Visible vs Invisible MMR

The way in which players can view other players is really important in a competitive game.
A system close to what is currently implemented (being able to see one and others wins at a glance but needing further research to find their W/L etc) is very necessary to prevent annoying or excessive elitism within a match. If you present people with the opportunity to make too many assumptions based on previous stats then elitism becomes a huge issue (AKA HoN).

However, I feel that MMR is a piece of the puzzle that is missing from what you can see from a player. There is no way (other than this?) to find out or compare your mmr to another player to gauge their skill (which I feel should be something rather easy to do).

I would love to hear TL/DotA's opinion on the matter since I get very mixed reactions from those who I ask.

Poll: Do you think MMR should be visible or invisible?

Invisible, I don't want players judge each other needlessly. (148)

47%

Visible, I like to know the skill of players in my game. (141)

45%

Doesn't matter stop making TL posts about it! (24)

8%

313 total votes

Your vote: Do you think MMR should be visible or invisible?

(Vote): Visible, I like to know the skill of players in my game.
(Vote): Invisible, I don't want players judge each other needlessly.
(Vote): Doesn't matter stop making TL posts about it!

Please also describe the magnitude of this change to you. Some people probably don't really mind one way or the other and many likely strongly prefer one method.

I will add or remove any pros/cons based on feedback (if anyone responds that is ).

Personally,
I do think MMR should be visible because I think that it creates positive changes (detailed below) and the only negative is elitism which happens anyway. This effect of arguably adding no problems but removing some is why I think it should be implemented.

Cons:
More elitism.
Creates distrust between teammates.

Pros:
Better way for reasonable players to gauge skills of their teammates/opponents.
A matchmaking system that is forced to cater more towards players that want fair games. *

*The fidelity of skill equality in matches MUST be more accurate in a visible mmr system as players can see if a match is relatively balanced based on mmr/win count fairly easily.
^ Honestly, this is why I want visible mmr, I feel right now that the matchmaking system in dota regards haste in the queue more important than match equality. I will admit that openly.

Of course this is all for fun, since valve will never make a change so large based on a few opinions, and if they don't already plan on implementing it they probably have their own reasons not to.

Last edit: 2012-06-14 10:27:29

Please remove nyx assassin

Unleashing Denmark. June 14 2012 08:40. Posts 2384

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i'd rather not. MMR can be grinded to a degree and higher MMR=/=better player.
Will just have people flaunting their e-peen.

"Back then teams that won were credited, now it's called throw. I think it's sad." - KuroKy

SilverStar Sweden. June 14 2012 08:41. Posts 5594

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No, MMR for a team game is stupid. People just get too hung up on a few numbers.

OrderlyChaos United States. June 14 2012 08:42. Posts 1085

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In HoN, there people would start screeching if a person with the lowest MMR of a team would pick something other than hard support, even if there was an MMR gap of less than 15 points. I don't really see how this would help people pick lineups as the low MMR people tended to pick what they wanted anyway (granted, I was not a high MMR player).

Erasme France. June 14 2012 08:43. Posts 4060

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There is already a MMR visible. If you're on the first page, you're good. Else you're shit

'Reading all your blogs make me feel warm inside, it's like I know you already and I hope you would like to know me too'

BlackGosu Canada. June 14 2012 08:46. Posts 780

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visible. who the hell cares about MMR, just fucking play the game and have fun

Jar Jar Binks

5-s United States. June 14 2012 08:47. Posts 878

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On June 14 2012 08:43 Erasme wrote:
There is already a MMR visible. If you're on the first page, you're good. Else you're shit

Yea, this method is enough for me. No need for individual mmr.

I liked Dota before it was Mainstream.

SKC Brazil. June 14 2012 09:06. Posts 3210

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On June 14 2012 08:46 BlackGosu wrote:
visible. who the hell cares about MMR, just fucking play the game and have fun

invisible. who the hell cares about MMR, just fucking play the game and have fun

That makes much more sense to me. If you don't care about MMR and just play to have fun, MMR isn't needed. You won't care about the benefits of a visible MMR but the drawback will affect you.

The issue is that MMR is meaningfull as a broad idea of how good you play, but it's pretty much irrelevant if people are close to each other. And people that are in the same game are ussually close to each other. Things like how often you play solo, wether you often have to carry or are carried by friends, lucky or unlucky streak, which kind of heroes you ussually play and even how hard you "tryhard" means people with similar skill can have a decent gap in MMR, but suddenly the guy a little bit above feels he is so much better and should tell everyone what to do. People are delusional enough about their skill level in this game already, there's no need to make it worse.

The OP is also so ridiculously biased... You even admit some pros are mostly irrelevant and basically don't care about the cons, just listing a general idea, elitism. You could have done the oposite by just listing "Possibly able to deduce skill level of player a little better than currently" as a pro and list 4-5 cons of a visible MMR.

SirMilford Australia. June 14 2012 09:20. Posts 858

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Is I feel as if i have hit a wall in terms of MMR but it is impossible to check, thus i would LOVE a visibile MMR. Even if it was something simple like A-B-C-D-E players with ranks in them. Much like ICCUP

.
Pro players would be in the "A" bracket. Semi-pro's in the B bracket. Good pub players would be in the C bracket. D is for your usual pub dota player and E is for beginners. THen you rank it like, A+, A- etc to add more diversity. This would actually probably increase improvement by players, and honestly wouldn't be that hard to implement.

BlackGosu Canada. June 14 2012 09:35. Posts 780

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On June 14 2012 09:06 SKC wrote:

Show nested quote +

invisible. who the hell cares about MMR, just fucking play the game and have fun

That makes much more sense to me. If you don't care about MMR and just play to have fun, MMR isn't needed. You won't care about the benefits of a visible MMR but the drawback will affect you.

The issue is that MMR is meaningfull as a broad idea of how good you play, but it's pretty much irrelevant if people are close to each other. And people that are in the same game are ussually close to each other. Things like how often you play solo, wether you often have to carry or are carried by friends, lucky or unlucky streak, which kind of heroes you ussually play and even how hard you "tryhard" means people with similar skill can have a decent gap in MMR, but suddenly the guy a little bit above feels he is so much better and should tell everyone what to do. People are delusional enough about their skill level in this game already, there's no need to make it worse.

The OP is also so ridiculously biased... You even admit some pros are mostly irrelevant and basically don't care about the cons, just listing a general idea, elitism. You could have done the oposite by just listing "Possibly able to deduce skill level of player a little better than currently" as a pro and list 4-5 cons of a visible MMR.

given how troll and rude the dota community is, i doubt anyone would care about MMR

i guess the TL and reddit communities are better, so perhaps they would care more

Jar Jar Binks

DodgySmalls Canada. June 14 2012 09:37. Posts 100

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On June 14 2012 09:06 SKC wrote:

Show nested quote +

invisible. who the hell cares about MMR, just fucking play the game and have fun

That makes much more sense to me. If you don't care about MMR and just play to have fun, MMR isn't needed. You won't care about the benefits of a visible MMR but the drawback will affect you.

The issue is that MMR is meaningfull as a broad idea of how good you play, but it's pretty much irrelevant if people are close to each other. And people that are in the same game are ussually close to each other. Things like how often you play solo, wether you often have to carry or are carried by friends, lucky or unlucky streak, which kind of heroes you ussually play and even how hard you "tryhard" means people with similar skill can have a decent gap in MMR, but suddenly the guy a little bit above feels he is so much better and should tell everyone what to do. People are delusional enough about their skill level in this game already, there's no need to make it worse.

The OP is also so ridiculously biased... You even admit some pros are mostly irrelevant and basically don't care about the cons, just listing a general idea, elitism. You could have done the oposite by just listing "Possibly able to deduce skill level of player a little better than currently" as a pro and list 4-5 cons of a visible MMR.

The OP is biased because it's my opinions, duh.
If you can name specifically how I should adjust the generalism "Elitism" into more specific categories like the pros section please inform me and I'm happy to change it. I just couldn't think of a way to do it is all. (I wouldn't categorize any of my "pros" as the same thing, but I would categorize every method of saying "I'm better than you" as the same thing)

I know it is biased and I apologize for that. My brain works to its own advantage though not yours.

Please remove nyx assassin

SKC Brazil. June 14 2012 10:06. Posts 3210

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On June 14 2012 09:37 DodgySmalls wrote:

Show nested quote +

The OP is biased because it's my opinions, duh.
If you can name specifically how I should adjust the generalism "Elitism" into more specific categories like the pros section please inform me and I'm happy to change it. I just couldn't think of a way to do it is all. (I wouldn't categorize any of my "pros" as the same thing, but I would categorize every method of saying "I'm better than you" as the same thing)

I know it is biased and I apologize for that. My brain works to its own advantage though not yours.

If you make a poll trying to have an accurate representation of how a group will react to something you should try to ask a neutral question though. A biased question can change results, and a biased text that only tells half a story can do the same.

About the points, all Pros could be written simply as "better way to gauge a players skill" and you could use the same categories you used as Pros for Cons, such as:

Worse picking in pubs: Leads to harrassment because a higher MMR player believes he is better at everything and should be able to dictate what everyone should pick, which is misleading since he doesn't know the actual strenghts or weakness or anyone in the group, quite often including himself.

A fake sense of how well someone plays: A player does't trust someone with a lower MMR even before he sees anything about how he plays, believing a simple number can accuratelly represent someone skills AND willingless to do his best to help his team.

A too simple way to compare yourself with others: Trusting a single number to judge who is the better player in confrontation can lead to you undestimating the oponnent and losing or harrasment such as flaming a 900 MMR teammate that shouldn't have lost mid to a 800 MMR oponent ignoring the heroes involved, ganks, possibility of a smurf, etc. A higher MMR player should always be better than a lower MMR player. Always playing expecting to need to do your best should help you improve more than knowing that you make mistakes and still win the lane.

Those arguments are obviously quite exaggerated, the point is both arguments are very, very simple. Elitism vs More accurate method to know someone's skill. Done. Then you chose to expand on why being able to know how well someone plays is good, but completelly ignored why a fake sense that such representation is acurate is bad. Maybe you believe everyone knows why that is bad, but your text feels biased if you expand on only one side of the argument. Everyone also knows why knowing someones exact skill level can be good.

Last edit: 2012-06-14 10:08:11

AiurOG United States. June 14 2012 10:08. Posts 71

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All competitive games benefit tremendously from having a visible indicator of skill and progress that represents the quality of your play (wins representing Quantity more than anything)

vanTuni June 14 2012 10:16. Posts 301

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make it visible, but dont balance teams stupidly. rather have pools. what i mean:

say starting points were 1000, dont make it so 1200 people get grouped with 800s to balance the game around 1000. instead make it so 1200 people only play against 1200 people. if people queue in groups the lowest mmr counts.

Last edit: 2012-06-14 10:17:01

DodgySmalls Canada. June 14 2012 10:19. Posts 100

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If you make a poll trying to an accurate representation of how a group will react to something you should try to ask a neutral question though. A biased question can change results, and a biased text that only tells half a story can do the same.

I don't think this makes any sense as the question itself is unbiased, I tried to keep most of my opinion below the poll on purpose to not try to sway people before they vote. Although, I would say that often people should read through a few pages of a poll to get additional information before voting.

That being said however I agree with the idea behind the second half of your post entirely and it was all very nicely written, however as you said yourself, a little exaggerated.

I'll think about how I want to adjust to OP because I agree with 80% of your post.

Another thing I'd like to say is you'll notice how all my "pros" are purely first person. I can see myself using MMR in this way because I am not an elitist, there's no guarantee that everyone will use these priviledges the same way.
Which brings me back to my fundamental "argument" which is that yes, 100% for sure some people WILL abuse the mmr system to trash talk and judge others. BUT, the people who will abuse that system ALREADY do this. Sure, maybe it would become worse and it definitely could be initiated earlier (ie before you've even picked a hero instead of immidiately after) but I don't believe that any of the "cons" you've created are actually new, they all exist right now.
You could absolutely argue that to some degree in reverse though, so I still agree with you 80%ish.

Please remove nyx assassin

EMIYA United States. June 14 2012 10:21. Posts 372

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Visible. Too many cons for having it hidden just to preserve some newbies or casuals E self-esteem.

Capricis United States. June 14 2012 10:22. Posts 232

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I think hidden mmr is working pretty well atm. I do wish you could see your own mmr, so you know whether or not you are progressing. It doesn't seem that the method he linked works any more? Something like that would be nice, where it takes some effort to view it and you can't really bother other people to find out their mmr.

DodgySmalls Canada. June 14 2012 10:30. Posts 100

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On June 14 2012 10:22 Psycho_Gemni wrote:
I think hidden mmr is working pretty well atm. I do wish you could see your own mmr, so you know whether or not you are progressing. It doesn't seem that the method he linked works any more? Something like that would be nice, where it takes some effort to view it and you can't really bother other people to find out their mmr.

I feel a little silly posting so much but hey, what'cha gonna do?

I think this is most likely a better plan than a standard visible mmr like HoN. Something that takes maybe 30-60 seconds to do per player so that you can check one or two people every now and then during or after a game is probably a safer bet.
(edit: probably longer than 60 seconds would be best)

That way you know that guy who fed off your team was actually a higher rated player, and it wasn't really your teams fault for being outplayed etc.

I know that sounds sort of QQish but whatever.

Last edit: 2012-06-14 10:32:50

Please remove nyx assassin

dtz June 14 2012 10:32. Posts 3903

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On June 14 2012 08:43 Erasme wrote:
There is already a MMR visible. If you're on the first page, you're good. Else you're shit

Yup. Always thought this was sufficient. If you are in the top pages often, then you are high MMR.

In a way this gives spotlights to people who are indeed good and does not put unnecessary stats pressure to lesser skilled players. In SC2 leagues terms , we don't need Silver league players being elitist and cocky and blame the Bronzes in their teams for why their teams are failing. If you are not top pages, you are not good, there is always something you can improve in your play first, and so don't look to blame others.

MMRs are too variable anyway especially at lower skill level where a guy can be decent with sven or drow but absolutely terrible with chen or sf. Don't really want people to be too concerned with MMR which might lead them to only their best heroes over and over again. ELO/MMR might be accurate for games like chess/sc2, but for team games with a lot of different variable such as Dota, then it's not a good enough indicator imo.

Last edit: 2012-06-14 10:44:24

SKC Brazil. June 14 2012 10:37. Posts 3210

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On June 14 2012 10:16 vanTuni wrote:
make it visible, but dont balance teams stupidly. rather have pools. what i mean:

say starting points were 1000, dont make it so 1200 people get grouped with 800s to balance the game around 1000. instead make it so 1200 people only play against 1200 people. if people queue in groups the lowest mmr counts.

No game wants to do that. It would be amazing if you could always get groups that every member has the exact same MMR, but you end up with 2 issues.

First, premades. How do you balance a groups with both 1400s and 900s? Try to find another premade with the exact same distribution? Assume that a group of 900s should be balanced like you said? That doesn't make sense, every group would try to find a shitty teamate to lower their lowest number and get an easy game. 1500+500 vs 500+600 doesn't seem balanced to me. So, would a group of 1200s be balanced for that first example? Is having a high skill player more or less meaningfull than a low skill player in your team? All of this adds a lot of complexity, which leads to the second point:

Search times. That's the reason every game groups people of diferent MMR's. It should be easy to double search times and get closer groups, but is that better? MMR isn't even completelly acurate, how much time is it worth to wait every single time you queue for a game for the chance of a better balanced team? These are probally what every single developer asks themselfs, and it also changes a lot with the population, skill level, time, server location, etc. It's not something easy.

On June 14 2012 10:22 Psycho_Gemni wrote:
I think hidden mmr is working pretty well atm. I do wish you could see your own mmr, so you know whether or not you are progressing. It doesn't seem that the method he linked works any more? Something like that would be nice, where it takes some effort to view it and you can't really bother other people to find out their mmr.

Doesn't work, was fixed a short time after that post.

Last edit: 2012-06-14 10:38:11