Since we’re getting patches again and the last one wasn’t terrible (unless you’re a Protoss main), here are the patch notes which I would have liked to see.
Matchmaking: General
Random: randomly selected race displayed for all players on the loading screen
1v1 mmr per-matchup: each player will have an individual rating for each XvX matchup
1v1 race veto: you can queue for a specific matchup for practice
1v1 league border determined by mean average of each matchup rating
Matchmaking: Team Games
Team games rating now influenced by/derived from 1v1 rating
Random team rating significant matchmaking handicap against Arranged teams
Players gain a very short player veto list to avoid being matched with team killers
Thanks, care to elaborate? Otherwise I’m going to assume you enjoy smurfing and team smurfing. Maybe you have practice partners for each matchup and want to deny casuals the ability to easily queue for practice? Maybe you are a random player who chooses random for the opening advantage but won’t admit as much to yourself because ‘I just like em all’. Or perhaps you like to teamkill? Best guesses from your input. Cheers.
This defeats the purpose of random. I’m not going to hear you out on any arguments for this
Absolutely pointless and unnecessary. Having MMR per race is plenty fine - the only potential adjustment that MIGHT be reasonable is for random. That is, random MMR should be based on the race you get in game, and not as a separate MMR.
I hate certain matchups, but this is just a ridiculous suggestion. You just need to suck it up and deal with the game. I can’t phrase it any nicer than that. MMR is a score for your skill based on your race, not who you face.
Should just be based on your highest race. I see no point in this change - in fact, it just adds more confusion. If a 6k MMR player in GM has an offrace of 3k for example, that person would have a diamond/low master border at 4.5k MMR. Doesn’t make sense to me at all
In your defense - when you put all of your changes together, they actually kind of make sense, but sadly, they’re all terrible.
Pass. Team games are vastly different from 1v1. You can be a solid team game player, but not be as great at 1v1.
The BETTER suggestion would be to remove premade team MMRs. You can smurf all day doing this - just find some friends and farm low levels by making new premade teams every single time. Better yet, if you’re in a clan of decent active players, you can run team combinations up to something like 50*49*48*47 for example. I am absolutely baffled by how much Blizzard encourages smurfing in this game. It’s disgusting and proof that the community has its dark sides.
Team game MMR should be solely based on your own team game MMR and that is it.
There shouldn’t be any handicaps whatsoever in any versus game mode.
The better solution would be if Blizzard actually punished trolls in game. League of Legends does it. Every other major game does it. Trolls get punished. On here? They get encouraged. In co-op, team games, arcade, everywhere that is not 1v1. All you have to do is implement a temporary ban/strike system on players who go inactive, attack their teammates, and/or somehow do not actively try to win. It is SO EASY, yet in ALL of the years this game has existed, NO ONE has thought to do it.
RTS on the casual level is ruined because of Blizzard/Activision, and I hope some other company comes up and saves the genre. I don’t care about Frost Giant or the other studios honestly - I’m sure some of them were around when the game was at its peak, yet did nothing to voice the real underlying issues of this game.
Anyway, that concludes my rant. Back to your drawing board
So to you the ‘purpose of random’ is to have an opener advantage over your opponent by knowing their race but they don’t know yours. Interesting.
Each matchup plays differently, has a different meta, requires different set-ups. This is the base of all balance whine. Rating each matchup individually will both highlight issues across the community for devs to address as well as show individual players their weaker areas and where to practice. It would further fine tune the matchmaking experience for people who perhaps stomp in PvT but struggle in PvZ for example.
You hate certain matchups because you’re worse at them. Per-matchup mmr would alleviate your frustration to an extent by matching you with more similarly skilled opponents in said matchup. Your overall rating with your race would still be reflected by the mean average of all the matchups that race can face, so the only real difference is an improved ladder experience and better matched practice.
Because you didn’t understand it properly. It would still be based on your highest race. But if your highest race is ‘Terran’, your league border is the average of TvT/TvZ/TvP mmrs. It’s only mentioned because you would now be able to individually queue for those matchups. This way you can’t rise to top rating by playing ONLY TvZ because your TvP and TvT are factored into the rating. You could however decide to only practice TvZ on the ladder today because that would be more fun for you and why TF not.
Yeah, and then there are high level 1v1 players who rarely play team games and when they do the system is frequently creating games between bronze and masters players. Team rating at least at the start should take into account whether the person has never played before or has GM level mechanics.
That is a good suggestion.
The advantage of a fully arranged team of people talking in a voice chat over randomly selected players is impossible to explain. Add to the fact that their mmr is likely fresh or purposefully smurfed, and the outcome of these games is all but predetermined. Truthfully RT should never face AT at all but that would make matchmaking take forever, so the logical compromise is to recognize the extreme advantages of AT and mitigate that in the matchmaker a little bit.
Blizzard will never do that in a product that does not require a monthly subscription to play. However, it’s possible they would implement a veto list of ~5 people which would significantly improve the player’s tools for dealing with these people. I’ve seen the same two people get matched together 5+ games in a row where the game simply ended because salty teamkiller was just attacking them with their starting workers. Ruining the match for all 6-8 players. Imagine the time saved if they could just veto that player and get a game.
What do you think about the argument “if random is so good how come there are no GMs/top level players that play random?”
Sounds more like we need to fine tune balance rather than change a system that works fairly well as is.
Also, what you’re asking for is a system that is significantly more complex than the one that already exists. Sometimes the simpler model is best to use. I don’t think anyone shares your ambition in creating a more complex rating system than the current one.
From my personal experience - not really. Speaking from purely my own perspective here: I hate PvP for example. It’s not balance, and the solution is not to have a separate MMR for each match up. They just need to do something about cannon rush in this particular match up.
Also, this stuff about averages, isn’t that what the current system kind of does already? Obviously we can go into very specifics about how it isn’t, but right now, it’s already factoring all matchups into one MMR. And wouldn’t this averaged MMR become biased if you were able to veto a matchup? Sounds like layers of layers of unnecessary complications to me.
Okay fair
I mean this is kind of fair, but at the same time, the system adjusts itself gradually assuming the GM player plays normally. The GM player just keeps playing until he reaches the MMR he belongs in.
Tough luck
The smurfing part with prearranged teams definitely needs to be changed. Fully on board in that regard. I think the best solution is to just remove prearranged teams all together and just have random team MMR. It’s imperfect, but it beats generating an infinite number of teams and nonstop smurfing on low level people.
I don’t care if you paid money for the game or not. If you’re ruining the online experience for others, you need to receive punishment. Maybe not a full out ban, but maybe a temporary/permanent ban from the game mode you are trolling in. Example: troll in co-op, get banned from co-op.
About vetoing players - people can just make new accounts. Then are you going to have to manually input those new names as well? It’s better if an automated system takes care of rulebreakers - puts less burden on the player to do things.
I think that it’s an irrelevant / strawman argument. My view is that the ‘purpose of random’ is to have your race randomly selected for you because you don’t care which you’re playing and you wanna spice it up maybe. Your strawman comes from your apparent belief that the ‘purpose of random’ is to hide your race from the opponent and create unfavorable openers. Hence our disconnect. It is my belief that the game would be better if both players knew the randomly selected race at the loading screen so that they can practice in the meta appropriately. When I play random, it is for my stated purpose. Having my race hidden ruins my play in subtle ways though due to my opponent’s potential meta openers being discarded at the start.
Again we are at fundamental odds over a different concept and you are arguing to that tangent. None of my patch notes were aimed at changing balance. The MMR change would allow the system to shift people’s weaker matchups together which would benefit both the fun of the matches they play on ladder and their ability to improve.
No, because it’s averaged. That’s why it’s averaged; so that you can’t just skip a matchup. It wouldn’t matter anyways, because you’d still be matched on your matchup specific mmr.
Very sportsmanlike of you. Rigged system, easily fixed but … Tough luck
So the teamkiller is going to simultaneously log into five accounts and harass you? The short list is simply to prevent abuse by people banning every noob for an advantage, but you could easily snuff out an individual TK incident with this. Sure, that loser can make infinite accounts and may still harass people all day long. You’ll notice that my suggestion had nothing to do with punishment and was all about giving players better tools to resolve the issue themselves. Disciplining bad actors is solely Blizzard’s responsibility and history teaches us that if you don’t pay a subscription to the Blizzard game in question, discipline isn’t going to come. Any automated system for that is going to be heavily abused in favor of the bad actors themselves. My suggestion’s potential for abuse is very low and gives players a powerful tool to avoid bad actors in a meaningful way.
I’ve heard the opinion that random players have their race not displayed in the loading screen because they deserve some reward for learning all 9 matchups. Actually imagine a guy who has thousands of games as random. Clearly he had to work very hard to learn builds, timings of all MUs so that’s why they have that small handicap of the start of the game. I know it is annoying but sometimes they will reveal their race if you politely ask them.
The reward should be learning the MUs, not ‘a small handicap.’ The handicap means they are practicing a technically ruined meta. ‘Handicap’ has no place in ladder 1v1.
Believe it or not, random spices things up. I sometimes like to call it the fourth race. You said earlier that random gives an opener advantage, but the honest truth is, it really doesn’t. Especially by the 2 minute mark, it doesn’t matter. Your suggestion completely defeats the purpose of random existing. You might as well be asking for random to be removed at that point. Because if there’s no mystery to Random vs. X, then you might as well pick your race and switch off to another as you feel like. I don’t stand by it. Just say you want random removed from the game and we can recognize our differences.
Help them improve… By helping them avoid the matchup entirely… You know, if this were for something like unranked or casual play, I would be more on board. If people want to play for fun, then by all means, it would be a nice gesture to veto certain matchups. However, we’re talking about ranked, and rank needs to be a reflection of your overall skill. Vetoing an entire matchup defeats the purpose of helping people improve. It just helps them run away. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding? Is the race veto thing purely for practice and separate from ranked?
So we’re back to square one of having our current system. Maybe I’m confused. Are all four of your points related to ranked or is there a difference? I think I need that clarified.
People farm accounts all the time. Ever since the game went free
This kind of argument makes no sense. Saying Blizzard won’t do anything doesn’t make your system better than mine. It just means Blizzard won’t do anything regardless.
Tell me how a rulebreaker can abuse a system that works against… Rulebreakers?
Disagree; example(s): Where does Protoss player place first pylon against Random? Even sacrificing one of your first workers, you won’t scout their race in time.
Can Terran players opt to proxy barracks to marine/bunker pressure greedy Zerg hatcheries? Race information is not in time, a plethora of Protoss/Terran openings will !@#$ on you if you do this blindly.
There are a ton of reasons why opening build and meta is ruined by the hidden race advantage. Opponent will completely discard meta openers purely because your race is hidden. That’s precisely why it’s an advantage which should not exist in 1v1, but then again that seems to be your only reason for selecting Random to begin with.
Yeah, you should. That is exactly what random should do.
No, help them improve … by making the matchmaking more precise and responsive to their performance in that matchup.
Yes, playing the video game should be ‘for fun’ for 99% of the players who are not professionals.
Rather than taking opening advantages by hiding your race, for instance?
No, it provides a tool for focused practice in a particular matchup. If you are struggling ZvT, you can improve at that faster by playing 20 ZvT in a row rather than 6 ZvT’s sprinkled into 20 games with other matchups. Because your ZvT is individually ranked your opponents will more accurately reflect your ability in that matchup. Because your Zerg league border is the mean average of your ZvZ, ZvP, and ZvT you must still play all matchups if you want that ‘prestige’.
It’s quite a bit different. I think you’re confused, yes.
They cant be playing them all simultaneously though, can they.
Saying Blizzard won’t do anything is appreciating reality. You haven’t suggested any system outside of ‘ban them automagically somehow’. We all know Blizzard is not going to pay for moderators for SC2, and any automated banning system will be so heavily abused it will create a worse outcome than doing nothing. So that’s not going to happen. A veto list would at least let victims block out perpetrators after only 1 poor experience instead of quitting queue after a chain of unlucky matches with the same troll teamkilling them. Are you afraid that people will … add you to their veto list …?
You really haven’t thought things that far through? Here you are bemoaning that they will just make infinite accounts, but can’t foresee the folly of a system that automatically bans people based on the reports from infinite free accounts?
Work towards walling the high ground ramp and work from there. It’s not as big of a deal as you think.
Terran can proxy barracks against every single race
That’s why you worker scout the random player
It really doesn’t. The game stabilizes by the 2 minute mark.
Just say you don’t want random
Ranked is ranked. If you wanted to suggest something casual like this, put it towards unranked practice and have a separate field set up there.
Going to speak a bit generally here - if you want focused practice then by all means, your suggestions fit under an unranked scenario. However, it’s flat out ridiculous to have a veto for ranked and separate MMR for each matchup. At the end of the day, you end up with something similar to the original model anyway if all you do is just average each factor and add them back up together. You are just suggesting a bunch of unnecessary and complicated factors to bring about what may be a small improvement at best. At the end of the day, everyone who is interested in ranked and wants prestige and wants the highest mean rating overall will not utilize the veto system, nor will they care so much about individual matchup MMR as it adds up to the current system in place anyway (the rating that matters).
It’s very quick and easy to switch between accounts
Here’s a list of conditions that can result in some punishment:
AFK for over 2 minutes after the game starts
Pulling all your workers around the start of the game and/or attacking your teammates
Destroying your teammates’ base(s) or armies
Just some small examples. Tell me how this system can be abused?
Guarantee you every popular online game has some degree of automated punishment towards players if they are reported/flagged for certain actions. It works EXTREMELY well. Have YOU thought things through?
Win rate % kind of does that. There is the myth that matchmaking chooses your opponents based on some hidden per-matchup MMR when it is entirely based on the MMR and per-matchup is never taken into account. If you are 4K you match 4K or closest to it, period. No matter if you are 70% TvT, 60% TvZ and 10% TvP or just have <50% Win rate overall but are on that MMR. This narration pushed here by clueless backeasters… is wrong.
I would want this but game cannot match Ranked vs Unranked, it has to be strictly for Unranked vs Unranked. Even from opponent side a Ranked player may match too much your desired matchup if they are weak on it, instead of giving them equal chances.
It is already done in a way. Often times that you just likely will lose from your weakest matchup, it prevents you from going higher, so this is what keeps you lower than if you coped with better win % vs that race. Imagine being a win or two away from promotion and one gets two tosses that rob one’s mmr. Now you need four. Oh but you are tilted, get this 5th loss like that.
You’re being disingenuous. I’d hit you with the ‘say you only play random for the advantage’, but you’ve already admitted to that. Agree to disagree; you want random to have an unfair advantage, I want random to really be able to practice the meta.
It’s ridiculous, but it’s similar to the original anyways. You’re just trolling at this point.
Pick one and stick with it; will they veto a matchup to abuse this (won’t work) or will they not veto any because they are only interested in the highest ranking?
Any change is ‘unnecessary’. There’s really nothing complicated about my suggestions. At least you can pause from your faux confusion to admit it would be an improvement. Those who want prestige by the highest mean rating will utilize the veto system to improve their weaker matchups.
Yeah, and IF the teamkiller switches accounts by that time the victim will be in a game without them. The account will likely have different mmr, etc, etc. You’re full complaints about ‘but the bad guy gets away!’ Oh no! It’s not about punishing the bad guy, its about letting the real player have a way to get a real game.
Great, start your own suggestion thread. I’m not interested in dolling out punishments to losers. My suggestion was in appreciation of Blizzard’s firm stance of never hiring any moderators ever.
Tell me who is going to enforce this system? How is this automated? 2/3 conditions can be met without the player actually being a griefer. #2 could be met by someone defending themselves against a griefer. You really haven’t thought this stuff through and are just begging for a magic bullet here.
Not this one; checkmate.
Quite a bit more than you have it would seem. We’re at an impasse. Everything you begrudgingly acknowledge would be a ‘small improvement’ isn’t worth it to you for someone else to implement because it’s arbitrarily ‘complicated’. You’re also extremely resistant to the removal of the inherent advantage of the hidden race mechanic in random; too attached to any unfair edge you can get. Being able to queue for a matchup you want? RIDICULOUS! Being accurately matched in that matchup? HORRIBLE! Giving team players an easy way to escape teamkilling trolls?! NO! WAIT FOR A BANNING SYSTEM THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN INSTEAD! Thanks for your input, but I think we’re done.
The suggestion is to make the myth a reality. So then the player with the 70% TvT winrate will match against stronger Terrans more appropriate for their level in the matchup; improving their TvT even more and the quality of those games. That same player with only 10% TvP will match with weaker Protoss opponents without risking their TvT rating, and again get closer/better games and a better experience and rate of improvement.
Ranked or Unranked wouldn’t change anything about it. Actually, having a second unranked mmr that doesn’t reset to your ranked mmr is merely a tool for smurfing and should be removed. Unranked mmr should really reset to your ranked MMR after a time if it’s lower than your ranked MMR.
So, in the grand scheme of things related to the prestige of the league border it changes little. But it improves the QOL of practicing a lot by more accurately matching you with opponents of each race, and allowing you to focus your practice for specific matchups.
As much as TvP is hated matchup it is still better to train it vs stronger or similar mmr. One gets no value beating some low economy protoss noob. You boost to that MMR by compensating it from the other matchups.
Smurfing is promoted also for anyone that does selective matchup, plenty of players who wanted to troll a specific enemy race. Also cherry picking your opponent’s race is not realistic competition in ANY game, especially as Ranked. It would be OK for Unranked, since no league-giving MMR is gained from selective game but it could change and ruin the rate of a Ranked player, just because you choose to play vs their race, and since now Unranked and Ranked match each other.
In this case, similar mmr. There is a threshold where playing against someone too much stronger won’t help as much as playing someone closer to your level. There’s also a point where it’s just not fun either; to play against a randomly selected stranger in what quickly becomes a hopeless competition. If they are a high level coach that’s one thing, but the ladder is quite another. The point is to match players similarly skilled in the matchup they are actually playing.
Another reason why unranked mmr should be more closely tied to ranked mmr and not drop below a certain threshold or not be reset. Smurfing is a problem, no doubt, but it’s not so simple to solve because no matter what a player willing to ruin their own account or record will be able to smurf.
Why though? If your league border is the result of the average mmrs between matchups and you’re matching against similar opponents for that matchup, what is actually the problem here? To actually compete you still need to be able to play all the matchups. All this does is give QOL for practice, and if someone isn’t competitive then why begrudge them playing only the matchup they want?
I want to reach any high league I want with my TvT year after year being over 70%. Why play other races? I can just run over same terrans. I do not need to win and lose half of the games on that league when I can just play the same MU over and over. And even if you say it averages, what if I made 4-0 vs Protoss, stopped there and all my other games are TvT? Or what if 4-0 is not enough to place in league of TvP, would that just give me the stone league? What an artificial way to get your average. Even if I met a wall at some point at TvT where I cant beat them so much anymore, that would shoot me a league or two above.
War3, AOE4, SC2 tell me any game where you pick your opponent’s race on a ladder, and the game is remotely played game like those mentioned.
Competition is not done by selecting your easier to beat race, t here is no way this is OK in ranked. You gotta learn to beat it and challenge it, not escape it with uncomfortable matchups. That is the point of a challenge
Well you can increase your TvT mmr but your league will still be averaged against your TvZ and TvP mmrs.
For fun, for practice, for an easier way to raise your average.
No, because if you’re running them over then your TvT mmr will improve and you’ll get stronger opponents. You’re only 70% TvT because your TvT mmr is being influenced by the other two matchups in a nonsensical way.
your vs Protoss mmr would be separate and depend on the level of P you beat in those 4 games. You’d still be in provisional mmr TvP and likely be ranked ~2500 in that matchup which would hinder your league average for your border display.
The games you’re playing would still be more accurately matched than they are now. The easier path to a higher league border is still to play all your matchups rather than focusing on one. The difference is you CAN focus on one if you want to practice it, and ALL matchups will be more fairly matched.
First of all that was probably not done for overcomplications of ladder. If everyone started having a separate MMR and league for each matchup and placed them in ladder you would get a mess of stats.
And if you still need to play vs each race, how is that different from now? The only difference is that one day you decide to play your terrans, another time you decide to play your protosses etc. The system now allows randomness of who you play against and it challenges your preparation.
So you basically want a lazier ladder.
Also filtering vs specific race will increase search time and potential to abuse your MMR when you start searching as another terran or whichever race you need.
Ladder is meant to be competition, in competition you have to be prepared against everything, not the opponent you want. So you are mistaken with fun and competition
I agree that there can be a ladder better than custom game to practice a match but to me the best is Unranked vs Unranked. Ranked selective race choice is no competition.
By that logic imagine you are a game from demotion or promotion. Let’s pick up our winning match up to increase chance to win because Average will increase with increase of your TvT too.
Frankly, you do not sound like coming from a high level player and that explains a lot. Even if you are terran, complaining that it is too hard to use ghosts for example is kind of excuse of being lazy.
