there’s two types of inflation that ultimately contribute to the same pot
- natural inflation
very basically at the start of a new season all the 3k players and 1300 players alike are all 0 cr
you’re very likely to run into players at lower mmrs that “don’t belong there” and they’ll likely walk over you effortlessly if you do belong there
as each week passes and those higher/better players will accumulate more games and more points climbing up the ladder giving worse players the ability to climb to the rating the higher players were previously occupying since they’re no longer there contesting it
experience doesn’t mean everything by anymeans but just as a visual representation
3000xp players might be 1900 now since the season just started
so 2800xp players might be 1700
2400 xp players might be 1500
until the 3000 experienced players progress to 2100 it’s unlikely the 2800xp players will climb since they’d have to overtake the players statistically better than them
the mmr ceiling can only move as fast as
1- blizzard allows (they capped mmr early last season and increased it gradually to artificially extend the life of progress)
2- top ladder players have to actively play to move the ceiling upwards
it’s a long and gradual process that you’ve only experienced the tail end of
- artificial inflation
starting week 10~ in the season blizzard starts to pump artificial or “fake” mmr into the ladder
every character gets roughly 2.x mmr per day or roughly 20 mmr per week
this means that for each month the season goes on players are given roughly 80 mmr for free without winning
the point of this is to dislodge the rating sitters at the top of the ladder incentivizing them to continue queueing to maintain rank for end of season rewards
it doubles as a late-stage-raid-nerf way for them to get struggling players over their goals like elite sets/gladmount when they otherwise would have no chance on their own merits
example here is that by the end of last season entry mmr (typically 1500) was actually 1861
that means a brand new player loads into their first arena with 1800 mmr
they can essentially 50/50 win/loss all the way up to 1800 making the elite set essentially a participation trophy you can only miss if you lose overwhelmingly at entry level mmr
a dramatic difference from the days prior to artificial inflation when it was 2200 and you had to win the majority of your games to earn it
it’s easy to view cr as the benchmark but the actual rating is completely irrelevant and is a constantly moving target
what you actually wanna look at is your ladder spot
1900 right now on ladder might be top 200 because the season just started
that means players that might have been 3000cr 2 weeks ago are roughly 1900 now
1900 on the last week of a 25 week season is like roughly 200,000
you aren’t going to compete with ladder top 200 players at 1900 right now just because you were 1900 last week when it was ladder spot 200,000
it’s not impossible but unless you see a lot of personal growth you probably won’t see your last-week-of-season rating in the next several months