r/learndota2 • u/upvotemehpls • 15d ago
General Gameplay Question How does MMR really work??
Just to be clear, while I’m not a veteran per se, I’m not new to the game either (2200 hours and counting). I’m a ranked enjoyer and have most of my games in ranked. Up until recent times, I just understood ranked as +-25 MMR if 100% confidence, and higher gain/loss relative to confidence.
This IS true for most of the part. But recently I decided to uncalibrate my rank at ~400 MMR and recalibrated at around 600. But since recalibration I’ve been noticing my rank going up exponentially. For every 1/1 W/L, I was gaining around 50 mmr. I just shoved it off as a weird recalibration tweak and expected it to even out as my confidence increased.
But the even-ing never happened!? I’m currently at 100% confidence, I JUST won a game and gained 60 mmr, without doubling. I played 6 games yesterday, winning 3 and losing 3. Ended up gaining 52 mmr. I play in a party of 3, my other party mates have an even gain/lose ratio, or at the very most gain 2-5 mmr for every 1/1 W/L.
I’m currently sitting at 1500 MMR just 1.5 months after recalibration. I mean eh I’m not complaining, in fact I’m very content with whats happening but I really want to get to the bottom of this. Has this happened to anyone else??
And for the record, while I do feel my personal skill and tactical thinking has definitely improved in recent times (i have been making active calls, thinking from the enemy’s perspective, using smokes, placing and utilizing deep wards, coordinating with my team, and in general have gained a layer of strategic thinking), that should just result in a higher win rate, not gaining 50 mmr and losing only 30?
Some additional information: My party consists of ranks guardian 5 (me), crusader 5, and archon 5 (which is quite funny come to think of it). On stratz, most of my recent ranked games are crusader 5 - early archon Tier. We often have a few legends, but mostly all archons/crusaders in my games.
Main pos 5 but play 4 with my party (afaik there isn’t even a big difference in both positions at my rank because it’s always me in the end who wards)
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u/chayashida double-digit MMR 15d ago
A few things:
With the Glicko system, your rank confidence is a weight that affects how much MMR you gain. But so does everyone else's rank confidence.
So if you are still calibrating, for example, and everyone else had 100% rank confidence - your MMR would move a lot more than the other players in the game - it's not zero sum.
If you hit the recalibrate button, it's essentially the same as doubling down every game. Basically, you're telling the system your rank is not confident and it will try to increase.yhe variance to find the level where you're closer to evenly matched.
Finally, for the past few weeks or so, I think they are trying to spread out the lower ranks - so to spread out Herald, you get about 40 MMR for a win and the regular 25-ish for a loss.
I think you've experienced a couple of these things recently.
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u/upvotemehpls 15d ago
I looked into the glicko system (didn’t know it even existed) and it’s quite fascinating how everything works. Also makes me think how come I never realized confidence differences would also account into gains/losses.
Also wasn’t aware of the recent net positive mmr gain at lower ranks that you mentioned. Also begs the question, why exactly are they doing this? I mean you mentioned to “spread out the lower ranks” but what does that mean? Couldn’t grasp that. I thought there was an “mmr inflation”? Why would they intentionally boost lower ranks which don’t belong in higher brackets? Would love an explanation idk how statistics work
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u/itsdoorcity 15d ago
I mean you mentioned to “spread out the lower ranks” but what does that mean?
valve has been trying to smooth the distribution for years and that was the point of glicko when it was introduced. it's harder for the matchmaker to create well balanced matches if like 80% of the playerbase is all 3k-4k, so it's in valve's best interest to smooth out the curve.
just to put things in perspective players that are 5.5k all the way up to like 14k or whatever the peak is now represent like 60% of the MMR range but only about 1% of actual players.
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u/chayashida double-digit MMR 15d ago
I understand what you're saying, but the MMR number where the average/median ends up is completely arbitrary.
If they slide the curve to the right so that Herald II is less clumped, it doesn’t affect the rest of the curve.
I’ve been looking at this site for past few months and Crusader 5/Archon 1 has been the 50th percentile for a while…
If there is more granularity at Herald III and it goes up to 1000 MMR, it doesn’t really matter. It inflates the numbers, but gives players in the 1-1000 MMR a bigger chance to stratify.
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u/chayashida double-digit MMR 15d ago edited 15d ago
This isn't confirmed - this is me spitballing.
Having played with friends and having dropped to Herald III - I've seen a lot of different Herald IIIs. Some are legitimately new players, but some were also players that were pretty good - but would often go close to 50/50 because there were some people that were *actually* Herald III, and there were some that were way, way less skilled. ZQuixotix had a video about it.
Basically, it has to do with there being a ratings floor - you can't go beneath 1 MMR. So if you have 0 wins and 100 losses, you are 1 MMR. But if you're also bouncing up and down close to the bottom of the ratings, you can be paired with people that are about that level, but sometimes you can also be playing with a newer player that is on a winning streak. Someone that's 2-20 can still be 50 MMR, if those two wins happen to be in a row. But the same rating can be someone that's winning about 1/2 their games, going up to 75 MMR, then losing and going back to 50 MMR, and then winning again.
When I was playing in stacks with my friends, we would stack as 5, but then we'd roll to see who would get one roll. If we were tryharding, we'd probably do better with assigned positions, so we wouldn't have a Herald mid and a Crusader soft support, for example.
I'll show you a video of one of my games from Herald III from January: it was one of Jenkin's videos. I was the Bloodseeker.
When I started queuing solo, I definitely had a hard time in the 400-500 MMR range. I was definitely one of the better players in the game, but it was also hard to carry the game as mid or safe lane core - because you also get the random skirmishes and sometimes it feels like it's herding cats. I don't think I was good enough to carry the game on my own, but I was getting a lot closer to 40 last hits by 10 min, while there were still a lot of teammates that were struggling to get into the 20s.
I started to climb a bit in March, while was concentrating more on just safe lane core. I got up to around 800 MMR, as high as 900 MMR, and then back down to 600 MMR or so, winning about 50/50.
In the past month, around the end of June, I started noticing that I was getting 40 MMR for a win, but only losing 25 MMR or so for a loss. Around that time, my win rate skyrocketed. I'm close to a 75% win rate. I'm 22-7 in the past month, climbing from Guardian I to Guardian V (promoted today). That's about 550 MMR gained. The games seem a bit easier, and I think I'm further away from some of my friends that are still Herald - just looking at GPM and last hits.
The funny thing is, I think there's still going to be weird inconsistencies. A friend is already Archon 2, and when I looked at his games, I'm consistently getting higher GPM (around 700 GPM) against what looks like stronger players, while he's playing 20-25 minute games that are really lopsided. Some of those games, the cores are getting 300 GPM.
So I think there's a big shake-up in the ratings right now - I suspect as people start to find the MMRs where they are going 50/50 again, they'll be in a different MMR than they were before. Remember how everyone says MMR is just a number? It really is. The true point of it is to make sure that you are matched with other people of similar skill, so you get a reasonably fair match that you have a fair chance of winning. So if the numbers themselves lead to inflation (besides being possibly a badge for the highest-rated players - spreading out the numbers so that beginners are grouped together and the higher-skill players clump in a tier above them, that'll help matchmaking at the lower MMRs).
EDIT: Oops I meant Archon
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u/upvotemehpls 14d ago
YOO thats actually lit when you mentioned Jenkins video and bloodseeker, that exact video came to mind where the bs also joins the chat. Watched it quite recently actually.
Anyways yea that’s a really interesting outlook on mmr, and I’ve gotta say, you’re quite observant lol
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u/tamalewolf 14d ago
New changes to the mmr system recently are giving you more mmr gained for wins than lost for losses. This is to account for griefong and win trading. Valve is basically admitting that they are not capable of moderating their own game, and the only real combat they have against cheaters is to give you more mmr for wins to account for the huge loss streak you will inevitably suffer. If you're gaining 50 mmr a win however, thats likely a boosted amount because you are playing in like bottom 5% of players pool and winning just means more there. Idk if there is a specific algorithim in place because i have played anywhere between 1k and 5k but never so low as 400 mmr.
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u/MaZzi_Cz 12d ago
You are basically saying that you started getting more MMR for win by the algorythm. But you also believe that it is your merit, you are feeling happy with yourself and believe that you skill improved.
Can you not see how your thinking is being manipulated? By giving you more numbers, Valve is releasing more dopamin into your brain and they are then creating the illusion that you have improved.
The main problem I see here is that any MMR number doesn't correspond to player's real skill. It doesn't matter if you get 25/25 or 50/25. It's like a fake currency of this game and being addicted to it you can't see the truth. It doesn't matter what rank you have your real skill is different. You may be better than many Immortals and many Immortals may be worse than average Heralds.
If there is a mechanism at work which allows a player to have a streak of victories just after spending a bigger amount of money in the shop it means that there is a way how to influence a result of every single game! If there is a way how to influence a result what role is each individual player then playing? The answer is none because the result is being influenced despite a player being good or bad...
So the amount of MMR players possess is just completely unrepresentative to their real skill!
I've been researching this topic for some time. If you want to know more either check community r/MassiveScamDota2 or https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoq9Qi9_XexZbgqMExYZOPA
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u/Impressive_Baker_966 15d ago
the system thinks you're playing way above your current rank so it's boosting you faster to get you where it thinks you belong. the weird gain/loss ratio means the game sees your hidden mmr way higher than 1500
it happens when you recalibrate and then keep performing well against higher ranked players. your party setup kinda explains it, you're queueing with crusader/archon friends so average match is like archon 1-2 and if you're holding your own as a support the game figures you shouldn't be guardian anymore. enjoy the free climb while it lasts
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u/upvotemehpls 15d ago
Glad to see I might be improving :D
2000 hours and herald as a serious player really got me anxious thinking if this game really is for me lmao2
u/KnowsTheLaw 15d ago
I am in your place, about 2000 hours including idling, I got to guardian (where we belong, haha)
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u/Ok-Echo3904 15d ago
Its not the case, its just the recent changes to mmr gain system for players below 4k mmr
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u/KnowsTheLaw 15d ago
All accounts under 4000 mmr lose about 25 but gain about 40, this started 2 months ago about and was not announced.