Also, the balancing algo bases things on gear to a certain extent too.

Don't believe me? Go on one of your 250 + toons and queue, but take off your sabers.

9 if not 10/10 times you will find yourself on a lowly geared team and its all the proof you need.

 

This does not happen. 100% made up.

 

1. Bioware needs to learn to code a balancing algo, and standard grade maths. This way matches will become less one sided and ranked will become fair and about skill again, and less about hitting the queue when you know the low gear CMT farmers are playing.

 

Matchmaking already makes the most balanced match ups possible based on elo. Sometimes matches still end up being unbalanced because of low population. There's not much Bioware can do about that part of it, other than improve ranked in general so that more people play it.

Both of those numbers are far too low. Arenas are very fast and the seasons are rather long. If you queue with any degree of regularity, you will play hundreds of games.

 

both those numbers are adequate to establish a representative rating. forcing someone to play the same toon just to keep up his rating is silly. If you're good enough to pull 1600 in a 50-game sample (taking cheating out of the equation), you're a 1600 player. You can go on with your life, play different toons, or quit the game and wait for a new season to drop. I wouldn't object to pushing it to 100, but again, taking cheating out the equation, 50 is plenty.

 

There is no number of games or ELO decay that can combat cheating, however. That requires a different approach (i.e., enforcement).

both those numbers are adequate to establish a representative rating. forcing someone to play the same toon just to keep up his rating is silly. If you're good enough to pull 1600 in a 50-game sample (taking cheating out of the equation), you're a 1600 player. You can go on with your life, play different toons, or quit the game and wait for a new season to drop. I wouldn't object to pushing it to 100, but again, taking cheating out the equation, 50 is plenty.

 

I strongly disagree. If you get 1600 in 50 games, that is either luck or wintrading. 50 games is far too small a sample. If you forced people of similar skill to only play 50 matches, one could end up 1600, the other could end up 1200. Luck is a significant factor with that small number of games. You absolutely need hundreds for the factors outside of your control to even out.

 

Others have pointed this out, but take a look at the leaderboard and sort by wins. How many players to do you see above 1500 rating with hundreds of wins? A literal handful. Do any of the top ranked players have hundreds of win? No. Is that because they just don't feel like playing a lot? No, it's because they know that if they keep queueing, their ranking will come back down to earth. They only got that high due to luck or wintrading. Again, what I'm saying only applies to the very top ranked players. If they were forced to play 200 matches (which is still quite a small number), the vast majority of those that start out 1600+ would fall back down rapidly.

 

Speaking for myself, I got really lucky in my first 30 matches. I went 20-8 and got over 1500. I could have easily gone 14-14 and been 1250. Playing a lot of games is necessary to see the kind of rating range you really belong in. The people that just queue 50 matches do not have a rating that represents their skill.

Edited May 18, 2019 by JediMasterAlex

I strongly disagree. If you get 1600 in 50 games, that is either luck or wintrading. 50 games is far too small a sample. If you forced people of similar skill to only play 50 matches, one could end up 1600, the other could end up 1200. Luck is a significant factor with that small number of games. You absolutely need hundreds for the factors outside of your control to even out.

 

Others have pointed this out, but take a look at the leaderboard and sort by wins. How many players to do you see above 1500 rating with hundreds of wins? A literal handful. Do any of the top ranked players have hundreds of win? No. Is that because they just don't feel like playing a lot? No, it's because they know that if they keep queueing, their ranking will come back down to earth. They only got that high due to luck or wintrading. Again, what I'm saying only applies to the very top ranked players. If they were forced to play 200 matches (which is still quite a small number), the vast majority of those that start out 1600+ would fall back down rapidly.

 

Speaking for myself, I got really lucky in my first 30 matches. I went 20-8 and got over 1500. I could have easily gone 14-14 and been 1250. Playing a lot of games is necessary to see the kind of rating range you really belong in. The people that just queue 50 matches do not have a rating that represents their skill.

 

Very well said. ELO at the moment represents a perfect storm that honestly punishes good players for continuing to queue, compared to those that only play 30 matches and switch to the next toon, rinse repeat.

I strongly disagree. If you get 1600 in 50 games, that is either luck or wintrading. 50 games is far too small a sample. If you forced people of similar skill to only play 50 matches, one could end up 1600, the other could end up 1200. Luck is a significant factor with that small number of games. You absolutely need hundreds for the factors outside of your control to even out.

 

Others have pointed this out, but take a look at the leaderboard and sort by wins. How many players to do you see above 1500 rating with hundreds of wins? A literal handful. Do any of the top ranked players have hundreds of win? No. Is that because they just don't feel like playing a lot? No, it's because they know that if they keep queueing, their ranking will come back down to earth. They only got that high due to luck or wintrading. Again, what I'm saying only applies to the very top ranked players. If they were forced to play 200 matches (which is still quite a small number), the vast majority of those that start out 1600+ would fall back down rapidly.

 

Speaking for myself, I got really lucky in my first 30 matches. I went 20-8 and got over 1500. I could have easily gone 14-14 and been 1250. Playing a lot of games is necessary to see the kind of rating range you really belong in. The people that just queue 50 matches do not have a rating that represents their skill.

 

It never evens itself out..as the more you play the higher chance of your rating to be ruined by the system. One day you can lose 10 games and the other day you can win 10 games. You depend on what's in que and what's in your team. Simple as that... It's massive gambling game. The top leaderboard people with few wins are winning 90% of the first 20-30 games. It's like you play mara, and go top 10 in 30 games and then you log your vanguard and you go top 10 again. Kinda silly.. but that's how it is. You, the avarage quer who plays daily will have to face some very difficult times as you will be at the mercy of the que unless you do selective queing, which trust me.. will get very boring after a while. I"ve had my rating in 1300 -1200 range for more than 200 games and I got 2 days where I was losing like hell and now I am ruined and have to start climbing from scratch. It's not fun at all this ranked. The fact that so few people play it is not surprising at all.

 

Look at regs, you solo que and there is only as much you can do...

 

Also I've noticed something... Whenever I was about to go from 1200 to 1300, let's say I was 1290 and I needed a win and was on a winning streak, it always **** itself up and losing streak comes, the same happened before 1400, at around 1380-90... Need 1 win and bamm... losing streak.. suddenly get bots, bads, bad luck.. whatever.

 

Not sure if someone else experienced this.. but it was very frustrating really. Like I said.. luck is a major component in your success. Also, your distance from the servers matters as well, but that's another topic.

Also I've noticed something... Whenever I was about to go from 1200 to 1300, let's say I was 1290 and I needed a win and was on a winning streak, it always **** itself up and losing streak comes, the same happened before 1400, at around 1380-90... Need 1 win and bamm... losing streak.. suddenly get bots, bads, bad luck.. whatever.

 

Not sure if someone else experienced this.. but it was very frustrating really. Like I said.. luck is a major component in your success. Also, your distance from the servers matters as well, but that's another topic.

 

You see that same complaint about "forced loss streaks" on the overwatch forums. It's not real in either game.

 

Also, you're right that at any given time, your rank might not be accurate no matter how many games you've played. But usually you should be in a sort of range of ratings. Like you said, you're usually in the 1200-1300 range. Nothing wrong with that. I'm usually in about the 1350-1450 range. As you get closer to 1500, the matches do get harder and harder, because you are put with lower elo teammates to properly balance matches. That's just the way it goes.

I agree with most of what you say alex, but davids point is real. its usually managed by queue dodging, playing the queue, friend listing bads, or whispering free elo tnks and hlrs to queue. doesnt matter, if you win several in a row you are going to end up losing several in a row. this happens so often its not just inthe players head. I literaly had like 4 matchs in a row where at least 3 of my team was alive each round, then suddenly my rage jugg is the last one alive in a 4 dps arena. or he dies first but equals the fotm teamates damage... all of them.

 

the hard truth in 2019 is no matter what they do the current system doesnt work anymore. whether is because every match is a 2v2 and 2 meat shields or whether due to population numbers you cant do skill tiers anymore. doesnt matter, in 2019 the elo system no longer works for swtor because you cant climb unless lucky or dishonest means. I recognize rage jugg is not fotm, but before the system changed he was silver tier, now? hes cant get out of 1250. he just goes back and forth, win or lose. 50/50 win rate

 

Im tired man..... Im tired of playing a content that my own skill doesnt change the outcome.... its depressing to spawn into a wz and know instantly 2 of your mates are going to get globald in the first minute and you have to choose to global their bads or peel the good players. which doesnt work on maras or mercs because they can face tank for about a full minute while ignoreing you.

Edited May 18, 2019 by Seterade

Yeah 50/50 ranged after hundreds of games played is not something unheard of.... and it's actually quite accurate about how this current system works. i

 

I can't say what is a good system, but they need to make wins count more than losses because now it's a pain in a back to climb and fall all the time. Like you said.. you win 6, and then you can easily lose 4 or 5 games in a row due things out of your control and then you have to start all over.

 

You win 2 games and then you lose 3 games... Now evening out is a pain again because you'd have to win at least 3, 4 games in a row to have a positive climb.

 

Another thing: increase reward costs and make ranked currency legacy wide. I would que 24/7...

... was on a winning streak, it always **** itself up and losing streak comes..

 

I literaly had like 4 matchs in a row where at least 3 of my team was alive each round, then suddenly my rage jugg is the last one alive in a 4 dps arena. or he dies first but equals the fotm teamates damage... all of them...

 

Like you said.. you win 6, and then you can easily lose 4 or 5 games in a row due things out of your control and then you have to start all over...

 

So, I took a couple quotes here, so hopefully not to seem like I'm singling out just one person (although, I guess two of them are from DavidAtkinson - sorry). But I think the language here is interesting. It's always "I had x wins", spoken like those are deserved and in no way unusual. And then it's "and then X losses screwed everything up". It's never "I had x undeserved wins", and then "x losses balanced things out".

 

I'm not saying that the wins in these specific instances were not totally deserved, but a LOT of the talk in this thread and others seems to be completely, 100%, about how the losses are never deserved, and always because of things outside our control. But the win streaks, those are always natural, and we deserve and should be getting those.

 

I'm not immune to this either. I stated to do exactly the same thing in ranked. Maybe not wins so much as "look what I did" - since I'm not convinced I should be in anything other than around the average level. But I definitely started to see where I would look at "wow, my horrible luck" when I had a losing streak. I really had to take a step back and stop playing for a bit and consider before I thought the same thing about a win streak. There was not a natural thought coming that said "wow, I've just had 5 wins in a row - I really SHOULD have 5 losses now to balance things out".

 

Again, I'm not trying to say that DA or Set don't deserve to have higher ratings or whatever, since I don't know who either of them are in game, and wouldn't feel competent to judge anyway. But I am saying that people in general seem to view a win streak as natural, and a loss streak as out-of-my-control-and-just -bad-luck. I think both are somewhat (well, a lot) out-of-our-control-and-based-on-luck. All you can do is influence the luck a little. A win and a loss are, generally speaking, exactly the same amount of indication of one's personal skill.

It never evens itself out..as the more you play the higher chance of your rating to be ruined by the system. .

 

ok. that's not true. the more you play, the more "honest" your rating becomes. I don't dispute that. but if you play 50 games, and you're sitting at 1600, that's not luck. the luck goes both ways. sure, maybe you should be 1550 but that one guy ended up on the other team for 3 straight games.

 

now if you wanna claim that this only matters for the top 3, sure. I'm fine with that. 1600 isn't top 3 (except for PT - lul). and when I say 1600 player, I mean that's around what you are. yes. 50 games is enough. the amount of luck involved for luck to do that over 50 games is just impossible to fathom, especially since the matchmaker mixes high with low on the same team.

 

wintrading or any other form of cheating obviously throws this or any other metric(?) off. 1000 matches or diminishing ELO isn't going to change that.

 

anyway, agree to disagree, alex, cuz I swore to not get sucked into pvp forum again, and I think this is like 3rd post in 24hrs. so...

 

/cheers

So, I took a couple quotes here, so hopefully not to seem like I'm singling out just one person (although, I guess two of them are from DavidAtkinson - sorry). But I think the language here is interesting. It's always "I had x wins", spoken like those are deserved and in no way unusual. And then it's "and then X losses screwed everything up". It's never "I had x undeserved wins", and then "x losses balanced things out".

 

I'm not saying that the wins in these specific instances were not totally deserved, but a LOT of the talk in this thread and others seems to be completely, 100%, about how the losses are never deserved, and always because of things outside our control. But the win streaks, those are always natural, and we deserve and should be getting those.

 

I'm not immune to this either. I stated to do exactly the same thing in ranked. Maybe not wins so much as "look what I did" - since I'm not convinced I should be in anything other than around the average level. But I definitely started to see where I would look at "wow, my horrible luck" when I had a losing streak. I really had to take a step back and stop playing for a bit and consider before I thought the same thing about a win streak. There was not a natural thought coming that said "wow, I've just had 5 wins in a row - I really SHOULD have 5 losses now to balance things out".

 

Again, I'm not trying to say that DA or Set don't deserve to have higher ratings or whatever, since I don't know who either of them are in game, and wouldn't feel competent to judge anyway. But I am saying that people in general seem to view a win streak as natural, and a loss streak as out-of-my-control-and-just -bad-luck. I think both are somewhat (well, a lot) out-of-our-control-and-based-on-luck. All you can do is influence the luck a little. A win and a loss are, generally speaking, exactly the same amount of indication of one's personal skill.

 

its not salt, or maybe I should blame myself, when the rest of your team literaly dies in 1 minute on merc and mara.

 

picture this for a sec. you are on dps pt or dps jugg. you do 200k dmg and you take 320k and die first. (this is realistic as long as you have targets other than maras, snipers, or ops. these three can facetank for the first minute taking next to no dmg due to how their dcds work.) then, you have a mara, a merc and a sorc on your team. timer drops from 4:15 (realistic time for how long juggs last vs good players) by 2:00 all three of your mates have died and only say, the merc managed to get 200k dmg.

 

this scenario is 100% out of your control. and it isnt isolated, it is a common issue in 2019 (both this season and last)

its not salt, or maybe I should blame myself, when the rest of your team literaly dies in 1 minute on merc and mara.

 

picture this for a sec. you are on dps pt or dps jugg. you do 200k dmg and you take 320k and die first. (this is realistic as long as you have targets other than maras, snipers, or ops. these three can facetank for the first minute taking next to no dmg due to how their dcds work.) then, you have a mara, a merc and a sorc on your team. timer drops from 4:15 (realistic time for how long juggs last vs good players) by 2:00 all three of your mates have died and only say, the merc managed to get 200k dmg.

 

this scenario is 100% out of your control. and it isnt isolated, it is a common issue in 2019 (both this season and last)

 

I'm absolutely not saying that anything you said is false. I'm saying that none of the 4 people on the other team is going "man, we just got an unfair win because of this crappy matching - we probably don't deserve the elo bump we just got". They are all going, "gg".

I mean if we're talking basic statistics, convergence tends to occur after approximately 30 samples at a minimum. Thus, as a simple mathematical matter, and assuming rating can be approximated as an independent random variable, 50 would seem to be a reasonable number. See also the central limit theorem.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5370305/

Edited May 19, 2019 by KendraP

Yeah 50/50 ranged after hundreds of games played is not something unheard of.... and it's actually quite accurate about how this current system works. i

 

I can't say what is a good system, but they need to make wins count more than losses because now it's a pain in a back to climb and fall all the time. Like you said.. you win 6, and then you can easily lose 4 or 5 games in a row due things out of your control and then you have to start all over.

 

You win 2 games and then you lose 3 games... Now evening out is a pain again because you'd have to win at least 3, 4 games in a row to have a positive climb.

 

Another thing: increase reward costs and make ranked currency legacy wide. I would que 24/7...

 

 

What you and Seterade said tends to be my experience as well. I never see it playing out any other way. If you don't stop quecing after 3 straight wins, you just end up losing everything and than signing off in disgust, kicking yourself for not having stopped quecing after 3 straight wins.

Very well said. ELO at the moment represents a perfect storm that honestly punishes good players for continuing to queue, compared to those that only play 30 matches and switch to the next toon, rinse repeat.

 

Agreed, that is definitely a problem

I mean if we're talking basic statistics, convergence tends to occur after approximately 30 samples at a minimum. Thus, as a simple mathematical matter, and assuming rating can be approximated as an independent random variable, 50 would seem to be a reasonable number. See also the central limit theorem.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5370305/

 

True, but when you add an ELO system to it, it adds another lvl of complexity. I would think that you would need to get a stable ELO rating around your skill lvl to first determine independent random variables.

 

Someone posted a link to ELO the other day, it might have been Set (sorry can’t seem to find it) or even you

It was a very interesting and informative read. I didn’t have a full understanding of what or how ELO was really supposed to work before reading it.

After reading it, I’ve come to the conclusion that ELO in swtor can never be entirely accurate because you have these random variables you can’t control, like the other people on your team.

 

For anyone who hasn’t read about the history of ELO. It was originally developed to rank world chess masters so that they could compete against each other. It was never designed for online gaming in a group environment.

I guess you would call that the original 1v1 situation. So if swtor was a 1v1 ELO system, then it would be 99% accurate.

But because it’s not, you need a much bigger sample of matches to really gauge a person’s ELO.

First of all, I support the general sense behind this thread. With the collapsing population, it would make sense to either just eliminate ranked altogether, or make ranked group ranked only with a group finder option, or seek some other form of queue consolidation. Another option that can be considered in addition, is making the ranked queue 1v1 - dueling is iconic from KOTOR.

 

That being said, I'm only posting here, after having quit the game for the past few weeks, because my bad-math senses were tingling:

 

I mean if we're talking basic statistics, convergence tends to occur after approximately 30 samples at a minimum. Thus, as a simple mathematical matter, and assuming rating can be approximated as an independent random variable, 50 would seem to be a reasonable number. See also the central limit theorem.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5370305/

This is a faulty application of the CLT - the reason being, the ELO you "should be" assigned by the system depends on the population currently in the queue. The skill level of the queue can actually fluctuate highly, because there is a handful people on each server playing at a higher level, and the number of them actually in the queue fluctuates greatly. This means that your samples are not from the same mean.

 

This is a population issue, if a 1000+ people played solo ranked all the time and the ratio of people in each bracket remained roughly the same at each hour, you would not have this problem.

 

True, but when you add an ELO system to it, it adds another lvl of complexity. I would think that you would need to get a stable ELO rating around your skill lvl to first determine independent random variables.

 

Someone posted a link to ELO the other day, it might have been Set (sorry can’t seem to find it) or even you

It was a very interesting and informative read. I didn’t have a full understanding of what or how ELO was really supposed to work before reading it.

After reading it, I’ve come to the conclusion that ELO in swtor can never be entirely accurate because you have these random variables you can’t control, like the other people on your team.

 

For anyone who hasn’t read about the history of ELO. It was originally developed to rank world chess masters so that they could compete against each other. It was never designed for online gaming in a group environment.

I guess you would call that the original 1v1 situation. So if swtor was a 1v1 ELO system, then it would be 99% accurate.

But because it’s not, you need a much bigger sample of matches to really gauge a person’s ELO.

The "issue" you're taking with the system disappears if each skill bracket is similarly (around same rating "density") and sufficiently (each "bracket" can be assigned their own games) populated at all hours, because the fluctuations in team-member quality would be minimal for any given ELO you may be sitting at. In particular, there is nothing wrong with using a ELO system for this game, if enough people actually played it.

 

However, the problem created by insufficient population is systematic - there actually is no workaround for it except for maybe trying to make SWTOR e-sports a thing (lul).

 

t. Math PhD

Edited May 19, 2019 by Metthew

That being said, I'm only posting here, after having quit the game for the past few weeks, because my bad-math senses were tingling.

 

What you are saying is if we want to pull you back into the game, all we got to do is throw some bad math at you?

What you are saying is if we want to pull you back into the game, all we got to do is throw some bad math at you?

 

1+8x4/6=-120783

1+8x4/6=-120783

 

Ohh no.....not math again.....please no math...

Ohh no.....not math again.....please no math...

 

For some people (myself included, lol), all math is bad math.

 

In fact, it can be downright evil.

Tbh I wouldn't mind if BW canned ranked arenas. It's been overrun with cheating and que manipulation since its inception, and the pvp population is beyond saving at this point. You generally see the same names in ranked and its been like that for a while.

 

However, if there was no way to que for solely arenas anymore, I would NEVER come back to this game. BW needs to grow a spine and fix ranked. It's been 11 seasons of the same nonsense. Enough is enough.

Edited May 20, 2019 by ColorfulCaiques