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What If Matchmaking Wasn't Based on MMR?

Dweeebles·9/19/2018, 8:22:22 PM·8 votes·4,516 views

I see a lot of posts that showcase some unbalanced matchmaking. For instance recently there was a match posted where the team MMRs were close but clearly the teams were still unbalanced. Basically there were 2 gold players with mixed silver players vs 3 silver players and a bronze and unranked player. Also the second team had very low win rates except for 2 of the silver players.

Obviously it is hard for me to tell what is happening under the hood here, I don't really know the nuances of the matchmaking system but I am guessing the golds were slightly under performing and the silvers on the other team were over performing and this was the result. But even though the MMR rating was close, this is not a balanced match. The difference in skill and/or knowledge between a bronze player and a gold player is generally massive. Putting 2 inexperienced players on a team to balance out what should be a mid silver match-up does not make sense. That is not fair or balanced.

So my question is what if matchmaking was not based on MMR? Instead you would get placed in a division based on your MMR after the 10 placement matches. Then once you are in a division you would play with others who are in or around that division regardless of current MMR rating. Having an MMR rating basically eliminates the point of having divisions, because you end up not playing with people in your division. If MMR is used, the division means nothing. It doesn't make sense that losing to gold players means that someone should stay in silver or bronze... the system should and could be more meaningful and rewarding than that.

Of course there would be a lot of things to consider here, how placement players get match for one. But I would like to see the ranked system mean more, where you are actually playing others that are your skill level and/or if you are moving up it actually means you are better than that division you were placed in.

Thoughts?

*this discussion is for ranked matchmaking not normals.

45 Comments

Malak9/19/2018, 10:00:03 PM6 votes

MMR should only affect how much LP you gain when in a winstreak, so you quickly get out of your division if you belong way higher.

Besides that, there's literally zero point in having MMR based matchmaking. If you want to put a Silver 4 player versus golds then give the goddam man his gold league title already for fucks sake.

Horse Grenades9/19/2018, 9:25:37 PM5 votes

This has been the argument for years. Riot consistently ignores it

EyesOfTheFox9/20/2018, 6:49:59 PM2 votes

The only concern I think Riot would have is thus:

While this would work in lower elo where most of the player base is, matches would come at about the same pace. However in higher elo, especially Challenger, they would never be able to find a match in less than an hour if they were only allowed to play other challenger players, this is partly why they get matched with Diamond players a lot of the time and doesn't actually have to do with MMR as the game is just like, welp no one is looking for a match in your division, everyone with similar MMR is either in a game or not online, so we'll just go down the MMR list until we find something, here's a D5 player cause that's all that was available, good luck.

MMR decay is also a thing. If you get to a higher ranked division, but don't play, your MMR declines but your rank in the division doesn't. So then even though you are a high rank, because your MMR is tanked, then it will even out the enemy team with someone of equally bad MMR or put them on your team to even it out, which could mean a player that plays a lot and actually has bad MMR because they are bad, thus screwing everyone over.

Yeah... come to think of it... MMR is totally trash especially when Riot doesn't actually give us the information they say is what they base our games on.

I don't think there's an easy answer to this and it's definitely something Riot is probably aware of.

haaaaaaalp9/19/2018, 11:36:28 PM2 votes

I don't think you fully understand how mmr and lp relate to each other. You can't just remove mmr and still have the current rank/division.

What you are proposing is to remove the lp/division overlay and go to a strictly mmr system. Matchmaking works by pulling 10 players of the same mmr. When a team wins, they gain mmr and when they lose, they lose mmr. This is the model you are proposing.

The rank/lp which riot has superimposed is a separate estimation of a player's skill based on what their mmr is and how that mmr has been trending. It cannot exist without the underlying mmr because it won't have any numbers to pull from.

Saezio9/20/2018, 10:27:55 AM2 votes

Either keep MMR only for LP changes OR remove leagues and have the MMR as our "Rank" Keeping both is moronic. Leagues mean nothing atm.

Stephenizgod9/20/2018, 5:49:47 PM2 votes

#1 Problem with how Matchmaking works: Being on a winstreak against Bronze and Silver players doesn't mean you should be facing a team of Gold players with Silver players on your team. All that means is you are better than the Silver opponents not that you are good enough to carry your team every game.

So giving someone Silver players and placing them against Gold players just because your MMR is similar to theirs is ridiculous. Generally what happens is their best player just stomps your team, feeding off your weakest link, while you do everything you can to deal with an opponent infinitely more fed than you.

I can win against most Silver players in lane, but I am not good enough to go 15/0 against them every game. However it is apparent that my teammates are always more than capable of going 0/15 against them. That is what having a higher MMR than everyone else got me. Now my MMR has tanked drastically because I literally can do nothing about someone having double digit deaths before 10 minutes plus at this ELO when someone gives up First Blood half the team gives up and tries to early surrender...

JRobin319/20/2018, 6:56:26 AM1 votes

I think we have to acknowledge that the upper ranks should be using a different system than the lower ranks in terms of what they see on their screen to indicate their rank.

We already know that at the highest ranks, the Tier system breaks down and players see their rank as a position on a ladder in Challenger. At higher ranks, players should see something that closely resembles a ladder... they recognize each other in games because there are so few of them at those high ranks. Maybe they should be able to see their MMR. At that high level of play, they need to be able to see a ranking system that is meaningful to their progress at that level. And maybe the Tier Division system just doesn't work anymore at that high level.

Well, RIOT is working on some changes to the ranking system. So we'll see what happens. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I haven't really seen enough details yet to believe that they've solved the problems for Diamond ranked players.

5050BS9/20/2018, 7:01:32 AM1 votes

If the game matched Gold with Gold and Silver with Silver and never went more then 2 brackets apart (If you are Gold 3 you will only see Gold 1-5 no matter what) and the system used Rank instead of a REALLY Shitty MMR that matches would be MUCH more balanced.

Reason why is that you games are based off your rank and it would go up and down a lot but you would know what you are played with vs this BS crap shoot MMR system that over and over does not work especially in Ranks that have massive number of smurfs and boosters.

Dweeebles9/19/2018, 11:08:48 PM1 votes

Let's up vote the crap out of this then and get some peeps to pay attention!

Dweeebles9/19/2018, 11:18:53 PM1 votes

Also bye the way, I posted this on Gamplay+ and it got rejected lol. I would really love to hear a direct response from Riot as to why they wouldn't want to improve match making.

Hügö9/20/2018, 5:37:25 PM1 votes

But I would like to see the ranked system mean more, where you are actually playing others that are your skill level and/or if you are moving up it actually means you are better than that division you were placed in.

It is exactly what the mmr system does? You are Silver with a silver mmr -> You play against silvers. You are silver with a gold mmr -> You play against golds.

VvVVvV9/20/2018, 12:21:16 AM1 votes

For that match you describe with golds , siilvers, bronze and unranked in the same match.....was this ranked? I doubt this could have been a ranked game.

If it was unranked game then that is normal because your unranked and ranked MMR are seperate. And a high elo player who doesnt play many unranked games will be matched with lower elo players when playing normal games.