Algorithmic Handicapping (MMR) is Wrong for Overwatch

Yes, they have. I literally linked to it earlier. Here’s the quote from it.

Your point is that they’re handicapping… Ineffectively?

incorrect, is a response that does not contain at least twenty characters

never been to a chess tournament, but I bet you dimes to doughnuts the declare they are using FIDE rules.

You could bet me dollars to dump trunks but again, I’m not interested in made up nonsense based on nothing but your feelings of right and wrong.

1 Like

so let us agree that the vast majority chess tournaments tell you how the bishop moves, agreed?

Yeah. It’s a system that has most of their entire user base unhappy and they refuse to acknowledge how poorly it is received.

And that isn’t any explanation of how it works. It’s a huge generalization (and contradictory at points) that ends with them saying “look at that! Everyone is at a 50 percent! It works!” which is just asinine and goes to show that as long as it appears to work, that’s all that matters.

1 Like

We aren’t talking about chess. Go to a chess website for sciences sake if you want to talk about bishops.

1 Like

I’d like you to name one other competitive environment where information is kept hidden. And don’t say cards, because hidden information is part of the game.

2 Likes

@meaStyy-1739 Calm down. Go outside. Take a walk.

@Tactician-11177 The actual comparison is not the rules of the match, such as how a bishop moves (which for Overwatch are either published or relatively easy to test), but the rating system. In a chess association or tournament you know the exact rules of how your rating will change with each game. Given the rating of the two players, you can calculate how your rating changes with a calculator and then verify that the official number matches. See http://www.glicko.net/ratings/rating.system.pdf for an example (US Chess Federation rules).

This is not the case for overwatch, in which in my summary, How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 11), is vague by necessity, in many places. Overwatch could stand a lot more tranparency in its rating system.

2 Likes

I think it was you who said, what if the MMR system is proprietary, intellectual property. I totally understand this and I want Blizzard to make lots of money because they are an awesome company. I’m just saying, hidden rating systems are a blemish on any competitive environment.

And thanks for clearing up my chess analogy :slight_smile:

1 Like

It wasn’t me. Regardless, though, I agree that it is their intellectual property. But there is no law that intellectual property must be secret (proprietary is secret by definition). And there are so many papers and talks out there about rating systems, that it wouldn’t be that hard for a motivated and mathematically inclined person to rebuild a system as effective as Blizzard’s and similar in function.

What Blizzard excels at is polish, fun factor, and long-term support. They wouldn’t lose players (to competitors or otherwise) if they documented their games better. But they’ve always been bad at documentation.

2 Likes

I’d bet they licensed MS TrueSkill. When to read up on it and compare what they said it’s either TruSkill or the spent the resources to build something just like it from scratch.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much more transparency people want and I honestly can’t understand why.

Are you really gonna break out the slide rule after gathering the SR of all the players (which isn’t possible anymore anyways)? Why?

Are you somehow going to get more kills just because now you know that will give you 2 extra SR?

Like, honestly, what useful questions does anyone have that they haven’t already explained?

Unless you think they’re being deceitful in the whole process, in which case there is no information that will satisfy you.

If I told you why I wanted it, would you fight for my cause. If I convinced you through empirical evidence that my wants were justified, would you take up my banner?

I don’t think you would, so why answer your question :slight_smile:

1 Like

I’d like it to be like chess: where you could calculate each SR change with a calculator or simple program, given only publicly available numbers.

If more information allows ratings to be exploited, then the system should be changed so it can’t be exploited (No security through obscurity).

This would make conspiracy theories even sillier, allow us to do bug checks, simplify and make more accurate my summary of how the system works, allow people to know what the ideal behavior is to rank up, etc.

2 Likes

It would be super nice to understand why this happens…

Win a game, total stomp. 3 SR
Loss a game, really close. -25 SR
Win a game, really close, play terrible. +20 SR

Hard to have faith in the match making when the SR/MMR system is so confusing.

2 Likes

Tact, the questions weren’t really directed personally at you, mostly it was more a general, rhetorical question.

I’m just saying I don’t understand the fuss. I’m curious, but I don’t really have any more questions on the matter that they haven’t explained, other than how groups are handled, but that’s not really anyone else’s concern.

Detailed math might be nice, but it wouldn’t actually matter gameplay wise, though I do agree with your concerns, @kaawumba, those are not the common concerns.

That 3 SR thing is a bug. Been around for more than year.

“Really close / total stomp” is not taken into account. In theory, whether you were predicted to win will be taken into account. But be it that you are in gold, almost all of your matches will be predicted to be 50/50.

See How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 11) for what is taken into account.

The discussion in this thread has been more substantive and focused lately. I just want to say thanks to the contributors. Let’s keep being clear with each other, even when we disagree.

4 Likes

it’s just like the question of balance. I think the game is pretty well balanced, except for Mercy and Widow on the top of OWL and torb/sym on the bottom, but blizz will sort everything out and the community’s outrage baffles me.

Okay. Took a walk. Feel the same state of rational enthusiasm to debate on the internet. Is this a problem? Should I just be ultra-apathetic and resort to passive aggressive tendencies instead?