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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Hero League is a joke.

Okay guys so, decided to do my placements for this new season and, after 10 dreadful games, I placed Gold 3 with 4-6, having been Plat 5 last season.

First of all, I'm not the only person complaining about the loosening of the system, but this time it was overdone... badly. Players going 5-5 or even 6-4 and dropping rank tiers. First of all, this should in no way be like this. Second off, even less when then you look at the games and they are like this: https://gyazo.com/eb1fc0dce006b4503001d8390dc210b5

We need tanks/supports. We have another volunteer to fill in. What does this guy pick? Zeratul to start trolling us, making us lose hard. The other games were all like this, which just puts off players from ranking up.

Would it not be better to have a system like Overwatch's where you also get rewarded if you play well but lose? How could this be done? Have the winning team vote on someone from yours.

Playing an entire game and winning it, to then have a single person throw for no reason, making you lose the game should in no way reflect on yourself. On average, its around 50% that you will be on a tea, experiencing this, the other team having it in the other 50%. Now think about the people who are sadly on the lower part of the spectrum getting this 75% of the time, or more.

I do think the ranking system should be adjusted or more stuff like this will happen:

https://gyazo.com/9c7bdebc0b0e2a3f3dc292419e8f6f37?token=33aef8fbac37252333c16c4f8b6340e7

Has the same guy that I reported from last game on my team, he kept doing it the game after, making the rest of my team do it as well in draft.

How am I or anyone else suppose to rank like this? Team League? Yes, it works there, but the HL experience should really be made better in one form or another.

Another possibility would be to have a system where the team could report a single individual as 4 for unsportsmanlike behavior, making not only the person be removed from ranked, but also having that game not count as losses for the suffering team. The winning team? Still get points and they'll never know this happened.

Now I do know there are going to be those people who say "You deserve your rank, stop crying" and whatever, and I'm ready for it, but next time you go to ranked, get ready for the same.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    The first 10 matches of a season are the absolute worst quality matches of the entire season with the most amount of volatility and randomness.

    And yet, those 10 matches have the same effect as ~100 matches on your rank.

    We can see the idea of placements in theory, but in practice it's just bad design. Blizzard really needs to rethink the new season experience.

    As a side note, Blizzard places you lower than you belong because they think it's fun to climb. In reality, it is extremely discouraging to drop in rank arbitrary. Jeff Kaplan realized this mistake and they already removed this "feature" from OW. Here's hoping they do the same for Heroes soon.

    Heroes doesn't place you lower. At the end of placements, your rank is a direct reflection of your MMR.

    Beyond the points already noted in this thread, there are a couple other things that affect end of season vs. start of season rank that aren't typically considered:

    The only time that rank is a direct reflection of MMR is right after placements. After that, it'll generally be close, but if you are on a win or loss streak at the end of a season, it can diverge pretty significantly. The start of a season effective "resets" your rank to the rank associated with your MMR.

    MMR (and thus rank) is relative and the populace gets better at the game every day. You have to not just improve, but improve at a rate faster than everyone around you, to increase MMR and rank. This is more noticeable at higher ranks where the most dedicated players exist as they're continually striving to improve.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    /u/BlizzTravis, are you able to confirm that there is a soft MMR reset (ie, the value of the MMR in addition to the uncertainty) at the start of the season, as there was for the first season? I played my first placement game against plat 1s despite ending the season D3 with positive PRA.

    There's two things that happen at the start of each season:

    1) Ranks are normalized. This is just re-mapping MMRs to rank so there's the proper percentage of players in each tier. As a season goes on, the numbers tend to drift and this re-aligns them.

    2) Uncertainty is increased. This is what folks tend to refer to as the "soft reset", but there's no real reset involved. It just allows your MMR to move more freely than it does normally. The effect decreases over time, so the early games hold more sway. This is a double-edged sword since things move more freely both up and down making those placement games more important. Even at the extremes, the net effect is still only about 2x what you'd normally get out of 10 games, though.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    Does this renormalization and increase in uncertainty, ie this soft reset, occur in other game modes as well?

    As in, does QM mmr soft reset + renormalize after season reset? Or is it only in HL and TL?

    Normalization is all modes. Uncertainty boost is just ranked, I believe.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    If uncertanty is increased, how would you like to explain that I ended up going 7-3 and yet my rank was exactly the same as last season (Plat 1-> Plat 1)? If you say that the effect of winning is about 2x of a normal win (i.e. "400 points"), I should have won 2800 points and lost 1200 point, resulting in a net gain of 1600 points (which translates to about 1,5 ranks).

    There's a lot of variables involved. The order you won/lost the games matters since the effect decrease with each game. Winning 7 and then losing 3 is different than losing 3 and then winning 7. The people you played against impact how much MMR you gain/lose in games. Your rank at the end of the season isn't necessarily the rank associated with your MMR, which could be higher or lower. Normalization could mean that even if that was your rank previously, its not any longer. Etc.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    The order you won/lost the games matters

    I understand why this is currently the case, but I suspect that it's at the root of a lot the heartache concerning the start of the season and placements. The system overly punishes loss streaks during placements, which are more common during start-of-season placements. I've read player after player announce that they were quitting HL after finishing their placements this season due to how far they de-ranked and even though I'm not one of them I definitely agree that the system as it stands is excessively frustrating.

    Technically, its impossible for loss streaks to be more common since every game ends with one team winning and another losing, but I get what you're saying.

    As you've probably seen, we're fine with trying out different things for ranked seasons and not increasing uncertainty at the start of a season could be an interesting test for a future season.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    Last time there were comments on this, the "MMR curve" was also re-fitted to a normal distribution, because that's the shape of the population for which MMR is calibrated - which was surprising to me, since most rankings perform better with a logistic distribution than a normal distribution, and kind of scary, because it confirms the ranking model deteriorates in quality for the extreme edges of the spectrum over time.

    Is that still the case?

    Not sure where that info came from, but it's never been a normal distribution.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years ago (Source)

    Hey Travis,

    As drastic this might be, would you guys even consider forcing people into only a certain type of hero picks during the draft?

    For example, 1st pick picks an Assassin, 2nd pick goes with another Assassin, 3rd pick chooses Warrior, 4th pick, say a troll, chooses another Assassin, and the 5th pick then (seeing the troll) chooses another damned Assassin.

    Could you change the draft system so that at least the last 2 picking players are 'forced' into certain roles, i.e. if the first 3 picks had no Warrior or Support, the 4th pick can only choose between Warriors and Supports, where the 5th pick would be forced to choose between the remaining one, a Warrior or a Support, depending on what the 4th pick chose? Example:

    • 1st pick: Assassin.
    • 2nd pick: Assassin.
    • 3rd pick: Warrior.
    • 4th pick: forced selection between Support, Specialist or Assassin.
    • 5th pick: depending on what 4th picked, forced selection between either Support + Specialist, Support + Assassin etc., you get the idea.

    As in, before clicking Search in Hero League, you'd see a pop-up confirming if you'd like to queue into 'balanced team drafts' or not, which would put you in a separate queue to all those other trolls?

    Extended queue times, dividing the Hero League playerbase in half, but I would honestly prefer that over what this crapshow can sometimes be nowadays...

    No, but I would like people to be able to queue up as a preferred role and use that as part of matchmaking. It wouldn't be hard enforced, but it would increase the likelihood that you'd have a mix of people willing to play the different roles on a matchmade draft team.

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