50/50 matchmaking is fundamentally flawed

fr0st2k·Mar 30, 2015·4 votes·703 views

Matchmaking should be either random, or pair you with similar skilled players at all times.

The main reason being that pairing you with lower skilled players makes you a WORSE player, as you have to adjust your play style to compensate for bad plays, turtlers, or other strategies you don't see in higher end play.

Even if youre just above-average, playing with bad players will greatly affect your chances of winning. It means that your win/loss has nothing to do with your skill level, but solely on your ability to adjust your play style (without knowing the skill of your players), which is impossible.

A better matchmaking should simply match you randomly against all rank 1200-1299 assuming you are 1239 or 1299 or 1200. throw out the 50/50 algorithm. its makes no sense.

5 Comments

Matthias9119Mar 30, 20154 votes

They do "pair you against similarly skilled players at all times". That's literally Riot's stated goal with matchmaking, to produce matches where each team has a ~50% chance of winning.

Sailor MintMar 30, 20151 votes

The MMR difference between the best and worst player on a team is less than 50, often less than 20. As both teams are even, the expected win rate of each team should be roughly 50%.

The league system has nothing to do with matchmaking. In theory, your MMR and Division should be similar after a large number of games. But most players have not reached that point.

Very Hard EngageMar 30, 20151 votes

its broken only in the sense that it limits the number of people who can rank up to challenger/diamond/plat etc. the system works with an unlimited number of players, not ~6million level 30's? whos to say one player is better than another, he might just play more, what if we both have a 70% win rate, we both started in say bronze, and can only work ourselves up so far based on the number of games we both play.

also what if 70% of the players are roughly the same skill level, now since only 50% of them can rank up, 20% of those players are deemed "lesser" because some of them had to lose the games they played against eachother.

Sailor MintMar 30, 20151 votes

You can get a fairly accurate estimate of how good a player is within 100 games. That's enough to go from Unranked to Diamond.