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potential explanation to matchmaking problems

Fermi Paradox·4/14/2019, 2:13:21 PM·1 votes·1,449 views

I recently read the dev update of a certain asymmetrical online horror game which made me realize a potential reason why matchmaking is still kinda screwed right now in both, normals and rankeds.

They talked about how they tested a different matchmaking algorhythm that "improved ping overall". They matched up people from the same region in the same games to ensure that the ping of everyone is somewhat equal and "fair" for every participant. One of the reasons why they reverted this change was a larger rank disparity.

When I read this I suddenly realized the high amount of German people I met in my last games. In almost every game, whenever I played, the enemies were also German. Even the randoms in our team were very often German. (summoner names and club names often gave this away. Or sometimes, sadly, they started insulting or taunting in German)

This doesn't have to be true. Maybe it isn't at all and this is just a coincidence but it could also be true.

What are your experiences with that? Could this be (one of) the reason(s) matchmaking is screwed?

We could "test" this by asking our teammates and enemies where they are from and collect that data.

Tell me your opinions :)

2 Comments

DuskDaUmbreon4/14/2019, 2:20:00 PM1 votes

Riot has a far larger playerbase than whatever game it is you're talking about. Riot can afford to be more selective with language and ping matching.

Of course, though, I'm pretty sure Riot just tries to match languages, and tries to match within the same general geographical region.

Kai Guy4/14/2019, 7:04:24 PM1 votes

There is a few reasons IMO its so frustrating right now.

  1. Riot tried to lower Starting MMR for New accounts. This will shift the Ladder down. Players who used to get wins in games around silver from ewbies who are bad no longer have house odds stacked in their favor. As much as losing from a bad teammate sucks if your consistent and not over placed your not going to be the worst player in a match very often. In any game your not the worst then the odds are higher the enemy team has the very worst player in a game. This is true also inverted. Remove the free wins and your left with more losses overall dropping an accounts rank down.

Ironically this is something a lot of people really wanted because they perceived that having newbies in their MMR was a negative thing for them to climb and far as I can tell Riot tried to deliver on that common complaint.

2 New MMR Tiers. People have not adjusted their expectations yet to what new tiers represent. Again ladder should be expected to drop because of lowering the starting MMR, that drop will downshift everybody. Add new tiers that represent different values then previous years and a lot of folks are finding it a real struggle to reach their previous MMR, some who achieved it consistently for years.

That frustration turns into tilt, Tilted teammates turns into more tilt.

3 MMR is not a player behavior system. MM also is not player behavior. Pretty much the only interaction is if your attitudes causing you losses you move down the ladder. Reason I bring this up is because the match quality itself is never looked at by MMR. Wins, Loss, Draw. Its a derevitive of Elo's work and also why Elo formulas are used so frequently, they are very flexable and quite good at objectively measuring results.

Anyhow point I want to make is that if you have a higher % of players who create a negative experience then your going to have a lot more matches that suck because of player attitudes. Like I said Tilt is on the rise and some folks are completely giving up. It doesn't even have to be a majority, Like 10 per team and it only takes 1 to be a real issue. 10% of the playerbase being toxic, tilted, or just not playing ranked with the intent to be competitive is gonna show up in a massive amount of games. And theres literally nothing MM or MMR systems do about it besides move them down. You need a player behavior system, and riots Player behavior system is built knowing how people on the internet behave so...… Well lets just say I personally believe it could be more strict and use improvements.