That's not what Mike Donais said. He said your MatchMakingRating WAS your Visible Rating.

"is the MMR a hidden number or does it just use the visible Rank points as MMR?"

"[–]from mdonais sent 10 months ago Visisble only."

[misspelling was like that].

Blizzard's 2 number MMR systems have been notoriously terrible.

The best part of BGs system is that it is transparent.

What's the problem you are trying to solve by having separate numbers?

Is it the new player experience of having 4k points and it takes forever to get to 14k for new players?

Isn't that solved by the reset? (Especially if the plan is to do seasons).

I've never understood why you can't just reset everyone to 0 at the start of the season and let the results speak for themselves.

Why do you want to put in place a system that gives an advantage to some and handicaps others?

BGs isn't a game like Hearthstone or HOTS where the winning outcome is binary. It's understandable to want to let players of higher skill excel quicker in those circumstances.

But in BGs, the better players do excel quicker. They get more 1st places and higher finishes.

You don't need a placement system in HS BGs. Just reset every season and let the better players rise.

Lmao. Blizzard literally just called their player base too stupid to know better.

Slightly off topic, but can I ask your thoughts about the damage levels in the game currently? Being hit for 22 damage mid-game as the third strongest in the lobby because you matched up with someone who power spiked is awful - hell being hit for a quarter of your health by someone who had crowd favourite & another 3 drop survive on 1hp on tavern 4 is awful.

I know battlegrounds is intended to be faster paced than most auto-battlers, but have there been experiements with changes such as all minions do 1 less damage to see how it plays out? I think a lot of the fun is scaling into a late game build and how you transition that, rather than just trying to hold on for dear life through turns 7-10, praying you don't come against the two snowballing guys, and hoping you can hit something in the meantime.

u/iksarHS

please consider reversing this and not allowing 4 man squads to queue into ranked against other solo players. It is destroying all competitive integrity that this game has to offer.

Can you share how rating reset will initially work? Is it a soft or hard reset?

I really dislike the separate numbers MMR system.

It was the bane of HOTS. It also was an issue in early Hearthstone, where you could streak 5-1 and end up playing Top 100 Legend players while not being Legend yourself.

The 1 thing I REALLY liked about HS BGs MMR was that your numbers WAS your MMR.

P.S. In fact, I'll go as far as to say, the one thing I TRULY HATE about Hearthstones current STAR system is that the Bronze-Diamond ranks are 100% MEANINGLESS.

It also creates a problem that it is easier for me to hit Legend when I get a 10X multipler than when I get an 11X because I face easier players which means I can keep up a winstreak and play fewer games getting into Legend. With the 11X winstreaks are more infrequent, and even those I still have a X2 multiplier in the last 5 Diamond ranks, I end up playing more games.

What I am saying it -- Blizzard has NEVER made an MMR system that uses 2 separate numbers that feels good, or intuitive, or fun. They typically feel punishing, and the player can never figure out exactly why (Hint: It's because the number they see isn't the number that they're being judged by).

I like most of the changes you guys are proposing for BGs...

...but please keep it to a 1 number MMR system. Your MMR should be the MMR you see.

It's the simplest and most intuitive to understand. (It's also the fairest imho).

Thanks for the response.

I don't think merely adjusting MMR for grouping will work well though. Say you find that grouping at 10k should be -10%mmr. All you'll have is the average of all playstyles in that MMR.

That will likely mean we'll still get an advantage if we communicate and quad stream vs average at 10k+, and the people who just want to play in the same lobby and don't screen share and do all that communication will be penalized for grouping.

And, most importantly, it does not address how unfun AND unfair it is to be a solo queue player in a 4v1v1v1v1. Not sure who this "feature" is for in ranked play.

This also does not address the ability of a group to favor one individual's MMR over the rest of the group, so that while group gains may be normal on net, the leaderboards will still be gamed in a way to systemically disfavor solo players.

Glad to hear MMR resets will finally become a thing in BGs though!

I'm honestly not convinced that grouping in Battlegrounds has much of an advantage in a normal sense of play, especially compared to other games like HOTS and LOL, etc. The advantages are mostly minimal in a normal context.

Where it is most exploitable is in people INTENTIONALLY GAMING the system to "wintrade"/powerlevel a single account to higher MMR. (This will become a bigger deal with Rank resets in the future, but not so much right now).

This would extend to abnormal play, like--

--not putting out units
--arranging units to ensure least amount of points lost between friends.
--feeding units to friends (Rafaam)

The exploitation seems to be a bigger issue when MMR is on the line.

I don't think much needs to be done right now. But when rank resets happen, it'll be far too easy to powerlevel a single player's MMR with the way groups currently work. (Think back to the way old HOTS MMR worked when powerleveling a fresh account into Masters).

There's something that I don't understand about the first solution of putting groups of 4 up against higher skilled solo players, so their average placement stays the same. The largest group of players who would likely make use of/abuse quad queuing are at the very top of the game. They're leaderboard players who feel like playing at an advantage is worth the effort of setting up groups of four (which so far has seen like very low effort), or at least very close to there.
A solo player at 12K might face quad queuers who are 9K-10K, so their average placement is the same, but who do the high mmr quad groups run into? There's nobody above them to queue into, so I think this "fix" leaves the most important, most problematic group completely unaddressed.

There is an inherent problem if there are no sufficiently higher skilled players than you for those who are competing for the leaderboard. I'm also not sure it's a good assumption that an x% more skilled player will actually be able to succeed at the expected rate vs. a group, if the group is able to get a big enough advantage out of it. That is, if the marginal power increase of being in a group is higher than that gained by a reasonable amount of skill differential. To answer that question would certainly require the kind of data that y'all are collecting (and we'd all love if you shared it) this patch, of course.

Finally, it seems weird to me to equate expected placement with expected game experience.

What's the point of rating reset if everyone's hidden rating remains the same? It just seems like a facade to make people grind to their hidden number again. It doesn't change anything except the visual rating.

Okay. That makes sense.

But it def seems like we already have visual progression. There's a number. We see that. It goes up.

Couple thoughts:

1) Is this a concern of hitting an MMR plateau where its no longer advantageous for high MMR players to continue playing? (We saw this briefly early in the life of the game where 1st place was awarding virtually no points. That was quickly changed).

I could see that being a concern.

However, doesn't resetting every season just fix that?

2) In HOTS, it was always frustrating not being able to see your MMR. This frustration has been replicated in the new Bronze - Diamond.

For players that were not GM level, you never really knew where you stood. You didn't know if it was just being constantly grouped with bad players or if you were actually a bad player. The system wasn't transparent enough. Also, as one got better it was difficult to rise up the ranks. (Many people just created entirely new accounts when they got better because it was easier to rise in rank with a fresh MMR).

With HS BGs, at least new players can see they are 4k, and after playing a few games can see and understand what it takes to get to say 5k, and then 6k, on to 15k.

There's no confusion.

And the current system is intuitive. I'm not sure why you'd want to change that.

3) As for using Bronze-Diamond HS standard ladder as an example:

HS (standard ladder) has replicated some of the frustrations with its implementation of the current Bronze-Diamond ladder. Your rank 'Bronze, Silver, whatever...' has no indication of your actual ability. It's basically just a 'loot delivery system.' Bronze: I get my 1 pack. Silver: I get my 1 pack and 1 common. Legend: I get 5 packs and an Epic and some rares.

The ranks of Bronze - Diamond are meaningless in terms of ability.

The only thing that matters is the hidden MMR that we can't see.

You say the point of this change is visual progression and use the current HS Ladder Bronze to Diamond as an example. That's exactly what scares me. That ladder system, as far as a ladder system goes, is...not even really a ladder.

The HS Bronze - Diamond system is LESS transparent than any previous Blizzard system I've seen before.

(Maybe I'm missing one. But I've played a lot of Blizzard games. It's up there with WoW's iLvl scaling and PVP scaling--both things implemented to make things "simpler" and only did exactly the opposite. Although, I will say as a loot distribution system, and a generally friendlier sens of progression (even if its meaningless) the new ladder did accomplish that. It's just not a good foundation for a competitive ladder).

However, it is now easier to get into Legend and less of a grind to grab rewards (like, casuals are no longer permarank 5, because there's incentive to get Legend and the grind is easier).

But the real ladder is the Legend ladder.

Unlike the Bronze - Diamond ladder, the Legend ladder is fairly transparent. You don't see the actual numbers, but in general terms, the higher up you go, the tougher opponents you face.

4) Weighted MMR.

My concern is that Blizzard's ladders like this (with the 2 number system), that try to match and correct MMR to put players in the place that the ladder system thinks they should be has always caused more conflict, been more secretive and confusing as to what's going on, and does tend to favor some players, while punishing others, even given the exact same circumstances.

I just really want to emphasize -- there is no reason to have a system in BGs that favors higher level players and keeps middling players down (which is what many of Blizzard's MMR systems tend to do, especially over a long period of time. Even HS BGs early 'placements' did this as well. That first week, if you didn't streak the first handful of games, it was exponentially harder to grind games after--meaning it was advantageous to just start a new account).

Current HS Legend Ladder and BGs are great.

I'm hedging here a lil, and saying, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

I like what you guys are doing and a lot of the changes sound positive. I also like hearing that you're working on toning down dmg in the midgame. That's probably the overwhelming majority of the issues that results in FeelsBadMan. I just grind my teeth when I hear you wanting to make the BGs ladder like the HS standard non-legend ladder. It's really not a ladder.