Guild Wars 2

Im not an expert in MMR, neither a super PVPer, but after reading so much of the forum feedback/venting i can say most people are clueless about it, so i made this post to explain the basics of MMR:

MMR: Match Making Ratio its a skill rating and skill rating system that comes from Glicko 2, glicko 2 of course comes from glicko 1 that in itself is an improvement of ELO.

How you move on the MMR system:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200) and go up or down based on three important points:

- You won or lose.
-Against what MMR (team MMR) you did it, compared to yours.
- How certain the system its of your MMR.

The second point directly destroys the common idea of same win/lose ratio= same MMR, that doesnt normally happen, the system take in account against who you fight.

At the same time this explain why theres difference between skill rating winning and lose between players and why sometimes lose have a bigger value than wins (you had more chances to win).

It also makes so that when the system has litle people or a player group up with a lower MMR guy, he will not farm skill rating, because a meager win of skill rating points (in fact some skill rating systems make you lost a small quantity of points when you win against someone less skilled).

Third one has to do with the deviations: MMR works as an alghoritm, it becomes more precise by each match, the more accurate calculation it has of your true skill rating, the less it will deviate for wins and loses, it will still happens, but less. This is because you will lost and win, as a result your mmr fluctuate up and down between your real place and if this deviations arent restrained partially the quality of matches will be deteriorated, since you will be under or overrated by an amount (not big but stlll).

This third point has an important part, the more you go against what the system predicted (long winning streaks), the more your MMR will fluctuate, because it no longer has an accurate data of yours (you improved in comparison of others). This make so that improves or lose in skill (or build power for example) will be more easily sized by the system (anyone with more than 4-5 winning streaks will notice an additional 1-3 points win of skill rate per win until he start to setle again).

MMR in season 1-4:

A common mistake people do its compare the old seasons with this one, there are several difference:

First one: The matchmaker had two mayor problems in previews seasons:

• Pip restriction to search for opponents of the same MMR (in all 4 seasons).
  This produced teams with very different compositions of MMR and can only happens now in very low population hours and in extreme MMR values, like 2000 and 400 (900 its not an extreme value).

• Matchmaker different formula (season 2-3): Of 10 people it grouped the best 5 MMRs in one team and the worst 5 in the other.
  This isnt happening now, can happen that a team has a general better MMR but not that all the best skill ratios are in one group.

Second: No checkpoints, this isnt grind based where you could get to one point, tank (knowing you were doing it or not) your MMR thanks to the checkpoint and fight against the low MMRs guys in the division.

In this season you tank your MMR, you lower your division and fight against guys of similar MMR than the one you have at the moment at each MMR value, as such you tank and lose progress to come back against the same foes.

Third: All people start in the same division or there were 3 points to start (emerald, amber and saphire), now each people start at half the difference between their MMR and 1200, so your starting point depends of your pre soft reset skill rating.

This means no low level skill player its suposed to start in platinum in the long run (since its a soft MMR reset, there was still some of the old leagues MMR distortions, so it could happen this time).

Four: Thanks to the 3 first factors, in previews leagues you could be in legendary division and have a 900 skill rating (been in the worst 50% of the population in terms of skill).

Now if you mantain legendary, you are really on that level.

MMR distribution and soft reset

MMR has a bell curve (normal curve) with a mean of 1200. This means each division dont have the same ammount of people, silver and bronce have way more than other divisions, in fact it means the more near 1200 you are more people on your same rating are.

The soft reset did this: (Last season MMR+ 1200)*0.5, and then give you 10 matches before it shows your mmr, however that doesnt mean its not calculated, you are been matched acording the initial operation, the soft reset however reset your deviation, so if you lose all of the matches, you lost 500 points of MMR.

However each match you fight against people of the same MMR you have at that moment, so its very difficult to fluctuate as much as pre season 1600 (1400 at the start of the ten matchs) to 900 this season.

MMR settling

Even after you got a bad/ god start or you climb, went down stairs to some skill rate, that doesnt means you are really in your MMR, MMR need to settle!. This means once you have like 20 matches and are still in the same MMR, you could said that as long as the other people are near their place, you are also near yours.

That means that if you started at 1400 and have only lost until 900 and never again you saw the 1400, its extremly probable that you were wrongly placed in 1400.

Reasoning and MMR

This part was writing because additionally to ignorance theres a lot of none reasoning and just denial in all the this system sucks/ bronce hell related topics:

MMR measures me individually but its a group game!:

Yes, but it you are put as a variable in the group game and over all your matches the constant its you, it have enough matches to discriminate others, the same for the other variables, if we go for regression or lineal algebra, it means it have enough equation with all variables to get the correct values of all of them.

So i can mantain 3 but my super archie bad bronce team cant do nothing against the other two:

First:

In my experience 90% of the guys saying im fighting 3 are clueless guys that either/and:

Didnt check their team wipped and the other guys come for him.
Have 40 secs mantaining the other team but think it was about 5 mins.
Random guy spawning after/before his team that go to play yolo vs 5…

Second: For all the other cases:

Your 4 guys have each a similar level of the other 2 guys, so except one or both of them its also not accurate measured by a lot, this will not happen. The best part its that they will go up and eventually you will, this kind of player will not always show in your matches, neither always on the other team, you will influence the outcome, even by an small ammount if you more win more 1vs1 than a player in that skill rating.

So yes, you are good you are going up, just not probably in a 100% wins ratio, every litle thing you do better than your teammates and by consequence the other team members, give your team more chances to win than the average 50%.

There are people that should not be in ranked!

If they are super bad they will fill the bottom of the skill rating system and people that get there and dont deserve it, will do it for a momment (example: if all teams members are afkers except you, you are the only one capping: winning all time!!!!).

And yeah they will fill the bottom because they will lose most of their matches until they find people like them. The probabilities you accompany them all the way in their downfall are very small.

General MMR reasoning means: how much matches can be considered luck, what kind of teammates and enemies i have at this skill rating and how they interact, what happens with someone that is this bad and using extreme cases.

The experts in MMR/glicko formulas, please correct or add anything.

PD: No my main language.

Thank you a thousand times. Accurate.

Nice summary, Lucius.2140.
Now you just need to go through every new PvP forums thread and every HotM instance and spam the links to your OP.

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

sephiroth.4217:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

THIS.

WHY should a new player receive 1200 mmr just for showing up? I’m sorry, but that’s just not fair at all.

sephiroth.4217:

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I don’t even quite understand how you can think this is not normal. This is totally expected. If you DON’T KNOW one’s skill level you place him at the presumed middle and use the placement games and the consecutives games to have the person go up or down to his level.

In the end there are MORE chances that a beginner that should not be around 1200 gets in the opposite team than in yours. All rants related to that is another pitiful attempt to justify a poor rating and defy both common sense and logic.

JTGuevara.9018:

sephiroth.4217:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

THIS.

WHY should a new player receive 1200 mmr just for showing up? I’m sorry, but that’s just not fair at all.

Because that’s the supposed middle. Because if everyone starts there those who were better go up and those who were worse go down. Simple as that. I mean, what are you even…

Somehow.4769:

JTGuevara.9018:

sephiroth.4217:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

THIS.

WHY should a new player receive 1200 mmr just for showing up? I’m sorry, but that’s just not fair at all.

Because that’s the supposed middle. Because if everyone starts there those who were better go up and those who were worse go down. Simple as that. I mean, what are you even…

So the game is mostly consistent of Average players, average players are what make this game but we are going to punish those very players just to make room for newbies?

You can’t start in the middle, how is that even fair? We all might aswell start with a 1900+ rating off this logic. People are Average because they’re not new but yet here we are mixed up together in such volatile matches.

If you can’t see the logic in that I can’t communicate this problem any further, I’m glad matchmaking and placement games went well for you and you got to avoid these guys, but some of us average players just want to play with average players, not newbies. We just want good games like the privileged 1500+ players get where we are matched against similar skill levels, is that really too much to ask because you’re making it sounds as if it is.

Keep in mind, “new” means new to ranked PvP, not neccessarily new to the game or PvP in general. Not all “new” players are bad and not all bad players are new. And according to Evan Lesh, those players start at average MMR, because most of them actually belong there. The matchmaking system also takes the amount of games played into account, to match new players with/against other new players if possible.

sephiroth.4217:

Somehow.4769:

JTGuevara.9018:

sephiroth.4217:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

THIS.

WHY should a new player receive 1200 mmr just for showing up? I’m sorry, but that’s just not fair at all.

Because that’s the supposed middle. Because if everyone starts there those who were better go up and those who were worse go down. Simple as that. I mean, what are you even…

So the game is mostly consistent of Average players, average players are what make this game but we are going to punish those very players just to make room for newbies?

You can’t start in the middle, how is that even fair? We all might aswell start with a 1900+ rating off this logic. People are Average because they’re not new but yet here we are mixed up together in such volatile matches.

If you can’t see the logic in that I can’t communicate this problem any further, I’m glad matchmaking and placement games went well for you and you got to avoid these guys, but some of us average players just want to play with average players, not newbies. We just want good games like the privileged 1500+ players get where we are matched against similar skill levels, is that really too much to ask because you’re making it sounds as if it is.

Again, newbies are more likely to be on the opposite team if you’re yourself an average or better player. Also you are overestimating the disturbance’s magnitude. A bad player will quickly drop through his placement matchs and few first matchs after that. And there are not so many new pvp players. Even if you all believe that pvp is plagued by pve players without having any real numbers to back it up.

What if you started trying to understand how things work before you whine? And then come back and rant on something you really understand. THAT way we’ll improve things.

Somehow.4769:

sephiroth.4217:

Somehow.4769:

JTGuevara.9018:

sephiroth.4217:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

THIS.

WHY should a new player receive 1200 mmr just for showing up? I’m sorry, but that’s just not fair at all.

Because that’s the supposed middle. Because if everyone starts there those who were better go up and those who were worse go down. Simple as that. I mean, what are you even…

So the game is mostly consistent of Average players, average players are what make this game but we are going to punish those very players just to make room for newbies?

You can’t start in the middle, how is that even fair? We all might aswell start with a 1900+ rating off this logic. People are Average because they’re not new but yet here we are mixed up together in such volatile matches.

If you can’t see the logic in that I can’t communicate this problem any further, I’m glad matchmaking and placement games went well for you and you got to avoid these guys, but some of us average players just want to play with average players, not newbies. We just want good games like the privileged 1500+ players get where we are matched against similar skill levels, is that really too much to ask because you’re making it sounds as if it is.

Again, newbies are more likely to be on the opposite team if you’re yourself an average or better player. Also you are overestimating the disturbance’s magnitude. A bad player will quickly drop through his placement matchs and few first matchs after that. And there are not so many new pvp players. Even if you all believe that pvp is plagued by pve players without having any real numbers to back it up.

What if you started trying to understand how things work before you whine? And then come back and rant on something you really understand. THAT way we’ll improve things.

How about putting people in 1900 rating then. As you say, they will fall or would that be unfair? Before you take your condescending tone remember that youre the one trying to argue someone elses perspective and experience. So i ask you to understand my point of view, the average player stuck with these players that have 500-77 scores, if that doesnt tell you something is wrong, nothing will.

At the end of the day we want balanced games, why is that such a hard concept to understand? Why is wanting fair games too much of an ask for you?

I honestly have no enjoyment getting 20 kills against newish players and im positive they hate being spawn camped most games too.

Fair games for all skill levels is all we want. Enjoyable games.

Im honestly starting to believe the people defending this are either not involved in this tier of matchmaking or they are scared to lose thier godly feeling because now they CAN get 20 kills a game. Ill check your rating and post here after work when i get home so we can all see which category you fit under.

sephiroth.4217:

Somehow.4769:

sephiroth.4217:

Somehow.4769:

JTGuevara.9018:

sephiroth.4217:

Players are suposed to start at a determinated ratio (1200)

so new players get an average rating before they even have the skills to be considered average.

I really think this is the real reason why Average players are extremely frustrated at the moment with PvP and I think every average player has the right to complain about it. An average player has no room for improvement against new players and an average player is average because they lack the skills to be pro and carry teams.

Maybe they should give new players a rating of 1800? Or would that be unfair? Atleast the pro players are more equipped to determine the outcome of their match with newbies running around.

Or maybe we can be logical and give new players, I dunno, maybe a new rating or low rating of maybe 600? That’s below average and allows for a dedicated PvPer to work his way up and any “ascended farming” players can stay at the 600 rating with each other.

THIS.

WHY should a new player receive 1200 mmr just for showing up? I’m sorry, but that’s just not fair at all.

Because that’s the supposed middle. Because if everyone starts there those who were better go up and those who were worse go down. Simple as that. I mean, what are you even…

So the game is mostly consistent of Average players, average players are what make this game but we are going to punish those very players just to make room for newbies?

You can’t start in the middle, how is that even fair? We all might aswell start with a 1900+ rating off this logic. People are Average because they’re not new but yet here we are mixed up together in such volatile matches.

If you can’t see the logic in that I can’t communicate this problem any further, I’m glad matchmaking and placement games went well for you and you got to avoid these guys, but some of us average players just want to play with average players, not newbies. We just want good games like the privileged 1500+ players get where we are matched against similar skill levels, is that really too much to ask because you’re making it sounds as if it is.

Again, newbies are more likely to be on the opposite team if you’re yourself an average or better player. Also you are overestimating the disturbance’s magnitude. A bad player will quickly drop through his placement matchs and few first matchs after that. And there are not so many new pvp players. Even if you all believe that pvp is plagued by pve players without having any real numbers to back it up.

What if you started trying to understand how things work before you whine? And then come back and rant on something you really understand. THAT way we’ll improve things.

How about putting people in 1900 rating then. As you say, they will fall or would that be unfair? Before you take your condescending tone remember that youre the one trying to argue someone elses perspective and experience. So i ask you to understand my point of view, the average player stuck with these players that have 500-77 scores, if that doesnt tell you something is wrong, nothing will.

At the end of the day we want balanced games, why is that such a hard concept to understand? Why is wanting fair games too much of an ask for you?

I honestly have no enjoyment getting 20 kills against newish players and im positive they hate being spawn camped most games too.

Fair games for all skill levels is all we want. Enjoyable games.

Im honestly starting to believe the people defending this are either not involved in this tier of matchmaking or they are scared to lose thier godly feeling because now they CAN get 20 kills a game.

Tell ‘em sephiroth. There’s a whole of bunch of these “pros”, white knights and apologists on these forums. The only reason I can of think of is, they benefit from the system or THINK they’re going to benefit. I see right through that BS.

I’m done defending PvP. This is the FIFTH season now and we still have the SAME problems.

Someone didnt play wow arena’s, lol, dota, smite, most pvp games or anything else ELO/MMR related it seems…

They even explain it with big letters and to the extreme in this post and answer your ignorant rants, but youre still blissfully ignoring the logical answers.

Great read on the original post btw, i hope a lot of people check this out.

sephiroth.4217:

How about putting people in 1900 rating then. As you say, they will fall or would that be unfair? Before you take your condescending tone remember that youre the one trying to argue someone elses perspective and experience. So i ask you to understand my point of view, the average player stuck with these players that have 500-77 scores, if that doesnt tell you something is wrong, nothing will.

At the end of the day we want balanced games, why is that such a hard concept to understand? Why is wanting fair games too much of an ask for you?

I honestly have no enjoyment getting 20 kills against newish players and im positive they hate being spawn camped most games too.

Fair games for all skill levels is all we want. Enjoyable games.

Im honestly starting to believe the people defending this are either not involved in this tier of matchmaking or they are scared to lose thier godly feeling because now they CAN get 20 kills a game. Ill check your rating and post here after work when i get home so we can all see which category you fit under.

You could. But then 1,900 would just become the new “average” and it would become a scale of 0-3,800 instead of the current 0-2400.

So basically its just a matter of scale, and you’re just arguing semantics, for lack of a better term.

It just so happens that right now 1,200 is the “base value” for this MMR system, and because it is the base value of the MMR system, the average player ends up being around 1,200.

Not the other way around.

You could flip it around as well. Have the base MMR be 500, in which case the average would end up being around 500, and legend would be near 900-1000.

Great post

I am really enjoying this season’s matchmaking. Anet has done a great job and so have you analizing it

Kuddos

sephiroth.4217:

How about putting people in 1900 rating then. As you say, they will fall or would that be unfair? Before you take your condescending tone remember that youre the one trying to argue someone elses perspective and experience. So i ask you to understand my point of view, the average player stuck with these players that have 500-77 scores, if that doesnt tell you something is wrong, nothing will.

At the end of the day we want balanced games, why is that such a hard concept to understand? Why is wanting fair games too much of an ask for you?

I honestly have no enjoyment getting 20 kills against newish players and im positive they hate being spawn camped most games too.

Fair games for all skill levels is all we want. Enjoyable games.

Im honestly starting to believe the people defending this are either not involved in this tier of matchmaking or they are scared to lose thier godly feeling because now they CAN get 20 kills a game. Ill check your rating and post here after work when i get home so we can all see which category you fit under.

Because if you notice the top rating is 2300 which brings your 1900 very close to it and far – far from the bottom. As to your point of view, if you consider yourself better than those new-bad players you get stuck with, there is NO way you will be stuck with them forever, simply because your exprerience and understanding on skill/class mechanics and contesting strategy will see your team through, hell you might even faceroll some fights 1v2 or 1v3 and carry your team to the win, THATS will happen until you meet your skill rating threshold and face players with very similar true skill rating as yours, unless you are already at this threshold.

One point you might want to consider changing is that the previous seasons didn’t intentionally put teams of high skilled individuals against teams of low skilled individuals.

It’s more that it’s reflective of the discussion about how Pip range was determining match-ups. The system was trying to find 5 players with the closest MMR to each other within a given pip range, and then find another 5 players with the closest MMR within that same pip range, and match them against each other.

The algorithm was prioritizing Pip range over MMR range and because it had to compensate for the fact that it might not be able to create a closely MMR matched game, you would get these wildly mismatched teams, especially during slow hours.

I’d actually suggest/argue that now with the pip system gone, the system should tighten up its MMR matchmaking as opposed to how it currently creates what could be considered wildly disproportionate skill level individuals on the same team with each other.

People don’t want matches to be good/close matches because of how many good plays their teams can actually end up accomplishing; but by a small handful of mistakes that might end up being made.

Olympia.5697:

sephiroth.4217:

How about putting people in 1900 rating then. As you say, they will fall or would that be unfair? Before you take your condescending tone remember that youre the one trying to argue someone elses perspective and experience. So i ask you to understand my point of view, the average player stuck with these players that have 500-77 scores, if that doesnt tell you something is wrong, nothing will.

At the end of the day we want balanced games, why is that such a hard concept to understand? Why is wanting fair games too much of an ask for you?

I honestly have no enjoyment getting 20 kills against newish players and im positive they hate being spawn camped most games too.

Fair games for all skill levels is all we want. Enjoyable games.

Im honestly starting to believe the people defending this are either not involved in this tier of matchmaking or they are scared to lose thier godly feeling because now they CAN get 20 kills a game. Ill check your rating and post here after work when i get home so we can all see which category you fit under.

Because if you notice the top rating is 2300 which brings your 1900 very close to it and far – far from the bottom. As to your point of view, if you consider yourself better than those new-bad players you get stuck with, there is NO way you will be stuck with them forever, simply because your exprerience and understanding on skill/class mechanics and contesting strategy will see your team through, hell you might even faceroll some fights 1v2 or 1v3 and carry your team to the win, THATS will happen until you meet your skill rating threshold and face players with very similar true skill rating as yours, unless you are already at this threshold.

I completely understand where you’re coming from because not so long ago I took the advice of another forum member and ditched the support and have been having really easy games for the most part since then but I’m extremely bored.

To be clear, I’m not saying I deserve to be higher or at some pro level, I am an average player that’s being qued with new/crap players. I want to play with a full team of average players and have a close game. (and sometimes it happens, so don’t think this is a never thing)

Apologies if I come across angry but I am merely frustrated that people say it’s a perfect working system when it’s not. To me it’s a new system that needs tweaks, it’s a great system but needs those tweaks…. We are being matched together based off ratings are we not? And yet we give newer players a boost strait to the middle so they can fall and drag team members with them on the way down.

It wouldn’t hurt to have the starter MMR at 900 or so, which is below average. As everyone has said, it’s not hard to climb so I don’t see the issues based off everyone else’s logic.

I know what I type can easily be misconstrued due to my english being so scattered, but please hear me out when I’m trying to say that putting newer players into the average MMR with the new solo/duo queue only match making system is HURTING us average players more than anything, we either have to carry ourselves and them out of it or we have to get dragged down with them. Maybe we are lucky enough to win 3 and lose 1 just to stay where we are.

I really do enjoy fair fun games, games that haven’t been decided till the end and last season for the most part was that but now it’s extremely volatile and unpredictable.

As i see it atm, the only thing that really needs tweaking is the number of the placement matches, as the average rating stands on 1200 and 10 matches are far too few to determine the placement of each player because these 10 matches are extremely volatile and the system do mix new/bad players with average/good players at the begining, considering that thoses matches with mixed skill level are far too unpredictable and in some cases can be “unlucky” for some sides (players ragequiting-afking-disconnecting on purpose or not) leaving those sides on the weak end and with such volatility can result on false placement at the end. (Many good-pro players placed much below their level like silver-gold yet they climped to plat-legendary in a week – same as many bad players placed high and had straight shot down to lower divisions)

sephiroth

It wouldn’t hurt to have the starter MMR at 900 or so, which is below average. As everyone has said, it’s not hard to climb so I don’t see the issues based off everyone else’s logic.

I don’t know much about the glicko-2 algorithm exept from the basic “how it’s supposed to work”, so i might be wrong, but here’s how i see it.

Let’s say we lower the starting mmr to 900 right now. What would happen, is that the players in the 1200 who barely maintained themself in this skill rating range will become less skilled than the now average 1200 player. And they will drop.
This drop in rating will then provoke a chain reaction where players in the 1100 rating will also become worse than the new average 1100 and drop.
The players in 1300 rating will also drop because they relied on some average 1200 rated player to luckily climb and drop soon after, but now the average 1200 rated player is stronger.
In the end, everyone drops. And the scale of 0-2400 now becomes 0-1800, where the average player will be located in the 900 range.

As someone said, it’s not that new players are placed at the average level, it’s that the average level is determined by where the new players are placed.

Spoichiche.1290:

sephiroth

It wouldn’t hurt to have the starter MMR at 900 or so, which is below average. As everyone has said, it’s not hard to climb so I don’t see the issues based off everyone else’s logic.

I don’t know much about the glicko-2 algorithm exept from the basic “how it’s supposed to work”, so i might be wrong, but here’s how i see it.

Let’s say we lower the starting mmr to 900 right now. What would happen, is that the players in the 1200 who barely maintained themself in this skill rating range will become less skilled than the now average 1200 player. And they will drop.
This drop in rating will them provoke a chain reaction where players in the 1100 rating will also become worse than the new average 1100 and drop.
The players in 1300 rating will also drop because they relied on some average 1200 rated player to luckily climb and drop soon after, but now the average 1200 rated player is stronger.
In the end, everyone drops. And the scale of 0-2400 now becomes 0-1800, where the average player will be located in the 900 range.

As someone said, it’s not that new players are placed at the average level, it’s that the average level is determined by where the new players are placed.

Would this be the same if the starting rank was 900 and the placement matches were amplified in placing? Kind of a catapult effect if placement games were good enough… obviously winning 0 should keep that player at 900 or less.

I am aiming to have those people who barely maintain themselves in silver to drop because they can’t manage that level of play, most are being carried by 1-2 average players. If anything it opens up gold and silver to players who deserve to be there. (these bad sorts of players I am referring too have been plastered all over these forums by many users) and keeps those sort of players down in bronze letting those who care about rating climb with others who are interested in climbing. Teams work better together with a common goal after all.