I think that it would be useful in the match-ups if, at least internally in the battlenet system, the MMR was calculated separately by race (for match-up purposes.)
For example, I’m much better against Terrans than I am against Protos. It would make the games more interesting if the system knew to give me harder Terran matches, but easier Protos.
The over-all “public” MMR doesn’t have to change. Just how matching is made by the system.
theres no developement on the game. so this will never happen.
Isn’t this already the case? It’s been a long while since they gave us per race MMR.
What am I missing?
Right now, the MMR is split by the player’s race. So if you play as all 3 races, your Terran MMR will be calculated separately from your Protoss MMR.
The OP is asking for your MMR to be split by opponent’s race. So let’s say you’re very good in TvP but suck at TvZ. The OP is asking for your TvP to match you against better players than would be against TvZ. Right now, players only have one MMR when playing as Terran, so you would be matched in TvZ and TvP using that same number.
MMR by matchup?
Maybe that has some well meaning rationale but on the surface sounds unnecessary at best. It’s probably logistically incompatible with automated ladder queue.
Ultimately I think the premise is a flaw in thinking that match need to be 100% even matches. While loosing to an objectively superior opponent isn’t always a fun experience, I think modern gaming’s obsession with balance and fairness is a detriment to players over the long term.
While you wouldn’t want kids playing midget football with NFL pro, you still need to expose the kids to their superior peer. Thats why organized sport have scrimmage games. If you only ever play against your own peers you’ll never learn to play against tougher opponents.
It’s actually the source of the majority of the frustration in the game. Basically it works like this. Protoss has an +150 mmr advantage in PvZ. As a result, they go up by 150 and zergs go down by 150. The Protoss are now facing super hard PvT and PvP matches. This obviously creates frustration. The reverse also happens for Zerg, where PvZ and ZvZ end up being harder, but ZvT ends up being easier because at a lower rank the terrans are weaker. The way this affects terran is that TvP is easy and ZvT is hard, and TvT remains unchanged. The net result is that Protoss dominate Grandmaster, Zergs are forced out, and terrans are in the middle ground being balance-neutral.
TvP: easier.
TvZ: harder.
TvT: unchanged.
PvT: harder.
PvP: harder.
PvZ: easier.
ZvP: harder.
ZvZ: harder.
ZvT: easier.
Translation, imbalance in 1 matchup makes 5 matchups harder. This would obviously changed if there were per matchup mmr rankings, because ZvP wouldn’t affect ZvZ and ZvT. But, per matchup MMR ratings would fix the issue in another way: it would become crystal clear when a matchup is imbalanced because ZvP rankings will be different than PvZ rankings, which means the balance counsel could stop coming up with excuses and would finally have no choice except to actually balance the game. Right now they go “REEEEE serral wins everything REEEEE skill issue on zerg’s part REEEEEEE learn to play noob”.
They and I had a stand off on the forums for the past few years. They harassed me 24/7. I kept telling them if they forced toss into the finals it would be highly embarrassing for them. Then Showtime vs Gumiho happened and the toss played like an ape and lost an unlosable series. It was virtually impossible for toss to lose and he made almost every mistake until he ground his advantage to zero and lost. Top community predictions kept being wrong, over and over again, I was right, and so there are a lot of hurt feelings out there right now.
The brilliance of the Gumiho vs Showtime debacle is that it was a TvP so they can’t even blame zerg for it. They absolutely destroyed their persecution narrative by their relentless buffing of protoss because they removed any way toss could possibly lose except that the toss gives the win away for free.
Anyway per matchup mmr ratings would be very good for the game because the liars and grifters on the balance counsel wouldn’t be able to gaslight as easily as they do now. The ladder interactions are murky because all matchups funnel into a single ranking, and that allows the balance counsel to gaslight and misrepresent. If there were per matchup mmr rankings, balance would be whatever the mmr rankings say and anyone disagreed would be a lunatic so it would be folly for them to even attempt to misrepresent balance. But right now they can misrepresent things and a big portion of that is due to the singular mmr ranking for all matchups.
My points keep getting stronger over time because Clem is now playing Protoss and his performance is exceeding the #1 protoss on earth (maxpax) despite having nowhere near as much practice and experience. So yeah. Top protoss professionals were the odd one out when it came to skill and the designers have been punishing the entire ladder for it and it’s one of the biggest factors driving the game’s decline. Because there is 1 ranking for all matchups, PvZ makes everything in the game harder for everyone. The esports people refuse to let go because having protoss in the finals is good for viewership numbers. Now the game is in a game of chicken between the esports people who hurt the playerbase to bolster tournament views vs the people leaving the game. Eventually the esports people will lose this game of chicken because the risk structure is not in their favor. If the players leave, big whoop, they find a new game to play – nothing is lost. If SC2 esports loses its viewers, they will probably never come back and the esports people will be out of a job. So this game is chicken is juvenile and short sighted from supposed “professionals”.
I presented them with a solution. The solution is to provide race switching incentives. If you want to protoss in the finals, and you don’t want to hurt the player base, then the answer is obvious: provide incentives for high skill players to switch to protoss. Do off race tournaments. Limit players to 1 premier win per race per year – if clem wins with terran, he has to play protoss or zerg. This fixes the issue in a way that is beneficial for everyone. The problem is, the bruised egos in the esports sector are a bit angry that an outsider was the one to identify the real problem & find the solution.
https://i.imgur.com/Lava0uP.png
59 workers vs 4. 2 mining bases vs zero. 3 value engines (shield healing, disruptor shots, storm) vs 1 (medivac healing). Vision advantage (obs vs no scans). Toss could’ve built 1 dt, 1 phoenix, and the game would be over. Toss has objectively won this game. Instead, he takes the worst imaginable fight, losing probes, stalkers bumbling around doing nothing, zealots attacking a refinery for no reason, his disruptors out of position, hits his own disruptors with his disruptor shots. The crazy thing is that after this fight he is still winning, but he loses.
By contrast, a champion tier protoss should be able to do the reverse: rather than losing from a winning position, a champion toss should be able to win from a losing position. I think this feeds into the decline of esports as well because the finals aren’t very good. The quality of the micro and positioning and decision making in that HSC finals was just so bad, and I think that’s going to hurt viewership numbers.
Their obsession with protoss is problematic, and an easy stop gap solution would be per matchup mmr rankings because then PvZ doesn’t mess with the other matchups by distorting the singular mmr ranking shared in common by all matchups. In the long term, it will force the game designers to be realistic about balance but in the short term relieving the pressure in the other matchups would be a good start.
https://i.imgur.com/KagyLgP.png
Aligulac does per matchup ratings and so this is basically what you’d see for every protoss on the ladder if it had per matchup MMR ratings. For zerg, it would be the inverse with ZvZ being their strongest, then ZvT, then ZvP their worst.
If per matchup mmr rankings were implemented, there would be absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind that Protoss is imbalanced in PvZ.
Right now, ladder Protoss is an absolute joke to anyone who understands 5th grade math and or has decent game knowledge. The thing about video game accomplishments is that they are useless except that they give you reputational points. But Protoss victories are so tainted by their balance advantage that nobody should respect them or their victories or their rankings. What exactly are these Protoss fighting for? They should be the ones most outraged because their reputational points are worthless because of this balance advantage and that nullifies their accomplishments and reduces it down to nothing but a waste of time. It’s obvious why professional level Protoss would be OK with an advantage, but what about the rest of the people who play Protoss. You know, the casuals.
By the way, for the people who are thinking “HerO is uniquely good in PvZ and uniquely weak in PvP”: you are wrong, this trend is shared universally for all Protoss in the pro scene. It’s a racial trait, not a player trait.
Clem is now beating the rank #2 PvT player on Earth 2-0 using Terran then turning around and beating rank #3 TvP player 3-0 using Protoss. Protoss was the odd one out when it came to GOAT-tier skill. When you split the player base into 3 groups, there is a high probability of large skill differences at the extremes for each group. This analysis tells us the probability of a skill difference >=X occurring at the extremes of each group if you split the SC2 player base randomly into 3 sets. There is a high probability that large skill differences occur, and what we observe with Clem’s offrace reinforces that.
According to monte-carlo models, the skill gap between top Protoss and Serral/Clem is so massive that you’d have to give Protoss an 85% win-rate between equally skilled players before Protoss started to have decent odds of winning tournaments like EWC. I think it’s quite obvious that balance is not the issue for premier tournaments and it is not capable of fixing the issue.
The only practical way to make Protoss win premier tournaments is to provide off race incentives to get Serral and Clem to off race. Provide bonuses for people who off race. Require anyone who wins a premier to off race the rest of the season. So on and so forth.
There is another way to fix this, but it would require a serious redesign of the game’s economy. The economy of SC2 is simply drastically overpowered compared to alternative strategies like tech-based plays. Having a tech advantage is worth zero compared to a guy who has infinite money. The reason this is problematic is because the economy is self-referential. An economic lead grows itself. That means it magnifies very small differences in skill. A player gets a small lead and if invested in economy it quickly turns into a massive lead that is completely and utterly insurmountable by any other factor. What this means is that if Serral has 0.1% more skill than Hero, Serral will have a 99% win-rate at EWC thanks to the economy mechanics.
If you really want to fix this issue, nerf the economy for all three races so that tech and upgrade and rush based plays are stronger. Tech advantages aren’t self referential and so the value they provide is linear instead of exponential. This means Serral gets a linear advantage from being more skilled, which means it’s easier for players like Hero to catch up and make come backs. As long as economic plays are overpowered, Serral and Clem are going to dominate tournaments.
Start by making creep tumors and injects and mules and chronoboosts cost minerals. No more free abilities IF those abilities bolster economic strength.
