Boards›Gameplay

MMR - The Real Algorithm

Cats Are Food·12/31/2018, 6:06:10 PM·7 votes·5,270 views

You know... no other game company with a matchmaking system keeps their algorithm hidden. None of them. Zero. Want to know what Blizzard uses? TrueSkill, the precise mathematical algorithm is available online. Same with almost every other company with a ranked matchmaking system.

RIOT? Hell no. The algorithm was discovered, once, about four years ago.... SO Riot changed it. They openly admitted to changing it -because- it was discovered. Why did they do this? Because it was shown to be imprecise, and fucked over players.

So, if you ever honestly want to know how MMR -truly- works? Good luck. The one time people figured it out, RIOT scrambled to change it into something that was worse. As opposed to just admitting they've no idea how to create an effective algorithm to juggle the number of player variables, and hiring an outside contractor to create one.

EDIT

I was asked for the MMR explanations for OTHER games, with the idea -they- hide how it works TOO! Let's see:

28 Comments

Saevum12/31/2018, 6:36:23 PM4 votes

I remember all those posts back in the day.

"Bring old Elo system back... Bring old Elo system back".

Sad memories to this day.

Crispy0Snake12/31/2018, 6:44:42 PM2 votes

They just don't want people to create some kind of strategy to climbing like "If I lose this one it'll think I'm worse so I gain more lp for wins afterwards, so I'll int this one" when you should always be playing to win

KirbyCake12/31/2018, 10:14:33 PM2 votes

Personally I have a pretty good idea of riots MMR system unless they changed it back when I was challenger. It is not good at all and has so many flaws in it.

  1. MMR changes are not accurate to what they should be. If you have 1 2500 player with 4 2000 players against 5 2100 players, the 2500 player gets screwed. He wins less and loses more compared to the 2000 players for no reason despite match making putting him in a game where he has a 50% chance of winning. For elo to be accurate the gains and losses need to be the same for everybody on the same team. Since he has a 50% chance of winning the game he should also gain the same amount that he would lose.
  2. Purple side gets screwed. It is known blue side has an advantage so they put higher mmr players on purple side. However their gains and losses are not reflected in the disadvantage they get from being on purple side. Due to their higher mmr they simply lose more than win less even if they would have a 50% chance of winning from a purple side disadvantage. If being on purple side inherently puts you at a disadvantage so that riot tries to give you a 50% chance of winning by putting higher mmr players on purple side, winning needs to gain the same amount as losing.
  3. Number of auto-filled players on each side are not equal. Before the role queue system you would just have to fill and good players can flex many roles and climb and win more if the enemy team can't flex many roles. Now with the role queue system we have entitled players who throw because they are auto-filled. Matchmaking does not even try to make the number of auto-filled players on each side the same which leads to horrendous 1-sided matches.
  4. Dodging needs to lose mmr, but it doesn't. Any tryhard can look up his teammates in lobby, see if they're auto filled and dodge bad matches and artificially climb that way.
  5. Matchmaking is also horrendously in-balanced with duos. Also gains and losses are off.

Riot's system is not very accurate and takes forever to grind due to the higher variance that their horrible system introduced. It really shouldn't take several hundred games to climb to the rank where to belong but riot's system is designed that way to keep people playing.

Kai Guy12/31/2018, 9:26:10 PM1 votes

Hold up. Your aware that the Algorithms are all build around Variables for MMR Elo and Trueskill right? Seeing them place variables but not being provided information on what they are or when they change does not give us great knowledge of a system.

For example I might be able to tell that a K factor changes on accounts after roughly 15 to 20 games with a revealed elo/MMR. How ever I wont nessarly be able to say why. Is it because its a flat # of games played or is it directly affected by uncertainty of the accounts im playing with and vs? Does it have modifiers to slow down high uncertainty accounts? We know this is done in chess with Grandmaster level players having a reduced K factor. When,where, and if For this are all mystery's for Heros, Dota2, Leauge, Smite.

Im sorry but you going to have a very hard time convincing me that we know anything other then the fundamental assumptions behind mmr and elo systems. We can check those assumptions by looking at the end results of the systems but we cant really "figure it out" with out a internal leak of the companys entire system.

I have never seen a single post from Blizzard that they use Trueskill. Only time I have seen True skill mentioned in relation to a blizzard game was on a 3rd party site, Hotslogs, which claims to use a modified version of Trueskill.

Tldr. Its a variable system, if you don't know how or why it makes its variables you cant make a claim we know how it works. It may as well just be hidden.

I AM MCLOVJHIN12/31/2018, 8:45:47 PM1 votes

I was looking through the boards for an MMR related post (I don't know if my issue warrants a full post) but I was Gold 5 when the season ended and in the preseason my MMR is low bronze. Like I am getting Iron players in my games. I'm losing 23-25 a loss and gaining 14-16 a win. I already have been demoted to Silver 2. I don't get why my MMR won't level out and it's frustrating.

IP Masquerena12/31/2018, 8:04:47 PM1 votes

Valve keeps their system secret as well, what's your point?

Heroes of the Storm is something Blizz seems to want to kill with all they did recently, so giving away the system is only beneficial to that cause.

Power Cosmic12/31/2018, 8:52:47 PM1 votes

Obviously it means it isn't the same for everyone. You only hide what needs to be hidden.