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Collection of comments by BlizzTravis about upcoming MMR system changes

In case you missed some or all of them, here is a collection of comments by /u/BlizzTravis about the upcoming MMR system changes.

Any changes also planned for uncertainty?

Uncertainty doesn't exist in the same form in the new system. The core concept of something that limits how much MMR can adjust on a per-game basis is there, but the factors that go into it are different.

Looks like new system promotes maining a few heroes rather than flexibility, true or not, and how big is the impact if true?

The most important thing is still winning the game. That hasn't changed. Sometimes, that means sticking to heroes you know really well. Other times, that means having flexibility in your hero roster and playing the heroes that best fit the situation.

Might be a stupid question, but if it's only about winning, why do we have stats-based MMR? why the win isn't the only factor? Isn't the concept of stats-based MMR less accurate than the winrate itself to calculate your odd of winning?

It's about speed more than accuracy. The current system, based entirely on wins vs loses, works, but because your skill is diluted in a team of 5, unless you are dramatically better (or worse) than the rest of the team, it can take a large number of games before the difference in skill translates to more wins (or loses) and moves your MMR to where it should be. By factoring in individual skill to the equation, it can arrive at the proper MMR much faster which means the matchmaker can make better matches overall.

Is draft/banning taken into account? Choosing the right hero in draft may be more important than performing better than peers on a certain hero.

Drafting matters in the same way as the above statement. Drafting is a skill and how well you draft affects your win rate.

All in all, do you have some additional insight into what parameters are used? How zoning, peeling, bodyblocking, skillshot blocking is taken into account? How will Force Wall-Tassadar be able to compete with Archon-Tassadar?

We have great insight into what parameters are used...but aren't going into that level of detail externally.

Also do you plan to add more parameters in the mix?

We'll add more parameters as it makes sense.

There's some concern about how reliable is data on low played heroes — maybe like Chen, Rexxar, TLV, anything on that? (Though I can't imagine any answer here but "we think our data is reliable enough" :D)

We have more than enough data on all existing heroes. For new heroes or major reworks, the performance-based adjustments will basically be disabled until enough data exists.

Are we right to assume that new MMR calculation would be applied to all game modes? For QM, it looks like a step in the direction of per-hero MMR, do you think we may end up there, or at least do you think it may be viable to maintain?

It will apply to all game modes that have MMR.

Can you win a game yet still lose MMR points? IE: a player goes full tilt, intentionally tries to throw. But the other 4 players are just dominating and still win the game.

No. You'll only gain points on a win and lose them on a loss. If you get full carried for a game, you won't lose points, but you also aren't going to gain very many either.

I think people's main concerns are along the lines of "who determines which stats are important" and "why these stats and not these other ones". I assume you guys are running some kind of adaptive machine learning, but most people are not going to understand that so maybe some kind of brief summary into how that works can help to alleviate the main concerns. Just a suggestion.

Quite right. For the "who determines which stats are important", its the players. We've chosen the stats to monitor, but which ones are important for that situation is something we are measuring, not determining ourselves.

About revealing MMR and the general clarity. Assuming "no" on "if you're going to reveal MMR" (:D) I'd like to ask whether we would be able to see when the adjustment takes place on the post-match screen, like we see PRA now.

We won't have visible MMR for this update, but I do still want to do it in the future. For now, you'll mainly see the effects through rank points. We're planning to swap out personal rank adjustment for a more direct performance adjustment which will give better insight while filling a similar role of keeping rank close to MMR. I'm not sure right now whether that will be for this season or the next yet.

Spot on and part of why visible MMR hasn't been a big priority for us but, there are some advantages to it:
- Currently, rank is the only visible indicator of skill. This forces us to link rank to MMR so they don't diverge too much because players get upset when they see people of different rank in their games even if they are actually the same skill. That's not ideal and leads to oddities with matchmaking when rank and MMR do diverge.
- Even though we don't show MMR, players have created other sources to approximate their MMR. The information isn't very accurate, but being the only source of knowledge, it gets cited frequently when players feel there are issues with matchmaking. There's two issues here: first, it gives a false impression that matchmaking is poor for some players and second, it makes it harder to understand when there are actually issues with matchmaking since the real issues can get buried. Effectively, for players that really care about MMR, we already have most of the downsides associated with visible MMR without having the upsides of it being accurate information.

But what order of magnitude are you all thinking? 10 points? 20, 50? Just trying to get a rough understanding of the overall impact it might have on gaining.

That's a tuning point we haven't settled on yet.

The system, unless specifically programmed to do otherwise, will think a death at the last moment is extremely meaningful since it is normally a 60s death timer.

Time is factored into the measurements. If you're dead for the last few seconds of a match, there wouldn't be any measurable impact relative to everything else that happened that game.

Regarding the new performance based MMR changes, does this mean if my team has captured the winning altar on Towers of Doom and for the fun of it I walk into the enemy death zone and die, my MMR will be adversely affected from this little bit of fun? Or perhaps there are 5 enemies killing my core and there are 4 allies dead. I have no chance to defend the core but rather than try and risk receiving an extra death I won't lose as much MMR if I stay in base? Curious about this.

Everything is by time, including deaths. If you die in the last second of a match, its not going to mean much. Even a full death in the last minutes would really only be a minor modifier overall once diluted against your overall performance in the game. The biggest factor for MMR adjustment is still whether you won or lost. Your overall performance is secondary to that and any particular moment is just a small part of that overall performance.

Does this mean that winning a game quickly and playing well will reward the same personal adjustment as having good stats in a long game? Some people are concerned that players will want to artificially extend game lengths to try and pad their stats before winning. Especially in games where the opponent is greatly outmatched.

Yeah, definitely. Everything factors game time into it for that exact reason.

Check out "BlizzTravis has been killing it lately; his comment history is full of interesting and insightful information" too!

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