How are people with 30% winrates anything but iron V?
Think about MMR like a check book. You have a balance. 30% alone looks bad but if its only out of 10 games? Your looking at -4 games worth of MMR from your balance. The 3 wins balance out 3 of the losses and the remaining balance of -4 is going to be your Balance. You need a Sample size of games of significance.
Soft resets mean players can start at a different balance because of participation In Prior seasons. Not everbody has the same balance at years start.
Why is there such disparity in skill in supposedly similar ranks?
System Uncertainty. It has to track players for a while to become accurate. Then player uncertainty because far to many players treat ranked as a casual game mode and make bone headed decisions that hurt their ability to win. The lower you are the more uncertainty you should assume, as any player can intentionally sink down the ladder. Not everybody is able to climb thou.
Why isn't rank even a factor in matchmaking? Why do you think MMR system is better than a ranked system? Is ranked system just to appease people? It is meaningless?
Its slower then MMR. Its not instantly accurate either. Its used more as a measurement for players to feel achievements. Because its whats used by players to represent their "skill" and "successes" Riot can have a more aggressive MMR gain/losses, and other features that a strict MMR only system would not be able to use. Most of them are around simply for player perception or quality... a pure MMR system would be just fine. It would also likely require players to play more games then what Riot is using.
Basically Their League system is just a further modification to a MMR system. By slowing down the Achievement you can increase the speed a consistent pattern of win% make. How you win and who vs implys "Skill". This can be used for reducing the overall time to put any 1 account into a proper MMR range to pull from for MM.
My rule of thumb, ignore anybody's Rank until you see a Veterans bade on them.
Seriously, I certainly haven't seen a mathematical justification for the MMR system anywhere here. It's clear as day horrible horrible players have lucked into ranking up higher than they belong. Your MMR system (which is subjective and full of decision making in first place, lame) also clearly decides way to quick where people belong. How can people with ten games and 30% winrate even be in silver? How?
2 Teams/8 Players Per Team . 91 games average. You can see a bit more in this FAQ from Microsoft then your gonna get from Riot. Point being MMR is a industry standard because its a provenly effective method.
Basically the theory Arpad Elo used which has been expanded on to work for MMR systems is skill in a game of skill impacts your ability to win. Even in team games this will hold true. For example, A basket ball game of 9 highschoolers and LeBron is going to be onesided if Lebron is playing to win. A game of 4 highschoolers + Lebron vs A Pro team is also going to be one sided.
Effectively Elo Derivative MM systems want to get to a point assigned accuracy. So that even with population impacting match quality to can try to make its very worse case games result in a weaker players "good" performance can beat a Good players "Bad" performance. Ideally you just want to have matches as close in Kfactor and MMR as possible but population (and duo which riot implemented in a way I actively object to btw) will prevent this from being constant option. The goal is to build multiple ranges that MM can pull from that give each team a fighting chance on paper.
Elo described it as "only an idealized model of an exclusive reality". The systems made to account for inconsistency, its built to be self correcting. That's built in to the Adjustments formula. Which looks something like this. Rn = Ro + K(W-We).
MMR is objective not subjective. Wins, losses, That's it, that's all it looks at on a player. Its Objective, not subjective.
Silver (was) The starting MMR for all fresh accounts. Its ground zero for newbies/smurfs. Silver is not high on the ladder, it represents the 50 Percentile marker of the player base, because its where accounts starting balance is. Bad players are expected to sink, like that player who lost 7 out of 10. They however need time to sink, by being bad they will inherently fall. This wont hurt you. Odds are the worst player in a match is on the other team. 11.11% favored, the exeception is if your the weak link then your team is screwed in 100% of your matches until your not a weak link.
So most players are silver. like 50% of the games population is going to be **under **some MMR value located around Silver 3-2. Remember its a check book. You can spend $5 a few times and you only see a small decrease. But if you spend it everyday and never add more back then your balance gets lower and lower and lower.
Its not magic, its math. Its not about perfection, its about a workable system. Its not going to be instantly correct at rating players, it needs data and time.
