Why is matchmaking so horrendously unbalanced? It has seemed so one sided for days now. The enemy team always gets at least 1 or 2 level 10s or higher, and my team is lucky to have 1 other competent player. Has anybody else had these sort of favoring issues?
External link →Is there a reason for 1500 being the base number for all new players. Why not 1200 or something in the silver ranks? Why put them at the base of Gold 3ish? Basically the question is if you drop someone who is new onto a 1500 team and they get a few wins by being carried due to just being a 1 trick pony player, or wasn't a carry role, or because the new player on the other team was in a premier role and just fed their brains out then you get a few ez wins and are now in the Gold 1 plat level.
Now their 1 trick gets banned out or just flat doesn't work. Now you have them literally dragging your team down and everyone with them. So you get this constant ping pong of players in ranks the shouldn't be in and the system that "works" basically just traps people in that gold rank because it's sorting out bronze players and plat players by basically keeping them stuck in this whirlpool of up and down.
Why is it that all new players are dropped right into the middle of the ranking system and not on the bottom and asked the rise up? That's my main frustration with the system. Far to many of my losses are from these bronze players who get carried just enough to get to stay in gold. I know they're bronze because they're the ones who go all in deep dive ganks at level 2 and if it works they keep the snowball going, and if it doesn't work they just log off.
So is 1500/Gold 3 being the baseline have any real reasoning behind it other than to create this ELO hell that is Gold? I remember Pon Pon argued that lowering it to the silvers just makes silver ELO hell, but I'd argue that's where ELO hell SHOULD BE. Having it in Gold means if you make it to plat then have a few bad days you're sucked back into the whirlpool... At least having it down in silver gives you leeway to put your mind back into the game while you move back up through Gold.
Because picking any other number is somewhat arbitrary, and shifts the curve such that it becomes the new "average".
1500 is selected not because we assume everyone coming in is average, it is that we have 0% confidence we know their MMR. This is true, we have no data on them yet. This lands them as potentially being anywhere on the bell curve, the average place of the bell curve is 1500, so they go there.
We can move them to 1200 for example, but over time this largely just changes 1200 to be the new average. Players who are really 1500 today would see themselves over time shift to 1200.
The second issue listed there is initial placement fluctuations. Since we have no confidence in their MMR, we test them. The "quickest" way to test them is to move them around a lot and heavily, overshooting and undershooting their real MMR until we can narrow it down.
This is the fastest method of placing everyone and finding their actual MMR, but it has the downside as you have suggested. On average this works amazingly well, but looking at individual cases it is possible for someone to be carried too high. They 100% won't stay there, it is impossible to remain that "lucky" but when looking at only 3-5 matches, it is totally possible.
You can slow this down, which will mean players will move slower and the extremes become less extreme, but this does mean we are essentially saying players will be at the incorrect MMR for a longer period of time.
So you CAN change starting MMR and you CAN slow this effect down, they have their own issues and impact the Matchmaker in non-trivial ways. Match quality will go down across the board.
We are discussing ways to address this but it is worth going over why things are the way they currently are. Matchmaking is often a matter of tradeoffs, what experience do your prioritize? Matchmaking isn't responsible only for making even matches, but ranking players in a way that can be used to make those matches. Making "more even matches" will often come at the cost of not testing players Rank accurately.
If I argued moving it just makes Silver ELO Hell, I probably just conceded the idea of ELO Hell for the sake of discussing why moving what a Division's MMR range is associated with won't change your experience; but I would contend that ELO Hell doesn't exist. There are many reasons for this, but if you are stuck at an MMR and you have played a significant number of games to wash out natural variations (50-100 games) you belong at that MMR.
Normally I'd agree except for the gold ranks is mostly just one sided stomps. Rarely do you get good games. It's constantly one smashes the other and what team do you get on for the ride? I've made it to diamond and it was the most fun I've ever had. I was on a vacation when you guys did that major reset and rework and missed that first week to get back to your rank time and it's been a mostly terrible experience since.
50% of my losses are easily from people rage quitting. 25% are easily from just terrible matchmaking and players in the game that shouldn't be. 25% left and yes, got beat and it happens. I'll get on a roll and my team is great, the other team has the rage quitters and I'm moving up in ranks. Then 3 straight nights of asking people to ward and they decide to call you toxic and purposely troll the rest of the game. It's not like I get to 1600-1700 and lose constantly due to my skill. I didn't feel like that until I was in the 1900s. I lose because the SwK "ADC" feeds all game. The full damage solo Chaac just insta dies late game and doesn't understand why. One game ok trolls happen, 5 games in a row later you realize something in matchmaking is broken.
ELO hell is when you go 24-5 as the jungle with 50k damage and still lose because your team has 0 idea what they are doing.
For the sake of this, I will go with the idea that Gold Matches are somewhat a coinflip, that matches are riddled with rage quitters and trolls. Let's even quantify this a bit. 5 players in every single match you play are queuing with the sole purpose of tanking the team they are on. Not just bad, but malicious.
You are trying to win to the best of your ability in each game you play and are always performing well. You are essentially a constant for your team. This means that there are 9 slots for these 5 trolls to go into, 4 on your team and 5 on the enemy team. The enemy team is more likely to actually have more of these trolls than you are.
Sure, if you look at an individual match that may not be the case, but on average you should be able to climb. Even look at your statement, 50% of your losses are from rage quitters, 25% are from matchmaking. Is that not something that is paralleled on the enemy side? Wouldn't this mean that 75% of your wins are the same? If not, why not?
This also assumes that 75% of all games are in this state, which from stats doesn't seem to pan out across the board. You could make the claim that the center of the bell curve where new players enter is that point and makes it an exception but that also seems unlikely.
Yes, the center of the bell curve is point 1 for each new player, so there is some turbulence there, but that turbulence is also tempered with that fact that the majority of players are also there. Statistically with the rate of new players entering, an average player will have a brand new player not all that often. Sure, it is going to happen, but to view it as this sea of Elo Hell where 75% of your matches are pointless seems extreme.
I am curious to see the match data on someone who feels like 75% of their losses are out of their control though, I may be missing an experience that more players are feeling and I would want to see what those matches look like. Would you be OK sending me/telling IGN or linking some matches as examples?
Simple solution: don't match players below x time played with players above y time played unless they are partied together; in which case that's their problem.
Absolutely not a simple solution. Or youre saying: "this is a simple solution, but one i suspect might not work?"
Youre now splitting the entire playerbase into 2 entirely different queues pretty much, likely to hurt the overall matchmaking much worse than the occasional "fresh 1500 player with veteran 1500s"
You need something that adapts for both MMR and Play Time in a more flexible way that can scale for years of matches and tens or hundreds of thousands of players. Setting one distinct "time wall" is not going to do that.
Part of me is wondering whether ranked should be solo queue but then have an "elite conquest" with picks and bans, that way ranked would be your "best matchmaking experience" but then you could practise with friends in the elite part without too much difficulty (or radically, have an extra league for just that like how we have Duel etc)
Casual conquest would therefore be sort of "anything goes" with an easier pickup rate, did toy with the idea once that Casual conquest could then be made to not record wins/losses just to get people to jump into it without fretting too much about winning or losing to pick up the game and then move on from there if they're serious enough
We did consider this, but have decided it is not a good idea. We have no desire to split the player base into any more distinct groups, it will only hurt all matchmaking considerably more than it helps.
Can you explain then why despite being in the most common mmr bracket I am repeatedly being placed with other solo queue players against the same 4 and 5 man premades that have significantly higher mmr across the board and just stomp over the opposition due to the horrid mismatch the system created? I experience this on both ends, feeling as if my performance has no bearing on the game's outcome; as the party matched with or against me was put in a position to win from the start by setting them loose on an iceberg with free clubs to bludgeon the seals with. It's so bad that if I'm lucky enough to get slotted in with a 4 man I could just afk farm all game and still win easily due to the mismatch.
This is not a confirmation bias: I have reviewed my match history constantly, and nearly every blowout win or loss has been the result of all solo queue or at most a single duo going against a 4 or 5 man premade with higher skill rating, and said party on the winning end. On the contrary, the most competitive games are those with roughly equal party representation, even with significant differences to each team's MMR.
You have also said that the system penalizes parties with harder competition but in practice I have only seen at best no handicap, and at worst the opposite, and it's getting increasingly more frequent every week. You need a significantly higher preference to matching large parties against one another because the system is clearly not accurately judging them against solo queue, especially in conquest where that inherent communication and coordination advantage takes over the game. The fact that they get to effectively ignore half the matchmaker is already beneficial enough.
I cannot explain that. It sounds like an insanely rare scenario based on our current rules. Everything you described is quite unlikely based on my current knowledge of the system and based on reviewing our stats.
There used to be special case rules, but many of these have been removed and we have seen significantly improved matchmaking data after their removal.
There is no "MMR boosting" for parties - party MMR is averaged and paired against the most close MMR players
There is no "party vs party" rule - Parties are matched against the most close players in MMR, with no regard for their party size
There is no "avoid repeats" rule - you can meet the same opponents multiple times in a row if the player pool MMR doesnt change enough
All of these rules being removed has improved the system, although i might assume you would disagree. Special case rules tend to create more player base segmentation, effectively giving you much smaller pools to match players with, and resulting in worse matches overall.
A common experience in the old days would be to play in a 5 man, queue up, wait for the queue timer to hit "emergency mode" (non timed queue feature) then play vs another 5 man of people way below or above you, resulting in a very bad match and long wait times.
In your case, if you do match vs a party, they should be close in average MMR to you. If you arent close, then youre likely in a smaller queue/region/time than you think.
Hmm..
I guess the only other thing I can think of at the moment is maybe when you hit Platinum the game just locks you off from partying up with x2 people in ranked. Most people sort-of know each other around that sort of veterancy bracket by seeing familiar names too. So while people can queue up x2 to try help each other in Bronze -> Gold and for the most part that's accepted, there comes a point where the game says "okay you should more or less be experienced enough now to go it alone for the real deal" as most veterans sort of think about queuing ranked by themselves for more serious competition. Would also give players a sort of goal to get to as well I suppose, hit Platinum and it's like a badge of honour with benefits of more tighter matchmaking algorithms? It'd also keep Masters players happy by sort of staying in that sort of bracket rather than smurfing (and if they did smurf to boost other friends accounts up by duo queue, the matchmaker would quickly suss it out once they were forced to stop and potentially fight against each other).
Masters players overwhelmingly wanted duo queue to return.
There is no easy solution to these challenges. There are huge teams of people spending years reviewing data and making tweaks to matchmaking systems and yet every game players complain. Dont put pressure on yourself to find anything perfect right here and now.
Pyroks post. It's still on the r/gaming subreddit but for whatever reason it was taken down on this subreddit.
I have no control over whats posted here.
However, that post clearly has a lot of toxic language and personal bias.
We did review that post as well before we replied here, and I don't think the player was correct in their analysis, nor was there much useful information contained within.
Except for "OP hates matchmaking"
which is valid feedback and something we would like to minimize.
I was wondering why is the minimum mmr variance value so low? At 5% variance you’re likely to gain or lose about 20-25 mmr per win or loss. Even if you have a 60% winrate after reaching minimum variance it would take you 50 games just to stably climb 200 mmr (assuming you win 30/20 games with 20 mmr swing each time).
At that point I think the grind to improve just becomes too extreme. I’m glad for the partial variance resets but I think it can still be punishing if you’re unlucky at the start of a new split. Would there design team ever consider setting the minimum variance to a higher value like 10%? It would allow people that deserve to climb a faster way to do so without waiting 2 months for a variance reset, and I don’t think it would change anything for people that are near a 50% winrate overall
SMITE's minimum variance is already generally higher than recommended from most MMR studies, and higher than most games. This was done intentionally because the early leads of SMITE felt that people should never be hard-stuck, even though it was considered mathematically risky at the time.
We have discussed increasing it further, but it comes with a lot of risks of putting people into places they dont belong based on win or loss streaks. It effectively makes it much more likely to create the problems that this thread is claiming exist already.
Is there any way there can at least be a hardcap placed on variance? I started this split at 100% variance. That is not good for matchmaking at all.
First game I was placed around gold players and barely got by. I then got 500+ mmr added on top and got placed into matches with high platinum players. Fortunately I lost that one so it wouldn't shoot me up further. But please put a cap on variance.
Variance is never reset in Normal Modes.
To make for the mathematically best matchmaking possible, Variance shouldnt be reset in ranked either, but we added it due to player feedback and because resetting it does 2 things well.
It makes sure no one is really hard-stuck. When variance resets, you get a huge amount of power to break out from your current rank
It checks players over time. To keep your rank you have to survive through resets. If you slack off or lose your edge, youre going to drop after those resets, and thats likely the right place for you to go.
Even though you "barely held your own" in gold, you did it, and you won, and on your first ranked game?! You definitely deserve to be around or slightly above gold, and the system is doing exactly what its intended to do to find the right spot for you.
Hey, on the topic of matchmaking, do we ever have casual MMR resets of any sort? I had alway thought the answer was no but at the same time larger streamers who are in regular contact with Titan Forge employees always blame casual MMR resets for weird matches at the start of a season when to me it just felt like the effects of the large sudden meta shifts between seasons.
There are no casual MMR or Variance resets. Not for any modes.
Possibly they are just referring to large influxes of players having those effects on them?
Why are players entering at 1500? We understand you don't necessarily care about player experience and love to regurgitate how good and close MMR is for matches, but the game is unplayable on controller based input.
Are there any plans to incorporate individual MMR modifiers for extreme cases? For example consistently having abnormally high KDA and being rewarded? I know it takes a tiny bit of effort but it would greatly help with how bad things are.
Pon already answered that question elsewhere in the thread.
No plans to include personal stats as MMR modifiers, even in extreme cases. We encourage you to win, nothing else.
This is a team game and role "performance" is very diverse, any sort of system like this would almost certainly be unfair to certain roles or would be gamed for individual gain and hurt overall match quality.
Also, I dont appreciate your loaded questions stuffed with negativity. Ive seen how you talk on here, and if you want your feedback heard you might want to work on your word choices.
The principle of variance is fine and I quite like those benefits. My issue is more the part that things like 100% variance can exist.
In my example, say I got carried for 2 games. With 100% Variance that might put me in Masters. I don't think that's healthy. Instead, why not put a cap on Variance at 40 or 50%, just to give a number. It could be higher, or lower, depending on what works best with the meta-data of player population.
But 100% is just waaaaay too high.
the 100% to 5% is actually just a player driven value that shows how its changed. This corresponds to a completely different value on our end.
Which means im saying - we can change the actual variance to decrease it, but we still planned on showing you 100% - meaning youre at the highest possible value.
Thats more of a sidestep of the question though, i still understand that you mean it should be lowered regardless of how its portrayed.
I think your example is a bit of hyperbole, but we understand the concern. We have talked about decreasing this, but without pairing it with a hard resets it provides a lot of favoritism to players who rose in rank before the change.
Some of the reasons these pitches wont work is because the system has been functioning a specific way already. Changing it partially in the middle causes different players to have different rules applied to their MMRs, which leads to even worse matchmaking.
I've stopped playing because of the negligence towards this subject. When there are 5+ threads a day saying how abysmal the state of the game is, and when you drop by to say nothing is wrong it's pretty infuriating for everyone. Last time I spoke with Pon he said there are ways you're exploring improving things. What are these plans?
I apologize for being rude but this has gone on for so long. Can you please do me a favor and grab a controller and actually play for just one day in ranked? Controller based input. As a developer myself who works with data analysis daily it's painful to see how there's nothing being done when improvement can be made in so many areas.
Thanks
We monitor the feedback closely. We have seen a huge influx in new and returning players lately which is expected to come with some matchmaking complaints.
Over the past few years the in-game metrics have constantly improved, and player complaints have largely decreased. (Although i see you whip up a comment to almost every single matchmaking complaint post)
I disagree with your analysis on this topic.
I dont know when you spoke to Pon but many things have changed with how we do resets over the last year, maybe thats what he was referring to? And we are here today again to tell you we still have more planned, and that its really not as bad as people think.
It seems once people get caught up in the negativity and obsessions of matchmaking, its very hard to break free from that mental state...
Where do you get your feedback that it isn't that bad? Or what metric tells you this?
I don't care about rank.I don't care about win or loss. I want a challenging match. I can't get that in Smite at the moment because the matches are too imbalanced.
If you have time I encourage you to please spend a day trying to play controller based input ranked for an entire day. If you can honestly say you've done that this season I'm happy to never comment on match making again.
I just want someone to truly hear the concern and experience what we're going through rather than dismissing that there's an issue.
I used to love this game. I want to come back. I need a challenge that isn't in the form of handicaps from match making or saboteurs.
Anecdotally, the frequency of these types of threads is near an all time low. Having been around for a while, large threads reaching the front page were the norm, while even this thread is struggling. Even just by new it feels significantly less.
I am less in-tune to it than I was when I did community where more of my work hours were spent looking directly at this type of metric, which is why I qualify it as an anecdote.
We have internal metrics on "Match Quality" as well as how many people actually engage with Ranked Conquest and stick around. These are across the board at an all time high. More people engage with Ranked. More people stay involved with Ranked. Each match on average is significantly closer.
We are looking at ways to improve things, but some of the feels improvements will directly impact these other improvements we have seen. We aren't against doing those types of changes, but we have to approach is carefully otherwise we risk disrupting what we have built especially over the last year and a half.
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