Now, I’m not saying that my ideas below are the best solutions, but they are all I’ve been able to come up while solo-thinking (pun only barely intended), and at the least it’s a start. I’d like to see & read what other solutions players come up with too! If you think one of my solutions below could be modified let me know as well.
Some of the more frequent problems I’ve seen about Solo Shuffle:
1. MMR vs Rating & Mismatched Skill Levels
Problem: Players with high MMR can be inexperienced with a new (low rating), potentially under geared character, leading to mismatched lobbies and contributing to MMR and rating losses for themselves and others regardless of how well other players perform.
Solution: Make MMR character specific, keep rating tied to spec.
Anticipated Concerns: This can complicate the matchmaking process and may result in imbalanced matches or longer queue times.
Mitigating Concerns: Implement a flexible matchmaking algorithm that can slightly expand the rating range for less popular specializations during off-peak hours or when the queue times exceed a certain threshold.
2. Unrewarding Rating Gains
Problem: Healers find it challenging to gain or maintain MMR.
a. Solution: Adjust the MMR gain and loss ratios for healers to make the rating changes more equitable, or consider the individual performance in matches.
b. Anticipated Concerns: This could result in an imbalance where healers climb the ladder too easily.
c. Mitigating Concerns: Regularly review and adjust the MMR algorithms and ratios.
3. Losing MMR or Gaining Zero Rating for Winning Half or More Rounds
Problem: Players lose MMR or gain Zero Rating even when winning half or more of the rounds, making progression feel stagnant.
a. Solution: Revise the MMR & Rating algorithm to consider the number of rounds won, preventing MMR loss or Zero Rating gain if a player wins at least half the rounds.
b. Anticipated Concerns: This might lead to players focusing on winning only half the rounds, thus impacting the competitive integrity of the matches.
c. Mitigating Concerns: Implement a Hybrid Round ELO System[^1] of MMR gains and losses that increases incentives for winning more rounds.
4. Inadequate Reward Structure
Problem: The current reward structure is not adequately compensating players, particularly those learning or gearing a new character.
a. Solution: Implement a system (Hybrid Round ELO System[^1] below) where players are awarded conquest/honor points immediately after winning a round to provide instant gratification and enhance engagement.
b. Anticipated Concerns: No major concerns anticipated, changes in player behavior are expected to be positive.
c. Mitigating Concerns: Monitor closely to ensure the intended positive impacts are realized and to make any necessary adjustments promptly to optimize the experience.
5. Penalties for Leaving Matches
Problem: Harsh penalties for leaving matches should be discouraging for players.
a. Solution: Introduce a Tiered Penalty System[^2] that distinguishes between occasional and habitual leavers.
b. Anticipated Concerns: It could hurt players who get DC’d
c. Mitigating Concerns: IDK.
6. Impact of Leavers on Other Players
Problem: Matches end prematurely when a player leaves, affecting the MMR of the remaining players and depriving them of the opportunity to play through the full match.
a. Solution: Hybrid Round ELO System[^1] for the players that didn’t leave. The player who left receives an account-wide “Deserter” debuff starting at 30 minutes (tiered penalty system[^2] details below).
b. Anticipated Concerns: Implementing the account wide deserter debuff might unfairly penalize players who disconnect unintentionally due to issues like internet instability or power outages. They would face the same penalties as those who leave the game intentionally.
c. Mitigating Concerns: Introduce a tiered penalty system[^2] that distinguishes between occasional and habitual leavers.
[^1] Hybrid Round-by-Round and ELO Adjustment System:
MMR Gains/Losses: MMR is adjusted immediately after each round (and displayed, with winners gaining and losers losing up to a set capped amount. This ensures that both MMR gains and losses are significant yet bounded.
Conquest/Honor Rewards/Non-Rewards: Conquest points are similarly adjusted, with winners earning and losers missing out on points (but not reducing) up to a cap, linking conquest/honor rewards directly to each round’s performance.
Premature Leaving Penalty: If a player leaves the Shuffle prematurely, their MMR, Rating, and Conquest/Honor are adjusted as if they lost all six rounds, in addition to the Tiered Penalty System (below), serving as a strong deterrent against leaving matches early.
2. Final ELO-Based Adjustment:
ELO Calculation: At the end of all six rounds, an ELO-based adjustment is applied. This calculation considers the overall match outcome, the players’ initial ratings, their stats (Healing done, Damage done, etc…), and the expected outcome, similar to the traditional ELO system.
Bonus Increase/Reduction: This final ELO adjustment can either augment the gains or mitigate the losses experienced in the immediate round-by-round adjustments, ensuring that the overall match outcome is still a significant factor.
3. Benefits:
Dynamic Engagement: The system maintains the dynamic and engaging nature of immediate round-by-round feedback while ensuring that the overall match outcome is still highly impactful, aligning with the holistic nature of the ELO system.
Granular Yet Holistic Adjustments: Players receive immediate feedback and adjustments from each round, while the final ELO adjustment ensures that the match’s overall outcome is still pivotal in the rating and reward changes.
4. Balancing Individual and Overall Performance:
Immediate Rewards and Penalties: The round-by-round adjustments provide immediate rewards and penalties, enhancing engagement and the competitive atmosphere.
Holistic Evaluation: The final ELO adjustment ensures that the match’s overall outcome is not overshadowed, maintaining the integrity and holistic evaluation characteristic of the ELO system.
[^2] Tiered Penalty System Example
Tier 1 (First Offense):
Deserter Debuff: A 30-minute account-wide deserter debuff.
MMR and Rating Loss: Equivalent to losing all 6 rounds in the match.
This tier is for first-time offenders and serves as a warning.
_
Tier 2 (Second Offense within a Certain Timeframe, e.g., 48 Hours):
Deserter Debuff: The deserter debuff increases to 1 hour.
MMR and Rating Loss: Equivalent to losing all 6 rounds, with an additional penalty of a small percentage decrease.
Tracking: The player’s behavior is tracked for a pattern of frequent leaving.
_
Tier 3 (Multiple Offenses within a Week):
Deserter Debuff: The deserter debuff increases to 2 hours.
MMR and Rating Loss: Enhanced penalty, equivalent to losing all 6 rounds with a significant additional percentage decrease.
Warning Notification: Players receive a warning indicating their continued behavior could lead to a 24-hour account wide deserter debuff.
_
Tier 4 (Chronic Offender):
Deserter Debuff: A 24-hour deserter debuff or potentially longer.
MMR and Rating Loss: A substantial penalty that might affect their ranking or matchmaking severely.
Warning Notification: Players receive a warning indicating their continued behavior could lead to a 48-hour account wide deserter debuff.
Well, that’s all I have for now. What do you think about any of those ideas? Furthermore, what ideas do you have?
This is fine, but the healer ladder is already matched to the DD ladder to an absurdly high degree of fidelity. Further improvements will be imperceptible to any healer that isn’t literally one of the top, like, 10 healers on the entire ladder across all healing specs.
Disagree that this is an issue. You can’t design your way out of players being stupid at every turn, and this is a case of players being stupid. 3-3 is a wash, like it should be and like it logically would be assumed to be.
Pretty much always going to be a good thing to add additional rewards, or improve existing ones. The biggest issue currently, to me, is that there’s a large swath of the ladder where your reward track is just getting one reward piecemeal. The mog should be awarded at 1800 and then there should be entirely new rewards to replace the non-rewards of having an incomplete mog unlocked. Next biggest reward issue is that the Legend rewards suck.
This isn’t the problem people think it is. People are just garbage at understanding how often they’re going to run into something. Even if your average player only abandons one match out of every 100 (whether on purpose or accident) you will still experience a leaver game every 20 games on average. The incidence of leavers is already low enough that harsher penalties are unlikely to produce results that are meaningful. What it would do is make DCs and other such events worse to experience.
Absolutely not. Not now and not ever. Every iota of this misguided notion is corrosive to the purity of the W/L-based rankings and the integrity of the competition within each match. The fact that you would suggest it means you haven’t the faintest idea of what the ladder is and what is going on within it, and you are in no position to be making suggestions regarding it.
Besides the reward track being improved upon, the primary thing that can help shuffle is to lower the queues via a priority pass system where you earn tokens for your DD specs by paying your dues with healing matches. The specifics need to be correct, but this is the one-and-only thing that will meaningfully reduce queue times.
The remaining change that would have any appreciable impact on the quality of the shuffle experience is to convert all rewards to be doled out based on your spec ladder percentile standing, instead of just the R1 rewards. This would maximally reduce the urge to follow the meta instead of playing what you want.
As much as I admire the properly formatted write-up OP (even though I definitely didn’t read it), there have been innumerable threads like this – many with great suggestions – and Blizzard simply doesn’t care to address the problems in a remotely timely manner.
See you next expansion, when maybe some minor adjustments will take place.
The issues with healers is more related to MMR (Your next point) and new players as well as only going 1v1 versus 2v2. DPS only need to be better than 1 other dps of 4 total. As far as MMR, too many players are starting out in the 1700-1900 range, despite gear or experience. Means tons of matches end in 3:3 for healers. To that, games where healers go 3:3 can still net a MMR loss. So if a healer had a positive MMR then goes 3:3 a few matches, their gains will be significantly smaller the next time they go 4:2.
Lastly, healer MMR is still deflated compared to dps. So start with fixing that and players will be more inclined to play.
Blizzard should be able to more or less account for disconnects. If players are… only disconnecting in matches, that should be easily recorded.
But yea, agree. Target players who consistently leave matches AND when players report someone who leaves, tell them. I like that when you report cheaters now you get a message letting you know action was taken. It’s honestly one of the best things they have done in ages for curbing cheaters.
I’m neutral on the rest of your points, but I’d say the largest issue still remains with MMR. Both in going up and down. The massive swings in MMR need to be curbed some. Losing one game 0-6 (which some specs are more prone to) shouldn’t nuke your MMR. MMR should build slowly and than fast. As in, the first 0-6 loss (for example), shouldn’t take be as big as say going 0-6 or 1-5 multiple games in a row.
MMR has massive pooling issue right now in the 1700-2100 range. It’s really tough to get out of, but once you do, nearly everyone I have spoken to has said it gets easier, and I’d agree with them. The starting MMR needs to be dropped dramatically. The quality of players say at… 1900, is all over the place.
It is a LOT higher than this. Just yesterday 2 of my 4 solo shuffles with 30 minute queues had cry baby quitters when they fell behind, they tank 150 rating just so the winners don’t get their full rating rewards. BLIZZARD NEEDS TO GIVE FULL RATING AND CONQUEST FOR EVERY ROUND WON, AND NOT NERF IT WHEN SOMEONE SPITEFULLY QUITS IN ROUND SIX.
In Counter-Strike 2 if you disconnect in a competitive match, the other players get put in a 2 minute technical timeout. You can reboot the game, and on the main screen at the top right is a clickable “rejoin your competitive match” button. My CS2 still crashes 1-5 times a day for no apparent reason so this has been a godsend. Shuffle needs the same imo.
Would need harsh enforcement. I could see players doing that to troll or to disrupt a go. It’s one reason why teams burn so many timeouts at the end of a match. Anything to disrupt the momentum.
Given that most players are just flat out leaving, they could just… remove the ability to leave matches. If you afk, you lose and the people that are with you report you. Or, if you intentionally leave a match, make the punishment different than a possible disconnect. If players want to go through the trouble of disconnecting their computer, it does, at the very least create a larger barrier then just clicking leave match.
Tanking 150 cr literally doesn’t matter as long as mmr only goes fluctuates from matches played. MMR is the only number that really matters and there’s no mmr penalty for leaving.
Leavers should just be punished on the tiered penalty like CS. Within a longer time frame leaves keep increasing your deserter. Hell isn’t CS 1 week at most?
Problem: not enough healers
Solution: incentiveize more new healers to queue by:
A) making it so healers never go +0 for 3-3. (Even between 5 and 15 depending on relative mmr)
B) adding healer specific rewards at different rating thresholds such as mounts, transmogs, enchant illusion
C) consistently implementing bi weekly class tuning such as small healer spec changes by either slowly bringing the over performers down, or the under performers up
D) hard reset or decay mmr for players with 0 games played a couple months into a new season so when people come back late, they arent queueing at high mmr if they had rating from previous season
Speaking of terrible healer mmr/rating adjustments: hxxps://i.imgur.com/QMmSBQi.jpg
I’m all for A & D. “B” I think would work for a short while as like a juice for the hype train to get healers interested again, and maybe a lot of people would finally see things from healing perspective as a bonus.
What are some of your anticipated concerns? how would you mitigate those concerns?
I think you’re missing the point of the thread, I never said they were good ideas. More importantly, what are your ideas, anticipated concerns, and ideas for mitigation?
I don’t recall, been a minute since I played CS, and last I played GO I was surfing.
