[matthew-wegner]

The Starcraft II beta is kind of horrifying--their excellent matchmaking ensures games are always very intense. Pardo actually commented on this at the Game Developer's Conference:

"If your matchmaking is really good, it means that for every single game, you're kind of the edge of your seat," Pardo said. "After you play an hour or two of games like that, you're kind of exhausted. So we're actually talking about, 'Is that the right matchmaking approach?' You might want to add a little sloppiness to the matchmaking. Maybe that means sometimes you get stomped, but sometimes you have easier games. And sometimes you have the really competitive games. It's got better pacing.

(From http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99211-Battle-net-S...)

So there's that interesting human element there--how wide do your want your matchmaking algorithm to get? Personally, I enjoy the nightmare intensity; it means I more easily get my fill for the night. Is only being able to play a few games at a time actually a bad thing? I guess it might be from Blizzard's perspective.

If you're in the beta, try playing 2v2 with a friend against the Internet. If you're losing you can at least lose together. Think of it as a co-founder ;)

[ohashi]

From what I think I've noticed...

It tries to match you as evenly as possible to start.

If you get hot, it will find better players.

If you lose a bunch, it will try matching you with worse ones.

(based on ranking)

I play platinum 2v2 and gold 1v1 and that's been what i've noticed. It feels like it's sorta testing out where you belong and fit in at every point in time. It also widens the matching if it can't find anyone rather than waiting... those games can get ugly fast in any direction.

PS - cheesy strats sometimes work on really good players because they forget how silly they are. I cannon rushed a guy sitting in the top of platinum league yesterday and I haven't seen anyone rage that hard in a while.

[mattmaroon]

I'm pretty sure it's just using a slightly modified Elo rating, and the updating the ladders on a weekly cron. The reason I say this is that when I first signed up, it assigned me to Silver league. I lost a bunch (it was before the beta was opened more widely and everyone there was good) at first. Then I got considerably better and won something like 17/20 games, but got bumped down to Bronze.

I can't think of any reason why I could get bumped down after a considerable winning streak other than a cron, especially since it always told me my opponent was a favorite over me and was presumably a higher Elo. It had to have been accounting for the 20 or so games I lost before I figured out what I was doing, otherwise I would have been bumped down far sooner.

(Bronze was a cakewalk, I won most games in a few minutes.)

Then they did a reset and now I'm in Silver and winning more than not. I might actually make Gold whenever the cron runs next.

[ohashi]

I don't think it's a cron, I've been promoted instantly the first time I was playing after winning a lot and getting ranked #1 in the division.

[div]

Indeed, if the system is really elo based then updates should be basically instant. A cron job is only required for rankings in which everyone scores relative to eachother.

[mattmaroon]

The elo is updated instantly. The leagues do not seem to be. The ladders within the division (ie. rank 1-100) does seem to update in real time and takes more than just elo into account.

I say this because I rapidly advanced in my division (from 95 to 35) and yet got knocked down. Perhaps I am reading too much into it and they just did a one-off division restructuring.

[ohashi]

There is most definitely an underlying ELO system. I don't know why they have the double system though... points and elo. It's matching against ELO I believe but the points and bonus pool crap it to encourage people to keep playing perhaps?

[mattmaroon]

So after playing LoL for awhile, which has a much sloppier matchup algo (it's harder to do accurately in 5 v 5 than 1 v 1) I have to tell you, better is better. The intensity of matches is part of what's made me switch to SC2.

The problem with the sloppy algo is that it's rarely fun. 45% of the time you're crushing the other team so easily that it's kinda boring. 45% of the time you have 0 shot of winning, and know this in a few minutes but it takes a half hour or more. 10% of the time it's close and then it's actually fun.

[mawhidby]

I agree completely regarding LoL. Their matchmaking system is supposed to give you a 50% chance of winning any given match (according to their wiki). I usually pre-made with 2-4 friends, and we almost always lost. We were low levels (10-15) being matched up against five level 30's. Needless to say, we were getting crushed every time. I think I had a 15 game losing streak or something when I pre-made.

Their wiki says they make the matches harder when you pre-make with friends because they figure that you will be harder to beat. I got so tired of the uneven matchmaking that I can't bring myself to play it anymore.

[mattmaroon]

They do. They add 120 to each player's ELO when queuing as a premade. The actual advantage you get from playing together ranges from much more than that (with a full team of players who coordinate well) to much less (a 2 man and a 3 man combined who don't coordinate well). We win almost every 5 man we play because we coordinate well, and none of us are that great individually so when we solo play our ELO drops.

Also, as I told Tom "Zileas" Cadwell, you can easily have a matchmaking algorithm that ensures you win 50% of the time but is not fun. If 50% of the time you're playing against hopeless newbs, and 50% of the time you're playing against the top guys, you'll win half but have fun on 0. LoL is not far from this.

LoL's matchmaking has 3 main problems that I can tell.

1. Radically different advantages to premades. Some premades get much more benefit than others. Starcraft 2 takes this into account by giving each unique premade its own rating. So if I play a 2v2 with my friend John, he and I will get a unique rating that doesn't affect matchups when I play 2v2s with my friend Chad. I'm not sure if this is an option for LoL given that it's often 5v5 (might work better on Treeline, which is 3v3) and a team is often comprised of one small premade and a few randoms, or 2 smaller premades.

2. Traction. They don't have enough people in the queue at any given point to create good matchups in a reasonable timeframe.

3. Elo. Elo ratings were meant for deterministic heads up matches. In chess, Elo works because the player who won simply played better.

LoL tries to compensate by determining why your team won or lost (and what part of that was your skill or lack thereof) when handing out the points. This is VERY hard to do well.

[mawhidby]

I understand the philosophy behind adding to a player's ELO when doing a premade. But I feel that part of the problem is that relatively new and inexperienced players (which I consider myself and the people I premade with) are going to be matched with higher ranked players. This makes it really hard and discouraging for you to play and get better when you are constantly losing to better players.

Personally, I enjoy playing the game with friends, it's more fun that way ... just not so much when you are losing badly every time.

[roc]

> I'm not sure if this is an option for LoL given that it's often 5v5 ... and a team is often comprised of one small premade and a few randoms, or 2 smaller premades.

Wouldn't the matching algorithm be calculating ratings for each distinct premade, regardless of whether it's a complete team?

So whether [You+Chad] are playing 3v3 with a pug, or 5v5 with any variant of three PUG+pre-made players, shouldn't you always be working on the [You+Chad] rating?

[cynicalkane]

Citation needed. I read that they changed premade ELO adjustments to be negligible for bad players and high for good players. This was like a year ago or around that.

[mattmaroon]

Well, my citation is an email sent to me by Tom "Zileas" Cadwell. I've talked to the Riot guys quite a bit, they actually play our Facebook game. I even got to check my elo :)

He didn't get into too great detail though so it's possible I misunderstood and it actually is a sliding scale, though I've seen no evidence of that (and quite a bit of the opposite).

[cynicalkane]

Zileas is a pretty smart dude, and they've been working on this for a while. I can't find the post I was talking about, but this one hints at the adjustments: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=12029

"This bonus is calculated from a bunch of research we did on hundreds of thousands of game results to figure out how much of an advantage being in a team is. We do some behind the scenes adjustments as well for stuff like beginners paired with pros, etc."

Some opaque, out of context statistical data: http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=16705

Personally, the matchmaking seems to me to get better and better the more players pick up the game. I still see unbalanced games, but I can't remember the last legitimate curb stomp, where one team was simply outclassed...

[tsally]

I've been in the beta for a while now and I can confirm this is the case. I actually laughed when I read your post, because I definitely play 2s to relax after an intense 1s session.

[hristov]

Well, I am not in beta but I like this approach. It is much better to play a close game than to get destroyed by someone that is so much better than you that there is no contest. And of course while it is sometimes fun to stomp on a newbie, that gets old too.

You learn the most from close games. You learn nothing from beating someone much worse than you. And when you are destroyed by someone much better you also usually do not learn much because you are so far behind that usually you do not know what hit you.

[technoweenie]

I end up getting demolished on every round. Starcraft 1 was so long ago.....

[metamemetics]

If you're in Bronze league, seriously just reaper rush every game.

[mattmaroon]

I find I learn the most just watching replays on YouTube.

[hassy]

Since this seems to be the thread for beta participants

who wants a game?

[mattmaroon]

I'm themaroon there.

[mquander]

designori.cta, platinum, US server.

[Psyonic]

2v2's are fantastic, but sometimes a chosen team gets matched against a random team, which usually results in a lame game. Hopefully this is due to the beta having fewer people

[baddox]

If it takes less than say 3 minutes to find a match, and I can win at least say 25% of the matches, I'll be happy.

[NickPollard]

I've been playing the Beta for several weeks, I think the longest I've waited for a game has been about 20 seconds, and apart from the initial few placement matches (to enable it to rank you at the beginning), they've all been reasonably close, entertaining games.

I can only assume that at retail with even higher numbers of players it will be even quicker to find a game.