first place.
I still need more time to test this over and over, but it seems that if you play too well then the matchmaker will VASTLY overestimate your abilities and you end up playing in Diamond tier matches (or whatever tier is just above your current tier) even though you don’t have the diamond SR to match it.
This is not true for tiers below Diamond. We still have PBSR.
PBSR just accelerates your SR change. If anything it probably results in even closer SR/MMR values, though I do not know for certain how it interacts with the SR/MMR split.
Meaning: “Your MMR is far from your SR and should be closer”.
PBSR is pushing players towards MMR, which system considers “the player’s”. The system clearly has some predisposition in mind about everyone below Diamond 
Has it occurred to you that MMR is working just fine on Free for All? The reason you’re seeing vast jumps in skill when taking first place is because first place is indeed many times as valuable as the other placements. FFA comp also has much less information about every player, since it’s new, so that’s another reason you’d see larger swings in skill. There’s also less players: bigger swings in skill.
FFA comp is a small taste of what an MMR reset would actually mean. You complained about struggling to reach diamond, but that’s actually quite impressive; plenty of GMs placed in that vicinity. Low master was top 100 a couple days ago. You are basically complaining that the MMR was out to get you when you approached diamond , when in fact it was just putting you against the other people approaching diamond… many of whom are quite good.
For all we know PBSR is applied to the underlying MMR in addition to the SR. As I said, PBSR’s relationship with MMR/SR is unknown. They said it basically did nothing at the higher ranks when they removed it, if I’m remembering right. In the long run it probably does nothing other than move vastly misplaced players to the appropriate rank quicker.
It’s not revealed because it’s not a player friendly number, it probably changes in ways that seem unfair or capricious; it also is dependent on multiple values rather than just a single one, so it’s harder to display the information in a useful way to the player. All this is why SR exists in the first place: SR is not quite as accurate at determining skill as MMR, but it’s close while also being much consistent and fair, so they use that for the rewards and bragging rights.
I wouldn’t mind MMR being revealed, but don’t try to imply it’s some sinister conspiracy to keep it hidden.
They removed PBSR in higher ranks to prevent stats-hunting and encourage teamplay (figures - we, belowdiamonds, do not deserve to play for wins only).
Anyway, whatever the reason it was removed. You see, the problem with SR in OW is - it is no way a measurement of player’s skill. Because:
It takes at least 20 games during a season to stop fluctuations due to matchmaker uncertainty. WTH, I’m playing for 5 seasons without breaks, and it still has uncertainty every 2 months??
There are two invisible to player factors, affecting his SR movement - MMR and PBSR. We, as you have just said, have no idea about their relations -> we have 0 control of our advancement.
SR for flex players is total garbage, since the skillsets for different roles (let alone, characters) are completely different. IT is MUCH easier for matchmaker to correctly rate a onetrick player, then flex player (your C.O.).
So, when a game tries to match players into teams, based on “certain SR range” (which is also unknown after season 7 changes), it effectively is using pointless metric. You could argue, that they match players according to MMR (I know, they do). But what insight about your gameplay can this fact give you? That you are at the same MMR bracket with that idiot one-trick DPS instalocker? Well, thanks, but no thanks.
The number one thing that sticks out to me in all the developers comments is the “certainty” factor. As in, once you’ve played enough games the system is “certain” of where you should be and prevents you from going up even if you actually do improve as a player.
I’ve been a high plat (like 2800ish) player since season 2 when they started using the current SR system. This season I started playing Brigitte and I’ve been destroying, I have like a 70% win rate with her over 50 games or so, and guess what? I’m still sitting right around 2800 because I get like 15 points for a win and lose 25 for a loss, as in the matchmaker is so certain that 2800 is where I belong that it bends my SR gains to keep me there even though I’m winning at a much higher rate, but it has no ability to see that it’s because of me playing a new character and improving at the game not just some insane luck streak, it’s really annoying.
It seems like you’re leaving out a lot of my context in order to make your point work. To put it into simple terms I’m saying that I made it to Diamond easily by not allowing myself to get first place, but instead get 2nd and 3rd to avoid the matchmaker from overestimating my ability and placing me in matches that are too difficult, too early.
I will say that I could be wrong about this because it is too early to say with FFA, I need to give it more time; I had 9 seasons of 6v6 comp to base my other opinions on, but this already looks like more of the same.
We do agree that an MMR reset would make no sense and be pointless.
PBSR has nothing to do with your hidden MMR vs your SR. All it means is that if you play really really well, both your SR and your MMR go up quickly (or down slowly). If you play really really bad, both your SR and MMR go down quickly (or up up slowly).
Your SR still matches your MMR, PBSR only influences how quickly they change.
By too early do you mean before you’re actually at that skill level? I agree that if you play abnormally well for a few games, rank up really really fast, and then have to lose a bunch of games at a level way above your actual skill it wouldn’t be very pleasant.