Ranked mode too punishing?

[DekuKitty]

More food for matchmaking thought...

Today my youngest son wasn't happy because he kept on losing. He's an A-, and has been for a few months. I felt bad because he's young, and I said I'd play on his account to get him back up 30-40 points.

And ... when I played I was repeatedly put on the weaker team, massively weaker team, all the way down to B+ 48. The opposing teams were organised, mine were not. The opposing teams splatted really well, mine not so much. It was hard to get the better of them all by myself. I had to play harder than I do in average S/S+ games just for my teams to have a chance. What hope did my young son have at winning these games? That's just mean. Then suddenly it all shifted, like a switch was flipped, and I got him back up to A- 54. I wouldn't say it was an easy winning streak but my teams were good enough to win.

Just reinforcing in my mind that something is severely broken or there is an agenda...

I'm staring to believe you on the agenda thing. Every single time I manage to win a few games, I'm suddenly on the weak, heavily unbalanced teams which causes me to loose all the points I just earned until I'm back to square 1, then i start winning again in a vicious cycle. Why exactly does this game have an agenda though? To keep us playing? Reminds me of one of those rigged carnival games.

 

[Award]

I'm staring to believe you on the agenda thing. Every single time I manage to win a few games, I'm suddenly on the weak, heavily unbalanced teams which causes me to loose all the points I just earned until I'm back to square 1, then i start winning again in a vicious cycle. Why exactly does this game have an agenda though? To keep us playing? Reminds me of one of those rigged carnival games.

My theory, earlier in this thread was that, if it's rigged, it's rigged for the purpose of load balancing the otherwise small player population and distributing them equally across the rank lobbies so that all player pool brackets have a suficient population. A way of mitigating the low install base of Wii U and Splatoon, and the adverse effect that has on player pool population compared to mainstream PC/XStation games like COD, Halo, Battlefield, Battlefront, Destiny, etc, etc, etc, which easily have populations several TIMES the size of Splatoon.

I also compared it to the rigged carnival games and casino games.

That may not be the reason (if it's rigged) but it's a sensible on and one they might not have a choice in if they want to create the illusion of a ladder where there aren't enough players to do it right. (Or weren't before this Christmas anyway) Though that doesn't explain the similarly unbalanced lobbies in TW which points back to it being simply a poorly designed, broken system.

The losing streaks happen in TW, as well no matter how many times I rejoin new lobbies. And then later suddenly a bunch of lv4's show up. And then I get some normal matches. I won't rule out that it's not rigged and that it's just even more broken than we give it credit for. But so much in ranked DOES seem rigged .

 

[Holidaze]

@Award You keep my beaked squids out of this.

OT: You keep my beaked squids out of this.

 

[Award]

@Award You keep my beaked squids out of this.

OT: You keep my beaked squids out of this.

If the beaks are Forge brand they'd be useful though! (And they'd have to be Forge brand because all the fugly stuff is Forge brand...)

 

[BlackZero]

I'm staring to believe you on the agenda thing. Every single time I manage to win a few games, I'm suddenly on the weak, heavily unbalanced teams which causes me to loose all the points I just earned until I'm back to square 1, then i start winning again in a vicious cycle. Why exactly does this game have an agenda though? To keep us playing? Reminds me of one of those rigged carnival games.

There is also the simple fact that people cannot communicate. Even great players need some way of coordinating. So, you have a mixed bag of skill levels combined with a possibly dramatic difference in play style, AND no way for anyone to communicate. All you can do is "Booyah" and "C'mon." While this will make people look at their maps, it doesn't tell them anything about what you want them to see. I really think even weak teams would perform better if there was a means for them to tell people what they're doing, and for others to tell them what needs to be done. I remember in one of my high school classes, we had to do a group project where we had to build a tower out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti pasta without speaking at all. It went about as well as you would expect.

You might get put on a brilliant team, but everyone does their own thing without coordinating their efforts with the rest of the team. In that case, you probably won't win if you're going up against a group with a modicum of teamwork.

 

[STELLAR-V™]

There is also the simple fact that people cannot communicate. Even great players need some way of coordinating. So, you have a mixed bag of skill levels combined with a possibly dramatic difference in play style, AND no way for anyone to communicate. All you can do is "Booyah" and "C'mon." While this will make people look at their maps, it doesn't tell them anything about what you want them to see. I really think even weak teams would perform better if there was a means for them to tell people what they're doing, and for others to tell them what needs to be done. I remember in one of my high school classes, we had to do a group project where we had to build a tower out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti pasta without speaking at all. It went about as well as you would expect.

You might get put on a brilliant team, but everyone does their own thing without coordinating their efforts with the rest of the team. In that case, you probably won't win if you're going up against a group with a modicum of teamwork.

This may seem a little too short and sweet in reply to all you wrote, but I'd once thought if Nintendo were to ask how to improve the game, to change C'mon to C'mere, and add an option to say "Look out" in case who just splatted you is still going.

 

[Award]

There is also the simple fact that people cannot communicate. Even great players need some way of coordinating. So, you have a mixed bag of skill levels combined with a possibly dramatic difference in play style, AND no way for anyone to communicate. All you can do is "Booyah" and "C'mon." While this will make people look at their maps, it doesn't tell them anything about what you want them to see. I really think even weak teams would perform better if there was a means for them to tell people what they're doing, and for others to tell them what needs to be done. I remember in one of my high school classes, we had to do a group project where we had to build a tower out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti pasta without speaking at all. It went about as well as you would expect.

You might get put on a brilliant team, but everyone does their own thing without coordinating their efforts with the rest of the team. In that case, you probably won't win if you're going up against a group with a modicum of teamwork.

I agree and disagree there. The design of the game was such that what needs to be done is self explanatory. There's a single objective an any mode, in relatively small maps where any variety of actions will lead everyone to the same objective unless that individual simply has no intention of playing the objective at all. There is also the issue that it generally would appear that "your team" is always the one incapable of teamwork while "the other team" seems to always bee well organized. How is it that it's always "the other team" If you bring a certain weapon, say, roller or eliter, your role is pretty much self defined. If you bring a shooter your role is fairly well defined as well. How much communication is needed to get 4 people with a weapon that determines their playstyle to play in a small map focusing on a single core objective? Even if you all do your own thing you're going to end up working together by accident. Assuming you're all actually working the objective at all. The only map that can lead to communications issues on strategy is saltspray, particularly TW where I often have teammates that are playing "right" but they abandon the top area in favor of ramps and the bottom, not knowing the utility of the top. That's a matter of not knowing the trick of the map.

But why is it "the other team" is always the one that appears to work as a team? My guess is the "middle players" aren't working as a team, they just have similar skill and knowledge. Where "our team" consists only of ourselves and 3 people that have no idea that you can actually charge a rainmaker shot or that you can actually go up the tunnels in Triggerfish.

I agree about the frustration of communication, but I also agree with the devs on why they didn't include it. The inevitable result is you end up with a "team leader" for whom everyone else serves. Or two conflicting team leaders cross-barking orders. It's too much "real world" and not enough fun. Nobody wants to be told what to do on their own darn recreation time, nor do they want to be told what to do by a 10 year old. Even if it was screen tap communicons which would be good, then you'd just get the people spamming demands at people and it would either be annoying or useless or both. Only bad things happen outside of organized groups which already can communicate as squads. Sure if we got a group from the boards here, tap away, we know we're working as a group. But with randoms? It would be about who's the alpha and establishes control of others.

And if the system isn't matching based on play style, then it's the fault of their own lousy lobby builder. But I'd also argue that random players that can work as a team on more complex forward strategies are inherently performing at a higher skill level (and rank) than the group that is not.

 

[Award]

This may seem a little too short and sweet in reply to all you wrote, but I'd once thought if Nintendo were to ask how to improve the game, to change C'mon to C'mere, and add an option to say "Look out" in case who just splatted you is still going.

Very true, though keep in mind that only NoA territory gets the ambiguous "C'mon" command. EU and Japan get, more or less "Follow Me!" instead. Similar to our odd NoA "Make it Rain!" instructional for Rainmaker which is as uninformative as you can get. EU and Japan get, more or less "Take the rainmaker to the goal". I absolutely love Treehouse and the work they do, but sometimes you have to wonder if they think some things through.

I agree about needing a warning command though. A lot of people just use "booyeah" for it, and I can't tell if they're warning me or cheering me on or congratulating their opponent.

 

[BlackZero]

But why is it "the other team" is always the one that appears to work as a team? My guess is the "middle players" aren't working as a team, they just have similar skill and knowledge. Where "our team" consists only of ourselves and 3 people that have no idea that you can actually charge a rainmaker shot or that you can actually go up the tunnels in Triggerfish.

Simply put, it feels like you always get the worst teammates because losing sucks and it sticks out in your mind more than winning. Look at your wins. Did you win every time because of skill, or is it possible a good chunk of your wins happened because the other team got screwed by the matchmaker? Did you win because of you personally, or did you have good teammates? I strongly suspect the truth is that your wins are a mixture of skill, luck, good teammates, advantageous weapons match-ups, map familiarity, and even things as minor as what type of mood you were in when you played.

The other team isn't exempt from these sorts of things, but I suspect most people don't really care when they are the ones winning. It only becomes important when you think you should win, but don't. Nobody analyses why they win when they think they deserve to in the same way that people are more apt to leave negative reviews than positive ones for a restaurant. People are less likely to say something when everything works like it should than when everything goes wrong.

I suspect there's some ego involved too. Look at the hundreds of rants on bad teammates. How many posts have people made raving about great teammates? Far fewer, because one expects the people they play with to be competent. It's only when they are incompetent that people take notice. It's the same thing with matchmaking. The bad matches stand out more than the good ones, and that leads people to believe they only ever get screwed and never have beneficial pairings. When you consistently play at a high level, winning becomes routine and losing sticks out in your mind. A person begins to expect a win and can't imagine why they lost.

I took a two week hiatus after a one week losing streak. Was it because the game was planning my downfall? Maybe, but it's far more likely that I lost a few games, got frustrated, played worse, got more frustrated, lost more, etc. It wasn't until I took a step back and came back to the game with a fresh attitude that things turned around. I think this is a good example of how a few bad matches can turn suspicion of a rigged matchmaker into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Especially if someone doesn't do some very important introspection after a loss to figure out how they personally may have contributed to a lost match.

I agree about needing a warning command though. A lot of people just use "booyeah" for it, and I can't tell if they're warning me or cheering me on or congratulating their opponent.

I just hit a button on the pad when I die. I'm usually watching for flankers, so I figure that's as good a way as any to let someone know the enemy's behind them. It's funny when I get "Booyah" from all the teammates in response. It's like they think I'm cheering them on.

 

[97Stephen]

Simply put, it feels like you always get the worst teammates because losing sucks and it sticks out in your mind more than winning. Look at your wins. Did you win every time because of skill, or is it possible a good chunk of your wins happened because the other team got screwed by the matchmaker? Did you win because of you personally, or did you have good teammates? I strongly suspect the truth is that your wins are a mixture of skill, luck, good teammates, advantageous weapons match-ups, map familiarity, and even things as minor as what type of mood you were in when you played.

The other team isn't exempt from these sorts of things, but I suspect most people don't really care when they are the ones winning. It only becomes important when you think you should win, but don't. Nobody analyses why they win when they think they deserve to in the same way that people are more apt to leave negative reviews than positive ones for a restaurant. People are less likely to say something when everything works like it should than when everything goes wrong.

I suspect there's some ego involved too. Look at the hundreds of rants on bad teammates. How many posts have people made raving about great teammates? Far fewer, because one expects the people they play with to be competent. It's only when they are incompetent that people take notice. It's the same thing with matchmaking. The bad matches stand out more than the good ones, and that leads people to believe they only ever get screwed and never have beneficial pairings. When you consistently play at a high level, winning becomes routine and losing sticks out in your mind. A person begins to expect a win and can't imagine why they lost.

I took a two week hiatus after a one week losing streak. Was it because the game was planning my downfall? Maybe, but it's far more likely that I lost a few games, got frustrated, played worse, got more frustrated, lost more, etc. It wasn't until I took a step back and came back to the game with a fresh attitude that things turned around. I think this is a good example of how a few bad matches can turn suspicion of a rigged matchmaker into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Especially if someone doesn't do some very important introspection after a loss to figure out how they personally may have contributed to a lost match.



I just hit a button on the pad when I die. I'm usually watching for flankers, so I figure that's as good a way as any to let someone know the enemy's behind them. It's funny when I get "Booyah" from all the teammates in response. It's like they think I'm cheering them on.

I think there is a lot of truth to that. Losses definitly stand out more than wins. I have seen some really bad teammates that could of cost us the match though, so I don't count that out entirely. I think the thing that makes us notice is that we often win and lose in streaks, and often before ranking up. I have definitely played badly before, but I'm not sure that's what causes it. I'll play a couple games where we win and I'm generally first or second, and I'll get to say 80 points. Then I'll get a game where I'll lose, "but that's okay you win some lose some". But then I'll just get one game after another where I'll be on top yet we're losing. It does get me aggravated that I can't win so I can't count that out as a possible factor, but if I'm on top I'm not playing the worst. What gets us is that in a good or even random system you should win two lose one win one lose one, but that doesn't happen. We go up and down in streaks and that makes it feel odd.

 

[Award]

Simply put, it feels like you always get the worst teammates because losing sucks and it sticks out in your mind more than winning. Look at your wins. Did you win every time because of skill, or is it possible a good chunk of your wins happened because the other team got screwed by the matchmaker? Did you win because of you personally, or did you have good teammates? I strongly suspect the truth is that your wins are a mixture of skill, luck, good teammates, advantageous weapons match-ups, map familiarity, and even things as minor as what type of mood you were in when you played.

The other team isn't exempt from these sorts of things, but I suspect most people don't really care when they are the ones winning. It only becomes important when you think you should win, but don't. Nobody analyses why they win when they think they deserve to in the same way that people are more apt to leave negative reviews than positive ones for a restaurant. People are less likely to say something when everything works like it should than when everything goes wrong.

I suspect there's some ego involved too. Look at the hundreds of rants on bad teammates. How many posts have people made raving about great teammates? Far fewer, because one expects the people they play with to be competent. It's only when they are incompetent that people take notice. It's the same thing with matchmaking. The bad matches stand out more than the good ones, and that leads people to believe they only ever get screwed and never have beneficial pairings. When you consistently play at a high level, winning becomes routine and losing sticks out in your mind. A person begins to expect a win and can't imagine why they lost.

I took a two week hiatus after a one week losing streak. Was it because the game was planning my downfall? Maybe, but it's far more likely that I lost a few games, got frustrated, played worse, got more frustrated, lost more, etc. It wasn't until I took a step back and came back to the game with a fresh attitude that things turned around. I think this is a good example of how a few bad matches can turn suspicion of a rigged matchmaker into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Especially if someone doesn't do some very important introspection after a loss to figure out how they personally may have contributed to a lost match.



I just hit a button on the pad when I die. I'm usually watching for flankers, so I figure that's as good a way as any to let someone know the enemy's behind them. It's funny when I get "Booyah" from all the teammates in response. It's like they think I'm cheering them on.

If we were talking about a normal system, I'd agree. This one isn't normal. I'm surprised to hear you say that after identifying so much of what is likely wrong with the way it works.

It's not a matter of remembering the losses and not the wins. The problem is the wins are generally in closely contested matches where a win, usually partial and not a knockout was eeked. The losses are generally total and complete shutouts. The wins usually come from occupying center and pushing the objective. The losses usually come from being overwhelmed and spawncamped. If we were talking about both win and loss being tight and in the middle of a highly contested objective, there wouldn't be much complaint. If we were talking about wins/losses always being total shutouts in both directions, well, I doubt many would even be playing the game. No, it's something different.

In TW, I hate having some super ace player on my team as much as I hate them on the other team. If they're on the other team, they end up destroying us and we spend most of the time respawning. If they're on my team, I spend the match having almost nothing to do. It's boring. I can't com[pare the experience to ranked, since in ranked, I always AM the super ace on the team. Except the previous time where everyone played well. Much of the time I'm running eliter. If the super ace levels the field before they even get to the perch, I just sit there, useless as the clock runs down. If the ace is on the other team, I get overrun and can't do much of anything either. I don't take eliter to ranked, but the same would apply. But I've never experienced it, because in the cases where the teams aren't well matched, I'm always the ace! I don't want to be, I just am because taht's where it puts me. For the same reason it wants to give me S rooms all the time in TW, I guess :p

You're right about the negativity versus people praising great teammates, but that's kind of the issue. It's a 4v4 game. I don't want overwhelming opponents any more than I want overwhelming teammates. I want good 4x4 matches that aren't dominated by individual players on any team. If individual players are dominating in a given rank, they should be playing a higher rank anyway!

The thing with the losing streaks is they're obvious and arbitrary. The idea you can play the hardest you can play for several lobbies and keep getting the same disastrous results. Then the next rotation it's suddenly becomes "easy"

One thing that I can point out about my position on it, is that technically I've yet to be truly "stuck" in any rank. Yet. I've always moved up in points by the time my session is over, but always have these strings of bad losses before magically it seems to let me win again. We'll see if I get out of where I am next time I try or if I get sent back and it's a viscous circle. It might be. But my point is, I'm not one of the people that's been stuck forever that's prone to see phantoms that don't exist - I'm someone that's "made steady progress" but can still see the almost systematic losing streaks in the process.

Even if you're entirely right, it still highlights why the rank point system is disastrously flawed and ranks should never, ever be fluid so that a rank is meaningless and doesn't indicate a given level of play if a losing streak at a given rank can move you to a lower rank and back up and back down, it then says nothing about what level of play is at a given rank. So even if you're perfectly right - it still points at a problem. Players that play at an appropriate level for a rank can't have hours of losing and barely-won wins and be bumped down into another rank, only to shoot straight back to a rank above where they started in an hour. There's something wrong with that.

 

[Award]

I think there is a lot of truth to that. Losses definitly stand out more than wins. I have seen some really bad teammates that could of cost us the match though, so I don't count that out entirely. I think the thing that makes us notice is that we often win and lose in streaks, and often before ranking up. I have definitely played badly before, but I'm not sure that's what causes it. I'll play a couple games where we win and I'm generally first or second, and I'll get to say 80 points. Then I'll get a game where I'll lose, "but that's okay you win some lose some". But then I'll just get one game after another where I'll be on top yet we're losing. It does get me aggravated that I can't win so I can't count that out as a possible factor, but if I'm on top I'm not playing the worst. What gets us is that in a good or even random system you should win two lose one win one lose one, but that doesn't happen. We go up and down in streaks and that makes it feel odd.

Very much this. If it alternated with the regular variability of competitive play it wouldn't be weird. It's the idea that "oh this is a lose session" that makes it really weird. If pro baseball teams (using baseball since they play so many games per year) were to lose 10 games, win 12, lose 14, win 16 in exactly that order, I'm pretty sure regulations commissions would start investigating possible illegal betting. Natural variability does not look like that in a competitive arena. And it's not just "random team synergy" if switching half a dozen lobbies yields the same results, Yet an hour later suddenly it goes the other way and you can't lose even if you suck personally. I know when I've done bad. Eliter in RM on Moray when I'd never played eliter on RM or RM on Moray. I sucked. We lost. Then we won. The carbon roller with sensitivity -5. I sucked BAD. We won. I switched lobbies and switched to +5. I stopped sucking. We continued winning all but one. It was like that was a "win" session, where no matter my performance or lobby, we were likely going to win, that whole rotation. I performed well. Everyone did. But I can't shake this feeling that the machine was just "giving" those wins somehow, even though they were close matches. I've also noticed if I continue playing after a rank up, it WILL be a losing streak in the new lobbies. But if I do it another day it's 50/50 chance.

I don't know if it's "rigged" or if it's the variability of being tagged problematically in player value, or flopping between inker/killer. But one way or another, the way it unfolds at least for some players is very unnatural.

 

[BlackZero]

If we were talking about a normal system, I'd agree. This one isn't normal. I'm surprised to hear you say that after identifying so much of what is likely wrong with the way it works.

The matchmaker can only pair people up based on the probability of winning. It doesn't have any control over how people actually perform. It's important to understand that limitation. Elo matchmaking does not determine skill, only probabilities. While the teams may not be perfectly balanced in TW, the imbalance shouldn't be completely one-sided in Ranked because the pool of people selected for a lobby is dramatically smaller and the player skill dispersal would be more concentrated.

Turf Wars can be a total crapshoot because it is random. I can't see that happening in Ranked though. The gaps in player skill level should be much smaller.

It's not a matter of remembering the losses and not the wins. The problem is the wins are generally in closely contested matches where a win, usually partial and not a knockout was eeked. The losses are generally total and complete shutouts. The wins usually come from occupying center and pushing the objective. The losses usually come from being overwhelmed and spawncamped.

Again, that is likely because those are the ones that stand out. I've had a lot of losses. Some where a photo-finish, and others were a shut out. I've won many matches. I couldn't tell you which ones were normal, though I suspect the answer lay somewhere in the middle. It feels like every game because it happens more often than one would like. People should always take personal experience with a grain of salt, because personal experience, by definition, is incredibly biased.

The thing with the losing streaks is they're obvious and arbitrary. The idea you can play the hardest you can play for several lobbies and keep getting the same disastrous results. Then the next rotation it's suddenly becomes "easy"

Again, this is based on personal experience, which is incredibly subjective. When I was in my losing streak, I was trying very hard to out-play the other team. I was very close to ranking up, and raised the stakes of winning and losing. When I came back, I had a very lax attitude and really didn't care what happened to my rank. I also enjoyed a wonderful three day winning streak. It could be some conspiracy engineered by a matchmaker that we have all agreed is half-***** and thrown together just so the game has something. It may also be due to the fact that I didn't put myself under any real pressure and kept a pretty calm and clear head, which allowed me to make better decisions in the game. Instead of feeling driven to set the world on fire, I just let the match unfold and exploited any opportunities I found. I believe taking that pressure off helped me play much better, even with a weapon I'm not particularly skilled at. Don't underestimate the impact that mental states have on your ability to perform. I suspect "Rankgst" has a lot to do with how people perform.

The bottom line is, the matchmaker can't control how people perform nor can it make any detailed predictions on who will win beyond a rough estimate. Saying there's some agenda behind the matchmaking suggests the computer is somehow making this personal and has a means of calculating how people will play in far greater detail than we've established that it can. It's not like the computer actually knows your skill or has any way of determining that based on what we've discussed on how matchmaking works. It may seem arbitrary, but it's actually stochastic. You can experiment with playing better or worse to adjust your position as best or worst player in the lobby to test our theory on matchmaking (aim for the middle). If all else fails and you're in a rut, it may not hurt to walk away for a few days and come back without any sort of mental baggage or pressure to win.

 

[97Stephen]

The matchmaker can only pair people up based on the probability of winning. It doesn't have any control over how people actually perform. It's important to understand that limitation. Elo matchmaking does not determine skill, only probabilities. While the teams may not be perfectly balanced in TW, the imbalance shouldn't be completely one-sided in Ranked because the pool of people selected for a lobby is dramatically smaller and the player skill dispersal would be more concentrated.

Turf Wars can be a total crapshoot because it is random. I can't see that happening in Ranked though. The gaps in player skill level should be much smaller.



Again, that is likely because those are the ones that stand out. I've had a lot of losses. Some where a photo-finish, and others were a shut out. I've won many matches. I couldn't tell you which ones were normal, though I suspect the answer lay somewhere in the middle. It feels like every game because it happens more often than one would like. People should always take personal experience with a grain of salt, because personal experience, by definition, is incredibly biased.



Again, this is based on personal experience, which is incredibly subjective. When I was in my losing streak, I was trying very hard to out-play the other team. I was very close to ranking up, and raised the stakes of winning and losing. When I came back, I had a very lax attitude and really didn't care what happened to my rank. I also enjoyed a wonderful three day winning streak. It could be some conspiracy engineered by a matchmaker that we have all agreed is half-***** and thrown together just so the game has something. It may also be due to the fact that I didn't put myself under any real pressure and kept a pretty calm and clear head, which allowed me to make better decisions in the game. Instead of feeling driven to set the world on fire, I just let the match unfold and exploited any opportunities I found. I believe taking that pressure off helped me play much better, even with a weapon I'm not particularly skilled at. Don't underestimate the impact that mental states have on your ability to perform. I suspect "Rankgst" has a lot to do with how people perform.

The bottom line is, the matchmaker can't control how people perform nor can it make any detailed predictions on who will win beyond a rough estimate. Saying there's some agenda behind the matchmaking suggests the computer is somehow making this personal and has a means of calculating how people will play in far greater detail than we've established that it can. It's not like the computer actually knows your skill or has any way of determining that based on what we've discussed on how matchmaking works. It may seem arbitrary, but it's actually stochastic. You can experiment with playing better or worse to adjust your position as best or worst player in the lobby to test our theory on matchmaking (aim for the middle). If all else fails and you're in a rut, it may not hurt to walk away for a few days and come back without any sort of mental baggage or pressure to win.

Personal experience may be subjective and biased but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm just trying to analyze why these streaks happen. I know they happen, they have happened many times. I don't think that the matchmaking is out to intentionally screw me, I'm wondering whether there is something in it that causes it. Could it be when I see the points rise I get a surge of adrenaline, lose my head and can't hit a thing? I can't rule that out as a possibility, but when I look at the list when I'm losing I'm on top. I find it hard to believe that I'm playing that badly if I'm on top. I do have a theory about that though. Since the matchmaking takes your past matches into account, it might be putting me on top just because I was winning before. That's just a theory, though it would explain why I'm on top when I'm losing. I always try to stay calm but I don't always succeed:(

 

[Award]

he matchmaker can only pair people up based on the probability of winning. It doesn't have any control over how people actually perform. It's important to understand that limitation. Elo matchmaking does not determine skill, only probabilities. While the teams may not be perfectly balanced in TW, the imbalance shouldn't be completely one-sided in Ranked because the pool of people selected for a lobby is dramatically smaller and the player skill dispersal would be more concentrated.

That's the problem though, the imbalance is completely one sided in ranked. It is equally, if not more imbalanced than the majority of TW matches. Except when it isn't. That comes back to the ripple effect. The bad matchmaking paired with the disastrous rank points system yields ranks that, instead of providing matches consistent with what should be the rank's skill system, you get matches that are as random and lopsided as a TW match, but with a more immediately competitive objective. If it were only "somewhat imbalanced based on the skill level" it wouldn't be half as bad as playing against a B+ team with a C team like it is now. It's TW bad through and through. And that's the fault of the scoring mixed with the matchmaking. Which brings us back to square one.

Turf Wars can be a total crapshoot because it is random. I can't see that happening in Ranked though. The gaps in player skill level should be much smaller.

TW isn't random though, Not anymore, since 2.4. It's much more likely to put me in all S rooms than other players, and much less likely to put me in all C or B rooms. I don't know what criteria it uses or now, but it's definitely matching skill level in some capacity now. And it's not applying rank because then I wouldn't get S's!

But the worst imbalanced games there aren't less imbalanced or more imbalanced than ranked!

Again, that is likely because those are the ones that stand out. I've had a lot of losses. Some where a photo-finish, and others were a shut out. I've won many matches. I couldn't tell you which ones were normal, though I suspect the answer lay somewhere in the middle. It feels like every game because it happens more often than one would like. People should always take personal experience with a grain of salt, because personal experience, by definition, is incredibly biased.

No, it feels like every game because for some sessions it's virtually every game back to back. Since I play the game often enough, and steadily enough, just in TW, unlike people who only play ranked when they play, I'm familiar enough with win streaks and lose streaks, and the "streakage", while it sometimes happens in TW (only for a specific rotation, then it's different again) it's much more pronounced in ranked. I had a session on Sunday afternoon in TW that was a similar streak of bad games, but oddly they were NOT all losing games. It was 50/50 win lose. But it was a miserable experience because everyone else was S rank. I was getting splatted constantly but the rest of the team was on enough equal footing as the enemy to actually pull wins. It still felt miserable because my experience sucked. I kept trying to get new lobbies that were better and I'd keep ending up with the same problem

But that wasn't win/lose predetermined, it was equal chances to win. It was just awful for ME because I couldn't do well. The ranked problem is worse. Fixed lose streaks against MORE imbalanced teams (my S teams were mostly balanced, I just couldn't keep up with the other 7 players. Though I still went 1/5, 0/6or so, which is STILL more useful to the team than some of my ranked team members end up being. No, there's something sinister about ranked.

Again, I'm not saying this as someone bitter about being held down. I've had steady progress so far. I'm saying this as someone that's watched arbitrary, inexplicable results in large patterns based on seeing teams that were so far apart in skill that it made no sense they were in the same rank at all.

 

[BlackZero]

Personal experience may be subjective and biased but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm just trying to analyze why these streaks happen. I know they happen, they have happened many times. I don't think that the matchmaking is out to intentionally screw me, I'm wondering whether there is something in it that causes it.

I'm not saying they don't. I just think that people are over-analyzing it. Losing streaks are just part of gaming. I don't know how the game updates your player value. I suspect (but can't prove) that it doesn't change your player value until after you back out of a lobby, but it may not update your player value until you back out of multiplayer completely and go to Inkopolis. In this case, your player value wouldn't update to reflect your latest performances until after you left multiplayer mode. At that point, your data would update and your matches would reflect the new data. This could be why you don't notice any significant change in the quality of matches: without leaving to Inkopolis, your player data doesn't update. Beyond that, I don't know.

That's the problem though, the imbalance is completely one sided in ranked. It is equally, if not more imbalanced than the majority of TW matches. Except when it isn't.

Bear in mind that Elo matchmaking strives for 50/50, but will settle for less if it has to or if the devs set a wide range of percentages considered "even." The game may try to get a 50/50, but may end up with a 55/45 or 60/40 depending on how the player values average out. That may account for this too. I don't know how much flexibility the matchmaking algorithm has.

TW isn't random though, Not anymore, since 2.4.

I'm not convinced, largely because I can't find any information on what they actually changed. Afaik, pre-2.4 matchmaking was supposed to use the same concept of matching similarly skilled players up with each other. Also, the update blurb says "In Regular Battle and Splatfest, players of similar skill will be matched more often." "More often" is a pretty flaccid promise that says to me "we kinda improved it, but didn't change a whole lot." I'm still pretty sure it's more or less random, or at least stochastic.

Again, I'm not saying this as someone bitter about being held down. I've had steady progress so far. I'm saying this as someone that's watched arbitrary, inexplicable results in large patterns based on seeing teams that were so far apart in skill that it made no sense they were in the same rank at all.

So, you're saying that your matches could have gone either way? I'm not trying to be an *******, but that's what 50/50 means. It means that, in spite of things like skill, luck or random chance can still cast the deciding vote. That's not imbalanced, that's just unlucky. I agree that the matchmaking system is poor, but I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say every match is slanted against someone. I think a lot of it is just luck: someone zigged when they should have zagged, or the other team got a lucky shot in, someone got an ink-strike off just in time to tip coverage into their favor. This has worked both for and against me many times. It's just one of those things.

If I were to keep an accurate record of my shut outs, curb stomps, almost wins, and almost losses, I don't think there would be an appreciable statistical relationship. Even if I feel like I have more bad matches than good, I don't think my stats would support that very strongly. I think I'd see a jump in my player value after a winning streak, a dip after a losing streak, and shifts from other players with higher player values to lower values based on how I was doing.

The only think I can think of that would impact this would be the uncertainty variable (sigma), which increases if you are inconsistent with your wins and losses. If bounce between wins and losses, the game "loses confidence" in your ability to win despite your player value. It reflects this uncertainty by increasing your sigma value, which pulls your player value down when it's averaging people up for matchmaking. This would match you with players who's values are lower than your actual value, but are in the same tier after your sigma weighs your player value down. This would make you perform as the best player in the lobby and possibly increase the chances of you getting teamed up with the weaker players to balance the match out. With all that said, I don't know if a normal Elo system uses a sigma value in that way, so this is wild ***** guessing.

 

[Award]

Again, this is based on personal experience, which is incredibly subjective. When I was in my losing streak, I was trying very hard to out-play the other team. I was very close to ranking up, and raised the stakes of winning and losing. When I came back, I had a very lax attitude and really didn't care what happened to my rank. I also enjoyed a wonderful three day winning streak. It could be some conspiracy engineered by a matchmaker that we have all agreed is half-***** and thrown together just so the game has something. It may also be due to the fact that I didn't put myself under any real pressure and kept a pretty calm and clear head, which allowed me to make better decisions in the game. Instead of feeling driven to set the world on fire, I just let the match unfold and exploited any opportunities I found. I believe taking that pressure off helped me play much better, even with a weapon I'm not particularly skilled at. Don't underestimate the impact that mental states have on your ability to perform. I suspect "Rankgst" has a lot to do with how people perform.

Or your winning streak was an example of this "streak system." Then it'll put you on a losing streak again. In fact I can guarantee you it will happen. It has happened to everyone here. For no identifiable reason you will start facing matches back to back against what seems to be opponents clearly well beyond the skill level of the other matches in the rank, or with a team that is vastly inferior. Above when you said players in ranked should be closer in skill than the randomness in TW. By B rank players should know how to shoot an opponent off the tower. Unless of course they've never played TC, which comes back to all mode need to be mandatory, or ranked separately. I'm not trying to rag on you, I know what you're saying, but it just doesn't match the abnormal trends we've parrticipated in. Whether it's because of intent or a badly broken system, it's definitely not "performance based" when it happens (in either direction.)

The bottom line is, the matchmaker can't control how people perform nor can it make any detailed predictions on who will win beyond a rough estimate. Saying there's some agenda behind the matchmaking suggests the computer is somehow making this personal and has a means of calculating how people will play in far greater detail than we've established that it can. It's not like the computer actually knows your skill or has any way of determining that based on what we've discussed on how matchmaking works. It may seem arbitrary, but it's actually stochastic. You can experiment with playing better or worse to adjust your position as best or worst player in the lobby to test our theory on matchmaking (aim for the middle). If all else fails and you're in a rut, it may not hurt to walk away for a few days and come back without any sort of mental baggage or pressure to win.

We haven't actually established how it identifies player value and chance to win. We established how it uses that value to make (bad) teams, and we've established that maybe lobbies are based on play style. But we haven't established how the player value used by he Elo is determined. Regardless, it would be simple enough to rig the matches even without figuring that out. Instead of having the Elo match 50/50, just have it match 60/40.

To do further testing I may have to create an alt though. I just need the time to get a new character to level20...

 

[BlackZero]

But we haven't established how the player value used by he Elo is determined

In chess, all new players are assigned one (800 or 1000 iirc). They then play provisional games with a heightened K factor that increases and decreases this value accordingly. Once the provisional period is over, their value goes up based on what the player value of their opponent is. Once they hit a certain value (like 1200), they go up a tier. When this happens, they earn less points from players of the tier they just joined, and all the tiers below. Mix and repeat until they reach Grand Master. In the mean time, they give more points to newer players as they go up in tier levels, and also lose more points for every loss.

Splatoon could use the same system: assign people who just started multiplayer a fixed "beginner value." If TW groups people based on skill level, they would rank up in the same way that people do in Ranked, only it would be a hidden value. As they win and lose, this value would go up and down.

 

[jsilva]

I took a two week hiatus after a one week losing streak. Was it because the game was planning my downfall? Maybe, but it's far more likely that I lost a few games, got frustrated, played worse, got more frustrated, lost more, etc. It wasn't until I took a step back and came back to the game with a fresh attitude that things turned around. I think this is a good example of how a few bad matches can turn suspicion of a rigged matchmaker into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Especially if someone doesn't do some very important introspection after a loss to figure out how they personally may have contributed to a lost match.

You had some good points although this one was my favourite. I can say my attitude in the past during losing streaks affected my gameplay. A self-fulfilling prophesy as you said, but in retrospect I'd say my attitude might have made it worse but the result was more or less inevitable.

I've been observing these things intently for about four months when I started feeling like there was more to the matching system. Throughout that time I've humbled myself and tried to analyse my own playing and tried to reevaluate situations objectively. I can absolutely respect your cool-minded approach to this and I've really appreciated your input. Even after all of my observations I've been trying to reevaluate.

However, all of my observations with my three accounts going up to S, watching the accounts of my two sons, hearing reports from other people, etc., just don't fit into a matching system that doesn't either have an agenda or a severe error that effectively results in bias, whether it be in losing streaks or easy winning streaks. I've seen way too much to dismiss it as random or an anomaly, even if things balance out in the end, which I question if they always do.

I'm glad Splatoon has done well because fundamentally it's an awesome game. But ranked matchmaking and points award/loss is not leaving a good taste in my mouth at all.

 

[Award]

I'm not saying they don't. I just think that people are over-analyzing it. Losing streaks are just part of gaming. I don't know how the game updates your player value. I suspect (but can't prove) that it doesn't change your player value until after you back out of a lobby, but it may not update your player value until you back out of multiplayer completely and go to Inkopolis. In this case, your player value wouldn't update to reflect your latest performances until after you left multiplayer mode. At that point, your data would update and your matches would reflect the new data. This could be why you don't notice any significant change in the quality of matches: without leaving to Inkopolis, your player data doesn't update. Beyond that, I don't know.

Interesting. that's possible. I've been dropping to the plaza more frequently recently to check the ranks of my lobby. I wonder what effect if any it will have (yet again in TW, I got a lobby with me, a B-, an A-, and a C+ against an S, S, S+, S+ team. WTF is with the matchmaking? I'm against a full S/S+ team 1/2 of all matches, you can't tell me that 1/2 of all players are top ranks in TW for crying out loud!

On the other hand, oddly, I just had a TW match with 2 S's and a B on my team. The other team consisted of A, A, A+, A-. We won, and I had the best k/d and #3 ink (custom eliter). How is it I'm performing well on an S team when S's normally trounce me (or dominate when on my team.) I'm starting to REALLY understand the frustration of @Holidaze and others about scrubby players in S rank. These guys weren't scrubby at ALL, but they were at the same level as me more or less, which is to say not nearly as good as a good many S players I encounter. How is it S consists of players ranging from my skill to superhuman robots with 100% accuracy? And what good is a ranked mode when the skill pool of the top tier consists of "everyone that doesn't paint the walls?"

Bear in mind that Elo matchmaking strives for 50/50, but will settle for less if it has to or if the devs set a wide range of percentages considered "even." The game may try to get a 50/50, but may end up with a 55/45 or 60/40 depending on how the player values average out. That may account for this too. I don't know how much flexibility the matchmaking algorithm has.

That definitely makes sense, and opens the question, just how wide a range do they give it. And if we're to the point it might be giving a wide range of matches, it's hard to distinguish between rigged, broken, or rigged to mask that it's broken. When there's players in the A ranks that carry the rainmaker to their OWN base, we really have to question how they get there, and what player value the system is assigning them and how? That may still come back somewhat to not having mandatory modes: You can't have players that jump into an S rank game that don't even know how to play that game mode. They're damaging other players. Though there's far too many wildly mismatched teams to think most of them "never played that mode before."

So, you're saying that your matches could have gone either way? I'm not trying to be an *******, but that's what 50/50 means. It means that, in spite of things like skill, luck or random chance can still cast the deciding vote. That's not imbalanced, that's just unlucky. I agree that the matchmaking system is poor, but I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say every match is slanted against someone. I think a lot of it is just luck: someone zigged when they should have zagged, or the other team got a lucky shot in, someone got an ink-strike off just in time to tip coverage into their favor. This has worked both for and against me many times. It's just one of those things.

If I were to keep an accurate record of my shut outs, curb stomps, almost wins, and almost losses, I don't think there would be an appreciable statistical relationship. Even if I feel like I have more bad matches than good, I don't think my stats would support that very strongly. I think I'd see a jump in my player value after a winning streak, a dip after a losing streak, and shifts from other players with higher player values to lower values based on how I was doing.

No, no, no, that's not what I mean. I mean it's the pattern that's inexplicable. In any game of chance and probability, if you take different random pools, you shouldn't end up with the same result of mismatched teams in every single sampling. There's something causing that. Either we're missing a key point of how it makes the lobbies (probable) or it's not entirely arbitrary in terms of how it matches you. In any game of chance the systematic losing/winning streaks should not happen in series. It's not statistically possible to happen with such consistency. Not in a truly random system. Alternating blocks of mostly the same result can't happen repeatedly across a large sample group. Something other than luck is causing that. It may be as simple as a key factor we're omitting from lobby building. (Still doesn't mean it's not broken.)

The only think I can think of that would impact this would be the uncertainty variable (sigma), which increases if you are inconsistent with your wins and losses. If bounce between wins and losses, the game "loses confidence" in your ability to win despite your player value. It reflects this uncertainty by increasing your sigma value, which pulls your player value down when it's averaging people up for matchmaking. This would match you with players who's values are lower than your actual value, but are in the same tier after your sigma weighs your player value down. This would make you perform as the best player in the lobby and possibly increase the chances of you getting teamed up with the weaker players to balance the match out. With all that said, I don't know if a normal Elo system uses a sigma value in that way, so this is wild ***** guessing.

That's a promising thought, but if it pulled your value down, would that not mean it would have to pair you with superior (or average) players to make up for your reduced value on the team, and/or pair you against weaker opponents? I'd think the sigma problem would be INCREASED consistency not decreased. If it's fairly certain you'll win they can have lower value team mates against moderate value opponents.

If I'm going to take a guess at what's wrong *IF* we're going to assume flawed algorithms are to blame alone, and that it's not artificially rigged, and that it's not using additional factors to intentionally pair players a certain way, then my guess here is that the matchmaking system ASSUMES ranks will consist of players of similar skill and the algorithm is designed with that factor assumed, when in reality the disastrous ranking system creates too wide a spread in skill in a given rank and thus it breaks down (and furthers the widening of the spread in skill.)