So one of the questions I always see people asking is how MMR works. It's not always a direct question about MMR but the questions they ask can be answered with an understanding of MMR.
First off, let's answer the basic question: What is MMR?
MMR stands for Matchmaking Rating. Essentially, it is a hidden number that goes up and down as you win and lose that determines who you play against.
The next question, which is much harder to answer is: How does MMR work?
The point of MMR is to attempt to pit you against opponents that you should go 50-50 against. That means that MMR tries to put you in games with people that over time you would win half of the time and lose half of the time.
Obviously as you get better, get worse, go on win streaks or loss streaks, your MMR can change quite a bit. Your MMR is the rating at which you should go 50-50 at that specific moment, so if you go in a win streak your MMR will start going up and reflect that.
Something people don't generally understand is that MMR is more fluid than LP or the old ELO. If you were at your proper LP/Division/Tier for your MMR and you start winning game after game, your MMR will inflate more quickly than your LP/Division/Tier.
The reason they do this is because they want games to be balanced based on skill but they don't want people changing divisions quickly.
Let me explain this a little more.
First off, they do not want you to climb through the ladder very quickly because they don't want someone to get lucky or unlucky for that matter and see a massive change in their place in the ladder that they cannot sustain.
So, they make it so that unless you consistently are winning over and over like a pro would on a smurf, gains are generally smaller unless you just got into the ladder.
At the same time, they don't want this careful approach to ladder placement to ruin games. If you are in fact good/bad and not simply lucky/unlucky they want to put you into games accordingly. So, they make your MMR move at the pace your ladder placement would move if they could safely assume that no luck was involved in games.
A secondary benefit of this system is that since your MMR is moving up/down, if you're winning you start to play with better people to see if you can handle it or if you're losing you play with worse people to see if they are more your skill level. All the while your actual ladder placement isn't going haywire.
Common Seemingly Contradictory Placements, Gains and Losses.
I went 5-5 in my placements and got Bronze 3 but my friend did the same and got Silver 4! What's the deal?!
There are actually multiple logical answers to this question depending on the circumstances. These are just some of them:
1 - Your friend was doing his placements for the first time, while you were doing yours after being in Bronze last season/during pre-season.
If your friend was doing placements for the first time and went 50-50 against Silver 4 players, it makes perfect sense for him to be put into Silver 4. And at the same time if you did your placements against Bronze 3 players because of your previous season/pre-season MMR it makes perfect sense for you to be in Bronze 3.
2 - Your friend won his games earlier on in his placements while you won yours later on.
This seems unfair, but it's really not. If you lost your first 5 placements you played against Silver players and only started winning against the lower Bronze players you got as your MMR crashed then your wins won't matter for much.
On the other hand if your friend won his first games against the mid to high Silver players but started to lose later in his placements against the low Gold players then his wins will have counted for much more.
3 - Your friend was simply put against better players because that's who was in queue.
If you went 50-50 against weaker players while he went 50-50 against better players, again, it makes sense that he will be put into a higher place in the ladder. It can be a bummer that you didn't have the chance to play against better players in your promos but if you played worse players you Should have been doing better than your friend anyway.
Me and my friend are both Gold 5 but he gets 20 LP for wins with -15 for losses while I get 15 LP for wins and -20 for losses, how is this fair? He can climb so much more easily!!
There is one really simple explanation for this.
Your MMR is lower than Gold 5, probably around Silver 1 or 2, while his is higher than Gold 5, probably Gold 4 or 3.
Most likely you have been in Gold 5 for a while where as your friend is new to Gold 5. Another possibility is that your friend has recently been winning more games than losing while you have done the opposite.
Your wins count for less because you are playing worse players than he is. In order to climb, you have to start winning more than losing against people that are at your current ladder placement, not against people that are lower than you. In order to play against said people at your rating, you need to raise your MMR by doing well against the people you play currently.
In other words, you are probably in this position because it is impossible to drop Tiers in the ladder but it IS possible to drop tiers in your MMR. You are essentially at the MMR of a Silver player while still Gold in the ladder.
I was getting 5 or 6 LP for every win and all of the sudden I got 20! I'm not mad but this must prove the MMR system isn't logical!
Actually that isn't a logical assumption to make. Once again, there are quite a few possibilities for why this happened. Here are a few.
1 - You played against a team that is much higher MMR than you or even what you normally play against.
If you beat a team that should have beaten you, the system will take this into account.
Think about it, if you were beating a bunch of Silver 3s and getting 5 or 6 LP then all of the sudden you beat a group of Gold 5s, logically you Should see a higher gain in LP and MMR.
2 - You went on enough of a winning spree that your MMR has become more fluid and has finally started to rise quickly again.
MMR for accounts that have played a lot of games is still more fluid than LP, but has become less fluid as games keep getting played.
However, going on a streak, good or bad, will start to make MMR change more quickly like when you first started plying ranked.
So if you were seeing low gains but you kept winning over and over most likely your MMR has finally started to move quickly again and you will see higher and higher LP gains until your spree stops or clams down.
These aren't all of the common questions but I feel like this covers MMR fairly well. In other parts of "Explain the Ladder" I'll be covering duo queuing as well as a few other topics people ask about.
Feel free to comment any other scenarios you'd like me to try and explain or things that you'd like me to blog about!
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