Either you don’t understand what a zero sum game is, or you don’t understand what MMR is. I explain MMR in the second post in this thread.
A zero sum game is one where for one person to rank up, another person must rank down. The “point” is for everyone to have an approximate measure of their skill.
This contrasts with a progression system, like most RPGs, where how much you play usually matters much more than your skill in determining your rank.
This also contrasts with a “pointless” game where results are 100% luck based, and neither skill nor time spent matters.
The primary reason to have MMR is to have a mechanism to preserve balanced matches when a player decays. His SR decays, but his MMR does not, and he is matched by MMR, not SR.
The developers have reported some other subtle differences between MMR and SR (Overwatch Forums), but they are pretty subtle and difficult to quantify.
I would prefer if there was no SR, MMR was visible, and decay was handled by having tier decay (GM → M → D) rather than rank decay.
It would be much more pointless to have a top 500 player decay down to 3000, and then farm people for 60 games to back to his original rank. Not to mention being a horrible and imbalanced experience for the people getting farmed.
I like the forced decay because it helps prevent boosted kids from getting boosted to a high rank and then staying there. If they want to stay there then they have to pay a lot of money. It exposes them when they stay at 3K because of decay.
Also, here’s another thing people don’t know about the matchmaker - when you decay and then get back on it places you with other people who are ranking up to make the matches easier to rank back where you were. FACT.
Having said that, someone who is boosted will be quickly recognized by the matchmaker and placed into matches where they are forced to downrank.
You definitely need decay for top 500. Otherwise people could just play the minimum number of games (currently fifty) and assuming they can maintain a marginal win rate, they will keep top 500 from the previous season. Below that, it is judgement call. Most people don’t think diamond really needs decay. I have a hard time getting excited about it because it doesn’t apply to me.
P.S. Ignore S23. He is a serious conspiracy theorist.
I care, I rank better than 93% of players and people who paid to get boosted or got carried by groups don’t deserve it. Comp ranking is about showing how good you are and what rank you can get to, I’m not going to pretend to be “chill” like it doesn’t matter, it does matter and everyone who plays competitive cares on some level.
In here spending countless hours defending the matchmaking system you created I see…trying to convince people that it’s good rather than trying to fix it. Laughable.
One way to get out of that is dont release top 500 until the end of the season.
Forcing anyone who wants it to keep playing. If this is done they dont decay unless they lose games.
I agree, matchmaking is inherently difficult to do correctly and there will always be problems with it. However, there are multiple areas in this matchmaking system that should be done away with, the main one which is the matchmaker arranging teams to where each side has almost a 50% chance of winning, here’s a quote from a developer:
The simple and primary goal of our matchmaker is creating fair matches. To do that, it evaluates potential matches by synthesizing an expected win %. The matchmaker is normally really good about creating matches with a win % that is close to 50%
This means even if you are playing 500SR beyond your current tier, there is most likely another player that is playing 500SR beyond his tier that will be placed on the other team to cancel out your skill and give each side a 50% chance of winning, thus elo hell is created.
The mistake of the matchmaker (one of the many) is it values creating a fair match over allowing players to get to their proper rank.
Either you need to explain this more, or you haven’t thought it through. What mechanism are you proposing to force people to keep playing? As opposed to just getting up to 4.5k on their main early in the season, and then switching to their goof off account?
Well your brain misinterpreted what I said, that’s why it sounds so “dumb” as you put it. I said “if you are playing 500SR beyond your current tier”, I didn’t say “playing 500SR above where your rank.”.
In other words, if I am a rank 3000 player and hop on another account that is 2500, after a few matches the matchmaker will see that I am playing much better than a rank 2500 should, and will find someone as good as me and place them on the other team to make sure that both teams have a 50% chance of winning. The reality is if I hop on a rank 2500 account every single match should be balanced in my favor.
It should be but the matchmaker quickly synthesizes a match where each team has a 50% chance of winning. In other words, it finds another smurf for the other team. I’ve witnessed this happen and it also hints to it in this quote by the devs:
“The simple and primary goal of our matchmaker is creating fair matches. To do that, it evaluates potential matches by synthesizing an expected win %. The matchmaker is normally really good about creating matches with a win % that is close to 50%”