Poll: Placement Matches

JRobin31·Mar 1, 2015·1 votes·470 views

Some players seem to feel that they get unfairly placed at the start of Season. There are posts saying a player played 10 wins but gets placed in Bronze 5 while a new player loses some of their placement matches and gets placed in Silver. Putting the obvious inequality between returning players and new players aside (that's a whole other debate about what it should mean to wipe the slate clean)... I'm curious how many games people think they should have to play in order to be accurately placed according to their skill level.

6 Comments

Deep Terror NamiMar 1, 20152 votes

Initially, 10 is fine. You're matched against different skill level opponents for each match, so your first placement from being unranked is entirely on how well you do against each level. There's no real other option besides starting everyone at the bottom (B5) or somewhere in the average of all players (something like S3).

My question for you, is would you rather have ~10 matches each against a different tier opponent to decide your placement, or would you prefer everyone is put in the same exact Rank at the start (many ladder systems do this btw, whether you're #1 in the world you get placed with noobs in the next season).

After your initial matches, well, even if your skill remains exactly the same, the game itself changes. If you improve, only doing more matches will prove that (this is obviously a continuous cycle).

JRobin31Mar 2, 20151 votes

You say 10 matches is fine initially, but I've read that players have gotten placed as high as Gold from their first 10 placement matches. Obviously, that would not be enough to properly place a challenger smurf. That means that the current system does, in fact, force you to grind your way to your actual skill level. It does force you to start at the bottom or middle. I'm not sure I would agree with having a system that allowed you to get placed in Diamond based on your 10 initial games. The question then remains: how many matches should a player play before he is properly placed according to his skill level?

Deep Terror NamiMar 2, 20151 votes

Platinum is the highest you can be placed, regardless of whether it's your initial placements or if you were Challenger 1 last season.

10 is fine. The more matches they make you do, the more accurate it is obviously, but after too many the placement matches become pointless because they're no different than regular matches. Those 10 are supposed to start you as close as possible to where you belong in as few matches as it can.

JRobin31Mar 2, 20151 votes

Right, 10 matches is fine (but isn't enough to accurately place a player), the question remains: how many matches should a player play before he is properly placed?

To add some perspective, I heard that Wild Turtle was back in Challenger within a day or two of the start of Season 5. It might be interesting to find out how many games he played to get to challenger again.

Deep Terror NamiMar 2, 20151 votes

You're obviously really dense. Your skill changes as you play so there is no number. If you play 10 games and your rank happens to be accurate, if you play 1000 more that rank is probably not accurate anymore.

Volt CruelerzMar 1, 20151 votes

When team builder ranked comes out, I'd rather it be 12-15 since the likelihood of any individual player getting placed incorrectly at least once goes up. Without seeing the math though, Idk how appropriate the current system is