Why winning but no rank up (explanation)

Competitive Discussion
1

So I see a lot of post about people wondering why even though they’re winning they aren’t ranking up.

Well its simple. We all know or should know about MMR. Your hidden skill rating. People have a lot of theories on how this works and how its used. Well its a mathematical formula that takes many things into account. One being your APM. Something you cant see either, we will never see this (APM) either and unless Blizzard lists them in detail. We wont know what the system considers an action.

Ive tested this and yes, APM has a very real effect on your MMR. Why and what is it.

Actions per minute. Even with a win, and I’m just guessing these obviously aren’t hard number. I’m just using them as an example. Lets say the system sees 5 actions per minute from player A But they’re essentially just trading kills 1 elim per death. They’re against player B. Player B is showing 11 APM and dying at a 1 to 1 rate.

Player B will gain more MMR on the win than player A. If the average APM is 10 at whatever rank. The player that did better than average will gain more MMR. The player that played below will plateau and stay the same rank even with a win.

Playing in the lower ranks for a few games I was able to test this by essentially playing like a low rank player. Teams were happy, but I had a low APM and didn’t really do what I should have been doing as a tank but to keep the teams sprit up whatever. B4 after 5 wins, B4 after another 5, B4 after another 5.

To also test the reverse I played 5 games where I essentially ignored the team and played a bit harder. S3 after 5 wins then played again super passive not doing much back to B4.

Its not the system keeping people down. Its their inability to make plays, position correctly to be effective and that they simply dont do much and spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen. You want to keep your APM up by doing things and not dying. You will see MMR gains from it. Higher APM = More skill, more SR, More MMR, Lower APM = standing around not doing anything or being dead a lot.

Now I’m gonna try to Ball my way up to a decent rank on this here alt account again. Hopefully I don’t have to listen to too much crying cause it gets old extremely fast.

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2

I don’t recall seeing any concrete details from Blizzard on the relationship between our hidden MMR and the visible skill tier. The visible skill tier updates 5wins/15losses but is it just a snapshot of our current MMR? Is there a limit on how fast it can update? etc.etc.

3

if i recall from part 2 of the dev blog post, your mmr is updated after every game

4

My roomates said I should install because the matchmaker is better/different, I’m not convinced, although they hate the matchmaker as much as I do so I’ve decided to keep an open mind. I reinstalled and have been playing in what feels like at LEAST masters games yet it had me ranked in gold, yet it’s boosting my SR every 5 wins despite the matches somehow being close, I’m now in diamond and still climbing.

Whatever it’s doing it’s at least partially broken because I remember the matches on my other plat account (before I got it to masters) and they were nowhere near this difficult. Basically there are plat/masters matches, plat/diamond matches, and plat/plat matches, so rank means almost nothing because your MMR is what the game truly sees you at.

5

this is why so many ppl climb once they turn off the noise of team chat. The average player has no idea how to play this game and will get very mad if they think someone understands the game better than them.
It’s a competition of fools try to outdumb each other with words and it does not help ppl climb at all

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6

MMR is yep, but how are the visual skill tiers actually related? Not speculation, but concretely.

One possibility is that it’s exactly the same as our skill rating/MMR but it only updates visually every x wins/y losses.

Another possibility is that it’s a different underlying value entirely that eventually converges to the MMR but its velocity is bounded to prevent huge swings and encourage people to play more. I don’t know.

I suspect that, regardless of how it works internally, it’s designed to get people to play more by making it more difficult to get to the visual skill tier that matches our MMR. People want the badge, not necessarily the absolute MMR number itself.

7

As far as the visual rank and MMR. No they are not linked currently. They could in theory be wildly far apart. Fix coming in S4 when they remove decay.

More importantly though the APM is, and I honestly believe I’ve been able to prove this through the testing I’ve done. One of the BIGGEST factors to where your MMR places you. How much you gain per win or lose per loss. More so than damage blocking healing elims or deaths. I believe your APM is a key factor. While all those are part of your APM, I believe the overall is much more important than any one specific stat. I cant give an estimate on how much it factors like I mentioned before, But it 100% factors in and it has a lot of weight seemingly.

But really that makes sense. Better players do more stuff therefore higher APM is big indicator of overall skill. So if you’re winning and not ranking up, do more stuff and it may change.

8

I think this is true to a point. I remember reading somewhere that it looks at how often you use skills.

I.E. Using an ult even if it’s not the “perfect time” for it as opposed to holding it for 4 min waiting for the “right” time.

Use you’re ult, maybe get a pick or two, or a bunch of healing, help a team fight, and be back to 50% charge by the time the person who’s holding it uses it once.

I think the game measures skill usage. Using an ability on CD for minimal effect three times is better than saving it for a potential big effect once.

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9

Yeah its for sure not the only thing it looks at but I can bet almost anything its one of the larger factors in where the system believes you should be playing.

10

mmr is matchmaking rating.

then you have hidden SR, its the same as it was in overwatch 1 just hidden. (we know it exists because you can get your data from blizzard)

your skill icon/tier is based on your SR, but how much SR you gain or lose during a match is based on how far your SR is from your MMR.

so a good example of this is like

your plat 5 but you have diamond mmr. every win might give you 50sr (we dont know the number this is a guess); so if you go 5-0 you’ll update too plat 3 then if you do it again you might update too diamond 5 (because its a total of 500 sr).

but if your mmr is plat and you are in plat 5, you might only get 20 sr per win so going 5-0 only gives you 100sr, or 1 skill tier update.

blizzard says MMR is updated after every match played.

11

this makes no sense ive been in gold 1 for the last 6 rank ups and out of all those games ive lost maybe 5 in total i think… im usually 30+/0 sometimes higher some less and never really die more than 4 or 5 times on a bad game
and i just cant get out of gold 1

12

The forum has been been saying that Blizzard told us all recently that they only use wins and losses, they don’t see/use performance. :thinking:

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13

You have to do more. Its not about any one specific number. Damage or Elims its a combination of everything you do. You can have high elims and a low APM, Low elims and a high APM. Obviously its calculated differently for different games, RTS, fighting, FPS. So OW probably has a pretty low average APM anyways.

But if you’re always doing something, using abilities, engaging whenever possible youll increase it. You may be playing mechanically well but need to work on something smaller to allow you to do just a little more. If you’re plateauing its as simple as figuring out small steps to increase your effectiveness by a small % and youll rank up. Slightly adjusting as you rank up is something everyone is most likely going to have to do. Small adjustments in play can make a huge difference.

There are a lot of ways people can improve. I started watching my games back. I asked for advice from players I knew were better than me. I asked higher ranked players about tech if there was any I wasn’t using. I honestly listened and I was able to make small adjustments to how I play and it did help me become a better player.

Like I’ve mentioned before when I started I was one of the people that blames the system and blah blah. But no I just had to learn the game better and work on the things I wasn’t doing well. So I’m not trying to bash people, this is a pretty complicated game when you break it down there is a lot of stuff to know