That and all the flaws it has maybe they should unhide and let the community guide them . The community has a better track record when it comes to things like this IMO.
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Hidden MMR is just SR without decay. Nothing else. At diamond+ you lose and gain same amount of sr every time and matchmaking just makes a team with average SR on each side (ignoring decay). That’s it.
A relay race could fit if you ran hundreds of relays with random teammates. That’s the key in both poker and Overwatch. Sure, for any SINGLE game/hand you might be unlucky, but your success is not determined by a one event. (Unless you go all-in in poker, which isn’t a thing in Overwatch).
This simply comes down to understanding basic probability, and not letting your own bias cloud your judgement. No one is specially given more bad teammates than other players.
I’ve read far too much of Cuthbert’s writing and the vast majority of his energy is not spent asking for public code, but claiming the system is rigged and holds him down.
Which we can prove isn’t true even without public code.
This really ignores the fact that the two have separate gains and losses. MMR can stagnate with wins and losses, SR cannot. Making them two separate things representing skill, and connected in that MMR can manipulate SR gains and losses.
This is called 1v6ing YOLO ulting @ 99/99…
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No, there is no 2 magical factors that influence matchmaking, its just SR or “sr without decay aka hidden mmr”. Its a very simple ± system that just adds and subtracts to make two teams have even average SR. One of the devs that worked on matchmaking tried to explain exactly that while sounding “smart” and making it seem as if he was doing some big brain work for the entire time he was on payroll which got a lot of people confused and the whole hidden mmr myth started. All that “hidden mmr” ever was is just SR without decay for people above diamond which is used in the matchmaking algorithm instead of displayed SR that can be decayed.
Its also rather amusing how all the conspiracy theorists on here blaming their lack of skill on teammates or other imaginary factors are around silver.
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Yes, there is, the Devs mention both MMR and SR and that SR “chases” MMR. Please look at Kaawumba’s post:
It has references and links for you to see where all of the information has been gathered from.
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Like most mainstream game developers, Blizzard considers themselves quite above the player community’s feedback or criticism. They don’t even respond to inquiries about how the Competitive Play system works. And what they tell us about SR/MMR is contemptuously simplistic.
There is no way that MMR is simply SR without decay. Did you read the quotation from Scott Mercer in the original post? There is a lot more to it.
What do you mean by ‘public code?’
Good summary and great question. What do you say FriendlyFire? What’s the harm in trying to know about these things?
Blizzard claims to be protecting the game from exploitative players, by keeping the workings of MMR secret. But they are only protecting themselves from scrutiny. Players will find a way to game any system, no matter if the company tries to keep things opaque.
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LOL … They do as good a job protecting themselves from scrutiny as they do redesigning heroes like sym.
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What’d they do to sym?
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Asked someone who clearly doesn’t play this game.
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Actually Zenren, I’ll side with you on this one but point out that this problem not only happens all the time but is an indicator of how the system actually works. It is my belief that MOST of this argument is really about the question “How does an average winrate of 50% allow anyone to change ranks?”
What you’re describing, an SR that is much lower than MMR, happens with decayed players. A person could have a MMR of 4500 and an SR as low as 3000*. The way they handle this shows what they mean by “chasing” SR. It’s visible and up front. Basically, you are given more SR on a win and less on a loss until your SR is up to the right rank.
If you keep playing at 1400 MMR you will have, overall, a 50% win rate, right? If, somehow** you actually do end up with an SR of 800 then you’ll gain a bunch for a win and lose hardly anything for a loss until it all adds back up to 1400.
This isn’t what actually happens, though, what actually happens is explained in a longer post of mine here:
The system wouldn’t work by holding MMR steady. If you lose enough that your SR goes down to 800 from 1400…your MMR is gonna go down with it, that’s how these systems work. If your ACTUAL skill remains at 1400 then those games will become progressively easier.
Now, there are people that will say that decayed players have special rules, but those people just want to convince themselves and others that they are better than their SR indicates. There is no reason to think that any discrepancy between SR and MMR is handled differently. It’s a rare bird that judges their skill correctly. Try to be that bird.
*(this may be wrong simply due to time constraints of how long it would take to drop 1500 points from decay)
**(I’m not saying this is likely or even possible, but it’s people’s perception so I’ll roll with it)
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Orrot, you seem like a pretty reasonable person that has a legitimate and common question about how the system works. It’s a question that I also had and that I have researched and answered earlier in this thread and others.
I won’t repeat the posts here, but if you look at the above post of mine (1 or 2 up) I think you may find the question asked for clarity then answered simply.
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Aaaaaaaand you basically just said you have no clue what is being discussed. Again.
Hey, I’ve got Ivan here who is a pro ice skater. He is going to race against Average Joe, and we want the match to be fair and 50/50. Joe is ok at skating, but not fast and may fall over. To make the match fair we have replaced Ivan’s skates with sticks of butter.
Why is Ivan complaining? It’s a fair 50/50 match?
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Ivan wouldn’t complain.
In your hilarious scenario the match will be interesting on both sides but no one will say that Ivan is worse than Joe even if Joe wins. The ranking will remain accurate.
This is why I think the discussion about balancing (or handicapping) is really a discussion about how you can determine rank even with a handicapped match.
You CAN rank with a handicapped match, easily, and actually better than just throwing 1000 Joes and 1000 Ivans together without any notion of balance. You actually don’t learn anything by having a fair Joe vs. Ivan race.
It’s just that the system that you need to use is much different from what most people are used to seeing in sports. It’s a relative ranking, rather than an absolute ranking. Absolute can’t work outside a tournament where everyone plays the same number of games.
Do you love making silly comments at the start of a post that make the rest of your comments laughable?
Please go look up the term “handicapping” it’ll help. Reading comprehension helps, but I did decide I wasn’t going to mock you on that anymore.
Pretty much this thread is a lot of Ivans and Joes complaining. But all good, you’ve magically decided that they aren’t complaining.
I never understand your need to bring up subterranean trade routes, which is obviously what you are talking about.
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Thank you OzoneOOO, I try to be reasonable and coherent. I can see where you are coming from and iterate that this is a discussion on match making and how MMR is used to make 50/50 matches.
I laughed at this.
To be more aligned with a real world analogy:
In drag racing, to be fair to two cars, the slower car starts the match first and the second car starts after a pre determined time.
Example:
Car A has a mean time of 1:12
Car B has a mean time of 45 seconds.
Since the true race of drag is that split second timing from yellow to green and how fast you react. Car B starts his run 27 Seconds AFTER car A started his run. This way the winner is chosen by the person who reaches the finish line first.
I wasn’t aware they did that but I love the concept. Its removing the vehicle aspect and making the final victory more skill based.
Pity Blizzard does the opposite and has a layer designed to offset skill…
Going to finish the next subterranean trade treaty anytime soon Ozone? I’m out of time to respond again, maybe in a few weeks I’ll be back.
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It’s titled as being about how MMR is wrong for competitive play. The OP doesn’t care if they are effective in using MMR to make 50/50 matches or not. It’s that they do it that he has a problem with. I’ve been discussing this over at least 2 threads and probably thousands of posts. In fact, the premise relies on the effectiveness of their MMR system. The debate from Cuthbert is never about how accurate it is. I’ll give a summary so far:
He actually has two arguments regarding this. The first is explicit and in the OP, but the second only develops later in the comments.
The first argument is that using balanced matches “corrupts” the win result. That is, your rank is meaningless if you always have a 50% win-rate. Simply put, at one point he says that balanced matches are “unproductive by design.” This is both the main hinge in his argument and incorrect as a matter of fact.
I don’t actually care if people call it handicapped vs. balanced. I think the term “handicapped” is a overdramatic and a bit misleading, but I’ll still use it when discussing the issue. However, using handicapped matches most certainly does not corrupt the win result.
The alternative would actually be much worse and lead to more problems that are similar to the more common complaints. This is a technical issue regarding ranking and matchmaking that extends outside the realm of Overwatch into any ranking system and his premise can be easily refuted without using any references to how the actual Overwatch system works. See above posts for refutation. Sorry to make you do the work, but my posts are already notoriously long.
The second argument which has been exhibited more recently is that MMR and the 50% win rate is an intentional ploy by a malfeasant company to ensure more people become addicted to their game. This is an interesting argument to make against MMR as there are many games one could call “addictive” that don’t use MMR. Also, yes, having a game where you are fairly matched is much more fun than the alternative and if you get “addicted” to fun games then I guess I would have to agree that MMR makes Overwatch more fun and therefore “addictive”. Cuthbert goes so far as to propose that legislation be enacted to stop the use of MMR being used to make games more fun…ahem, I mean more “addictive”.
The debate does trail off into several various pet-peeves of various people, from the fact that it’s hidden, the how much MMR and SR can be separated, how accurate MMR is, whether PBSR is good or not, how groups or playing different heroes affect things, etc., but I’ve been discussing this respectfully with Cuthbert for awhile now and am pretty confident in what HE actually believes. None of these tangential issues really don’t make any difference to whether or not a “handicapped” match corrupts the ranking result and is thus “wrong” for competitive play.
What a lot of people like you come here and hear in his initial post and some subsequent posts is something a bit different. Frankly, it’s not as interesting but as it SOUNDS similar to what Cuthbert is saying and it makes people say that they agree with him, even when they really don’t, he tends to encourage it by acknowledging the kind words and welcoming any complaint as if it fits. Take for instance the “hidden MMR” complaint. He’ll act as if it’s you against the world on this, but it’s actually a pretty minor dispute. Very few people will say that it’s great to have MMR be hidden but for some it’s a bigger deal than for others. It’s the same with MMR/SR discrepancy.
Here’s your proof. If Cuthbert wants MMR to disappear, as he’s said clearly multiple times, then whether MMR is hidden or how far it can go from SR really doesn’t matter one bit, does it? Still, rather than telling people to take those complaints elsewhere as they are irrelevant he uses them to grow emotional support for what should be a very technical dispute. The end result is that people think he’s right about his OP when, actually, very few have read and understood the actual message.
To be clear, if you’re concerned with whether the matches are actually 50/50 or how you are supposed to climb in rank with the matches being 50/50, or that MMR is hidden, or that MMR is inaccurate, that is not what the OP of this thread is actually about. Not that these aren’t valid concerns, but Cuthbert’s concern is actually more complex than a lot of people give him credit for, IMO.
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In my experience I found that MMR is very stat based.
Guys ALWAYS remember that Blizzard removed bonus streaks and sr loss/gain modifiers based on stats but they NEVER said they removed it from MMR.
Community was blaming Blizzard for streaks and stats modifiers and in my opionion they were always very smart pretending to give to our community what we ask for while nothing really changes.
Guys, atm Blizzard got NOTHING to judge the attitude of a player in cooperation, timings, or whatever else regarding ow as a team based game.
STATS are the individual final results and the only valuable thing they can actually judge as they are comparable in tiers and are a very good way to “understand” the carry potential of a player.
Every time i lose some match with bad stats i find more idiots and tilted players in my matches as if they try to put togheter ppl they think they deserve to go down and viceversa.
I realized I was really able to shorten loss streak durations by farming stats with my best plays instead of filling the classic 2-2-2
Im afraid to tell you that this system actually rewards personal skills but don’t hope they are gonna admit it.
Look at how oversumo works, it can accurately tells you if you are likely to go up or down BY ONLY WATCHING STATS, and in my case it never failed.
The mechanism is very simple, oversumo compare your sessions stats to other players in the same tiers and tells you:
stats under 25% of the rest of the tier = you are going down
stats above 75%, you are going up
stats between 25% and 75% you will fluctuate in the same tier depending on which side you are holding (under or above 50%)
Now it comes my exploit as I think that MMR can move in both direction regardless of the final esit of a match.
When you lose a match you are likely to have bad stats even if you are not that bad but your team simply get stomped.
So, focusing on farming in these cases is the key.
Pick the hero you think is better in that specific match for you to farm stats and if you succeed you will easily see how the MM will be tender in next matches.
Pratic example: you are filling by tanking or healing but enemies are wrecking you with pharmercy and tou know you are a very good hitscan? Screw this team and go for it, you are probably going to lose the game anyway and maybe the rest of your team will see it as throwing, ignore them, your job is raising your stats toward 50% or even more to make your MMR less punished.
It’s the same for other roles, if you feel the lack of healing is embarassing go even for the 3rd healer and farm good healer stats.
Sad truths, you can come here and tell me I’m stupid but Im not gonna stop with this attitude until I see it perfectly works.
Ofc this is not an exploit to raise your rank but it can definitely helps you in reducing loss streak duration and the volatility of your rank, and this means you will be more likely to stabilize at your cap and improve faster (instead of going through an insane and tilt-like loss streak).
p.s my eng is crap no need you let me notice it.
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I agree. I am so sick of going up and down 500 sr every week. Its obvious the elaborate system that blizzard has tried to make is deeply flawed comlared to the simple elegance of a NORMAL RANKING SYSTEM.
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