MMR Manipulation - and possible fix

[Trias-2243]

@LightWarrior-1296

So I’ve been playing versus for a bit now and I’m in platinum or gold depending on the race. Most of the games I am evenly matched with my opponent and the win is up for grabs. Sadly, a significant number of my games are against players who are vastly superior to me, despite having a similar MMR. Almost half of my last 8 losses are against players who almost doubled my APM, and absolutely clobbered me in the game(you can check the graphs and performance 2020-08-26). If you check the match history of these players, you’ll find that many of their “losses” are just them leaving the game 30 seconds in. I assume to lower their MMR, so they can stomp players like me.

This makes for a less fun game/ladder dynamic and I’m sure is not what blizzard intended. And that isn’t the only problem this creates. I’ll often start a game only to have one of these type of players leave in the first couple minutes. Which is not only a waste of time, but artificially raises my MMR, so it is that much harder to win against the next opponent.

Your assumption is correct : if there are multiple freeloses in their history, then the only possible purpose is lowering their MMR in order to play lesser opponents. What you did by checking that, is confirming that they were freelosing smurfs.

I also agree with the consequences, as all those you mentioned are listed in the dedicated thread. But you already found it, right ? I may use your feedback into it, as the more testimonies we get, the more we go from simple deductions to a gathering of facts.

@LightWarrior-1296

I write this in the hopes that blizzard will improve the MMR system to reduce this kind of behavior. I’m sure there are many ways to do that, but I would like to suggest one. The amount of MMR you gain or lose should depend on the length of the game.

This would make it much more difficult and time consuming to game the system. It would also mean players lose less MMR for getting cheesed and win more for an epic victory.(side benefit)

There’s nothing quite like an epic game of Starcraft, but that can only happen when players are evenly matched. So if you work for blizzard and are reading this, I hope you’ll pass it along to someone who can help. Let’s keep the ladder fun for everyone.

As I previously said, we have yet to convince the devs that this is an issue. And so, if we suggest a fix, it’d be preferable to go for one that would have little to no impact on regular play.
That’s why I believe the suggestions some made (part III) about increasing queue time after a freelose is the way to go.

Thanks for sharing your experience here and on the big thread, it helps.