Originally posted by
StunningTomato86
So it's a modification of my proposed system, in an attempt to more quickly allot you to your true rank. The intent is good, but I don't feel it is necessary.
When the system decides a player is overrated, they're punished for losses more heavily than they're rewarded for wins. Assuming the system was correct in this decision, the player would still feel a sense of disappointment: it appears the game is biased against them. Even if the system does put them in their correct rank quickly, I think it's a wrong thing to do simply because of how it makes them feel.
If they instead slowly fall from grace without biased RR rewards/punishments, they'd be much more able to accept the blame, and possibly motivate themselves to improve. The psychological response would be more positive this way.
Assuming the system decides the player should be ranked higher, and is correct in that decision, the player's gonna get there eventually.
Under my system: Players don't improve significantly over the course of a day, it takes them a while. It's unlikely that a player with bronze skill will get to silver skill very quickly. So as they slowly improve, so will their win-rate, their RR will follow, until they're in silver. They won't be curb-stomping the enemies for 15 matches, they'd be just about out-performing most of them for 30 matches. The Riot system simply doesn't make sense in this scenario.
Where the Riot system makes sense is for new players, those who just came in from a background of tactical shooters, and already know what's up. So for such people, the Riot system makes perfect sense.
How about using the Riot system for a player's first 100 (?) games, before using my simplified system? The Riot system will put them in their (estimated) deserved rank. From then on, they can move up/down the ranks slowly, as their skill goes up/down slowly.
First off, I find your ideas really interesting. It's always nice to read an interesting breakdown on ranked beliefs or concepts. Thanks for spending the time writing it up!
What does the system use to decide "you deserve more/less"? Changing the RR rewards artificially pushes you to what "the system thinks" you deserve, which is simply not fair.
The system is not as complicated as I think you are assuming it is. Yes we have some fancy math to calculate it, but at the end of the day MMR is a giant ladder. So if you win against opponents you climb up the ladder, and others go down it. Yes we have math that determines by how much you should go up the ladder, but at the end of the day you can break it down to "win more climb more".
The only way to tell you're in the rank you deserve: you play equally well as everyone else in that rank. How do you identify this? 50/50 win/lose rate, easy. And the only way for the RR to remain constant at a 50/50 ratio is to have equal rewards for games won and games lost.
This is very true, with one exception to our system. Because we have things like demotion protection, and points we give when you promote, we have a net positive system. For most players, this is perfectly fine, but does enable rank inflation. Also we want to make sure we are giving players the benefit of the doubt when they do rank up. But what happens is that players can win streak upwards above their MMR, then they hit a rank cut-off and hit demotion protection. This also occurs because we award lots of ranked rating points, if we lowered our total gains/losses players would not be able to get as far ahead of their MMR from win streaking, but it may increase the grind and perception of being hard stuck my become worse(certain point values just "feel" bad, or like we hold you down).
So because you get about 20+/- RR on average, when you are at your actual MMR, it only takes 5 games net positive to winstreak upwards above the rank you are currently performing at. So right now people are teetering on the edge of a rank, getting demotion protected, while the system is trying to push them down. This is actually pretty rare, but as you play more games you increase the chances of having that 5 game net positive winstreak increasing the chances it can happen to you.
We accepted this, in the current design, because we can either give you more for a loss and less for a win and it helps combat any kind of ranked inflation that happens in that situation. That being said it doesn't feel good, which is why you see posts like this. But at some point we can't let players rank up if they don't deserve it. Technically, even in our current system, you could out win your ranked rating. Even if you got +10 per win, and -30 per a loss, you could maintain a win rate above 75% win rate and climb. But if you did that you would increase your MMR and just climb anyways.
Lastly we can't give you the same amounts per a win and loss, and just let you face off against opponents and let the ladder work itself out. The reason for this is not every match is equal. Sometimes you will be the best player on your team, sometimes the worst. That's the basis of why MMR was made, and why all games have moved to this style of system(in fact most games use Microsoft's true skill MMR system). Okay so lets say now that we have a system that is purely even Ranked Rating gains, but we need to solve for opponents being at different point values and skill. The solution would be to give you different amount of ranked rating gains/losses based on the values of your opponents - Now you've just made an MMR system!
This then turns into "Just Show MMR". The problem is you will have some games where you win, and only got +3. You would also see matches where you were bottom on the board, but got +30 if your team won. This is because wins are more impactful against higher MMR players - because you are showing you are better then them. This is why the arrow system we used in the prior episode felt bad, because sometimes you got 1 arrow for a good performance. Again, we suffer from an even worse problem then the current system with comments like "I have no idea why the system works this way" because to understand it you would need to be able to look at every players MMR and understand why the math is moving you up or down based on your opponents values. So to smooth out the experience, and have the best of both worlds(smooth gains/losses and fair match making) you have to use two systems that live on each other.
If a player were to win, consistently, against players they would climb the ladder and their Ranked Rating gains would also increase. The system isn't some mysterious number, or lines in the sand, where we say "You have to play this well to rank up" - in reality we are telling you to play better then the players around you to rank up. We definitely can do things to increase the perception of getting ahead of your MMR, and make it feel better too. We definitely need to make some tweaks, it's just difficult in systems like these where researching and gathering data takes time. We also have to make sure any change doesn't break the system because players will feel it when we get it wrong(we don't want match making to get chaotic). This was a long response but hopefully it helped! Thanks for engaging in these talks, and I love talking about these things :)
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