[2022] This game feels like it's deciding who the winners and losers are.

Thanks for giving us the benefit of the doubt!

You are correct. We try our best to give each team the same MMR to lead to a fair match. We don't look at your win% at all, nor your recent Win/Loss pattern.

When putting a match together, all the matchmaker does is:

1. Grabs 10 players whose rank and MMR are close enough to each other.
2. Makes sure it can assign each player to a team and role such that the total MMR between the two teams is within an allowed MMR gap and role preferences work.

If that all goes through, the match fires up.

That's about it.

This leads to matches being winnable by both teams. It doesn't mean there aren't outliers, or matches that can snowball, and there are a lot of other factors that can show up between team assignment and actual match play. But that's how it works.

I can't really speak to how we compare with PC since I don't have their raw data in front of me.

But as far as what can lead to increased MMR gap, in WR it's more likely to be trying to get everyone their position. duo/trio doesn't have a huge impact there (average duos and trios still only win 50% of their matches). 50/50 matches are still the most common, but it can push up to 60/40 in some worse cases.

As for a feeling of randomness, that can also come from the actual skill gap within your team, which doesn't have as strict of a control. The team vs. team MMR gap has a value above which the matchmaker will never allow. The within-team gap, however, resizes based on real-time population.

Basically, it will find the closest MMRs possible within the allowed Rank gap. The rank gap also can't be loosened. But it is possible during slower times of the day to get players whose MMR is much lower than your own despite having the same Rank as you. When that happens, outcomes can feel more random because no matter how hard you try, it feels like you lose because your teammates aren't carrying as hard as you are.

Your win rate will be the same either way (50%), it just *feels* like you have more control when your teammates are closer to your skill.

That can happen for a number of reasons, and is not ideal. We don't currently look at a 40% account and try to fix it with extra wins, nor at a 60% account and try to fix it with extra losses.

Most common reasons I've seen in real data:

• High MMR players coming over from League PC and just starting out will play way better than anyone they are allowed to match with by Rank until they get up to Diamond+. These players get high win% because our rank gap restrictions prevent us from putting them an actual fair 50/50 matches. They end up in a lot of 60/40 matches until they hit ranks that have enough high MMR players to balance them out.
• Likewise with really low MMR players. Sometimes we just can't make teams good enough to win if a player is just that bad. This is pretty rare though.
• Similarly, the very very top 5-10 players will likely play so good they go positive because the best we can find is around 60/40 fairness. They make so large of an impact on win rates. This is super rare.
• Just plain randomness. There's a pretty wide range of possible win percentages even in optimal matchmaking. Even if every one of your matches if perfectly fair, you can still start a season at 40% or 60% after even near 100 games. It's also hard to change that without another 200+ games after. In other games I've seen known top pro players winning major events start seasons at < 40% win rates just due to sheer bad luck. They evened out over time. Despite the low win rates, they were still top-ranked (equivalent to top 10 Challenger) with a 40% win rate because in those particular games, the Ranking system detected they were good despite bad teammates and gave them plenty of the equivalent of VP/LP to get them to the top.

That's my experience with this at a high level.

Now, should we help fix a 40% win%? Maybe, it's not something I've tried. Same with a 60% one. I personally felt that slope a bit slippery, but I'm always learning new things.

Outside of just random luck, there's also when you play. If you got excited to play early this season because of how well last season went, you may have run into higher MMR players before they worked their way up to where they wouldn't match you. Sometimes this can result in less fair matches early on, though it's a bit rare and still likely just random luck.

Another factor is the time of day you play. If you play closer to prime time in your region, you're more likely to get teammates closer to your own MMR just because there are more players around to match with.

Yeah, you've pretty much hit on the major tricky design pivots when it comes to matchmaking and ranking.

If we focus on matchmaking, then players get closer to 50/50 games when some feel like they deserve a higher win rate. To compensate for this, we try and make sure higher MMR players get extra Ranked Fortitude or LP to help them climb even if their win% stays near 50%.

If we don't focus on matchmaking, then it's possible to just let people climb, but then you run into the problem you brought up which is it results in a lot more players getting into matches they can't win or into matches where they feel like they aren't good enough to even play the game. In my experience, this type of experience leads to a larger negative impact than when good players have to lose half their matches.

But, yeah, you have touched on exactly the types of topics we have to balance.

EDIT: To your comment about tight criteria, you are right. Rank is the only hard threshold here, and Rank isn't as good as MMR at separating skill, but it's the most visible so we give it some focus. MMR is better at separating skill, but we let the matchmaker widen the MMR gap as needed to reduce wait times.

Yes, I agree, and that's how the same system works on, e.g. League PC. A combination of what the teams looked like and where everyone should be going.

Wild Rift currently assumes every match is fair, which means in some cases the LP gains/losses don't seem to line up with what happened in the match. In the long run, it gets folks to the right place since most matches are fair, but it can result in some awkwardness. We are aware of this and are evaluating potentially changing it to be closer to PC in that sense at some point.

It's basically a simplifying assumption that carries some baggage but still works.

Mostly because that type of choice doesn't happen in a vacuum. One player waiting longer makes other players wait longer because now they can't match with that player. This can cascade into everyone waiting longer, even those who don't want or need to.

Seeing some Golds as a Plat is pretty normal though. If you are both solo queue, that means you are low Plat. Once your party average (or solo) is farther into Plat, you won't see parties that average below Plat in rank.

If you saw it solo queue in Plat 2, that means the Gold was in a party with significantly higher-ranked teammate, pulling their party average into high-plat.

Since their party was considered Plat, the feature you are talking about wouldn't make a difference for you.

Most of the time you will get your positions, but there are exceptions that happen due to the random nature of all the factors matchmaking has to balance: wait time, ping, rank, MMR, team balance, and position. Sometimes you get another player in there who just hasn't been able to play their position recently, whereas you have, and it's just their turn so to speak.