Matchmaking system is broken. This should be pretty obvious. As a semi-competitive player, I openly aknowledge that I will never be competitive. I will never win consistently. I will merely be “good” and that’s the best that I’ll ever be, but I’m hardly even that. Thing is; I want that legendary backpiece, or at least to get as close to it this season as possible. I predict there will be more opportunity for me to get more tickets in future tournaments, so I generally want to play this casually. Thing is, I have trouble getting with a group of friends willing to play as casually as I. It seems like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of casual players willing to take me up in their team who don’t care enough to communicate on mic (or even be able to queue for ranked) and being cast aside from more capable groups because I main thief.
But this isn’t about me, it’s about the system as a whole. I’d like to propose a model to look at the system we have now, in comparison to the prisoner dilemma.
The prisoner dilemma is as follows:
“Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:
If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison
If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)
If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)"
Because betraying a partner offers a greater reward than cooperating with him, all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other, and so the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them to betray each other.
Lets rewrite this to apply to the leaderboard system.
“Two teams are trying to advance in pvp. Each team is interested in advancing to the next rank by earning pip score. They need approximately 5 consistent wins in order to progress to the next tier. However, because each team is matched based on MMR ranking, the team with the lower MMR rank will be matched with similar ranks. Instead of winning against steadily higher MMR rankings in order to progress, however, the teams have another option; they can throw games. When a team throws games, then suddenly wins a great deal of games, they not only have an easier time winning games, they also, when matched with a high rank MMR team, have the opportunity to gain TWO pips (at the expense of two of the fairly playing team.) Lets assume both teams are equally capable of progressing to the next rank.
If A and B team each abuse the MMR system, each of them will progress normally after spending significant time losing MMR. When they fight, one team will win, gain one pip, where the other team loses and loses one pip.
If A team abuses the mmr system but B team does not, A team will gain two pips on a win and B team will lose two pips. It is also not unheard of for A team to lose nothing to win and B team to gain nothing.
If A and B both do not abuse the system, each of them will progress normally, when they fight, one team will win, gain one pip, where the other team loses and loses one pip.
Sound familiar? It is not only rational to abuse the system, but it’s unfair to everyone else trying to play fair. Don’t you think?