What Is MMR? How Does It Work? More Specifically, How Does "Normals" MMR Work?

Tentacle Advisor·Aug 26, 2016·1 votes·22,844 views

I've never truly understood what MMR was other than a case of 'this is your level of play so this is who you'll play against', and even today, I still don't quite understand how it works and/or is calculated.

The reason I ask is because I'm a Silver player (not sure if that means anything outside of ranked but I'll state it just in case) and lately I've been getting thrown into games with like 2-3 plat players. Hell, the other night I was literally matched against a Master tier player [a game that actually hurt my soul a little because I couldn't do anything to them; what made it worse is I was playing Vlad, a champ I'm still in the process of learning]

Anyway, getting back on topic, can someone explain how MMR works or at least be able to explain why I'm seeing so many Plats in my games, as of late? I would deeply appreciate it.

7 Comments

RageQ2Aug 26, 20163 votes

MMR stand for, "MatchMaking Rating" which is determined as your skill level for your games, Riots uses this to match fairly similar skill levels together. Your Ranked MMR is fairly low for your current league, placing at 1,293 which is slightly below the average MMR rating. What surprised me is when I checked your Norms MMR it was all the way in Gold 5, at 1,694. This is the reason you're seeing so many platinums in your games, you can be matched with silvers-platinums. The Master ranked player that you were matched with (i.e. brainmeiter) had only the Norms MMR rating of Plat 5, 1 league above you. This was the reason he was also matched with you. Also in that same game was a Diamond 1 player, who had similar Norms MMR ratings than the Master ranked player. You can find a bunch of information on sites like op.gg or lol-mmr.com either site is fairly well at telling MMR ratings over your past few games.

Tentacle AdvisorAug 26, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Your Ranked MMR is fairly low for your current league, placing at 1,293 which is slightly below the average MMR rating.

Well, that stung a little bit. Honestly though, I believe that's due to how League performs on my laptop, which unfortunately, isn't a high-grade one. Plus there's the fact that I main support and tend to only play ranked when I have a duo-partner. I'm hoping to get a better pc soon, so hopefully once I do I can perform better and probably have a higher MMR. [That did kind of sting, though.]

What surprised me is when I checked your Norms MMR it was all the way in Gold 5, at 1,694. This is the reason you're seeing so many platinums in your games, you can be matched with silvers-platinums. The Master ranked player that you were matched with (i.e. brainmeiter) had only the Norms MMR rating of Plat 5, 1 league above you. This was the reason he was also matched with you. Also in that same game was a Diamond 1 player, who had similar Norms MMR ratings than the Master ranked player.

Well that's....concerning. I guess I really need to try a whole lot harder from now on, then. = \

You can find a bunch of information on sites like op.gg or lol-mmr.com either site is fairly well at telling MMR ratings over your past few games.

Thanks for this. My brother was also wondering where to check these, so I appreciate this a lot.

RageQ2Aug 26, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Well, that stung a little bit. Honestly though, I believe that's due to how League performs on my laptop, which unfortunately, isn't a high-grade one. Plus there's the fact that I main support and tend to only play ranked when I have a duo-partner. I'm hoping to get a better pc soon, so hopefully once I do I can perform better and probably have a higher MMR. [That did kind of sting, though.]

Well that's....concerning. I guess I really need to try a whole lot harder from now on, then. = \

Thanks for this. My brother was also wondering where to check these, so I appreciate this a lot.

You're welcome! Try to stick with ranked and equal out your MMR Ratings, it shows that you have the ability to reach Gold level Elo just you haven't done the ranked games to get up to that point. I guarantee you that you will be able to climb fairly easy dependant on what I've seen.

Tentacle AdvisorAug 27, 20161 votes

I'll work on that the moment I get this new PC of mine built. Probably won't be done in time for this season, but next season I plan on going for Gold. My current laptop just can't keep up and I don't want to be a liability to other players. Anyway, your advice is much appreciated.

EedatAug 26, 20162 votes

MMR is a hidden number assigned to you based on how you perform. Its the number that Riot uses to match people against each other. They try to match people of similar MMRs into games together

Let's say Riot pieces two teams together to play a match. It looks at the average of all the player's MMRs and makes a decision of who should win based on it. The higher the average MMR of team A is above team B, the higher the likelihood that team A should win. Your MMR is always adjusting based on if you win or lose games. If you win games, your MMR goes up. If you lose, it goes down. Its a slow process and a single game won't have a major impact by itself. However, if the game has decided your team is unlikely to win based on having a lower MMR, your MMR will go up more if you win. Vice versa also applies. If you lose a game that you were heavily favored to win, you will lose more MMR. MMR adjusts very slowly. It takes a lot of games to move your MMR up or down by a significant amount

Let me move on to your other question. "Why am I getting Plat+ players in my normal games?"

Thats because your MMR in normal games is completely separate from you Ranked games MMR. If a player is a high ELO player in ranked, but never really plays normal games, they could still have a very low MMR in normal games. Doing well in ranked does not affect your normal game MMR at all. This is compounded by the fact that high ELO players tend to only play ranked exclusively. So when they do play a normal game, their normal games MMR is much, much lower than there ranked MMR. This leads to a lot of goofy scenarios where high ELO players get matched against lower ELO players that play normals more often.

Tentacle AdvisorAug 26, 20161 votes

That...makes me feel a tad better about the situation. [Only a tad.] I guess that just means that from now on, I'll have to try a lot harder in my future games so that my performance can at least look like it matches up to the apparent "Gold" level that I'm shown to be at. But then that also means that learning stuff is going to be a lot harder now, especially since the main thing I'm trying to learn is jungling. Keeping the motivation to learn said role is pretty hard, given the opponents I'm matched against.