Can someone walk me through the CR system?

Community General Discussion
1

Honestly I think this is one of the more frustrating, blatant treadmills they have perpetuated, so from my understanding. You have a MMR that dictates how much CR you gain or lose, in which typically you lose the same amount of CR if you win a match, then lose the next one. With each loss increasing the amount lost, meaning that to me at least, CR is a bad system overall. For the reason of it’s bad when you lose so much, and gain so little honestly, with teammates lower scores dragging you down in terms of gains.

Along with being the driving force behind why players don’t stick around in groups when they lose one or two games. Thanks to this rather outdated system that only exists to act as a treadmill for PvP, to force more time played. As the other fun thing is when it matches you against the next bracket level, and you can’t get said bracket level gear. In which typically you wind up getting pancaked due to the gear differences, over skill.

To me the system is dated, and very flawed, and needs an overhaul in how it works, as it feels so bad to work hard to gain a score, then lose 20 points in 2 matches, which is double what you may of gained in a previous win. In which I feel you either need to lose less CR per loss streak, or gain more CR per win as the current system just gives pitiful amounts out, and takes so much away when you push past 1600 right now, and it feels bad, at least to me.

Oh and before I get the ones saying well make sure their close to your CR, I always do, as I know that affects how much you gain, yet it doesn’t excuse the massive losses you experience per loss. With little in the way of a win, and it makes it feel slow for the sake of being slow, and extremely punishing to even bother with, and incentivizess buying a carry just to gain enough for PvP gear, which again is a bad thing. As it shouldn’t be this way, and should be more fair in my opinion.

EDIT: Wanted to add I feel the flaws with the system have been compu8nded with the vendor honestly. The way they implemented the vendor just exacerbates the CR systems issues. In which at this point you pretty much need to be in the bracket you want to be in, or else you get to face an extremely long and tedious grind where you have to force your CR up enough. To where the win loss ratio works out, or just get lucky with team matchups, which I feel are also skewed, as with the current system, it doesn’t make much sense to match up 1700 teams against 1800 teams. Due to the gearing differences between the two. IDK maybe I should just take a break from PvP for this tier until 9.1 when they finally seem to care enough to delve into fixing it.

2

Here’s how it works: it doesn’t.

3

My experience with RBGs:

It is my understanding, but is in no way fact – that your gains, or losses are based of the team you queue with’s MMR and your relation to that MMR. Imagine it as a pie, and winning/losing effects how much pie you take up based on CR vs MMR.

Example:

Team average MMR: 1800.
You: 1790
Lowest On Team: 1300.

You win -> You gain points averaged to a “per game current CR” win. Roughly 16-20 points.

You lose -> You’re the top end of the team’s loss. The 1300 people lose 0 rating, you lose rating equal to the total rating loss of the game across the team to those who can lose CR. Hypothetically, about 40. The equated value of X (players not losing rating) versus Y (players losing rating)

Being the lowest CR in a group is always a benefit to you as a player. Being the highest CR in a group of people who are lower CR than you is almost always a detriment to you as a player.

A group where you are the highest, or close to the highest CR will equal less CR gained per win – as you are “on par”. A group where you are the highest, or close to the highest CR will equal more points lost - as you are above the average of your party.

A group where you are the lowest, or close to the lowest CR will equal significantly more CR gained per win – as you are much below the MMR you’re playing. A group where you are the lowest, or close to the lowest CR will equal in very little points lost – if any. I lost 3 games in a row at 1750 and lost zero points because the team was 2k MMR.

4

inb4 “just git gud lol”

5

That sounds like an odd system. I suppose they do it to help people gain.

6

See this is why I find the system was o be screwy, I believe that you should gain more per win. Then initially lose a lot less per loss, given it feels like you can take a step forward, and then immediately take 2 steps back in one to two losses, and that isn’t a good system to me. It should be less of an impact per loss, and should provide a cushion other than you have to have a win streak to push the MMR high enough to where you don’t lose CR. Over immediately losing CR like nothing over the fact that you squared off a full rival geared team that skill wise wasn’t better. Yet gear wise was and meant they had more health and ability to shrug off damage. Then dish it out or just not die thanks to thier gear.

7

I think the loss/gain system is set in a manner to dissuade going 1:1 and eventually climbing.

Like historically in League of Legends, LP losses out weighed LP gains so you would need to go 2 wins to 1 loss in order to have a net gain. As of the last few years, it’s been slightly more per win than per loss until ultra-high ranking. Meaning, if you can go 50% winrate (which it often feels like the game forces you to 50% winrate) - you can… over enough games… climb to any rank.

I think that’s what WoW’s rating system is attempting to prevent… Going 1 win to 1 loss on equal rating to your enemy team should theoretically end up in a net rating loss, not neutral or small-positive gain.

8

It might be terribly applied in formula but the way it’s meant to work is if you’re winning against players you are favored by odds to win, you will gain less. If you lose matches against players who based on their rating should have lost, you lose more.

If your MMR is mostly a 50/50 win or loss, the game decides you are at the rating you should be at and you need to keep winning in a row for the game to second guess itself and think “Oh, they’re better than I thought.”

It isn’t so much your rating as how much is going into that number. League of Legends for example used to use the ELO system from Chess. The more games you had played, the more certain the game was of your rating therefore you had to win more games to make it second guess. Like if you played 1000 games and were at 1500, the game decided you belong in 1500 due to the large sample size. However if you played 6 games and were 1500, each win or loss impacted that number more because it didn’t have a good enough sample size.

9

It does. That’s how the basis of the system works. It uses how many games you played vs how many you win to match you where the ideal point is to put you where you’re always at a 50/50 win or loss to say that’s how good you are. Then based on that rating if you beat someone of a lower score, you gain less, if you beat someone of a higher score you gain more due to the odds of it.

It’s convoluted with all the crap to explain it in detail, but more or less the basic idea is to have you at a 50/50 and whatever your rating is at when you hit that is where the game has determined you belong. As you win in League, especially with streaks the game goes out of whack and starts matching you against players far above your skill level to see if you belong at where it thinks you do or if it’s a fluke.

Issue is, it doesn’t work in a team based game at all. It works perfectly in Chess where you can only lose of your own failure, there is no balancing BS or anything else influencing it, just your decisions. League on the other hand you can be really good, but having two feeders on your team can make winning a game you should be able to win next to impossible. Especially when they throw hissyfits and rage quit because you “didn’t gank enough for them.” as jungler since they can’t realize you have 4 kills, no deaths, and 6 assists being a good thing.

10

The problem with that is the existence of “losers queue”, and Riot openly refuses to acknowledge/claiming there’s no such thing as forced/mandatory 50% winrate. They openly say it doesn’t exist, but it does exist over enough games.

I think OP’s issue is akin to the same problem – there’s no actual information provided as to how MMR gain/loss works on a transparency level, just like in League they refuse to acknowledge losers queue.

11

See this is why I think the CR system is flawed, given I feel I can push to 1800, at least my damage coming out of matches is at or far above the other top players in the match. Yet it seems like it can heavily drag you down with others if they simply mess up in some way, along with gear dictating how matches can go. Thanks to higher gear meaning you are able to survive more hits and so forth.

I think this kind of system works in a game like OW, where it boils down to skill given the hero’s are all stationary in damage amounts and so forth. Versus WoW which is completely random in how fights go, especially based on pure crits that can 100-0 someone. That can cause results to be skewed and not true to skill when RNG is a factor, and the system needs to payout more, over taking more away.

Like I said this just screams like its another hamster wheel they’ll never fully fix, given it gives players a reason to keep PvPing, for the chance that the stars align in your favor to oneshot or burn someone down.

12

IDK anything necessarily about the loser’s queue, I quit playing back in like season 5, whenever they made smite swords a thing and Hecarim top lane was ridiculously broken.

But Riot saying that the game doesn’t try to put you at 50% winrate is fooling themselves, that’s how MMR is meant to work in any game by default. If you’re 50/50 in Bronze, the game says you belong there. If you’re 50/50 in Challenger, the game says that’s where you belong. That’s the entire point of the system, to put you at a point where you win as much as you lose and based on where that is have a good understanding of how good you are.

If you’re like me and rocking a 70% winrate in Platinum tier on a smurf because you’re better than the people there, the game realizes you’re better than that tier and starts matching you against Diamonds.

13

Well, the system used to be just based on your team’s rating which was a lot more of a fair thing, MMR started to be a thing around late Wrath and it had a lot of problems. I remember Season 9 had a huge issue with a Russian team who would deliberately lose games on alt teams to tank their MMR then curbstomp games on a higher rated team without fighting higher rated teams and just collect 1-2 points per win. Similarly you had people who would deliberately lose games to trash their MMR then go on massive win streaks to rubberband it backwards which made the game trip out and think they were better than they really were due a huge winstreak against apes and give them more points per win.

However I agree, the system for WoW does not work because there’s too many variables. You can’t really measure your skill. Like how am I supposed to know if I’m good or bad when a warlock chaos bolts me for 70% of my hp bar because the game dragged on long enough and I can’t stop them? Similarly if my rogue doesn’t know they can step kick casts, how does that reflect on me personally?

14

The system currently also frustratingly helps/endorses boosting. High gear players can queue to deliberately lose with a 0CR alt, tank rating down super super fast by just instantly surrendering and losing ~100 rating a game… Then hit 1.4k with full Duelist, queue up, and people under 1.3k are gonna get ~150 rating a game until they catch up - usually around 1550 for the “carry”, and then get the last 50 points through playing.

It’s not healthy. There needs to be “locks” into certain tiers once you hit them.

15

Honestly, a lot of the systems in SL’s aren’t healthy for the game, and just serve to be hamster wheels at best. In which they defend them by saying they’ve been in the game in one form or another, and so that means it’s okay as a result. When their the core reason why the game is so flawed right now, and tends to leave a sour taste in people’s mouth. When their done playing, given their not very fun systems, and in fact can be some of the most frustrating pieces of content to ever exist in any game.