Soft Cap

[Rufo.3716]

The biggest problem is the whole matchmaking process. It all depends on who you get paired with and against. Even the best players can only carry so much, you can't make up for 4 completely inept players on your team. I have one account hovering in the gold area at the moment, and another stuck in bronze. If the MMR has me where it should, please explain to me how I have 2 different accounts in 2 totally different tiers. Might as well not even have a ranking system as it doesn't mean much at all. I crush in bronze carrying as hard as I can and it doesn't matter at all when you have the other 4 guys on your team going home at start of game.

 

Would love to know if any player has actually gotten to plat doing solo queue only.

[Ithilwen.1529]

> @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> > @Ithilwen.1529 said:

> > Thanks for that. Is there a current version of the code or pseudo code posted? I'd like to see it. Also, why doesn't the matchmaker take match history into account? After all, loss streaks are one of the biggest causes of toxicity.

> >

>

> As far as I'm aware (I'm not a programmer), the current version is correct except for one thing. Dishonor history no longer affects matchmaking.

>

> We don't do modifiers for win and loss streaks because this is already accounted for in your skill rating changes from match to match.

>

>

 

I recognize that. I'd still contend two things: 1. It's insufficient and 2. The allowed deviation in rating ( for choosing teams) is too high. The latter problem wipes out the moderating effect of relying on current rating.

 

I think that with sequential losses there should be an effect, ( a kind of "virtual" rating? I've used this method in scripts many times, use a sub variable (float) to preserve some factor.. so the "virtual" rating would go down exponentially with each loss over say, 3 in a row and reset after any win or relog. If there were not consecutiove losses the "virtual" rating would equal the real one and you could them match make off the virtual variable.) Doing this would prevent the kind of long loss streaks that made s1-s2 so toxic. One player reported over 100.

 

Much better to wait for a good match than to be thrown quickly into an unbalanced one.

 

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

> @Ithilwen.1529 said:

> > @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> > > @Ithilwen.1529 said:

> > > Thanks for that. Is there a current version of the code or pseudo code posted? I'd like to see it. Also, why doesn't the matchmaker take match history into account? After all, loss streaks are one of the biggest causes of toxicity.

> > >

> >

> > As far as I'm aware (I'm not a programmer), the current version is correct except for one thing. Dishonor history no longer affects matchmaking.

> >

> > We don't do modifiers for win and loss streaks because this is already accounted for in your skill rating changes from match to match.

> >

> >

>

> I recognize that. I'd still contend two things: 1. It's insufficient and 2. The allowed deviation in rating ( for choosing teams) is too high. The latter problem wipes out the moderating effect of relying on current rating.

>

> I think that with sequential losses there should be an effect, ( a kind of "virtual" rating? I've used this method in scripts many times, use a sub variable (float) to preserve some factor.. so the "virtual" rating would go down exponentially with each loss over say, 3 in a row and reset after any win or relog. If there were not consecutiove losses the "virtual" rating would equal the real one and you could them match make off the virtual variable.) Doing this would prevent the kind of long loss streaks that made s1-s2 so toxic. One player reported over 100.

>

> Much better to wait for a good match than to be thrown quickly into an unbalanced one.

>

 

You want the matchmaker to be fixed so losses don’t mean anything oh that is great, players play with their real rating not a fake cushion rating.

[Ithilwen.1529]

I want the match maker to prevent extreme streaks, in either direction.

[Razor.6392]

> @Exedore.6320 said:

> No, you just belong in or near gold2.

> If you win a bit and start moving up, you'll play better opponents. When you can't compete at that level, you lose and get bumped back down.

 

I'm sorry but this is a joke. There's LOTS of people in gold that shouldn't be outside silver or bronze. Matchups vary wildly in quality, so to think that OP is accurately facing considerably better opponents as soon as he reaches a certain threshold is naive at best.

[Malafaia.8903]

> @Razor.6392 said:

> > @Exedore.6320 said:

> > No, you just belong in or near gold2.

> > If you win a bit and start moving up, you'll play better opponents. When you can't compete at that level, you lose and get bumped back down.

>

> I'm sorry but this is a joke. There's LOTS of people in gold that shouldn't be outside silver or bronze. Matchups vary wildly in quality, so to think that OP is accurately facing considerably better opponents as soon as he reaches a certain threshold is naive at best.

 

Thank you! It's exactly about this.

[Zaxares.5419]

I'm curious though, Ben. Does the MM algorithm remember your rating between seasons? Or is it assigned afresh during the placement matches at the start of a season? (And if not, do you think it should? It might help in allowing players to find their natural tier instead of having it determined by wild luck in whether or not you had good teammates during your placement matches, since I've seen everybody in my placements from obvious newbies to PvP (in that they were using the starter PvP builds, or PvE builds) to people with "X Legend" titles.)

[LUST.7241]

> @Ithilwen.1529 said:

> Thanks for that. Is there a current version of the code or pseudo code posted? I'd like to see it. Also, why doesn't the matchmaker take match history into account? After all, loss streaks are one of the biggest causes of toxicity.

 

Probably not updated with the 1600 restriction.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

[psyt.9415]

They should do it like LoL where you actually are in a pool with other players in each rank. You can see their win and loss totals and streaks and point totals you have to pass the guy at the top of the pool to move up a tier and if you start losing you get relegated only when someones point total passes yours. I mean I guess you can sort of do this with the top 250 but I think all ranks should be based on points relative to your peers.

[Zaxares.5419]

I do actually like that idea, psyt, but the trouble with that approach is that the pool of players in the upper ranks (Platinum and Legendary) is just so tiny that if we restricted matches to only within your division, you'd have a lot of top-end players who would basically sit in queue for hours and never get enough people for a match. It'd probably work great for the lower divisions, but not so well for the higher ones.

[Egorum.9506]

> @Rufo.3716 said:

> The biggest problem is the whole matchmaking process. It all depends on who you get paired with and against. Even the best players can only carry so much, you can't make up for 4 completely inept players on your team. I have one account hovering in the gold area at the moment, and another stuck in bronze. If the MMR has me where it should, please explain to me how I have 2 different accounts in 2 totally different tiers. Might as well not even have a ranking system as it doesn't mean much at all. I crush in bronze carrying as hard as I can and it doesn't matter at all when you have the other 4 guys on your team going home at start of game.

>

> Would love to know if any player has actually gotten to plat doing solo queue only.

 

I get to plat as solo q every season. I tanked my placement matches this season so I could farm the pips up quicker and just made it back into plat monday. So it's doable, but very painful. It feels like the game is forcing a 50/50 rate, you either crush the opponents or you 3v1 for 2 minutes and find that a mesmer and theif duo 2v4'd your entire team without them getting a single point. My favorite is when I see a support MM reaper on my team in a Plat match, or at the end of the game when I find out I've done 40%+ of the teams total damage, while getting top healing too?

 

In bronze and silver, it's about which team has the good players. In gold+ it's which team has the inept player(s), turning every game into a 4v5 right off the bat.

[Lilyanna.9361]

> @Egorum.9506 said:

> > @Rufo.3716 said:

> > The biggest problem is the whole matchmaking process. It all depends on who you get paired with and against. Even the best players can only carry so much, you can't make up for 4 completely inept players on your team. I have one account hovering in the gold area at the moment, and another stuck in bronze. If the MMR has me where it should, please explain to me how I have 2 different accounts in 2 totally different tiers. Might as well not even have a ranking system as it doesn't mean much at all. I crush in bronze carrying as hard as I can and it doesn't matter at all when you have the other 4 guys on your team going home at start of game.

> >

> > Would love to know if any player has actually gotten to plat doing solo queue only.

>

> I get to plat as solo q every season. I tanked my placement matches this season so I could farm the pips up quicker and just made it back into plat monday. So it's doable, but very painful. It feels like the game is forcing a 50/50 rate, you either crush the opponents or you 3v1 for 2 minutes and find that a mesmer and theif duo 2v4'd your entire team without them getting a single point. My favorite is when I see a support MM reaper on my team in a Plat match, or at the end of the game when I find out I've done 40%+ of the teams total damage, while getting top healing too?

>

> In bronze and silver, it's about which team has the good players. In gold+ it's which team has the inept player(s), turning every game into a 4v5 right off the bat.

 

Lol that's pretty much gold.

Not who has the best players, but who has the worst.

That starts changing once you hit gold 3, but in gold 2 and 1? LOL, it's like betting how many silvers you can get paired with and how many plats is on the the opposite.

 

Quite chuckleworthy really.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @otto.5684 said:

> This is just RNG. I will be honest with you, any game that has a margin of win over 150 points is a failure in match making (even 100 is a stretch). These are the majority of games. When I look at my play history I typically find no more than 1 game with a margin under 100 in the last 10 games, 2-3 games under 150 and at least half with over 200.

>

> The match making just guestimates what your skill level is based on what ever your rank, MMR or what ever info. It is like guessing what someones IQ is based on their grades in school. The correlation is... limited.

>

> If you are good, and persistent (as in playing boat load of games), the sample size gets big enough, and you will eventually climb-up the ranks to where you should be. Hey, just like in real life :#

>

> But if you are thinking that the match making system figured out your skill level and manages to keep you within that "skill level" range, this is not even remotely true. This is way beyond the match making capacity.

 

That's the problem isn't it?

Most people don't have the time to play 10 games a day to increase the sample size.

And seasons don't last long enough for those people to get to that point. So, and along with lack of players, and i'm pretty sure there's some part of the matchmaking that works to smooth the curve, it can't be that you instantly go from 10 game win streak into a 5 lose streak with the most appaling of scores (i got a 500-65 loss from people afking and simply not knowing what to do - at theoretically gold rank), by coincidence.

 

Even if the algorithm isn't balancing that out on purpose, the short lived seasons exacerbate that perception. And that part is 100% on Anet's hands. And it's one of the larger reasons why, for me, personally, ranked is just broken, and pvp became largely unfun since HoT. The second reason is the removal of team-queue, which is just moronic in a team game.

[Vagrant.7206]

I don't think it's a soft cap. I think it's the algorithm trying to make up for a poor pool of players. The problem is particularly noticeable when the server population is low (IE at 2 AM)

 

For example, if you have a relatively high ranking, but there's a small pool of players, the matchmaking algorithm will attempt to balance both teams. The problem is that there may not be enough players in the middle -- so one team may get more average players, and the other team may get one excellent player and a bunch of bad players. The one excellent player cannot make up for the bad players' behavior, so the team with average players will tend to win.

 

I've noticed this in a lot of games myself. Sometimes it's almost like I'm playing with silver players on my team, the enemy team is gold, and I'm plat. I win 2v1 fights in these scenarios (or at least hold my own), but my team is incompetent.

 

> @Rufo.3716 said:

> Would love to know if any player has actually gotten to plat doing solo queue only.

 

Me. I was in the top 10 for a brief moment yesterday. :tongue: Until the matchmaking system knocked me down a peg into plat 2.

 


 

[Hockmed.9417]

> @Ithilwen.1529 said:

>

> I recognize that. I'd still contend two things: 1. It's insufficient and 2. The allowed deviation in rating ( for choosing teams) is too high. The latter problem wipes out the moderating effect of relying on current rating.

>

> I think that with sequential losses there should be an effect, ( a kind of "virtual" rating? I've used this method in scripts many times, use a sub variable (float) to preserve some factor.. so the "virtual" rating would go down exponentially with each loss over say, 3 in a row and reset after any win or relog. If there were not consecutiove losses the "virtual" rating would equal the real one and you could them match make off the virtual variable.) Doing this would prevent the kind of long loss streaks that made s1-s2 so toxic. One player reported over 100.

>

> Much better to wait for a good match than to be thrown quickly into an unbalanced one.

>

 

The reason they had to allow such a deviation is a tiny PvP population, especially since the World Tournament Series is no longer a thing to bring in esports crowds. People at the high end of the rating system were waiting for excessive periods to get a match. Since the high rated players are the ones that people typically watch streaming, it looks pretty terrible if they have to wait up to an hour at times for a single match.

 

The solution Anet went with was playing subpar games rather than waiting for the perfect game. That means when the already low population is light because of off-peak hours, the variation of skill levels will be excessive. It's a symptom of the system, but even moreso the lack of player base from which to pool.

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

> @Zaxares.5419 said:

> I'm curious though, Ben. Does the MM algorithm remember your rating between seasons? Or is it assigned afresh during the placement matches at the start of a season? (And if not, do you think it should? It might help in allowing players to find their natural tier instead of having it determined by wild luck in whether or not you had good teammates during your placement matches, since I've seen everybody in my placements from obvious newbies to PvP (in that they were using the starter PvP builds, or PvE builds) to people with "X Legend" titles.)

 

There is a soft reset at the start of the season rather than a full reset. So your previous rating does come into play. Everyone’s ratings are moved closer to the middle and their rating volatility is set high during placements.

[paShadoWn.5723]

> @ReaverKane.7598 said:

> The second reason is the removal of team-queue, which is just moronic in a team game.

 

In Heroes of the Storm, there are solo ranked queue and team ranked queue but i guess GW2 haves too little players to fill both.