

It has never sat well with me that placements could have such a large impact on your seeding in ranked play. Why should 10 matches at the start of a season have a disproportionate impact on rank than the last 10 matches played at the end of the previous season or some random grouping of 10 matches played in the middle of a season? Opportunity - or at least that seems to be the rationale coming from the developer team. Opportunity to move up/down the ladder by loosening the uncertainty metric associated with one's match maker ranking (MMR). It's important to keep perspective on how a small sample size of data, given more significance than other data points, can skew the perception of an entire population of data points. In practice, one placement game can have the same impact on one's rank as 10 games played in the middle of the season. I am not a fan of this. In theory, placement games are one's chance to make a significant leap in the rankings because their skills have improved (or maybe skills have degraded and the sting of demotion is felt instead).

The unfortunate reality of the situation, however, is that placements feel like a crapshoot, or worse, a lottery predicated on not just your own play but that of your teammates and enemies. Yuck. Even in past seasons, when I benefitted from the loosened uncertainty in placements, it didn’t feel like I achieved anything. Was I happy to be placed higher than I was previously? Sure. But the feeling was mostly empty because there was a lingering shadow of doubt as to whether I earned the rank; Did I merely get lucky with a good stretch of 10 games that just so happens to be the start of the newest season? On the flip side, losing ranks during placements feels super bad and considering the effort I typically put forth in a given season – unjustified. For the record, I have never moved more than 4 divisions plus/minus from placements (in fact last season was the largest diversion I've experienced when I finished Plat3 previously and placed Gold1). Maybe the specter of the MMR bug is simply coloring my perception overall. Regardless, I don’t like placements especially for those who consistently put time into each season. Here’s what I think would be a better system:

1. If a player has achieved a rank in the previous season no placement matches need be played. The player begins the season at the same rank. Masters players who finish with more than 1k points would be reset to Masters1000, and Masters with less than 1000 points back to Diamond1. There's still an opportunity here for loosened uncertainty but I think its effects should be considerably less – approximately 75% less than it is now.

2. Players that have never played a season would still be required to play placement matches; however, their seeded rank (from either QM or URD) would only be allowed to move a maximum of 3-divisions. For example, if one’s URD-MMR sits at Gold3 then at most placements could move it to Plat5 or Silver1. This would keep people relatively close to their seeded rank while still allowing for the possibility that the seeded rank is too high/low.

3. Players who have taken a break from HL and missed an entire season would still use their old HL-MMR but would be required to play placements. Similar to a new ranked-player, movement within placements would be capped to 3 divisions.

I’m not saying this is a perfect solution, but I think it’s a decent framework from which new/returning players could be seeded better while not penalizing folks who continually work at their rank each season. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really address other issues I have with ranked play and leads me to MMR/rank-decay.

Let’s consider a fringe case - players who sit on their rank. In doing some research and using a totally non-scientific method (looking through random players profiles) I was startled to find a large amount of players who simply play their 10 placement matches and then sit on their rank. There’s nothing wrong with that. My guess is that people simply want to qualify for the end-of-season rewards and then are done with ranked play. What I do take issue with is that said rank-sitter has zero reasons to continue playing ranked after their placements. My proposal is NOT for MMR-decay, but rather Rank-decay: one-division demotion every 4 weeks if less than 10 ranked games are played during that span. In effect, rank-sitters would gradually lose their seeding in the ladder for inactivity. If a player returns to ranked play after a 4+ week hiatus, their next matches would have a slight loosening of uncertainty (not nearly as dramatic as current placements) to potentially help them recover the lost division by awarding more Personal-Rank Adjustment points. I think this type of decay would encourage people to stay in ranked throughout the season and even if a typical rank-sitter only plays enough games to keep their place on ladder, their games-played in a season would triple, potentially even quadruple. For Masters, decay would occur in their points accumulated, a maximum of 1000 points. If the Master is at 0 points they would be dropped back to Diamond1. Rank-decay would be capped at 3 divisions within a given season so at most a Master-player would drop to Diamond3 or a Plat3 player could drop to Gold1 and so forth.



Now consider the curious case of someone who leaves the game for some time (say 4 months) and then comes back to their exact same rank as when they left (no MMR decay). The devs have said multiple times that their data suggests the returning player needs only a handful of games to recoup their previous skills. I don't have a difficult time believing this but I do take issue with the fact that someone can simply leave and comeback to their spot essentially saved for them. What about the potentially dramatic shift in the meta or hero reworks? While the mechanics of gameplay might be like riding a bike, the overall game itself could have shifted in dramatic ways (someone returning from a hiatus at this very moment would be in for a big shock!). I believe forcing returning players into placements matches is a partial solution that could be further improved with some form of rank-decay. The placements would serve as an opportunity for the player to prove their previous rank was justified and thus their artificial movement downwards would be capped at 3 divisions. Through placements, the returning player could potentially place as high as Masters1000 but as low as Plat1. But oro, a former master player being placed in Plat1 is demoralizing and might serve as a disincentive to the player from ever playing ranked again… That’s a fair criticism but regardless of the reasons for not playing in a previous season(s) I think it’s far less fair that people who continually work at their rank are placed with people who aren’t familiar with the current meta but are supposedly equally skilled at the game. At the very least, returning players should be required to re-seed while those who continually play can be assumed to have an accurate MMR/rank.

The benefit of rank-decay over MMR-decay is that a player who loses rank would have a MMR higher than their rank and as such the system would be trying to nudge them higher through Personal-Rank Adjustments (less points lost in defeat, more points for a win). I don’t think it’s appropriate to artificially lower a player’s MMR for not participating in ranked play so this seems like a decent compromise.



This also has the side-effect of impacting Smurf accounts. I have zero problem with people creating multiple accounts and then leveling each account into Masters (hi psalm and fan) but I do think it should be more difficult to do so if the Smruf account is only played sporadically. Pros like psalm who have 2-3 accounts in masters probably wouldn't even hit the Rank-decay because they seem to play their smurfs often enough to avoid the penalty, but it would hurt those who only play them into Masters and then quit.



Finally, I want to briefly address MMR Hell. It doesn't exist.



I get that playing in Silver can be a rough time and it may take many games to climb. Ladder systems are a grind. It's the very nature of them. Loosening the uncertainty just to potentially push someone out of SIlver/Bronze through placement games isn't a good option. I think this season's wonkiness proves that. I'm still hopeful that the Dev team will be able to address the issues with the Performance Based Adjustment system because in theory it should help people who are "stuck" in a league climb faster. For the record, I don't think PBA should apply to people higher than Diamond1. Systems that attempt to compare you against a sample of similar players will ultimately struggle to analyze players who sit at the edges of a bell-curve. I'm hopeful that the return of PBA will also mean it doesn't apply to Masters+.

What do you think, does my proposal have merit? Is there a better way you can think of? I’m all ears…