Fights Reducing frustrations with Rifts

[Blimeylimey]

This isn't correct. Because the change in your rift rating is determined by the relative rating of you and your opponent, if you win/lose at 50/50 with people that on average have a higher rift rating than you, you'll still rise, because you win more points in the 50% you win than you lose the 50% you lose.

I thought about this and I don’t agree. The case described assumes that the average rift rating of the opponents would rise as you improve your match making rating. But this discussion is specifically about decoupling the two. If you can face players with higher rift rating, then there’s equal chance to face someone with a lower rift rating.

 

[fanghoul]

I thought about this and I don’t agree. The case described assumes that the average rift rating of the opponents would rise as you improve your match making rating. But this discussion is specifically about decoupling the two. If you can face players with higher rift rating, then there’s equal chance to face someone with a lower rift rating.

I can't agree with the premise of your argument here. All that's been suggested in this thread is some changes to the match making, how many there are and when they happen. That doesn't do anything remotely like decouple Rift Rating from roster strength. The two are currently strongly correlated and changing that would require some drastic change where the results of Rift Battles are now be completely unrelated to the characters you have and a total reset of the current scores.

 

[Blimeylimey]

I can't agree with the premise of your argument here. All that's been suggested in this thread is some changes to the match making, how many there are and when they happen. That doesn't do anything remotely like decouple Rift Rating from roster strength. The two are currently strongly correlated and changing that would require some drastic change where the results of Rift Battles are now be completely unrelated to the characters you have and a total reset of the current scores.

I must not understand something fundamental here.

Currently, matchmaking is based on rift rating and player availability. The reason that players feel that matchmaking is not working well right now is because rift rating does not feel like an accurate measure of relative strength. It already feels like rift rating and roster strength are decoupled. While I don’t have data, I think that this is partially true because of players that intentionally drop rift rating in order to create win streaks.

All proposed changes to matchmaking I’ve seen so far suggest accounting for factors other than rift rating (such as player level, collection strength, map strength). These suggestions essentially create a separate matchmaking rating (MMR) that is dynamically updated independently from rift rating. In this system, with the exception of players at the far ends of both MMR and rift rating, a player is as likely to match with someone they are trying to catch up to in rift rating as they are with someone who is trying to catch up to them.

Perhaps I’m just struggling to explain how I understand these kinds of ranked matchmaking systems. Ultimately, my main points are: 1) win streak rewards encourage manipulation of matchmaking and 2) if rewards are based on rift rating then rift rating should be the only factor in matchmaking.
Thank you for your patience.

 

[fanghoul]

a player is as likely to match with someone they are trying to catch up to in rift rating as they are with someone who is trying to catch up to them.

I believe this is the core problem in our disagreement. Just because two options exist doesn't mean that they are equally likely to happen. Even with some players rise and dropping, there's still currently a correlation between Rift Rating and roster strength, or else we'd expect for it to be equally likely that the #1 player in Rift Battles to have either 30 diamonds or only bronzes.

 

[Blimeylimey]

I see. I’m imagining a scenario where rift rating and MMR are not significantly related and you’re imagining a scenario where MMR still significantly (but not totally) depends on rift rating. Is that correct?

 

[fanghoul]

I see. I’m imagining a scenario where rift rating and MMR are not significantly related and you’re imagining a scenario where MMR still significantly (but not totally) depends on rift rating. Is that correct?

That's correct, except I'd probably say that Rift Rating depends on MMR.

 

[Dusty00]

Just chiming in to say how unnecessary it is to have a win streak feature. For most people that number will probably never be above 3. It only encourages people losing on purpose to then build up a streak, which creates more uneven matchups. In addition, top players gain at least three times more rift coins because they essentially never loses.

I got lucky one week and had a 12 win streak (first week of reset), which gave me 2.8x rewards at 112 coins a match. It’s ridiculous! I’d imagine top 10 players getting away with 14+ win streaks having so much rift coins that they longer have any use for them.

 

[fanghoul]

Just chiming in to say how unnecessary it is to have a win streak feature. For most people that number will probably never be above 3. It only encourages people losing on purpose to then build up a streak, which creates more uneven matchups. In addition, top players gain at least three times more rift coins because they essentially never loses.

I got lucky one week and had a 12 win streak (first week of reset), which gave me 2.8x rewards at 112 coins a match. It’s ridiculous! I’d imagine top 10 players getting away with 14+ win streaks having so much rift coins that they longer have any use for them.

I think this is one change that everyone seems to agree on, and seems relatively easy to implement too.