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Rank Discrepancy In Ranked Matches

Elite4Runner··1 votes·404 views

I'm not crying about being matched with/against players who are higher or lower rank than me.

This is an honest question as to why it is even an issue.

Why is it uncommon for players to have matches every player, or at least a large majority of the players are in the same division as them?

I'm actually very new to ranked as of late last season so I am not sure if this has always been the case or not.

Is it an effort to keep the que-times down? I would think if this was the case it wouldn't be that big of a problem for lower ELO.

Even then, are there so few players que-ing up at the same time that there has to be a jump from Gold 4 to Plat 5 in order to make a 10 person team? (Just an example)

Or is this somehow designed to help determine proper ranking?

I guess I could see if there was a Bronze 1 player in their promos and a Silver 5 player at the bottom of their bracket they could find themselves matched against each other, but this wouldn't be very extreme.

This is honestly just something I was "thinking-out-loud" about. If you have a good answer I'd be happy to hear it.

3 Comments

Godhri1 votes

Because that doesn't make sense. If you think about how the world works, you'll understand that being matched against your skill level and being rewarded for beating someone your skill level isn't a very great accomplishment.

For example, we can't hope to achieve the next level of mathematics by only doing math problems at our "level" of skill. Taking on new challenges lets us know our limits and know when we can surpass them.

So by this logic, their system actually makes sense so long as the disparity is not greater than 5 tiers or one whole division.

Elite4Runner1 votes

{quoted}

Because that doesn't make sense. If you think about how the world works, you'll understand that being matched against your skill level and being rewarded for beating someone your skill level isn't a very great accomplishment.

For example, we can't hope to achieve the next level of mathematics by only doing math problems at our "level" of skill. Taking on new challenges lets us know our limits and know when we can surpass them.

So by this logic, their system actually makes sense so long as the disparity is not greater than 5 tiers or one whole division.

I'm not saying that it doesn't make any sense to do it that way. I can certainly see the logic, but there are certainly other skill based rank systems where you are expected to better your immediate peers before advancing to the next level.

It just seems kind of one sided for half of the match, like only half of the players are even capable of proving something.

It says a lot more about you if you are able to beat a Plat 5 as a Gold 4 than it does for the Plat 5 to beat a Gold 4.

It also skews the weight of your team's accomplishment. If you on the team that gets carried by a player of a higher rank, that doesn't mean that you are really any better than anyone on the other team as an individual.

**

However, if you were to play against all Gold 4s and you win, it is significantly more likely to assume that you and your teammates trend toward the higher tier of Gold 4. To do so consistently suggests that you should probably be in Gold 3.

Mysticman891 votes

I would suggest that a lot of players (perhaps even the majority of players) haven't played enough games that their MMR and their rank actually match up (this tends to take hundreds of games). With all the shields to demotion (and promo helper in gold and below), it's not difficult for people to happen to go on a win streak enough to get a promotion, then have a comparable lose streak to return their mmr to where it was, but not get demoted due to the protections in place. Since matchmaking goes by MMR (which is theoretically the best measure of your skill, not your rank), matches where everyone is roughly the same rank would need everyone to have MMRs in line with their rank.

Theres other factors around this time of year though. Preseason lots of people are on break from ranked compared to during the main season. Ranked flex matches based on flex MMR which is separate from solo MMR, so theres tons of people who haven't even had a chance to climb/fall there and people from a whole variety of solo queue ranks have comparable flex MMRs.

Premades also make it less likely everyone will be the same mmr, as all it takes is two people of different mmrs to queue together to throw that off. The team average mmrs tend to be comparable, but it can feel unfair depending on how similar the premades are.

As queue times get longer, the acceptable MMR gap does widen, but that's less of an issue, and particular with autofill being a thing queue times should be lower than ever (barring dodges). (Although, people might end up with their off roles and their MMR might be less representitive of their skill in that off-role, but that's an issue that becomes apparent in-game, not in their ranks.)

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