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A dose of reality on the new ranking system based on 250+ games and simulation data.
TLDR: Barring a monumental effort, you are not going to move up appreciably in the rank system within the timeframe of a season. If you are close to the next tier (IE Gold 1 to Platinum 5) and you really want the next set of goodies then go for it. If you can enjoy the rank system simply for the sake of playing ranked without having expectations then go for it.
This is not a post about whining about the system or my own personal rant about how the season has played out for me so far, but an objective look based on simulation macros I wrote to imitate the rank system, logic and finally my own anecdotal, N=1 experience with the season after over 250 games so far. This post will be long.
First, let me share a little about myself in regards to HotS. Based on my MMR I’m sure the Reddit community would label me typical or trash tier depending on the maturity of the particular community member. A look at my hotslogs profile (hotslogs.com/Player/Profile?PlayerID=2063447) will quickly reveal that I am pretty atypical with regards to experience with the Hero pool and the sheer amount of games I have played. I have every hero to 10 (including Guldan). I have purchased every master skin (including Guldan). Over 5800 total games played with over 4400 of those being in Hero League/Ranked.
I’ve spent significant time during the preseason at every conceivable rank from 40 to 1. My MMR has ranged from 850 – 2600. Since climbing from 850 MMR (which is where I settled at after 223 games, not a brief dip early on before the system is still uncertain about you). The climb from 850 MMR to 2100 MMR took roughly 1000 games, more games than a large portion of the playerbase has played period. Since then I have went up and down from 2100 to 2600 multiple times for reasons that I will get into when I focus on Season 1.
The first thing I want to do is link a couple of charts I made using this spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15MmilFj4oJMqMNh01fwUaSSlYnOmwGL8Qg-aYXKctgc/edit?usp=sharing
The premise here is simple. People love to complain that the bad players or “potatoes” are causing them to lose. This spreadsheet calculates the probability of you having more potatoes on your team than are on the opposing team assuming a certain percentage of the player base at your MMR range are potatoes assuming that there can be up to 4 on your team and up to 5 on the other team and that the team with the most potatoes will lose.
When graphed there is an interesting peak from around 15% - 50% “potato population” where you will have more potatoes on your team 25% of the time. Will you lose games that you can’t help? Of course! But you can you still win 75% of your games if you play perfectly. If you are sitting at 50% then a big part of your losses are on you and whining about potatoes won’t do anything to make you win more.
An interesting side note is the two tails of the graph. If there aren’t any potatoes in your MMR range then you don’t lose games to potatoes. If everyone in your population is a potato (but you aren’t) then you don’t lose games to potatoes. This is why a truly good player will always get back to a high MMR quickly on any account. At low MMRs everyone is a potato compared to them and they will win 95% of the games they play well in.
I included another chart with the same assumptions but Duo Qing. Not going to discuss further but here is the chart.
Now let’s look at how the rank system works. I used macros in an excel spreadsheet to simulate the system. The spreadsheet takes starting rank (Bronze-5 etc), an ending rank (Master etc), the number of points into the rank, the expected MMR adjustment and a win probability and simulates how long it will take to get to the ending rank.
A random number is rolled and if the number is above the win probability then the game was lost. If the game was a demotion game you drop a tier and have your points set to 750. If the game was a promo or normal game then the points are subtracted. It does the same thing on the other side etc. The entire simulation (from starting rank to ending rank) is done 100 times and some statistics are pulled from the 100 simulations. Link to the sheet is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41120892/RankSim.xlsm
Let’s assume that like every redditor you are Bronze-5 but really belong at Master. Here is what it would take to get there assuming the 25th and 75th percentile of games it took to move through each division:
Division Expected Win Percent Expected Number of Games Expected Rank Boost Bronze – Silver 90% 28 – 32 30 Sliver – Gold 75% 37 – 48 25 Gold – Platinum 65% 54-85 20 Platinum – Diamond 60% 70 – 118 15 Diamond – Master 55% 117 – 253 10 Let that sink in. If you are at Plat 5 and are good enough to pull off 60% win rate then depending on promotion match luck then you will take somewhere between 70 – 118 games to get to Dia 5. All the way from Bronze – Master with what is frankly above realistic solo Q winrates is somewhere between 306 – 536 games. That’s at least 30 games per week or more than 4 games per day.
Even if you have the skill to pull it off, you probably don’t have the time to play that many games with the dedication it takes to maintain the win percentage it takes to get there in a reasonable amount of games.
My experience so far this season? Well I was rank 1 shortly before Chromie came out but was around 18 when the season rolled. Why did I drop so much? I tried to make Chromie work in HL mainly. I also figured with a confidence reset coming with the season roll that I could make it up anyway and my remaining performance wouldn’t have mattered.
Fact is I placed at Gold 2. Over my first 100 games I won 66 of them. I got up to Platinum 1. I had promotion games to get into D5 and lost them. Where am I at now? Gold 1. What happened? I lost focus, I let myself get tilted, I got tired of always tanking with Muradin. Leo got buffed? Well shit, I better try him out this game.
Starting a week ago I started going back through my losses this season and trying to identify what went wrong. Did we draft bad or did we play bad. Did I throw? Did my team let me down? Did we just lose an even game? My classifications and notes are available here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dD_4drS0O0qAQvn1n1RvuVfMFnWNLVphQjEaz9BYpaY/edit?usp=sharing
Feel free to match things up if you want and critique, but I think I was fairly objective. After 5800 games I can point out deficient comps and bad plays. I only looked at all the losses because I am frankly tired of trying to recall 230 games from memory. Some of the Wins were gimmies, some I made adjustments or picks or plays that caused us to win. Some I was simply on the better team. Here’s a pie chart of my games this season:
I was the cause of 40% of my losses. Mostly from trying to make weird hero choices work instead of just going with something conventional that I was tired of playing. The loss percent due to teammates was around 23% of my total games which is what you would expect from the potato theory.
A lot of my recent losses were from me playing Guldan in hero league, not to say I played him badly but there were instances where I shouldn’t have picked him like when we already had a poke DPS picked or showing or the other team had a sustain healer picked or I simply tilted my team due to picking a bad character. This is essentially why my MMR is all over the place. I could probably break into higher MMRs but I get tired of playing the correct pick over the course of 100s of games.
My plan for the rest of the season? Just continue playing but I am probably not getting out of Platinum this season. Due to my loss streak to send me back to gold I am getting a negative MMR adjustment. I am losing 18 extra points win or lose at this point and it might take me up to 36 games at 60% winrate just go break back into Platinum.
Am I a just a Platinum player? It depends on the day and some luck just like everyone else. Playing as much as I do I play at odd times and see a whole range of players. I’ve been in games with Pro players and high ranked GMs. They outplayed me. Hard. 3000 MMR players seem like a joke most of the time I get matched with one.
I honestly feel like I could play at a higher MMR than I am at now, but I play too many games to be consistent enough to get there would out being horribly bored from playing the same heroes over and over again and not trying the new shinnies.
If there is an MMR Hell its not that you can't play to where you belong; its that it takes so long to get there that most people won't take the effort.
If you read this far then thanks and good luck in the Nexus.
Shameless S1 youtube highlight channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXg2xV9h1OHhFp1o4soTZbg
EDIT
There has been so much feedback and a reddit gold to this post. A big thanks to the community.
While responding to the proposed changes detailed by /u/BlizzTravis I noticed that some of the randomness in the model was due to doing a random roll on everygame which is probably not what the user wants. They probably want to know that if I am winning 60% of my normal games and therefore I have a 60% chance of winning my promotion game then what # of games do I need to rank up. This table provides a better answer to this question. Current is the current system and new is the changes proposed below where you bank points on a win.
Division Win Percent Current # Games New # Games Bronze - Silver 90% 9-15 9 - 13 Silver - Gold 75% 29 - 47 19-38 Gold - Platinum 65% 31 - 47 29 - 55 Platinum - Diamond 60% 37 - 67 49 - 87 Diamond - Master 55% 67 - 120 106 - 160
BlizzTravis
The banked points would be replacing the set points coming out of a promotion match, not in addition to them.
It's not symmetrical to bank points upwards but not downwards, but it feels really bad to lose a demotion game and see that its going to take a 3-win streak to get back to the division you just vacated with that loss.
I think its worth the trade-off and if we find that its causing a lot of upward inflation, we'll adjust.
BlizzTravis
We'll keep an eye on it, but I don't expect it is going to make that large of a difference. Since we plan to keep seasons relatively short, there's a limit to how much inflation can happen during a season.
A new season is effectively a reset button on ranks. Placements are based on MMR so if your rank points are inflated beyond what they should be based on your skill, that'll get sorted out in the new season's placement.
BlizzTravis
It's on the table. I'd like to try more incremental tweaks first, though.
BlizzTravis
Cool analysis, Patcash. One change we're looking at making is banking the extra points that are currently lost when you hit a promotion match. Then, win or lose, those points would be added to the results of the promotion game.
So, if you're getting 200 points for a win and were at 950, you'd be stopped at 1000 points for the promo match, but have 150 points banked. If you win the match and got 200 points, you'd end up at 350 points in the next rank. If you lost the match and lost 200 points, you'd end up at 950 points in the same rank.
One side effect is that it becomes possible to be in a promotion match, lose, and still be in a promotion match. Bit odd, but acceptable.
Demotion matches wouldn't bank points. In a similar situation to the above, it's just a gut punch to lose that match and end up losing 350 points and staring down the barrel of a 3 game winning streak to get back to where you were. So, we'll just drop extra lost points in that case. It'll cause a slight overall upwards push in ranks over the course of the season, but that'll be fixed with the start of the next one.
Overall, that should maintain the punctuation mark of promotion/demotion matches while reducing the overall effect of bad luck on your ability to promote.