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Matchmaking (constructive discussion)

Unload On Me·4/3/2017, 5:31:16 PM·16 votes·1,224 views

I understand the repetitive rants about the current matchmaking system and while justified, it won't get us anywhere.

We need a constructive discussion on the topic. With educated opinions, facts and data.

 Let's reiterate one last time about the imbalanced matchmaking. MMR seems to be one of the key issues. I realize it's one and maybe only benefit is that it helps higher elo players climb faster and get to where they should be, Great!, but at the cost of low elo's unhealthy play.

  I actually don't get excited by win streaks because I know it raises my mmr and forces me AND SOME of my teammates to play with people well above our skill level. It should have you play other people in your division who are also playing well. Not players in whole other divisions above you. Right now you can have bronze players forced into games with silver and golds. Silver players forced into games with golds and plats. Gold players forced into games with plats and diamonds, etc. It's ridiculous.

  This seems to be more of a lower elo issue and by lower elo, I mean, Diamond 2 and lower. When you're diamond 1+ going on win streaks doesn't necessarily put you against people much better than you because you're already top 1%. Although maybe you get matched with teammates who are worse? Regardless, my point is, a bronze player should only be facing and defeating bronze players to make it into silver. Silver players should only be facing and defeating silver players to make it into gold. Gold players should only.....you get it.

  I get that e-sports and high elo play is Riots baby. It's what brings in most of the entertainment but lower elo being such large portion of player base should account for something right? Throw us a bone. I would honestly rather hear Riot come out and say they won't make any changes to the matchmaking system to help low elo experience because it would collaterally have a negative impact on high elo play, than to sit here waiting and hoping for a change, only to hear silence.

  With that said, feel free to discuss without derail. Is there a way to fix low elo matchmaking or all elo matchmaking without jeapordizing one or the other? Is there an alternative idea for auto fill (another major issue across all elo's) or should it simply be removed?

Thanks for reading!

19 Comments

MysterQ4/3/2017, 6:42:38 PM3 votes

Fix low Elo, our queue times are already super short and we are a large percentage of the players. It makes no sense for us to have this convoluted system.

HalcyonDweller4/3/2017, 6:12:11 PM2 votes

Just going to paste a quote I think is relevant here for reference.

{quoted}

You can't be that naive to think that every game has two teams of exactly equal average MMR with each team member also having exactly equal MMR. Not to mention the flaws with the system where you could have high variance MMR teams vs clustered MMR teams. Take the following example

Team 1: Member A: MMR = 3 Member B: MMR = 6 Member C: MMR = 9 Member D: MMR = 12 Member E: MMR = 15 Avg MMR = 9

Team 2: Member A: MMR = 7 Member B: MMR = 8 Member C: MMR = 9 Member D: MMR = 9 Member E: MMR = 12 Avg MMR = 9

Member A in Team 1 is definitely experiencing a problem. Why is he matched in a game with MMR's and ranks higher than him. Member E in Team 1 is experiencing an opposite problem where he's questioning why he's put on a team with 2 shitty players (Member A&B) vs. a team with solid players.

I'm not going to discuss every member's point of view, but just because you have MMR X does not mean your teams average MMR is also X.

In this scenario Team 2 should win the game. They should have 2 easy matchups, 1 maybe 2 even matchups, and 1 hard matchup. And yet, both teams have the exact same average MMR. Here lies the problem.

awdaf4/3/2017, 6:11:16 PM2 votes

I get that e-sports and high elo play is Riots baby. It's what brings in most of the entertainment

I think by entertainment you meant, the monies.

SlaktarTasken4/4/2017, 12:25:42 AM2 votes

I would love a match making system fully based on ranks/league standings opposed to some invisible mumbo jumbo like MMR.

Just about any respected sport in the world has that formula and there is a reason why they don't change it.

Odd that a team based game has a ranking system more related to chess ( a 1v1 game/sport) than it is to real team sports.

Best the best of your league for a chance to take the spots of the lowest in the league above, that's how it should be.

Not lower league players and higher league players consistently mucking sh*t up in wildly unbalanced matches.

I don't care about Qtimes, I'd take a half an hour wait over a fast but stupidly unfair matches any day. If ranked isn't supposed to be taken seriously, how can one take the game seriously?

You learn the most from the closest games since those are the ones where it is easy to gauge what little moves actually made you win/lose.

High elo narcisist that oppose this and say that best way of learning is by getting facerolled by said high elo players are full of themselves.

I don't give a rats rectum if your diamond mule has to put in some work to boost you by getting his smurf to the exact league where you are or if you're a mule that wants boost some lower ranked player with little obstruction, I don't care if casual tears will flow. I want fair and competitive matches and the current system doesn't give me that even remotely close to often enough.

If something like that would happen, I'd definately consider playing ranked again and buying RP.

I only speak for myself, that's my 5 cents.

Floupi4/3/2017, 9:29:17 PM2 votes

[deleted]

RomanorumLegio4/4/2017, 5:28:10 AM1 votes

I would argue that that the issues we see in matchmaking are the consequences of the things Riot has done to try and please us, the player base.

  • Role selection makes it so the system can't just grab the closest mmrs because it is highly unlikely the the optimum players by mmr also want the roles to make 2 teams.
  • Like it or not, most of the playerbase would really dislike long que times, so this is why we have autofill.
  • The LP system is designed as a reward system, and it does it's job well as such. It feels much better to rank up from silver to gold than it is to watch 1290 tick up to 1310. However, the discrepencies between rank and mmr make matchmaking feel bad, that is why Riot hides this without a 3rd party site.
  • The demotion protection you get forces separation of mmr and lp. Lose when you are at 0 lp or something like 5 lp? Mmr considers you "demoted" but the lp system will protect you from this if situations are correct. This is epecially bad in division Vs. -Side note: promotion series exist to help counteract this effect.
Automated Riven4/4/2017, 7:48:36 PM1 votes

The only way to have a healthy matchmaking system is to remove duo que. We have ranked flex so the other matchmaking should be pure solo. That way there wouldn't be bonuses and penalties for duoing which skew matchmaking. If a gold and a bronze duo then it becomes impossible to have a fair matchmaking.