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Blue response on why Visible MMR may not be a good idea

There are benefits and detriments to visible MMR, as Travis Mcgeathy outlined in this thread. One comment I felt was particularly compelling had been obfuscated by its position in the thread, so I figured I'd give it some more exposure, as well as contribute my thoughts.

When MMR is visible, though, it gets viewed as a reward system rather than a measurement. It becomes a focus for players to "increase their MMR" instead of working to increase their skill

GoodHart's Law read's "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." A good comparison may be drawn to the debate surrounding visible MMR and I believe it is worth considering that visible MMR will defeat the purpose of having MMR at all (given that a visible representation of your rank has already been implemented).

What do you guys think?

BlizzTravis

Posted 6 years, 6 months ago (Source)

How’s that different from current Rank system. I just want my rank to go up.

There's a much bigger explanation tied to that particular line, but in short, Rank IS a reward system. You can go on a win streak and spike your rank, literally getting better rewards at the end of the season if you cross one of the reward thresholds. It's fine to chase higher rank. It's something that can be achieved as a goal in itself, though you'll still find better long-term success just focusing on getting better overall.

MMR is the opposite. MMR is a measurement whose goal is to be as accurate as possible to a player's skill. Streaks are a part of life and not generally an indication of a change in skill unless they're sustained, so MMR doesn't move much over a short number of games.

I know there's a subset of players who would be ok just seeing their MMR and understanding that it isn't going to move dramatically when you go on a hot streak, but most players get disheartened when they don't see tangible gains while they're doing well. That's what rank provides.

If you remove rank from the equation, the pressure on seeing tangible movement over a short period shifts to MMR which, if we were to do that, would degrade the system and lead to worse matches overall.

So, even if you're one of those folks who would be happy just having visible MMR and watching it slowly increase (or decrease) over time, you can think of rank as a buffer that allows MMR to do its job of being a measurement rather than a reward.

Now, all that being said, also having visible MMR in addition to rank would allow for rank to serve its role even better since it could be truly decoupled from MMR. Right now, we have to keep rank and MMR relatively close, but if MMR were visible, rank could float freely from MMR. Seasons happens frequently enough that rank and MMR won't diverge too much before being re-aligned, but a player with, say, Gold 3 MMR could reasonably end up in low plat at the end of the season by doing well over the short term and that would be ok since players could judge the quality of the match off the MMR ratings instead of rank and understand that having a Plat player in their Gold game isn't actually bad.

That got far longer than I expected, but hopefully it explains the difference.

<blockquote class="quoted">
 <div class="md">How’s that different from current Rank system. I just want my rank to go up. 
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="md">There's a much bigger explanation tied to that particular line, but in short, Rank IS a reward system. You can go on a win streak and spike your rank, literally getting better rewards at the end of the season if you cross one of the reward thresholds. It's fine to chase higher rank. It's something that can be achieved as a goal in itself, though you'll still find better long-term success just focusing on getting better overall.

MMR is the opposite. MMR is a measurement whose goal is to be as accurate as possible to a player's skill. Streaks are a part of life and not generally an indication of a change in skill unless they're sustained, so MMR doesn't move much over a short number of games.

I know there's a subset of players who would be ok just seeing their MMR and understanding that it isn't going to move dramatically when you go on a hot streak, but most players get disheartened when they don't see tangible gains while they're doing well. That's what rank provides.

If you remove rank from the equation, the pressure on seeing tangible movement over a short period shifts to MMR which, if we were to do that, would degrade the system and lead to worse matches overall.

So, even if you're one of those folks who would be happy just having visible MMR and watching it slowly increase (or decrease) over time, you can think of rank as a buffer that allows MMR to do its job of being a measurement rather than a reward.

Now, all that being said, also having visible MMR in addition to rank would allow for rank to serve its role even better since it could be truly decoupled from MMR. Right now, we have to keep rank and MMR relatively close, but if MMR were visible, rank could float freely from MMR. Seasons happens frequently enough that rank and MMR won't diverge too much before being re-aligned, but a player with, say, Gold 3 MMR could reasonably end up in low plat at the end of the season by doing well over the short term and that would be ok since players could judge the quality of the match off the MMR ratings instead of rank and understand that having a Plat player in their Gold game isn't actually bad.

That got far longer than I expected, but hopefully it explains the difference.
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/82vaa9/blue_response_on_why_visible_mmr_may_not_be_a/dvdyfsd">BlizzTravis</a>)
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Tweet

<div class="md">There's a much bigger explanation tied to that particular line, but in short, Rank IS a reward system. You can go on a win streak and spike your rank, literally getting better rewards at the end of the season if you cross one of the reward thresholds. It's fine to chase higher rank. It's something that can be achieved as a goal in itself, though you'll still find better long-term success just focusing on getting better overall.

MMR is the opposite. MMR is a measurement whose goal is to be as accurate as possible to a player's skill. Streaks are a part of life and not generally an indication of a change in skill unless they're sustained, so MMR doesn't move much over a short number of games.

I know there's a subset of players who would be ok just seeing their MMR and understanding that it isn't going to move dramatically when you go on a hot streak, but most players get disheartened when they don't see tangible gains while they're doing well. That's what rank provides.

If you remove rank from the equation, the pressure on seeing tangible movement over a short period shifts to MMR which, if we were to do that, would degrade the system and lead to worse matches overall.

So, even if you're one of those folks who would be happy just having visible MMR and watching it slowly increase (or decrease) over time, you can think of rank as a buffer that allows MMR to do its job of being a measurement rather than a reward.

Now, all that being said, also having visible MMR in addition to rank would allow for rank to serve its role even better since it could be truly decoupled from MMR. Right now, we have to keep rank and MMR relatively close, but if MMR were visible, rank could float freely from MMR. Seasons happens frequently enough that rank and MMR won't diverge too much before being re-aligned, but a player with, say, Gold 3 MMR could reasonably end up in low plat at the end of the season by doing well over the short term and that would be ok since players could judge the quality of the match off the MMR ratings instead of rank and understand that having a Plat player in their Gold game isn't actually bad.

That got far longer than I expected, but hopefully it explains the difference.
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/82vaa9/blue_response_on_why_visible_mmr_may_not_be_a/dvdyfsd">Source</a>)
 
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