Arena Matchmaking System FAQ

#0 - Feb. 6, 2009, 8:26 p.m.

Why am I 1300 when my record is 50/50? 70/30?
Let’s turn the question around first. Why is my record 50/50? If your record is 50/50, that means your match-making rating (MMR) is almost exactly correct for you. It means we are finding teams that as near as possible match the ability of your team. It means that you are being matched as fairly as possible. If we matched 1300 teams at 1500 instead, they would only win 30% of their matches. We would rather those teams win half their matches.

But I’m 70/30, what about that?
If you are 70/30 and we think you are 1300, your MMR will climb to roughly 1533. You will then be matched with 1500+ teams, and your record should decrease to 50/50.

Yeah, so why is my rating still going down then?
The team rating will drop until it reaches the average match-making rating of the teams you beat 50% of the time. For example, if we are matching you against 1200-rated teams, and you are winning half the time, it will drop to 1200. If you are winning 70% of the time against 1200-rated teams, then your MMR and TR should move up to 1433.

But I’m not matching 1200-rated teams, I looked these teams up and most are near 1500.
It is likely that those teams have an MMR of 1200, even though their TR is 1500. This means that even though they look like 1500 or 1400-rated teams, they have been playing more like 1200-rated teams this season.

No matter what I do, my rating dives to 1300
If your team rating keeps diving to 1300 while you win 50% of your matches, then you are winning matches against 1300 players.
Being 1300 means:
-- You go 50/50 vs 1300 teams
-- You are better than 25% of all teams
It means that the teams we are matching you against have average MMRs well under 1500.

How will I get to 1650?
-- The definition of a 1650 team in both the new and old system is “Better than 68% of all teams on this BG in this bracket”
-- To be 1650, your team needs to be better than 68% of all teams
-- This means you will beat a team with an MMR of 1500 63 out of 100 matches, and go 50/50 vs. a team with an MMR of 1650

Wait, why 63%? Shouldn’t it be 68% then?
-- Smart question! The reason it’s not 68% is because a 1650-rated team does not always perform exactly at 1650. We take this into account.

But I’m stuck at 1300, I never get to play those higher-rated teams:
-- A 1650 player will win about 4 of 5 matches against a 1300 player
-- If you are at 1300 but belong at 1650, you should be winning 4 of every 5 matches
-- If you do that, your MMR will go up steadily, and you will face harder and harder opponents
-- Once you move your MMR to 1650, your TR will follow

How long will this take?
-- This depends on how much evidence we have that you *were* a 1300 team
-- If your team *Really* is a 1650 team, average case is 40 games
-- But it can go higher and lower. Great luck = 16, Terrible luck = 150

I guess that’s correct theoretically, but it’s very discouraging:
We do believe that we can improve the experience for teams that start at 1500 and go down from there. However, the changes we prefer merit waiting for the next arena season.

Sindra

#1 - Feb. 6, 2009, 8:46 p.m.

For what it's worth, you might want to add, that Kalgan gave a few insightful comments to this topic in the american forums.

Kalgan: Shadoweric, to try to clarify what was happening under the hood here's a report of the games your team played. My following post comments as to what was going on with the system (it's too long to all post in this one). For reference, TR is your team's rating, MMR is your team's matchmaking rating (the "hidden rating"), OMMR is the opposing team's matchmaking "hidden" rating, TRC is your team rating change, MMRC is your team's average matchmaking rating change.

CREATED_TIME TR MMR RESULT OMMR TRC MMRC
1/24/2009 2:50 1434 1350 Lost 1378 -15 -72
1/24/2009 2:57 1419 1278 Lost 1240 -19 -83
1/24/2009 3:04 1400 1195 Lost 1093 -22 -83
1/24/2009 3:16 1378 1112 Lost 1313 -16 -34
2/5/2009 22:08 1362 1078 Lost 1154 -23 -49
2/5/2009 22:12 1339 1028 Lost 928 -28 -77
2/5/2009 22:18 1311 950 Won 842 1 40
2/5/2009 22:23 1312 991 Won 923 2 41
2/5/2009 22:28 1314 1032 Won 689 0 13
2/5/2009 22:32 1314 1046 Won 1109 6 60
2/5/2009 22:38 1320 1106 Lost 1166 -21 -38
2/5/2009 22:42 1299 1067 Lost 957 -27 -62
2/5/2009 22:48 1272 1004 Lost 1133 -21 -29
2/5/2009 22:52 1251 975 Won 932 3 38
2/5/2009 22:57 1254 1013 Won 1004 4 36
2/5/2009 23:32 1268 1167 Lost 1061 -21 -53
2/5/2009 23:39 1247 1114 Lost 1000 -24 -59
2/5/2009 23:45 1223 1055 Lost 1132 -17 -29
2/5/2009 23:48 1206 1025 Lost 1035 -22 -39
2/5/2009 23:55 1184 985 Won 1090 8 45
2/5/2009 23:58 1192 1031 Lost 1015 -20 -34
2/6/2009 0:04 1172 997 Won 1042 8 40

And finally his comments on the data

Comments on the results...

- Your team started with the system believing that your skill as a team was around 1350, but with a low degree of confidence in that number because the system was new. Your team lost versus a team we believed to be of around 1378 skill, so the system starts trying to aggressively lower the quality of your opponents to see if you do better (the lack of confidence the system had in your rating is why it is changing your MMR quickly at ths point).

- Your team continued to lose versus teams we believed to be around 1240 rating, 1093 rating, 1313 rating, 1154 rating, and even 928 rating. That's six losses in a row to teams far below your team's currently displayed rating, your currently displayed rating of 1311 is pretty high considering the teams you're losing to and the game believes you are probably not 1311 skill.

- You win your first game, versus a team the game believes to be about 842 rating (as seen in their MMR above). Your team only gains 1 team rating, because after all your team's visible rating is already 1311, and this win was merely versus a 842 skill team. Your matchmaking rating goes up by 40 points though, as the game thinking there's definitely a chance you're better than 900 rating.

- You win 3 more in a row, versus teams the game believes to be of about 923, 689, and 1109 rating. Your matchmaking rating is going up meaningfully, but since these teams are rated so far below your team's rating, you aren't gaining much for it.

- You lose 3 in a row after this against teams of 1166, 957, and 1133 quality. These teams are significantly below your team rating, and the system is gaining confidence that your current skill is not 1300+, so it's moving you toward around a 1005 rating (this is why you're losing a lot of team rating for your losses)... the system is pretty confident based on who you're beating versus who you're losing to that you're overrated at your 1200+ rating.

- Your team wins a few versus teams of 932 and 1004 rating, teams we expect you to beat close to 50% of the time now, so the game is matching you against opponents that are probably close to your skill, but unfortunately your team rating is way higher than that already, so you aren't gaining much TR for the wins (no surprise).

- Your team loses 4 more games versus teams of around 1000 rating, indicating that maybe 1000 rating is even possibly too high, your team rating keeps moving below 1200 on it's way to around 900 pretty quickly (losing between 17 to 24 team rating per game).

- You win, lose, win versus teams of about 1050 average matchmaking rating. You're going about 50/50 versus teams that the game thinks is about your rating (1000 or so), so your team rating continues to move toward that.

As explained in the FAQ's, your team rating is moving toward a rating where you beat opponents about 50% of the time. To remain at the 1434 rating your team started at, you would have had to have been winning 50% of your games versus teams that were significantly more successful.

As some of you might see, the matchmaking rating actually adapts very quickly. By no means are you pigeonholed at a rating, it adapts more quickly in many respects than a traditional Elo system. However, you do have to be able to beat teams of a given rating about 50% of the time in order to get your team rating to a given level.

BTW, hopefully in the process of copy/pasting data and trying to get the formatting right I didn't mess up any of the data.

Source: http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue-tracker/us-forums/14910422788-arena-matchmaking-system-faq.html

Edit: Blue tagging this post.

Vaneras

#10 - Feb. 6, 2009, 1:30 p.m.

Q u o t e:
kalgan posted 2-3 more times, something interesting:

Player questions-post.

Q u o t e:
What about the other end of the spectrum? I'm pretty much the opposite of the OP, with two teams in Gladiator range at the moment. You are investing a lot of resources in making sure the bottom rungs of the ladder are having fun; this is a good thing no doubt. But you talk about the need for gear rewards for the people playing at 1200 and 1300 ratings. Where does that leave the players who are actually good at arena? You seem to be saying to the low ranked players "we understand that playing the game alone isn't enough, and that you need a reward structure of worth to feel you've accomplished something." But if you start giving things of value out at 1200-1300 or whatever, can you leave things of value for the 1800-1900? More likely, you've shifted the "fun for funs sake" role from the bad players to the good players.

Is it simply an issue of scale? There are a lot more bad players to appease than good players to appease, so thats where you need to focus? Or are you also aware that through this, there needs to be a worthwhile reason to compete at the high end as well, and not just for competition's sake? WoW, to me, is about personal progression first and foremost; be it in professions, raiding, farming, or PVP. Are you prepared to devalue the achievements of the top end to appease the masses at the low end?

I've got Deadly Shoulders. This, to me, was an accomplishment. It sounds like you now view that structure as a failure. I personally find it rewarding. I know others do as well. Is this no longer a legititmate feeling in the eyes of Blizzard?

WotLK has been fun, but I keep feeling like I'm losing out because I'm a good player. I actually had the thought the other day "if only I were worse at WoW, I'd enjoy it a lot more." I can't imagine that's a feeling you want to cultivate, but this latest series of posts is starting to reinforce it.

Please tell me if you still have plans for the upper end of Arena other than hoping you can queue when teams even remotely close to your rating are, and you won't have to farm 2-4 points all night long. Please tell me good players still rate in World of Warcraft.

Kalgan Answer:

Q u o t e:
There's still plenty of room for some items to be pretty hard to get without causing most players to be left out of good gear. As I mentioned earlier, with the start of the next season we expect new teams and personal ratings to start much lower than they have before (not 1500). That way, everyone's experience is to climb toward the rating they're successfully playing at. So, knowing that, here's what our current thinking is on rating requirements for season 6.

Disclaimer: all of this is subject to change!
Other notes/caveats:
- items with no rating listed would have no rating requirement

- it won't be quite as easy to get deadly items via emblems of conquest as hateful items currently are via emblems of valor

- the new Archavon boss (a new boss located in another wing of the Vault of Archavon), will have slightly different drops than the current Archavon (he can drop Furious Gloves/Legs, or any possible random honor item in addition to tier 8 pve set items similar to Archavon's t7 pve set drops, but cannot drop the Furious Chest piece)

- honor/arena costs aren't listed but Hateful costs would be similar to current Savage, Deadly costs similar to current Hateful, and Furious costs would be similar to current Deadly

- you might note that the Furious weapon is still at a high requirement, 2k, the thinking being that most players are encouraged to get their weapon upgrade through pve, although hardcore arena competitors have an outlet to get an equivalent weapon through arenas (if you're hardcore enough for 2k, you can forego raiding for a weapon)

- additional note, "deadly trinket" refers to the current battlemaster's trinkets, "furious trinket" refers to an upgraded medallion of the alliance/horde

Hateful Gloves
Hateful Legs
Hateful Chest
Hateful Helm
Hateful Shoulders
Hateful Ring
Hateful Trinket

Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape
Deadly Trinket

1300+: Deadly Relics/Idols/Librams/Totems
1350+: Deadly Gloves
1400+: Deadly Legs
1450+: Deadly Chest
1500+: Deadly Helm
1550+: Deadly Shoulders

1400+: Furious Bracer (honor)
1450+: Furious Belt (honor)
1500+: Furious Boots (honor)
1550+: Furious Neck (honor)

1600+: Furious Gloves
1650+: Furious Ring (honor)
1700+: Furious Legs
1750+: Furious Chest
1800+: Furious Trinket (honor)
1850+: Furious Helm
1900+: Furious Cape (honor)
1950+: Furious Wands/Relics/etc
2000+: Furious Weapon
2100+: Furious Shoulders
2300+: Furious Tabard (purely cosmetic and awesome looking)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422788&sid=1&pageNo=7#132

Guess you beat me to it Ninf... Quoting for visibility :-)