Hello Blizzard,
I just had an encounted with a Master 2 player in my ladder (me being a D1 player). Lost against him and he took 57 MMR points from my pocket. How is that possible? Well by playing unranked.
Why is this system in the game? This doesn’t seem fair.
Can you remove this mechanic?
I don’t think they should remove the mechanic, personally, but I can see how that would be frustrating.
The MMR system works by looking at your MMR for the current race you’re playing, and looking at your opponent’s MMR for the current race they’re playing.
Depending on the disparity between the two, you will have an MMR range that is either even (MMR range is close) slightly favoured to one opponent (one opponent has a little higher MMR than the other), favoured (one opponent has an MMR that is somewhat higher than the other) or very favoured (one opponent has an MMR that is much higher than the other).
When you win vs someone that you are favoured against, you gain comparatively little MMR points. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, when you beat someone who is a higher MMR range than you are on your current race, you gain a significant MMR boost because of how favoured they were.
The important thing to note is that MMR ranges are serparate for each individual race you are playing. Effectively, this means that you have 3 MMR stats - one for each race.
Additionally, the points they get also include points from their bonus pool if they haven’t played with that race for a while.
Now, I’m not entirely certain as liquipedia doesnt have a whole lot of details on the unranked matchmaking, but it is also possible you may have a separate MMR for each race you play in unranked as well - I think thats the case, but I’m not 100% sure.
I actually think the system as it is is a fairly robust system. I havent gone into a lot of detail here, and liquipedia has a fair amount more on it, but suffice to say I’m quite content with it as it is.
I suppose you could make the argument that if you are playing a ranked game and lose against someone who is unranked you should lose a set amount of MMR regardless of what league they’re in, but I don’t think that’s any better than what we have currently, personally.
I only just discovered this recently and was shocked. How could this be? How many players did I frustrate with my more casual play? People are incredibly competitive even though it’s just a game. In short, I agree 110% ranked and unranked players should be matched and play separately.
Unranked is one of many ways in which Blizzard encourages smurfing on this game. There is no reason why unranked should have a separate MMR which is not leashed at least on the minimum side to your ranked MMR… besides to encourage smurfing.
How often does that happen, though? I can’t remember the last time I played vs unranked, must be over 100 games ago. What happens all the time (like >10% of games) is that people leave the game at the start and GIVE me MMR I don’t deserve. Smurfing is a big problem in Diamond, but I guess there’s no easy way to fix it.
The whole reason why Unranked exists is for weak minded people not to get a heart attack by losing 7 games in a row. The frustration of losing a series of games I have had many times over wc3 and sc2 and with growing up started caring less (not to say victory series also came so…)
This is all thanks to the emergence of 
generation that you have to cater to
Also, it exists so you do it all on one account. In the past you couldn’t start new accounts without more copies of the game.
Now when you can start new accounts Unranked becomes obsolete.
I too find it annoying some coward who has been high league decides to play Unranked because scared and ruins the MMR of ranked who weren’t that good.
Now Unranked would stop the creation of new accounts but people still make new accounts, isn’t it better to have Ranked only and get the thrill of promotion? So yes I agree Unranked should go but in a dead game who cares, 2 years ago I was matching same people in D+ (due to lack of enough players) imagine the situation now
Eh, I can see an argument for it being useful for practicing new build orders, and experimenting/trying things out you normally wouldn’t do.
There is no reason why they should be separate, people just lose their mind when their rank drop