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Can we talk about the ELO system?

Mandaari··2 votes·1,131 views

MMR (not LP) is ELO. MMR is what decides who you play against, and really it's the important number.

We've all had those games. We're going pretty even in lane and the enemy jungler shows up. You saw it coming, so you back off and make their jungler waste his time. Meanwhile your mid gets solo killed and your jungler is hard farming inches away. Coming to the party late, your jungler pushes your dead mid laners wave just enough so that it'll freeze in front of their tower. For some reason your top laner thinks that he needs to help hold mid, so he starts running down through river while the other top laner is pushing into your turret. The other team goes for dragon and despite your pings to trade for the mid tower with your top lane, your jungler thinks they can 1v4 smite steal by walking through the other team. You don't surrender because you know you have a strong late game team and you just need to play smarter, but your teammates repeatedly insists it's safe to get that bot farm when you just saw the other team rotating down toward dragon. You manage to set up some awesome picks that net your behind Yasuo some shutdown gold, but he decides to use his E to speed through the minion wave into the fog of war because he saw a full health tank that he wanted to get too.

ELO is not a good way to determine your skill. It's good for single player games and it's good for static teams (ranked teams), but it's absolutely awful for matched games. I'm finally deciding to post this because in the last 5 games I've had I've awful games where something very close to the above happens. Obviously I have my fair share of games where I don't perform. I've fed, just like anyone else, and I occasionally make a stupid rotation. And we all should be punished for those games. But I should not be punished so hard for the games we lose because of teammates, and my teammates should not be punished so hard for games that I cause them to lose.

Riot, I'm sick of those kinds of games determining my MMR. You're a company that other companies look up to for pioneering systems, yet you hold on to this archaic system for determining skill. Come have a discussion about alternatives. Tell us why you haven't looked into alternatives, or if you have why you haven't chosen any. Tell us why you think ELO is a good indicator of skill in a matched multiplayer environment.

32 Comments

ChargeItDownMid2 votes

[deleted]

Mandaari1 votes

I don't ever remember hearing that. If you have a link I'd like to see it.

I'd like to see something that takes your personal play into account more. Preferably a system that identifies what specific aspects of gameplay affect your chances of winning. It'd weight the factors rather than just the outcome of the match, so if you lose the match but played extremely well compared to your teammates and opponents you would lose little to no MMR. If the system is accurate enough you could potentially gain slight MMR.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Apollocliptic1 votes

To create a system based on stats would require something of immense complexity, just to figure one out would require a lot of effort, then determining it's viability would be almost impossible before implementation. In 1v1 games it's easier, but games as diverse as this, it'd be exceptionally hard to know, before hand, if a system would work. This is all before Ha...lp's point, which is even if they got it right, it'd probably get tweeked every patch, because that jungler placed more wards, or that top laner got more assists. It would kind of force players to stick to very SPECIFIC game styles, such as top tank, engage/cc jungle, AP mid, utility support, because any diversity would cause your rank to go down, even if it worked and won you the game.

Imagine this: Support is judged on Assists (not enough, losing kills to "get assists" would lead to more losses)

wards (can spam wards in nexus platform using sightstone) ward position (would require proximity status of wards, and relation to each other - that's a lot of work and wouldn't take into account ward "usefulness" Ward detection - how often enemies are spotted (spam wards in lane) Ward detection where otherwise an ally is not nearby to serve same purpose (or minion) - can still spam 3 wards on a pink and stack up points wards would need to be aware of their location, their location in respect to each other, who placed them, where allies and other sources of vision are, where enemies are, and compare successful application to other poor applications

This is JUST wards, JUST for support, and what about other lanes that should ward too? Imagine going through this process for every stat simultaneously? cs, kills, assists, deaths, jungle clear, objectives, ganks, distance travelled.

In an ideal world you'd have such a system, but just conceptualising it requires a huge amount of effort, and there's no guarantee that it would work in the end! Put simply, it's just not worth it, not unless someone has a breakthrough method that would reduce the workload exponentially

Mandaari1 votes

I missed an important part. It would not be something static that's determined by a Rioter going in and changing values. It would have to be something that's data mined automatically with a large number of games, and be associated with a confidence. As a hypothetical example and implementation:

The game keeps track of misplays with some arbitrary points.

After a high number of games, the system detects that Garen performs well against Riven. Garen gives up 3 solo kills in the first 5 minutes. The system adds 3 points from all players except for Garen and Riven. At the end of the game the total number of points are translated into a percentage of how much you contributed to the games outcome and how confident the system is in that percentage. The percentage, confidence, and outcome of the game are combined into how much your MMR moves.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Mandaari1 votes

Variables that are subject to change can be accounted for through confidence. Data from old patches should yield lower confidence.

I'm not saying it's a perfect idea right off the bat, but it's something to start with. Rather than just saying that it won't work I'd like to see suggestions on how to solve those issues.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Mandaari1 votes

I don't agree with that. Sure, you won't have full confidence by the time the next patch hits, but it's possible to limit the drop in confidence. It could be both a factor of recent data (like the Hot filter in boards) as well as a function of changes. If dragon or something related to dragon changes it's unlikely to remove the credibility of all of your data. I mean, let's say dragon gets 200 global gold. That's a huge change that affects a lot of the game, but you getting solo killed in lane repeatedly is still an obvious failing.

It'd just be about identifying where there are interactions, which hopefully can be done through automation.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Mandaari1 votes

There are ways of classifying data that aren't traditional mathematical functions. Computer learning is capable of those kinds of things, albeit it's very complex. Am I saying it's guaranteed to be perfect? No. I'm saying it's something worth researching and prototype before ruling it out immediately.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Mandaari1 votes

Again, not how machine learning works. You aren't (directly) creating a formula where you plug in all of these variables that you have to tune. All you're doing is saying what the variables might be.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Mandaari1 votes

Do you know that? Have you tried it? Do you work for Riot? You're treating assumptions as fact before you have evidence for them.

Kwon Ri Sae1 votes

Elo is great. Just play long enough, and eventually it'll all balance out, and you'll find your ranking.

tplegs07081 votes

or maybe let us see our mmr

Mandaari1 votes

That's not the issue. Knowing what your MMR is doesn't change who you're playing against. There are a few 3rd party sites that show MMR as well.

Beoridas1 votes

i agree with what was stated before. ELO is not a good system, but the others are worse.

Essentially, if you are slightly better than your current ELO, you will rise after a very long time. IF you are A LOT better, than it will be more rapidly. (if you put me in bronze for instance, i will most likely 1v5 after the laning) Put me in plat, and i will have to change my game to heavy obj control and farming because i dont have the skills to do the same thing (which master, challenger tiers could)

Kazaashi1 votes

Sure there are a lot of factors that affect the outcome of a game, but the only thing that takes them ALL into consideration is wether you Won the game or Lost it. If Riot were to implement a system that uses your ingame performance to determine your MMR, they would be essentially enforcing a particular meta. There would be a right way to play the game and a wrong way to play. Riot has stated MANY times they do not want to do this.

MMR is used by the NCAA College Football in the BCS ranking determinations. NBA and the NFL use it to rank individual players before determining trades, rookie signings, and draft coices. It is much more legitamate than people realize. Riot didn't choose this system because others are worse, they chose it because it is objective, simple, and effective.

For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Mandaari1 votes

About the meta enforcing, I don't think that's true in a good system. If Riot specifically says "perfect CS gives more MMR" then yes, it's enforcing a certain play style that might not actually be a true measure of skill. But if some system detects that you have perfect CS and that perfect CS has empirically been linked to winning, then it's not enforcing the meta. It's just identifying what does and doesn't work. Other people could find something else that works well, like sacrificing CS to invade. In doing so they teach the system that there are alternative interactions that lead to winning.

You can play a game like crap and still win it. Likewise you can lose a game while performing amazingly.

Also the link in the OP is the same link to wikipedia.

Kazaashi1 votes

{quoted}

About the meta enforcing, I don't think that's true in a good system. If Riot specifically says "perfect CS gives more MMR" then yes, it's enforcing a certain play style that might not actually be a true measure of skill. But if some system detects that you have perfect CS and that perfect CS has empirically been linked to winning, then it's not enforcing the meta. It's just identifying what does and doesn't work. Other people could find something else that works well, like sacrificing CS to invade. In doing so they teach the system that there are alternative interactions that lead to winning.

  1. It is pretty obvious that perfect CS increses your chances of winning games, and, therefore, gives you more MMR. Riot doesn't have to state it.

  2. Doesn't wether or not the team actually won the game seem like more susinct and comprehensive way of judging wether a specific metagame choice worked for a team or not?

Mandaari1 votes

It is pretty obvious that perfect CS increses your chances of winning games, and, therefore, gives you more MMR. Riot doesn't have to state it.

Your strong CS is only reflected in your change in MMR if you won.

Doesn't wether or not the team actually won the game seem like more susinct and comprehensive way of judging wether a specific metagame choice worked for a team or not?

It's only a good reflection of your skill if your team as a unit is what's being judged. In the case of ranked teams this is fine, but in the case of match made games you are not your team. Currently if your top laner gets solo killed twice in lane it affects your chances of winning and thus your personal MMR. You had no contribution to that, nor should you have, and yet you're being judged because of it.

Kazaashi1 votes

{quoted}

Your strong CS is only reflected in your change in MMR if you won.

Right and consistantly getting 10 cs/minute will contribute to you winning a LOT more games than getting 5 cs/minute.

It's only a good reflection of your skill if your team as a unit is what's being judged. In the case of ranked teams this is fine, but in the case of match made games you are not your team. Currently if your top laner gets solo killed twice in lane it affects your chances of winning and thus your personal MMR. You had no contribution to that, nor should you have, and yet you're being judged because of it.

That is not true at all. If you are mid, you can roam up top and help. If you are the jungler you can try to gank or try to snowball another lane. Bot will have a hard time directly helping them, but they can help in teamfights by farming up and not giving the other team more kills. There are LOTS of things you can do to help out your team. Solo queue Ranked is about how well you work as a team with 5 strangers. The team as a unit is always being judged, because it is a team game. Your individual performance has an impact on the game, but rarely are games won or lost by a single person or action.

Mandaari1 votes

Right and consistantly getting 10 cs/minute will contribute to you winning a LOT more games than getting 5 cs/minute.

It only factors into your MMR if you win. It'll make you more likely to win, sure, but it won't matter how well you did if you lost.

That is not true at all. If you are mid, you can roam up top and help. If you are the jungler you can try to gank or try to snowball another lane. Bot will have a hard time directly helping them, but they can help in teamfights by farming up and not giving the other team more kills. There are LOTS of things you can do to help out your team. Solo queue Ranked is about how well you work as a team with 5 strangers. The team as a unit is always being judged, because it is a team game. Your individual performance has an impact on the game, but rarely are games won or lost by a single person or action.

These are all things you can do to mitigate the damage. If your top laner had simply just not fed kills then you could do all of those same things and be better off than if he had fed kills. If you heavily contribute to a win despite having a handicap then good for you. You should be rewarded for it by higher MMR gains.

Let's look at it from a different angle. It's a minute into the game and you're making sure your red doesn't get invaded. You see the other team and instead of pinging it out you decide to fight them. You die to the enemy mid laner because you make an obvious bad decision. Their mid laner now starts with an extra Doran's Ring. Your teammate is now at a serious disadvantage because of you through no action of their own. Sure, throughout the game your teammate can play smart to mitigate their disadvantage, but right from the onset of the game your team is less likely to win a game solely because of one person's action.

AndyChrono1 votes

"ELO is the worst form of determining skill, except for all others that have been tried." -Wins-a-ton Churchill the 1st of Demacia

Reikken1 votes

People don't understand pings. "Wut. why would I do that?" Sometimes you gotta type out your intentions.

Mandaari1 votes

It's almost never a problem of misunderstanding pings. After someone does something stupid even though a teammate pings I will usually ask why. Most of the time it's because they thought it was a good idea, not because they didn't understand the ping.

Ice Weasel X1 votes

Elo isn't an acronym. It's the last name of the man who developed the system.

Redus1 votes

The game would become so slow and boring if kda was a factor that determined matchmaking. I personally think the only issue with the current system is that the range of mmr's per team is too great. I think people should be facing people that are very similar in mmr, not average being similar

Mandaari1 votes

I did not say KDA. KDA might be one of many contributing factors if at all.

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