UPDATE:

The changes to the CSR update to bring it more in line with a player's MMR are now live. With the change, CSR will go up +15 on a win as long MMR is also going up (TrueSkill2 agrees with increasing skill). Players will also only lose -1 if their CSR is below their MMR when they lose. This way, players who end up with losses despite high performances will quickly regain the lost CSR, and keep their CSRs representative of their actual skill.



Likewise, players with overestimated CSRs will lose -15 on a loss as long as their MMR is below their CSR, but still gain +1 on a win. This prevents and undoes the negative effects of CSR inflation that tend to happen when a player is carried, or participates in a win even though they performed poorly.



The changes will slowly move everyone towards where they should be, but may not fully correct the inflation and deflation by the end of the season.



Next season, all players will place 200 CSR behind their MMRs instead of 100 because the new system converges much faster. In addition, no one will start above 1700 CSR.



This will result in next season having some of the most accurate visible Ranks we've had in H5 to date.



We know these changes will feel frustrating to players with inflated CSRs, but feel that the benefits of the ranks reflecting actual skill are important. They ensure you know how much you can still improve, and they also send the right message to your opponents at the end of a match. Currently, PGCRs are showing matches that look much less fair than they actually are. This will improve that greatly.



Two main comments this week.

Why am I matching against Champ / Onyx parties, often with only Diamond-level (or worse) teammates?



We have seen concerns with matching what appear to be stronger teams than expected. What you are seeing is their visible ranks, or CSR, and is not the most accurate measure of skill. MMR is way more accurate at predicting who will win. Usually this isn’t a problem because the two values stay relatively close to each other. There is a new issue where there are players with CSRs significantly higher than their MMRs. What appears to be a team of Champs is often actually a team of average Diamond players. Rest assured that despite appearances the matches are close in MMR.



To reduce the confusion, we will be rolling out a change in the coming weeks that will keep CSR more in sync with MMR. A player who with CSR above their MMR will not gain points on a win and will lose a small number of points on a loss. On the other hand, players with CSR below their MMR will not lose points on a loss and will gain a decent amount of points on a win. Players will see their CSR converge to their MMRs over the course of several matches.



Because the season didn’t begin with the change, not all players will have their CSRs in the correct spot by the end of the season, and while not perfect, this won’t affect who they get matched against.



Starting next season, players will start with their CSR behind their MMR like usual, Champs will start at 1700, and then everyone will climb towards their MMR. Once players reach their MMR, they will stay in sync after that. MMR can still change over the course of the season, but CSR will quickly converge on it.



So, in short, you are almost certainly not matching Champs with Diamonds for teammates, you are actually all Diamonds and we will make this more clear soon.





Clamping MMR for Matchmaking and Team Selection



As you may recall, we clamp MMR when it goes into the matchmaker to make sure players at the ends of the skill spectrum still find matches in a timely manner. For example, assume Diamond players are between 1 and 2, and Onyx is 2 and up. If we clamp at "2", then a 3.5 Onyx player becomes a 2.0 Onyx player, and looks not much better than a high Diamond player.



The actual clamping points are determined by the population size per playlist, aiming to guarantee at least a match worth of players will be available during any given search. In less popular playlists, the matchmaker can not distinguish between, e.g., Diamond and top Champ players when considering the set of players in a match.



There are two places the matchmaker uses the clamped values. They determine the overall top to bottom skill in a match, for example, whether you can have both Onyx and Platinum in the same match. They are also used in a team balance evaluation where the matchmaker makes sure that, given a potential set of players and their parties for a match, the team balancer will be able to create at worst a 40% chance for either team to win.



In the past, we used the same clamped value for both situations. This means that the team checker would allow matches that the skill system were unfair because it didn't know the values were clamped. We now use the raw and not clamped value for the team validation. Using the raw value won’t have any effect on most matches. It only influences the endpoints (very good and very bad players). But in those cases, it prevents situations where full parties and exceptional players with MMRs past the clamping locations can get into unfair matches.



For example, without the change, a full party of high-Onyx players appears to the matchmaker as low-Onyx solo players, resulting in the matchmaker treating a match between them and a group of low-Onyx solo players as totally balanced. It also would consider matching them with high-Diamond players as a 60/40 compromise. With the change, the same fireteam is now recognized by the matchmaker as both a full party and as high-Onyx and will match appropriately.





Playlist Popularity

No surprises. Keep in mind Grifball and Triple Team were only up part of the week.



Super Fiesta

Slayer

Warzone

Heroic Warzone Firefight

Castle Wars

Quick Play

Big Team Battle

Infection

Legendary Warzone Firefight

SWAT

Team Arena

Doubles

HCS 2018

Elimination

Grifball

Free-for-All

Mythic Warzone Firefight

Warzone Assault

Triple Team