To preface this, I haven’t PvPed since the vanilla days and I am only doing it this season because I like the recolor on the mage elite PvP set awarded for 1800 rating. My original plan was to get to 1600 and then use the spelunker token to complete the set but alas I was foiled by Blizzard deciding to put the gladiator instead of the elite set on the vendor.
Anyway, I now find myself in need of reaching 1800 rating but I can’t make heads or tails of how the rating system works. Up until reaching 1600 I typically got around 100 points per win and more of it was a win streak. The game that got me to 1601 gave me 125 points. So I fully expected that all I had to do was win two more games and I would be at 1800 and happily go back to never interacting with the PvP system again. However, what happened instead is that I got 19 points for my next win, then “rating unchanged” for the next two games, and lastly a loss of 12 points, and then I just logged off in bemused confusion.
I’ve tried researching this but it seems like even though this is a 20 yo game no one really has the slightest clue how the rating system works and all anyone can do is make an educated guess, something I am unable to do because of my extremely limited experience with PvP.
With all that in mind, I don’t really care how rating works, I just want a ballpark figure of how long it will take me to get from 1600 to 1800 because I am already at around 30 games or roughly 10 hours (15 minute games and 5 minute queues in the weird Blitz mode) which is already longer than I cared to spend on this endeavor seeing as I don’t enjoy PvP at all and just wanted my transmog set.
P.S. I’d like to take this time to apologize in advance for the teams that get stuck with me, blame it on Blizzard for locking the best recolor behind a time limited PvP event. 
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Yeah, the rating in this game is too random and it’s stupid. It would be much easier to have a fixed gain / loss.
It seems to me like there is a deliberate inflation of rating in the 0 to 1600 bracket and then the game suddenly decides to mess with you and give you incredibly incremental gains so as to keep you playing longer. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if it was as simple as that rather than some complicated algorithm that tries to account for everything from your own skill level to that of your opponents as well as team composition on top of that.
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It’d be nice if you were guaranteed a flat guaranteed gain or loss on wins and losses but game weight exists for a reason. The problem is that the weighing can be so far off that the game will give you matches where you stand to gain nothing from wins and can lose a ton of rating from losses. Meaning the only correct option was to never queue up in the first place.
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I noticed when I stopped playing for a week and came back that wins were much easier to get, either because the inflation deflated a bit, or the game saw my losing streak & my time played going down simultaneously and decided to toss me some pretty big bones lol
I was struggling to break above 1.5k rating in any rated PvP on my main before taking a small break, and then shot up to 1833 within 6hrs upon return.
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I am about to give up for the moment. All I’ve done this week is manage to go down 50 points because every single win gives me “rating unchanged” yet losses still dock me around 12 points. It’s clearly a rigged system or otherwise the algorithm that calculates ratings is completely borked. It can’t place me from 0 to 1600 in just a few hours but then not allow me to make any inroads at all for an entire week, especially considering that skill barely factors into the equation at all with this Blitz mode and it comes down to a flip of the coin which team wins most of the time.
If they can’t sort this out then they need to do away with these “time limited” sets and just let us slowly acquire them through dogged determination rather than dumb luck. Even games like Destiny 2, which is the mother or all FOMO, lets players get all the PvP sets if they just play a lot. Put all the transmog pieces on the vendor for a stupid high amount of conquest or something along those lines.
/pokes Blizzard with a stick
Do something!
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your frustration as a casual/newcomer is totally understandable.
its never really explained how it works. but yes… 0-1600 is super fast but IIIRC after that u can only get a maximum of 24 per win?
It’s still accurate from what I have heard.
Tomorrow tentatively, we will be able to see our personal MMR. Your personal MMR compared to enemy team average MMR, determines how much you gain for a win or lose from a loss. If you duo queue with a very high MMR person while you have very low personal MMR, and win Vs a team who has an average MMR far above your average MMR and win, you gain tons of rating and some MMR.
Typically, folks that win more than 50% of their games will have an MMR above their CR, and should be matched with and Vs players with similar MMR. When your enemy team has lower team Average MMR than your personal MMR and you win, you gain very little CR if any.
One pain point caused from previous success is, it is possible to win a match and get 0 CR, just because the game thinks the enemy team you beat was expected to lose to you as your personal MMR was that much higher than the enemy team average MMR. Without having personal MMR visable, the last few weeks have had many ppl confused.
Can anyone spot the problem here?
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Yes. Wins should always grant CR more than 0. Probably no less the 5, even if the enemy teams Average CR is lower than your personal MMR, you didnt choose to have higher MMR than the enemy’s average unless you duo queued with someone far lower MMR than yourself. And claiming ignorance to what your teammates MMR is is easy as it is hidden until tomorrow.
It really does need a different mmr system. That or they have to stop throttling it to death because they want rewards to line up with their dead 3s mode.
Its never going to be a successful esport blizzard you told the dota devs no. Accept you made a mistake and move on!
Granted I am new to this but I honestly don’t understand why there even needs to be an MMR system at all. All that ends up doing is causing longer queues assuming that the system really does prioritize matching you with other players that have a similar MMR. It also inherently causes stagnation at higher levels because there are fewer players in each MMR cutoff pool.
Then aside from that there is a massive conflict between wanting to have as many players as possible participating in order to have shorter queues and having a reward system that doesn’t encourage participation and even actively punishes you for it. Surely the devs realize that the majority of players only engage with certain types of content not because they particularly enjoy them but because they want whatever reward is gated behind them? Why not keep the current structure in place but also introduce another means of acquiring all the rewards that would take a lot longer but be guaranteed? I don’t have a competitive bone in my body and I don’t mind being fodder for bloodthirsty PvPers as long as I get something out of it too. I am sure there are other people who feel the same way and we’re a major untapped demographic, lol.
I get the point behind it… we can disagree on the reward structure but you do want people matched up together of roughly equal skill.
Whats your winrate? Your record? If you are net 50% and winning losin winning losin the matchmaker thinks you are where you belong.
In order to avoid matching with teams too far outside of my MMR, for the purpose of gaining rating when I win, typically I only queue up between 5pm to 10pm, and primarily play Tuesday-Thursday. I dont play every day but I assume Ill see the most players from timezones similar to my own on their main or top alt during those times and days. Queues in the morning or late evening for me appear to place me in matches way below or above the average MMR is see during my preferred queue times. Whatever my queue strategy has done for me, it has worked.
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Well in my, admittedly limited, experience the MMR system doesn’t really accomplish that. The time of day (or night) you happen to queue at seems to be a far better predictor of who you get paired with. It’s an inherent flaw in the system. Sure there is this MMR structure in place but when there aren’t enough people in the same imaginary bracket as you the system still puts you together with whoever it finds and screws you over if you are playing all the time because you just want to grind out the rating.
That’s the part I take issue with. The inability to progress regardless of how much you play. That’s why I want to see the rating divorced from the rewards. Those who care about their rating will still have that and those who are in it just for the rewards will have a reason to keep playing. Otherwise the latter group just gets fed up and quits and the former gets stuck with the 30+ min queues so then everyone is miserable. Conquest is already worthless past a certain point (one that’s arrived at very quickly if you play regularly) so why not put the transmogs and other rewards on the vendor and let people earn them that way? It’s a win/win. But instead of doing that they even removed the transmogs from the token vendors so you can’t even go to the ridiculous lengths of leveling multiple characters of the same class just to get the final two pieces. From my perspective it’s like Blizzard is actively trying to push people out of PvP by taking away their motivation to participate in it. 
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