Ranked is a Stacker Machine.

[Award]

There's evidence on both sides, definitely, and if I were more of a statistician, I might try to analyse match results based on objective metrics (K/D, how overwhelming a win/loss is, how many small/middling/large pushes each team made) to see if it does seem improbable and hence somehow rigged. But as it stands, I really don't know - I want to believe that Splatoon wouldn't rig games in the manner that Award laudably describes it (I give him a Like out of respect for the work he's put in, not necessarily out of agreement).

If you don't think that Ranked is accurately assessing your skills at the game, I'd suggest finding a squad. Competitive or casual, as long as it's one that allows you to play Ranked with people whose skill level is reliable (whether good, mediocre or bad, at least not fluctuating), it should remove most undesirable factors outside of your control.

Thanks! :)

One thing I'd clarify is that one element about my theory versus the OP theory and other theories I've had myself in the past about the system is it's not best described as thoroughly "rigged" even though the matches themselves are in essence rigged in such a system, the rank is technically not. It's genuinely calculated on actual player action and skill, just through an invisible formula we can't actively identify and work toward improving the criteria it's looking for (and, arguably, thus can't game the system either.) I'd classify it as dishonest if it's fixing matches to achieve a result of placing you in the skill level it's determined you belong in - but your rank is still the rank you've earned in actual skill based on the formula you can't access.

Ultimately if this is it I can't be as annoyed at Nintendo as I previously was for the system. If this is the system they designed it specifically TO address the issue of bad teammates making you lose and/or carrying you. If your rank is one calculated individually based on play, then luck of bad teammates and good teammates doesn't actually affect your rank much at all so long as your own play remains consistent within the parameters of the metrics the system evaluates. In prior matchmaking threads there was debate about whether a "fix" for the rank problems was to score people individually instead of as a team. The counter argument was always that if doing so it would make some players try to be the "hero" at the cost of their team as they'd be only interested in ranking up themselves and that such things have happened in other team games. The devs would have been keenly aware of this conundrum when they started design, all of them being fans of other shooters themselves. The idea I described seems like a very creative, Nintendo-like out of left field solution for a problem like that, , and ultimately actually is a good idea. It's just that it has some serious flaws at least as it relates to evaluating some players or play styles. But I can practically see in my mind the Iwata Asks transcript that won't happen where they discuss this solution for ranking. (laughs).

Yeah, it might be that. But I tell you, going in with a negative attitude in general does really affect your gameplay. Take my story for example, I hated Splat Zones to no end (and is still my least favorite mode to be honest). And I kept blaming the game mode that it doesn't work properly on my end to make the other team win and keep me in A/A+ forever, in a similar fashion on how some of you blame the whole game's matchmaking system for your losses.

No less than a month ago, I was convinced that I would be stuck in A/A+ forever because of Splat Zones and that it was the game's way of telling me ''screw you, you ain't getting to S!'' But instead of going in with a ''goddamn it, it's zones, I'm bound to lose again.'' I went in with more motivation and an overall positive attitude, and guess what, I made it to S+!

Have you watched this video from DUDE? (assuming you know who he is)

Spoiler: Video

I watched it more than once, and I beleive the tips and tricks said in that video can help anyone that truly wants to improve.

I think you might misunderstand a little, I'm not talking about going in with a mindset that you're going to lose - I always play every round like I'm going to win, even when it's only 3v4. That's actually the part that can make it frustrating, when I'M playing like we can win until he clock runs out, but nobody else is (though the other team is!) I'm the player that still bolts off the spawn heading toward the RM when there's 3 seconds on the clock and we're 40 points behind :P

The goal is in understanding the pattern where even with consistent gameplay, you go into long runs of losses with a very familiar pattern of team composition, and the more confounding patterns where with even better gameplay you win less, or with worse gameplay you win more, as though it's entirely out of your control. And the pattern where just as you're deep in the losing streak, you've dropped a full rank or rank and a half, just when tilt should be kicking in and making it impossible to win - you suddenly start getting easy wins as though the system is in control. Because the idea here is the system IS in control of placing you in the rank it's placed you in. Not that the odds can't and sometimes aren't defied. But it's designed to make that difficult to do.

And the idea of improving, etc, would still apply to such a system. The rank wouldn't be arbitrary, it would be your actual rank as calculated from your actual play skill. The limitation is merely that without knowing what it uses to calculate that rank we don't actually know what to improve on. If I were playing at S+ skill it would have let me win up to S+ so I'm clearly not, for example (I didn't need the system to tell me that, my own experience with S+ opponents tells me that ;) )

So let’s say I’m S+80 with one of my best weapons. Your hidden-system must see me as strong (with some criteria we don’t know of), and then I pick the E-Liter. Normally the hidden-system should give me good teams, but how fast will it see I suck? Cause honestly I’ll go pretty fast to S40. Some wins here and there (I don’t know losing streaks personally, even with this weapon I always finally get a win. I’m especially good at keeping a won game… won). Does that mean this hidden-system can evaluate me with very few games? I don’t buy this. It’s way too hard.

I'll write a big wall of text again responding to you :) You took the time to address specific points and raise specific questions and really weigh the concept which is great! The more we question assumptions and think of new questions the closer we'll get to understanding the system. I'm increasingly confident the system does work this way, but the part I'd still love to identify is what does or doesn't affect it's decisions - comparisons with you who is at the other end of the spectrum, the steady S+, can really help figure that out! :) I'll have to do it in English though....I tried learning French once...my teacher was fairly clear in telling me I wasn't very good at it and demanded I stop ;) I wasn't snarky enough to tell the teacher whom that was a reflection upon ;)

There are quite a few unknowns. Does the system apply different metrics by mode? Does it average all 3 modes? Or weight the most played? Does it evaluate each weapon individually? Does it average them? Or does it weight each weapon's contribution in your calculation by the total turf inked? (after all, why do they track that metric at all? That's a good teaser as to the kinds of metadata that can go into such a calculation.) In fact, it would be silly to assume the formula has always been consistent. Every single patch includes the line: "– Adjustments have been made to make for a more pleasant gaming experience." as one of the patch features. Tweaks and adjustments to the skill computation formula would be one of the most likely inclusions in the catch-all adjustments for a more pleasant experience.

So how would it react to you doing more poorly with eliter? That would depend on if it tracks different weapons differently or weights most used weapons into your skill. Would poor performance with eliter get outweighed by exemplary performance with tentatek and range blaster? It might. But it wouldn't be ignored either. The larger the sample the more accurate the results, however, I do believe that the Splatoon system is very quick (perhaps much too quick) in adjusting players skills. While not ranked, nor exactly the same system, playing a new alt in TW is a good indication of how fast it can react. You'll observe that your first match is against true noobs. Within 1-2 matches you'll find you're facing players in the 20-30 level range and the intensity is much more difficult. You'll observe other obvious alts. Within 5-6 matches you're back at your proper skill level against all lv50 A+/S/S+ ranks. Actual C- beginners would not be facing those opponents and certainly not so fast. It learned very quickly our real skill levels. There is a similar, though not as stringent matchmaking/ranking system behind TW. It appears to be maintained independently of ranked. I suspect it's rate of adapting to skill is part of what can go wrong and wrongly keep some players down or deranked. If you play and make certain mistakes a few rounds that count as big strikes against the hidden formula, it might react and drop you a rank within merely a few rounds. Thus you'll experience those 10 game losing streaks. A top shelf player as you seem to be, who can stay in S+ with little risk of drop is probably less likely to make those kinds of errors that would raise red flags in the system.

Another point now, which I believe is pretty good. Let’s say I make a game, and I make a ranking system of my own, which evaluates a lot of things. And I rank guys based on that. But what if? What if someone who doesn’t do well by my criterias… still win A LOT? If that happens, I’m forced to consider he is something. He does something. He is strong by a way I didn’t anticipate. So what I’m saying is… Even if this hidden-system exists, it has to take the victories/losses into account. It can’t work without it. You can’t just say a guy is bad if he keeps winning anyway.

Now, why not taking only this? Personally I believe it would be more than viable, and easy. Plus for Splatoon, it’s kinda hard to “spy” actions of the players. The player has bad accuracy? Well, he was turfing and suppressing a lot, he is a support. The player didn’t move a lot? Still doesn’t mean he was bad. Didn’t kill a lot? Eh, so what, I played great games without killing much. Died a lot? He played objective. It’s fairly hard to evaluate the actions without human-intervention.

Well in this system I'm theorizing, it definitely doesn't take wins/losses into consideration. Possibly not at all, or possibly slightly but is easily outweighed by other factors. If we assume the system was designed very SPECIFICALLY to avoid the problem of bad teammates causing you to derank or good teammates causing you to be carried, then we'd have to assume the system would very specifically NOT want to consider wins/losses but look instead at performance overall irregardless of win/lose. So the direct answer is in this system, the player who is evaluated as, say a B+ but still wins a lot, would not get the chance to win a lot. If he was sent to B+, the matches would be arranged to keep him in B+ - he'd get terrible teammates that would hold him from going over B+90 or so, forcing him to lose down to B+ 20 or so, and letting him rise to B+90 or so. If he defies those odds, then sure he'd get to A-, but if the system didn't feel he's actually an A- he'd continue getting odds stacked against him to bring him back down. If he's really THAT good that he'll keep winning even when the odds are stacked against him with poor teammates then he'd naturally move upwards despite the system. But he'll have a far harder time maintaining that A- or A than the player the system determined was supposed to be an A- or A to begin with - his rounds will be notably more frantic with him carrying a disproportionate load of the team. Ultimately it's unlikely that would happen. But if the player really is good and the system really calculated him wrong, the result isn't that he'd be actively BLOCKED from advancing, but that he'd have to deal with matches vastly more difficult for his rank than he should have to face....a functional equivalent of 3v4 or 2v4 as a regular match due to the skill gap between teammates and opponents. He'd also end up carrying other players that were slated to be moved down. But in most cases he'd not get that chance to win "a lot" if he got to B+90 he'd succumb to the weak teams he was assigned and moved down (and back up) to hover within the B+ range as designated until the system evaluated his play as improved.

I don't believe k/d factors in, at least not as a primary factor. That much seems obvious. The devs used to tout their "playstyle" metrics for matchmaking very often. They've talked about that less frequently in recent patchs. We know know for certain they tracked the nebulous "playstyle" of players. But what is playstyle and how do you track it? We don't know - but they do and we know they're doing it, they've said so often. I imagine it's more than just "playstyle" - that's just the catch-all phrase they use for "low level player metrics tracking." Though the one item you touched on I think is key to how certain players seem to get caught in the system more than others. Bad accuracy. Accuracy is one of the staples for such a player metrics system in most shooters. In Halo, if you fired a shot and didn't hit an opponent, you missed, plain and simple. In Splatoon, did you miss, or were you turfing? Metrics tracking in this game would have to be pretty squishy. It would have to use some fuzzy logic to "assume" turfing versus a miss. But that logic could never be 100% accurate. It makes sense that some players playstyles and turfing habits would be more likely to "fool" the system into thinking they missed when they were instead turfing (turfing in close proximity to an enemy? Must be a miss!) That might be one of the key factors in how a portion of us get caught in rank loops where we're clearly being wrongly pushed down in rank often by pre-determined poor team matches.

So anyway, even if there is a hidden-system, which I think is wrong as it’s complicated for nothing, just keep winning. Of course you’ll say you’re with bad mates, but then I’ll say give your alt to some S+ guy and I’m pretty sure he’ll go up fast enough.

As you sad above, say you play on my account, it would pretty quickly identify your skill level and permit you to win. Also a very high tier player (an S+ that stays in S+ easily) would be the wrong match to say "prove you can't carry this obviously incredibly mismatched team" - because you quite possibly could. I think more fair would be the other way around. Have an S or A+ player play on some S+'s alt S+ account. Let the system mark that account for derank due to the obvious drop in skill. Then have the original account owner play the account while it's in it's "losing streak" mode for a round or two and see how unbalanced the matches would be. That would have the original high rank player playing the unbalanced games at their own rank rather than at a rank lower than them. Doing it the other way around, such as my A+ alt flagged in "derank mode" doesn't reveal much - could you, for example win with a terrible team against A/A+ opponents? Possibly, no matter how bad your teammates are because your opponents are all well below your actual skill. (and no I'm not advocating anybody sacrifice their S+ in such a manner ;) )

My point of view: there three kinds of matches you can be in. 1 = your team is quite weaker than the other one ; 2 = quite stronger ; 3 = more or less the same level. In 1, you’ll lose most of the games anyway (or you’re making an alt), in 2 you’ll win most of your games anyway. So the only thing needed is to win in 3. And pro-tip: a normal team looks like a weak one actually.

I don't disagree with the 3 types of teams you can have. For the sake of debate, lets say it's hard to tell 1 and 3 apart, but 2 is quite obvious. If this were random matchmaking you would have equal chances of getting 1, 2, or 3. If you can't tell 1 and 3 apart you have 60% chance of those and 30% chance of 2. If you're playing for hours on end, day after day you should get a sense that any of these can happen at any time. Yet the very observable pattern in this game is you get ONLY one type or another in succession. Maybe a stray #3 you can win or lose equally here and there. But while you are in transit between ranks, you'll get statically one variety. "losing streaks" very clearly have back to back successions of very weak teams (easy way to tell a weak team: Do not touch the objective yourself. If the objective never, ever moves in your favor, the team is weak. When I'm playing hydra or eliter I get lots of time to observe who is or is not touching the objective and who is dying in every encounter - a luxury I don't have with shooters, bamboozlers, brushes, etc.) Even average teams will touch the objective and make some distance with it. Poor teams do not. Conversely when you seemed marked for promotion, every team you get is a good team. Even if you don't participate they seem likely to win without you. The objective presses forward steadily - someone other than yourself stops the objective from approaching. The'res a 4th scenario which is when your team is average and the opponent is obviously strong. These tend to be the situations where your team can lead for half a match and seem "not bad" but then they get steamrolled in the second half and seem utterly helpless to deal with it. So there are two "favored to win", two "favored to lose" and one "equal match" situation(s) The issue isn't the types of matches, it's the patterning of getting the same types of matches in succession. I change lobbies every match. I shouldn't see endless streams of weaker teams through a whole rank. I also shouldn't see endless streams of stronger teams through a whole rank. Not in an actual random system. The fact that there's a pattern to it indicates that something other than natural statistics is driving the team building.

Previously we've speculated that the agenda is simply to keep players from moving up in general, or that some players are overvalued and expected to be the one carrying a weaker team. Or that it was a stacker machine etc. But none of it really fit with the game very well....even if they were doing that, WHY? The concept made sense but the motive did not. But seeing it go in both directions makes it very clear - it's deliberately maintaining state. Why would it maintain state if w/l is what determines rank? Because w/l doesn't determine rank! Which technically would be a good thing. Using w/l in a team scored game would technically be an AWFUL way to determine rank. On paper this system would indeed be superior. Except for those that fall into the holes where it still has flaws in determining player skill.

 

[Award]

[NOTE to mods: Message split due to forum software maximum character limit - double post required.]

I saw a lot of people complaining and basically saying (without even realizing it sometimes) “I’m better than my rank”. I believe this kind of feeling is born from the “I need to do everything” games.

That's part of the effort in this observation though. I have 3 accounts, and the 3rd I created priarily to delve deeper into exploring the mysteries of the matchmaking system. The first two are S, and third currently A+, and it was through observing this account in relation to the others that I've cemented a lot of the concepts in this theory that I began evolving on the others. It was smooth sailing up to B+....got there in 2 hours or so. Little effort. But then the unexpected happened, something that didn't happen raising the prior account - I got trapped in B+ for days! The pattern started there, the win, lose, win, lose, ALMOST lose to B again, but then win back up to upper B+, then lose back to ALMOST B. That stuck me odd. Then in A- the same happened. And I was stuck there for 2 weeks. Then the magic win streak where every lobby had me on the massively stronger team as though it was designed to propel me through a dozen games as rapidly as possible even if I squid partied. Then the same catch stuck in A, back and forth for days. Then a straight shot to A+ with little resistence. Then stuck in A+. BUT then it seemed like a controlled loss down to low A, and seemed like I was even going back to A-! Down to A8 (from having been up at A+70-something something 3 times in one day in the controlled up and down within the rank) . But, instead of dropping me to A- I instead got a meteoric rise to A80 in what seemed like controlled wins. I could have gone further to test the theory more but a friend was online and was available to squad so I played with him instead of continuing. It's one thing to wrongly believe you're "better than your rank" but quite another when you're on your 3rd account and are oddly being pinned 4 ranks below your real rank on 2 other accounts...then 3 ranks...then 2 ranks...then back to 3 ranks below, as though it's all highly mechanical. It's also telling when I can perform much more reliably in squads with all S/S+ players with at least a 50/50 ratio because the team compositions are more equal all around. ;)


Summarizing your closing thoughts, those are all very valid, helpful observations in team matches, etc. And I'd like to discuss those strategies in a separate thread sometime, because that's all very good stuff. In the context of the "forced weaker teams"however, it doesn't apply. And while you accurately describe the "I have to do EVERYTHING mentality" you do so at the discount of the many situations where you really DO have to be the one to do everything. It's one thing if a tentatek main has to "do everything" without observing their teammates. I'm an eliter/charger main. My primary role is to sit back and watch the field more times than not. It's exceedingly obvious the rounds where you really DO have to do everything, because you endlessly observe that nobody else does. And more to the point you notice, if you falter, if you're not the one that stops the RM, if you get splatted finally, it all falls apart and suddenly the RM or the tower is 5 points from KO - because your team was relying on you to do it. And they only snapped into gear much too late when you weren't there to do it. I've considered the ideas of waiting to the end after the last time you suggested that you play that way. So I've tried it. My team pops the RM, I just sit back and defend and wait for them to grab it and make the push. They don't. Instead the enemy grabs it and runs into our base with it. My team never comes back. I've tried not pushing the tower, waiting for the team to be ready to make that push. They don't. The game ends 98-3. The strategies you suggest probably work fine at S+ where you can assume a general high level of play. In the A's and even S, I don't think it's safe to rely on your teammates to have such a strategy in mind. When the sniper's the only one on the tower or carrying the RM, something is VERY wrong with the 2 Wasabis and the .96 on the team. When the bamboozler Mk1 is the only one inking the zone, something is very wrong with the carbon roller, nzap, and trislosher on the team. Similarly if I take my roller and base raid and splat 3/4 opponents and have them penned near spawn, my 3 teammates are out near the zone, and are NOT INKING IT, letting the enemy counter continue while they're out there unopposed, "Waiting" for them while the counter is counting down for the opponents is not going to fix that. I have to leave and give up the great position penning the enemy in to go ink the zone and stop the counter. So lately I've been playing midrange shooters so I'm in more of a position to be the one that does EVERYTHING on the team. Results improved somewhat, but ultimately the roller coaster of what seems like scheduled wins and losses continues. I'm tempted to go back to my chargers.

Speaking from personal experience however, trusting my teammates often ends in losing more than winning. I've found that "forcing" the game is more likely to yield success. Generally I see less games with the tower in the 90's if I forced the game early and posted a score on the board, it kicks the enemy to respond which seems to kick my team a LITTLE less out of their complacency. it doesn't always work. I sometimes get the feeling that the "bad" teams may not be lacking in skill but are simply lazy and expect someone else is going to carry them. My roller experiment where I just went around and inked and avoided the RM and yielded the same w/l ratio as if I participated showed me they seem to react on their own more if they don't feel there's someone doing it for them. Which explains why the system has grouped them to be forced down in rank ;)

Still, bad teams are bad teams, they're to be expected. The interesting part is that it's in a pattern. You get the all bad ones, or the all good ones, back to back until you arrive at what seems to be a target destination. Then your fortunes reverse, but only up to a ceiling where you'll ping back and forth in streaks. This defies statistical probability in an organic system. It would be harder to notice in S+ because there's an upper ceiling. If they introduced S++ in 2.8 and you suddenly found yourself losing to S+ 15 in a long streak every time you hit S+90, you might start to detect a pattern as well ;) If then one day you find yourself handed easy matches (consisting of all S++ vs S+ players) back to back in every lobby until you got to S++30 as though the system just magically placed you in S++.....you might start to REALLY see a pattern. ;)

 

[Goolloom]

The goal is in understanding the pattern where even with consistent gameplay, you go into long runs of losses with a very familiar pattern of team composition, and the more confounding patterns where with even better gameplay you win less, or with worse gameplay you win more, as though it's entirely out of your control. And the pattern where just as you're deep in the losing streak, you've dropped a full rank or rank and a half, just when tilt should be kicking in and making it impossible to win - you suddenly start getting easy wins as though the system is in control. Because the idea here is the system IS in control of placing you in the rank it's placed you in. Not that the odds can't and sometimes aren't defied. But it's designed to make that difficult to do.

Well, there's the thing I don't understand so much honestly. I don't quite get why some people would be looking for certain patterns in the game's system or any of the sort. Because for me, when I lose a bunch of games in a row, instead of looking for such things, I just shrug it off and move on with my day, assuming I'm just not really into the game right now and I'm not playing my best (if my rank went down it most likely meant I wasn't playing on S+ level at that moment). If it happens that I get matched with people that are much better or I get teammates that are not so great, I just roll with it and do my best anyways, as long as I feel like I did good, I'm fine with it. That's probably why I didn't find any patterns, I'm not looking for them.
...Also that I don't really beleive there is such a system too, but that's just me.

The limitation is merely that without knowing what it uses to calculate that rank we don't actually know what to improve on.

I'd like to add, I haven't seen so much online multiplayer games that shows you what you should improve on :P
Sure, they track all those stats to give you a general idea of what you could be looking at, but it's never too clear on what you should be looking to improve.

 

[Award]

Well, there's the thing I don't understand so much honestly. I don't quite get why some people would be looking for certain patterns in the game's system or any of the sort. Because for me, when I lose a bunch of games in a row, instead of looking for such things, I just shrug it off and move on with my day, assuming I'm just not really into the game right now and I'm not playing my best (if my rank went down it most likely meant I wasn't playing on S+ level at that moment). If it happens that I get matched with people that are much better or I get teammates that are not so great, I just roll with it and do my best anyways, as long as I feel like I did good, I'm fine with it. That's probably why I didn't find any patterns, I'm not looking for them.
...Also that I don't really beleive there is such a system too, but that's just me.

Haha, well I think Nintendo didn't do a good enough job camouflaging it, honestly. The patterns are kind of obvious if you're playing enough. I imagine they didn't quite expect the game would draw as much popularity and addiction as it did so they didn't think to hide it so much from the people that are playing hours a day every day :) I picked up on there BEING patterns long ago, which made me pay attention to them. But it took a long time to zero in more on what exactly the pattern actually is. But once I noticed the tendency of patterning I couldn't resist trying to follow the pattern to see where it goes. The idea of a dishonest game system is troubling, especially from Nintendo. Now that I think I have a better handle on it, it's not as horrible thing as it seemed, but it does have flaws.

And what you say even with my theory is more or less true - if you go down, you probably aren't playing S+ level and the system corrected for that. And like I said, the sudden losing spikes at different times don't always make sense - it's as though it's rating you against an average of who is currently online to determine your right rank. That might be part of why the "wait for another rotation" works for a lot of people -you're actually waiting for the average skill of the currently online population to go down so it favors your position again. I don't "sit out after a few losses" or "wait for a winning rotation" - I try to figure out how to make the losing rotation a winning rotation and why it isn't, try different weapons, etc right through a lost rank or so :) The people who stop after a few losses etc. won't see the pattern because they don't play through the completion of the pattern. You have to play it to where it bottoms you out and reverses you to see the upper and lower limits of it and how it forms a cycle more than it does a streak.

It does seem that certain players get caught up in the "it thinks I'm in rank x, now it things I'm in rank y, now it thinks I'm in rank x" loop though more than others. I'm guessing playstyles don't always jive with the way it tracks the data.

I'd like to add, I haven't seen so much online multiplayer games that shows you what you should improve on :p
Sure, they track all those stats to give you a general idea of what you could be looking at, but it's never too clear on what you should be looking to improve.

Well fighting games and such that's a harder call. Yeah you lost, but why? But shooting games it's generally straight forward: "shoot less, hit more, die less" :) Most shooters you're PRIMARILY scored on k/d * accuracy%, and augmentation by many many other parameters goes up or down from there. Splatoon given the turfing mechanic and the crazy objectives makes tracking that a whole lot more difficult and requires a lot of software assumptions. Without knowing which metric it's penalizing you on (despite being, say, the least dead on your team, or the best killer on your team, etc.) it's hard to figure out where it thinks you're falling short. That's the big flaw in my theorized system - not knowing what it tracks.

But the obscurity would also be by design: So people don't game the system (as we all know they would) to boost the important metrics and leave their team stranded for the actual win. They'd play the metagame rather than the game, and we'd have threads here on "How to Maximize your S.Q.U.I.D. ratio To Get To S+ in 40 Games Or Less!"

 

[Cuttleshock]

Relating my own personal experiences similar to Award's theories... I have plummeted from A+ to A-, and shot right back up. But on those occasions, I believe that it was mostly due to my own play; I was honestly outplayed by enemies if I kept losing, not just because my team failed to position well but because I was having a bad run. Recently, in S, I've also experienced winning and losing streaks of up to 6 games, keeping me between 20 and 60 or so. But that doesn't really match up to the numbers that Award refers to - and it's not unreasonable for streaks of that length to occur in an unweighed matching system.

More respect to Award for having a veritable thesis going on this subject. Surely, though, this has to be something that can be datamined? If a system like this exists, there'd have to be some parameter in the game's code that allowed it to track statistics like these, regardless of where they actually get processed and permanently stored.

 

[Nero86]

What I'm doing lately is to record my own results (mode + maps + weapon used), many of my losing streaks were related to a combination of lack skills on the map/no advantage on the map and my own mistakes. Plus there's that "dark hour" (mine 23:00~1:00 GMT-3) where all sort of bizarre lag/teleports happen.

My system is:
Match -> Result -> Reflect :D

 

[Award]

Relating my own personal experiences similar to Award's theories... I have plummeted from A+ to A-, and shot right back up. But on those occasions, I believe that it was mostly due to my own play; I was honestly outplayed by enemies if I kept losing, not just because my team failed to position well but because I was having a bad run. Recently, in S, I've also experienced winning and losing streaks of up to 6 games, keeping me between 20 and 60 or so. But that doesn't really match up to the numbers that Award refers to - and it's not unreasonable for streaks of that length to occur in an unweighed matching system.

More respect to Award for having a veritable thesis going on this subject. Surely, though, this has to be something that can be datamined? If a system like this exists, there'd have to be some parameter in the game's code that allowed it to track statistics like these, regardless of where they actually get processed and permanently stored.

In a series of losses where you believe it's due to your own play, that's certainly a fair analysis. Though I'd also caution against the mentality of "assume it's your own fault and don't blame your teammates" out of chivalry if that's not entirely the case, as it might cause you to overlook the reality of the series. I.E. if you were clearly your team's weak link, you went deeply negative k/d they went positive, you got distracted from the objective too often and left your team fending for the tower alone too often, etc, then, yes, you might be the cause of the streak. On the other hand, if you were focused on the objective while your team was not, or leading the k/d board for your team (or the whole lobby), it's not arrogance to step back and say "wait...even if I sucked, how did I suck less than everyone else? How bad ARE you guys?" :) A common thought in my mind during Splatfests when I KNOW I did awful only to find everyone else did even more awful :P

Of course, in those cases within the context of this theory, the question is not about blaming your teammates. The question is about why those 2-3 teammates were grouped together and why you were grouped with them against opponents that could clearly not be measured as equals by any matchmaking system. If it happens once or randomly it's luck. It's the cycle of it happening with consistency that turns it into a pattern.

Like I mentioned above, during my seemingly controlled win streaks, I've seen the same happen on the other team. This last win streak when it started sending me back to A+, I was on the stronger, winning team, and I could tell easily the other team was one of those "marked to derank" teams several lobbies in a row. There were 2-3 teammates on their side that were just awful...very easy to defeat in battles, and in more than one lobby I grabbed the RM and ran STRAIGHT PAST THEM and they didn't even try to stop me. It was obvious they were "working on their ratios (k/d)" and didn't even know where the RM was (and didn't much care.) But they also had that one good player on their team I really felt bad for, I've been that player enough times to understand. The player that went 15/4 while their teammates went 3/9 (without carrying the RM or going kamikaze against it), the player that posed a real challenge and tried really hard to win. Even being on the opposing side I could tell that player did not deserve to be on that team and was in no way playing at the poor level of his teammates. It seemed obvious in several of those lobbies it was the same thing, it was clear my team was an overperforming team and the other team was an underperforming team. It's always interesting when you can carry the RM, alone, with no escort across the map to KO by knowing which one enemy to avoid. It also makes me understand what my opponents see on my team during a losing streak...

As for your streaks between 20 and 60, yes that fits the pattern as well as 8 and 90. The idea is it's centering you within S, likely, within this theory, because it's identified your proper rank as S and is maintaining you there. If true, it won't let you get up to S+ until whatever metrics it tracks tells it you're an S+. It also doesn't easily let you down to A+ unless it determines that your skill has dropped, even temporarily. It's possible that more consistent players are going to see less big swings. Or players that don't play "the bad rotations" will probably have a better score in the data tracking than the ones that play all rotations equally. If it is basing it on RELATIVE measured skill vs other players online the ones that play "only good rotations" would technically have inflated numbers by not adding much data where they lack skill versus the players that play everything who feed equal amounts of positive and negative data into the machine. In a sense it could be a form of scumming, though nobody participating would realize they're doing so.

In terms of datamining, that's an interesting question. I would imagine the network traffic could be monitored in terms of what's going outbound to Nintendo servers, though you would need to have all 8 players monitoring network traffic, because the game appears to split the hosting up between more than one player (thus the frequency of dual or triple drop-outs together) - it seems to cluster players into a few mini-servers. So you'd need to see what data was sent to Nintendo both during and after the match and/or during your first return trip to the lobby, in case it aggregates data and queues it for later xmit.
Though it's also possible it just distills your value to a number, locally, and it's all done client side and matched to a chart distributed with each rotation and rank change. I don't know that anyone's been able to get that detailed in cracking the game so far, merely the data archives with map/item data and the rule scripts. I'm not sure anyone's delved into the netcode. And if it's server side based on play data, that would be pretty hard to track. It sounds possible though now that we have an idea what we'd be looking for. NWPlayer would be the one to ask how far they've gone into the logic though - I'm pretty sure she's been mostly into model data and the item database etc.

What I'm doing lately is to record my own results (mode + maps + weapon used), many of my losing streaks were related to a combination of lack skills on the map/no advantage on the map and my own mistakes. Plus there's that "dark hour" (mine 23:00~1:00 GMT-3) where all sort of bizarre lag/teleports happen.

My system is:
Match -> Result -> Reflect :D

Yeah, there's the lag factor during the "dark hour" as well :) That'll cause losing streaks unrelated to the system (but might fuel negative data into the system that haunts you the next day. That could explain why the laggy sunday curse seems to often be followed by the monday curse.

Of course while your lack of skills on a map contributes to a loss, that's only valid reasoning if your 3 teammates were at least on the same side of Bluein Depot as the zone for at least 1/5 of the match. "I didn't carry the slackers on my team hard enough!" is not a valid accusation toward yourself ;)

 

[Nero86]

I was checking my records from yesterday and noticed some funny pattern.
.Me and a friend won 6 matches in a row, then lose 6 in a row.
.We won one, then lose the other one against demon players (20/1 K/D).
.Won another one, then returned against the same team, with those 2 demons again (lol).
.Won two, then lose other two with the same teammates.

Good that happens in Squad, where we don't lose or win points, or we'll be pretty messed up! :D

 

[binx]

Sigh... Just for your information, I'm reading this while working. So I copy paste all this in a Word document, so that it's less suspicious... Even though it's english. 17 pages. You really want to kill me! (Alright, there were some pages with random stuff.)

I don't have much to say (I hope).

First, I think it's wrong to leave the lobbies every time, especially in your situation. If you want to prove your point, why not staying in your lobby as much as you can, and study the other players? When you're in a so-called (let's say losing) streak, you can mark the three guys with you as "supposed to rank down" guys or something. Then look if at least one of them stay, and look if he stays in your team or moves. Repeat a lot. A LOT. If the guys keep changing teams here and there, even if sometimes they seem to follow you, it's more of a point for me. Else, more for you.

By the way, played with a Hydra guy the other day, while I was trying for a 99 (even if I have disconnections these days, sadly). So I was around 80, and I had this especially weak guy in my team. I noticed him at the second game (two games with me). I guess he was testing the weapon out. He was too passive. Understanding the basics of the weapon but not helping to keep counter going with him. Of course I could change lobby, but I believe to go to 99 you will need to carry some "weak" (as S+) guys anyway, so I just do the usual, staying in the lobby. After I noticed him I played differently, realising I myself was too carefree, and made him win some. He played some games in the other team too, and that was easy win for me (remember a 50/50 winning ratio is super bad if you want to go 99, you really need to win with him). The thing is, the game didn't seem to care if he was with or against me.

Anyway. About all this... It makes me think about the conspiracy theorists. Like, if someone say we never went to the moon, even if he is kinda smart, I can't do anything. It's not like I can prove him we went. You have really good points and you don't seem dumb at all, but I believe you don't have any real evidence, just like I don't. In the end we just have two opposite points of view and no real way to prove them, just having some things that kinda point towards our sides...

But well, still try the stay-in-lobby strategy. Just go "yes I want to play again" everytime, and write down every guy from every game with every result (or, easier, take photos of each result screen I guess, and study it later by keeping the order). If it changes enough, you can't really say the game chooses your mates, can you? (Of course, the matchmaking is now taking the weapons into account, but you know it so I trust you to take this into account too. Like I was playing jet squelcher yesterday while nobody would dare taking long range weapons [flounder heights SZ, I wouldn't recommend Jet for it, but well I did it anyway], so obviously the longest range were all against me, even if it only was pitiful dynamos.)

The idea of giving away an S+ account to a weaker player and take it back later is interesting, but I doubt someone would give it away like this. Personally I wouldn't care much about the rank loss, but I don't know what can be done to my account and would be quite afraid to lose things definitely, or get a ban from Nintendo, or... things.

 

[rhetoric]

How's this for a "conspiracy theory": If you played well and reached S+ without playing the stacker machine for quite some time, you got lucky. If you played poorly and reached S+ you got really lucky. If you played well but many many matches in a row were such that you had absolutely no chance to win, it's not your fault that you have failed to reach S+ yet, rather the game is configured such that players experience losing streaks. If you played poorly and lost many many matches in a row, you need to improve. Wow, that sounds totally far fetched.

 

[Nero86]

@Award
Another day I reviewed my results staying on the same room until the end:

Rotation 1:
Lose 2 Win 2
Lose 3 Win 3
Lose 1 [ends this rotation]

Rotation 2 (the next one, enters in another room):
Win 2, Lose 2
Win 4, Lose 4
Win 1, Lose 1
Win 1... so I stopped, time to sleep, and I was afraid of that win being taken back by matchmaking.

I'll try to check players in the room, if winners and losers are proportional. And if matchmaking is simmetrical, the best is to leave whenever you lose after 2+ wins, yes?

 

[Award]

Sigh... Just for your information, I'm reading this while working. So I copy paste all this in a Word document, so that it's less suspicious... Even though it's english. 17 pages. You really want to kill me! (Alright, there were some pages with random stuff.)

LOL, applause for the effort ;) (Also apologies for the late response, I started typing a lot of this yesterday and didn't have time to finish :) )

First, I think it's wrong to leave the lobbies every time, especially in your situation. If you want to prove your point, why not staying in your lobby as much as you can, and study the other players? When you're in a so-called (let's say losing) streak, you can mark the three guys with you as "supposed to rank down" guys or something. Then look if at least one of them stay, and look if he stays in your team or moves. Repeat a lot. A LOT. If the guys keep changing teams here and there, even if sometimes they seem to follow you, it's more of a point for me. Else, more for you.

I've tried both ways. On my original account I stayed in the lobby between rounds most of the time, and then after a while started changing lobbies a lot. On many Splatoon advice boards such as /r/splatoon one of the first things that many high rank players tell people is to change lobbies every time you win, because then you'll get the losing team next time. Kind of like the group think that influences Splatfest "less popular team wins" syndrome, because many of the good players have been given such advice, most of the winning players will change lobbies after a win, and the ones who remain are more likely to be the losing team and you're more likely to be paired with them.

So I've played both ways, with staying in the lobby each round, and with changing lobbies each round. I can't say it has really affected the result either way, but I at least know I won't be affected by "the good players left and the poor players stayed." However unlike the advice I also switch after losses, so I get a new lobby with fresh players. It keeps the weapon mix and play styles random so there's no "it's the same bad/good player that caused this result!", it's always a new group. I made sure to always switch lobbies on this account though specifically for the matchmaking trajectory. Random lobbies, if truly random should be a 50/50 mix of good and bad teams without any detectable pattern to that series. If you stay in the lobby there's a "human element" I could see patterns of losing teams because the same poor players stayed, or winning teams because the same good players stayed. Most of the time I find ranked does not alternate what team players are on if you stay in the lobby. Most of the team reamins in tact.

But in terms of actual w/l ratio, I haven't seen a REAL effect whether I switch lobbies or stay in the lobby. it just minimizes the chances of something other than random (or controlled?) losses.

By the way, played with a Hydra guy the other day, while I was trying for a 99 (even if I have disconnections these days, sadly). So I was around 80, and I had this especially weak guy in my team. I noticed him at the second game (two games with me). I guess he was testing the weapon out. He was too passive. Understanding the basics of the weapon but not helping to keep counter going with him. Of course I could change lobby, but I believe to go to 99 you will need to carry some "weak" (as S+) guys anyway, so I just do the usual, staying in the lobby. After I noticed him I played differently, realising I myself was too carefree, and made him win some. He played some games in the other team too, and that was easy win for me (remember a 50/50 winning ratio is super bad if you want to go 99, you really need to win with him). The thing is, the game didn't seem to care if he was with or against me.

Having one poor player in the lobby is one thing, and I don't think that's really a symptom of the same situation. A random poor player is always possible even on the "stronger" team. The pattern is most evident when there is only one other GOOD player (if that) on your team. One bad player I'm unlikely to notice if I have two good teammates. The tower/Rm stays in motion, the zone stays contested, the lost player can't really be detected because I could easily assume he has a strategy in mind for flanking/distraction/turf coverage, some support role. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt automatically. It's when in consecutive lobbies you only see one teammate if that actually playing at the objective, or if the opposing team is the weak one, only one opponent you actually have to watch out for.

For example in another horrible session yesterday where I tumbled from A+14 to A26 (not unexpected, the A+14 started downgrading from A+57 the other day) I had an SZ match in Mackerel with the Tempered Dynamo on my team that ROLLED the entire match... Ok there's my one bad teammate. But the problem is the OTHER two teammates were dead most of the match as well and while for half a match they did claim the left zone, they never got to the right zone. I had splatterscope so my painting was limited short of my bomb rush and as I was always fending off multiple squids and forced to retreat into the first row of crates to take shots, I rarely got a chance at the zone. In the end I was the only player with a positive k/d and we had not scored a single point. That match was endemic of numerous matches yesterday (won 3 of 12 matches, two of the 3 I won my k/d featured a k 3x that of my teammates and a d 1/4, and I was on the tower to the ko.) (I would have played down to A- but I wanted to end the night after a pair of epic wins when the game suddenly hit the "magic air brakes" on my controlled descent and I was suddenly up against teams where I was scoring double digit kills and only 1-3 deaths. As expected I was in free-fall to low A with teams I could not carry until magically I was handed opponents I could dominate and lead my team in a big way back to mid A. Again, same pattern. It was containing me in A, forcing me down, then forcing me up. The force upward, I was not "carried" by overwhelming in teammates, but instead I was the dominating player in the lobby with capable teammates but opponents that were very clearly less capable than the many rounds prior. It's not that it would not have been possible to lose the rounds by being inattentive, but my opponents were significantly less skilled players than all the prior lobbies once I got below A30 as I work toward A60. Will it continue to A+ and/or S again? We'll see.

I would say though that it's worth keeping in mind that S+, and doubly so, upper S+ isn't a very good snapshot for the experiment simply because the quantity of "weak" players playing in that tier would be very, very low. Everyone has to be very very high performing to be playing with you at all, so you're not exposed to the types of players that would be filled in that can truly lose a game. Not that there aren't ANY in S+, but it would be harder to find them on a regular basis. Also, your own personal skill would clearly place you at the top, so it would be much harder to find a team for you that you would be unable to carry heavily when you were in the lower brackets. Watching DUDE's videos for example and his bizarre level of perfect accuracy with chargers always makes his advice for oth

Anyway. About all this... It makes me think about the conspiracy theorists. Like, if someone say we never went to the moon, even if he is kinda smart, I can't do anything. It's not like I can prove him we went. You have really good points and you don't seem dumb at all, but I believe you don't have any real evidence, just like I don't. In the end we just have two opposite points of view and no real way to prove them, just having some things that kinda point towards our sides...

This is quite true, we don't have the design documents, we don't know how it works with any solid proof. We can only make educated guesses based on our observations. It's very possible I'm wrong. It's very possible @ZainreFang is right and it's just a stacker after all. But right now, this pattern seems to be the one with the most solid foundation. Or it's possible we're both right, and it applies a stacker at certain times. But what we DO know from observing the patterns is that the sequences that are seen do not reflect statistical probability in an organic system. Something is manipulating the probability to win in a way that is anything but random. These sequences would not be possible to occur were the system genuinely random. Or if they did occur would be a rare occurrence, not a repeating one.

But well, still try the stay-in-lobby strategy. Just go "yes I want to play again" everytime, and write down every guy from every game with every result (or, easier, take photos of each result screen I guess, and study it later by keeping the order). If it changes enough, you can't really say the game chooses your mates, can you? (Of course, the matchmaking is now taking the weapons into account, but you know it so I trust you to take this into account too. Like I was playing jet squelcher yesterday while nobody would dare taking long range weapons [flounder heights SZ, I wouldn't recommend Jet for it, but well I did it anyway], so obviously the longest range were all against me, even if it only was pitiful dynamos.)

Like I said, I've done that too. Technically it doesn't seem to have an effect on ratios, but the result is more deterministic if you're retaining members. Tracking the patterning of the system is much more practical with lobby changes since you're actually requesting the system to provide a new "random" list. It's too easy to have a losing/winning streak due to the retained members in the same lobby due to chancing upon a good match. It doesn't reveal the nature of the system. But yeah, I've played both ways.

I HAVE recently started taking pictures though of the stat screens. Mostly for my own amusement and sharing with friends than for formal record keeping - the sequences of my whole team either being much worse than the other team or being just outright awful are worth capturing, though the stat screen doesn't capture the awful 94-14 losses (or worse, the 100-ko losses.)

FWIW I don't have any new updates on the pattern as last night I played squads on one of my S accounts instead. Though there were probably more losses than wins (a lot of S vs S+ rounds though so that's understandable) and we did get stuck with some awful weapon mixes (all chargers & dynamos vs all splattershots & gals) and some terrible teammates (.52 gal guy that went 0/12 during a match we won by k/o in under 2 minutes - what were you doing? How did you even die 12 times without hitting anything in a 2 minute victory match? )

The idea of giving away an S+ account to a weaker player and take it back later is interesting, but I doubt someone would give it away like this. Personally I wouldn't care much about the rank loss, but I don't know what can be done to my account and would be quite afraid to lose things definitely, or get a ban from Nintendo, or... things.

Yeah it was more of a hypothetical setup due to the fact that giving an S+ player, a good, consistent one, an account at a lower rank wouldn't be beneficial since the S+ could likely overpower the competition alone. But having a poorer player flag an S+ account for "demotion" through less skill would be interesting to see if the real S+ player would be handed unwinnable matches for the first 2-3 rounds before it "relearns", But no, I don't think anyone should be handing out there accounts, it would only really work in a situation with a family member or something, an S+ sibling gives their B+ sibling their account to destroy to play with the theory :)

 

[Dessgeega]

http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/filibuster.htm

 

[Akamia]

This is quite true, we don't have the design documents, we don't know how it works with any solid proof. We can only make educated guesses based on our observations. It's very possible I'm wrong. It's very possible @ZainreFang is right and it's just a stacker after all. But right now, this pattern seems to be the one with the most solid foundation. Or it's possible we're both right, and it applies a stacker at certain times. But what we DO know from observing the patterns is that the sequences that are seen do not reflect statistical probability in an organic system. Something is manipulating the probability to win in a way that is anything but random. These sequences would not be possible to occur were the system genuinely random. Or if they did occur would be a rare occurrence, not a repeating one.

It's very possible @ZainreFang is right and it's just a stacker after all.

Uh... no...? I believe I explained rather well – twice, in this thread – why it simply cannot be, by Splatoon's very nature compared to that of Stacker. It simply would not make any sense. In what bizarro universe could a multiplayer console shooter like Splatoon be analogous to a rigged arcade prize game like Stacker?

For the purposes of my time on this thread, this issue is the only thing I'm concerning myself with. I'm dismissing everything else as irrelevant, because the OP, @ZainreFang, comparing the ranked matchmaking to a Stacker machine is the very topic of this thread as far as I understand. :p

 

[Award]

Uh... no...? I believe I explained rather well – twice, in this thread – why it simply cannot be, by Splatoon's very nature compared to that of Stacker. It simply would not make any sense. In what bizarro universe could a multiplayer console shooter like Splatoon be analogous to a rigged arcade prize game like Stacker?

For the purposes of my time on this thread, this issue is the only thing I'm concerning myself with. I'm dismissing everything else as irrelevant, because the OP, @ZainreFang, comparing the ranked matchmaking to a Stacker machine is the very topic of this thread as far as I understand. :p

My point was that we don't and can't know for sure what exactly it does, we can only speculate. In practical terms, my theory has as much chance to be right as his, though I do agree that his is technically a lot less likely based on what you've said :)

 

[Nero86]

My point was that we don't and can't know for sure what exactly it does, we can only speculate. In practical terms, my theory has as much chance to be right as his, though I do agree that his is technically a lot less likely based on what you've said :)

Yes, we're raising theories, I think discussing this is fun. I see friends talking about other online games that force 50% win ratio, I think Splatoon have some symmetry like this to sort team members for each side. Staying on the same room is giving me this impression.

 

[Akamia]

My point was that we don't and can't know for sure what exactly it does, we can only speculate. In practical terms, my theory has as much chance to be right as his, though I do agree that his is technically a lot less likely based on what you've said :)

Well, thank you for clarifiying it so concisely, though I am hesitant to call it "theory" – I favor the scientific definition for "theory", which is anything but mere speculation in that it's actually well-supported, over the common vernacular, and as such I reject the latter usage whenever I personally use the word.

I'd be a hypocrite if I were to say you writing near essay-long posts were a bad thing in and of itself, as someone who writes long YouTube comments myself at times, but when we're talking about comparing a multiplayer shooter to a rigged single-player prize game, the subject matter favors something on the simple side, methinks. :p

 

[Rabite]

It may seem possible that the game throws incrementally harder challenges at the player when they've been on a win streak, but it's absolutely not rigged, not at least in the way a slot machine would be. If this game had a way of privately recording win ratios for each player, I'd be willing to bet for most it would be in the 50-60% range. Long loss streaks start to feel like matchmaking witchery coming together to work against you, but the gist of it is that when under pressure, most of us make more mistakes and commit to small, subtle changes in our play style that act as a heavier detriment than we believe.

Sometimes, the RNG of it all will stick you with some lumpy sack of ink who doesn't understand where the rainmaker goes and will throw a loss several times. Other times, you might get tossed onto a team with a bunch of A- players while the other side is stacked up with A+ players. Seems highly suspect that something like this would happen unintentionally, but from everything I have witnessed I am convinced the matchmaking system is exponentially dumber than anybody here could ever imagine (Thanks for the three carbon rollers!)

Just keep your head up, keep your ink tank filled, and die with your Arrowbands on if you've got to.

 

[Award]

It may seem possible that the game throws incrementally harder challenges at the player when they've been on a win streak, but it's absolutely not rigged, not at least in the way a slot machine would be. If this game had a way of privately recording win ratios for each player, I'd be willing to bet for most it would be in the 50-60% range. Long loss streaks start to feel like matchmaking witchery coming together to work against you, but the gist of it is that when under pressure, most of us make more mistakes and commit to small, subtle changes in our play style that act as a heavier detriment than we believe.

Sometimes, the RNG of it all will stick you with some lumpy sack of ink who doesn't understand where the rainmaker goes and will throw a loss several times. Other times, you might get tossed onto a team with a bunch of A- players while the other side is stacked up with A+ players. Seems highly suspect that something like this would happen unintentionally, but from everything I have witnessed I am convinced the matchmaking system is exponentially dumber than anybody here could ever imagine (Thanks for the three carbon rollers!)

Just keep your head up, keep your ink tank filled, and die with your Arrowbands on if you've got to.

Much of what you say is overall true, and I was inclined to believe the matchmaker was simply awful and that was the cause. But that was until I played enough, and especially once I started making sure to change lobbies every game that the real patterns started showing. If it were a sucky RNG it would be a lot more random. It's when the "bad RNG" matchmaking is sequential that it becomes clear the "R" in RNG is missing :) But you don't get the players that don't play the objective and/or always go deeply negative (without pushing the objective) due to subtle changes in your own play. When you get them game after game, but the opposing team seems to have mostly competent players game after game, there's nothing random there, the system is clearly grouping "weaker" players against "average" or "stronger" players with consistency (meaning some players see win streaks, some see loose streaks out of it). I'd agree if you start performing badly or making mistakes that cost the game, if you become the weaker link on the team etc. But the kind of streaks we're talking about are where 2-3 teammates are very obvious weak links while you're the obvious "leader" among the group, and it consistently hands you a series of these, until a "bottoming out" is reached, and then it either suddenly goes in the other direction in a similar streak, or reverts to a more even challenge for a while, until you get too high up, and then it does another streak again. It's possible the matchmaker doesn't understand these are weak or strong teams, but it seems to be very, very reliably grouping weaker players together when it does this (but seems to place one strong player with them, which I've seen on my own "bad teams" and on opposing "bad teams". It might be as simple as the math works out that 3 bad players and 1 good player = 4 average players and it thinks the match is fair. We had presumed that true in earlier discussions. But again if that were true it would be more random, you would see that only randomly. The odds of getting consistent teams for 5-12 matches in a row in 5-12 different lobbies, of the same x4 average v x3weak, x1 excellent, and always ending up on the same side for that whole imbalanced run week after week, it doesn't seem very random at all.

It's also possible it really is just broken and this pattern forms from a deep flaw in the system. But I think there's more intent behind it. I don't believe Nintendo would have failed to notice such a severe flaw over the past year unless it's not a flaw.

Well, thank you for clarifiying it so concisely, though I am hesitant to call it "theory" – I favor the scientific definition for "theory", which is anything but mere speculation in that it's actually well-supported, over the common vernacular, and as such I reject the latter usage whenever I personally use the word.

I'd be a hypocrite if I were to say you writing near essay-long posts were a bad thing in and of itself, as someone who writes long YouTube comments myself at times, but when we're talking about comparing a multiplayer shooter to a rigged single-player prize game, the subject matter favors something on the simple side, methinks. :p

A hypothesis supported by medium-term gathered statistics, then ;)

 

[mercenariez]

S Rank player here. I usually hover around the mids, 30-60ish. Highest was around S70.

There is objective proof of Splatoon keeping track of winning percentages and a player's number of wins for the week: look no further than SplatNet.

Does Splatoon ever use winning % to organize teams in solo queue? Idk

I do know that sometimes when you do bad, even though you've been doing well for a while, it's actually just because your team's weapons got countered coincidentally.

Sometimes I watch what my teammates are doing (well in the higher ranks at least this is more prevalent, i.e. A to S. In lower ranks there's way too much variation even in one rank) and they usually are doing some pretty good well thought out strategies! Like, sometimes we just don't mesh our strategies together very well, so we fail as a whole, but their intention was obviously to try and win, not lose. Anyway, we end up losing (and I rarely get knocked out anymore which kind of testifies to the non-rigged possibility. Probably 70% of my matches now are pretty close) because we simply had too many rollers against snipers on Moray, or too many snipers against carbons in Pirahna Pit, or w/e. It never stays like that for more than 2 matches in a row though. Other times I think it's just strange weapon match ups the opponents have that just ends up out prioritizing ours as a whole, or their play styles just clearly counter my team's.

Also, a lot of times I clearly cause my own losing streaks by playing for too long. The brain gets fatigued after a while and even the best players would drop in rank if they never took breaks. It's hard to resist though, especially when you're currently at a lower rank than when you started playing :p

To end my post, here's some food for thought (made this up myself lol):

A losing member of a team exclaims: "my teammates suck! I'm the only good player on the team!"

Question: If ALL members on said team exclaim the exact same thing, then does everyone on the team suck, or are they all good?