Boards›Gameplay

How does normal matchmaking work? "Mythbusters - Riot why you lying edition"

Dont ignite Sabo··1 votes·748 views

Let me tell u a funny story: Once upon a time riot said that matchmaking is balanced. The end.

Let us look at what they wrote over matchmaking. Sadly the source is german.

> WIE FUNKTIONIERT DAS MATCHMAKING ZURZEIT? Zuerst platziert das System die Spieler in den entsprechenden Pool. Das entspricht im Grunde der Warteschlange (Normal, Rangliste, Solo/Duo, 5-köpfige-Ranglistenteams usw.). Sobald die Spieler auf die Pools verteilt sind, versucht das System, Matches zwischen Teams zu arrangieren, die in etwa gleich stark sind und somit die gleiche Gewinnchance haben.

Let me tranlate that:

  1. the system sorts the players for every single Q.
  2. the system creates teams that should be equally strong. <-- and that's where they are lying.

http://fs5.directupload.net/images/171206/g6hyprpq.png

that's just an example just scroll down my normal match history every game is a stomp, because the teams are unbalanced as hell.

Make sure to subscribe, share and like and we'll c us in the next episode of "mythbusters - riot y u lyn"

salt intensified

7 Comments

YokoNomi1 votes

It's normals though.

Dont ignite Sabo1 votes

Yeah so what? Just because it's normal every game needs to be a unbalanced stomp? I dont agree with that. Normals shouldnt be like that. When u play normal u wanna have fun. It's not funny when one team cant do shit. I dont even care when i've to play vs diamonds. But they should split them even. 3dias + 2plats vs 1dia, 1 Plat, 1 Gold and 2 unrankeds is just bullshit

YokoNomi1 votes

{quoted}

Yeah so what? Just because it's normal every game needs to be a unbalanced stomp? I dont agree with that. Normals shouldnt be like that. When u play normal u wanna have fun. It's not funny when one team cant do shit. I dont even care when i've to play vs diamonds. But they should split them even. 3dias + 2plats vs 1dia, 1 Plat, 1 Gold and 2 unrankeds is just bullshit

Then you may as well be playing ranked.

I'm unable to recall any recent game I've played, where normal based matches sync your level/rank. It simply wasn't a thing, and in those particular circumstances, it felt irrelevant anyways.

Look, I can see where you're coming from. But again, ranked pretty much already does what you're requesting for norms. Norms by all means is pretty much a free for all in most games. You play to the meta, but on a somewhat less competitive ground.

Unker1391 votes

Normal has its own MMR. Normal does not care what rank you are.

Mysticman891 votes

Matchmaking for all queues is based on MMR for that respective queue, which is why a challenger player on his 'bronze' solo/duo smurf who dodges a ton to stay bronze, still ends up playing diamond+ players (after their initial period of stomping low elo people as their mmr climbs) when playing solo/duo.

Similarly, if a challenger only plays off-main roles or new champs or only does silly builds in normals, their normals mmr will settle at something people would probably consider more akin to 'gold' (or whatever level they effectively are under those conditions), and almost certainly won't have a 'challenger' normals mmr, because that wouldn't be fun for them as they'd just get stomped.

At the same time, some silver level solo/duo players might be playing their main role/champ in normals, and actually climb up to a normals mmr that is more akin to gold, as them trying their hardest lets them climb a little further over players who aren't necessarily trying as hard.

Point being, it makes sense to match people based on how they're actually performing in that queue, which is why MMR is separate for each queue and ones rank doesn't matter. Sometimes this produces what looks like really imbalanced matches if you look at rank, but under the hood, each team would have similar MMRs, so as far as the system is concerned, the matches are fair and balanced, which is why you end up with matches like the one shown in the OP.

(And it's worth noting they really would be, if all players involved had played enough matchs that their MMR's had leveled out to their playstyle for that queue. Problem is, particularly in preseason, lots of players are playing normals who havenn't actually played enough normals matches to find their 'true' normals mmr, and also the game is pretty snowbally right now, so even 'fair' matches might look like complete stomps.)

Dont ignite Sabo1 votes

Yea i kinda know that this is how it actually works. I just wanted to criticism the current matchmaking system through exeggaration.

I do think solo/duo mmr should play into ur normal mmr ofc it shouldnt replace normal mmr entirely. Maybe that could fix those issues or at least leads to slighty better balanced teams.

Mysticman891 votes

You then have an issue where all the players who actually have played enough normals to get to an mmr appropriate to their normals playstyle, find themselves no longer in balanced matches until their normals mmr readjusts to the composite normals/ranked mmr system, and since those people are the ones who actually do play a lot of normals, it'd affect a great deal of people. They'd adjust, but then every season when the ranked soft reset occurs suddenly their normals matchmaking would turn into a disaster again, or even if they just went on a ranked binge to change their ranked mmr.

Current system is much more stable, and the cases when it appears not to work just stand out a lot, but they almost certainly make up a small proportion of games (since the people who have normal mmrs not in sync with the skill they exhibit in normal games are the people who don't play normals very often, and hence don't impact that many games).

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes