matchmaking & rank insecurity

One of the reasons I'm starting to play Zero-K less is because of the current skill based ranking system. I got lots of elo by beating people in the steam release, and now I'm sitting at Giant. However, I'm already getting my ass whooped by people in subgiant. I enjoy playing matchmaking, however, I also don't want to lose my rank. I realize many people may find this amusing, as it is a simple icon on my profile, but I still don't want to lose it.

I'm wondering how many other people feel this way.

I propose that matchmaking should have a ranked mode and unranked mode. Both players will still be put into the same queue, only when you queue as ranked, the match result will affect your competitive elo and your rank, but when you queue as unranked, the match result will only affect your casual elo, which will be behind the scenes and won't affect your rank.

I think I'll feel better if I lose a rank, since I'm near the bottom of Supergiant and I believe I am overrated (probably from beating newbs after the Steam release, who turned out to be better). I've had this pattern recently: I play MM games, mostly losing to people with similar rating, and my rating goes down. But then when I stop playing for a bit (being busy with stuff that's not ZK), my rating goes up (presumably because the people I played improved rapidly).

Clear downward trend in my skill since Steam release (only 10 points, but it's there):


But that peak on Apr 29 has been getting higher since WHR can retroactively change rating, so my visible rating actually increased since the Steam release despite the reported downward trend.

I think your current rank is fairly safe; you're in the middle of Giant (look at that progress bar on your userpage) and will need to lose over 100 rating points to drop a rank with the current playerbase. My Supergiant rank is not as safe; I'm barely hanging on to it now and will probably lose it as the active player base gradually shrinks and becomes more skilled on average (due to the influx of new players slowing). But until I lose it, yeah, I guess I have a bit of rank insecurity.

It's funny because DrDoom is probably about as good as me, if not better. Yet after 500 games he was still way down at rank #40 whilst I was at #12 after about a dozen games because I'd barely played ZK at all.

SnuggleBass I share the same experience with you. The current system often makes matches that are entirely one sided because some people think any match is better than no match.

100% for max player retention and rank security.

quote: 100% for max player retention and rank security.

A joke, but with some truth. I wonder if you could implement a MM system where players were given an option of how easy or hard a match they wanted, and then people wanting easy matches could be paired against people wanting hard matches. It would be like smurfing, but legit. You could only do this if the MM pool were large enough, so I'm not seriously suggesting it for ZK.

However, maybe here's an idea that actually could help us. Have an option for how loose a match the player is willing to accept, and give them some feedback of how long they may have to wait in order to get the match they want. Tighter matches are better games, but maybe someone would rather take a looser match just to play instead of wait. So instead of answering GoogleFrog's question and mandating the match tolerance for everyone, let people decide for themselves what their tolerance should be.

quote: Personally, a big reason I don't play 1v1 much anymore is that I feel like there's not many people with which I'm evenly matched.

Give yourself a handicap when you play against someone obviously below your skill. You could even come up with some kind of standardized handicap, like "build one storage at the start of the game for every 50 points in ratings difference" or some such.

Ideally, you would be able to somehow indicate to the ZK infrastructure that a match should be unrated, so that WHR would not take your handicapped play into consideration (which would otherwise incorrectly lower your rating and raise that of your opponent and all other players). Maybe there could be a setting like "Put me in a rated game if the win prediction is 40%-60%, otherwise put me in an unrated game with up to a 10%-90% prediction". It would be like simultaneously joining a ranked queue and an unranked queue and taking the first match you can get that meets your preferences.

quote: but also you prompt other people to smurf as well to actually get the rating they actually deserve

What? No. WHR is quicker to catch up to what's happening than elo, but you don't make WHR more accurate by removing data.

What will likely happen though is that you're gonna get spotted and your elo merged, for precisely zero difference towards "attaining proper ranking" compared to if you played under your main.

quote: WHR takes to account your inactivity. If you become inactive your uncertainity grows which in turn means that you get you will acheive your rank faster.

You can't use that to actually grow your rank, though. You have to actually win for that, and i don't see how periods of inactivity which grow your uncertainty will help you actually defeat a similarly-skilled player, especially consistently so. If you can pull that off, you can just do it without waiting for uncertainty to grow. Because you're legit good.

quote: So not only you can't grind but you will actually gain more points... BY NOT PLAYING. I guess I just gotta buy a VPN to not keep myself rusty and see you in a year when I will actually be able to place on the ladder where I belong.

Your skill grows in inactivity in absolute terms because there's a ranking inflation with new players bringing new points into the system - sure. But you won't grow anywhere high this way, because the people higher on the ladder will capture a bigger share of this inflation.

Unless you start winning against them, of course.

Just let people never decrease in whatever "star" they have. Obviously its ridiculous if people wont play because they are afraid to lose their star...

Are the two queues independent? You should expect that to at least double wait times, but in reality the waits could be much much longer.

I think ehtomlol is looking in the right direction. The current rank system is all accuracy with no concessions to the humans who are interacting with the system.