The KD Ratio Head Scratcher
What I'm looking for is some insight into how lobbies are made, and how XP is factored in. For context, I've been playing BR's (Fortnite and Warzone mainly) for 5 years, and jumped into Apex about 3 ...
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@ChasingGeekdom
Just speculating, and others have suggested this before: the game looks at a couple of different skill metrics, but it also looks very carefully at how many matches you play per day/week/season, how many matches you average in a row, and if there's a correlation between a really horrendous match and a log off. I suspect the game then assigns you an mmr, but also a "willingness-mmr." In other words, how much garbage you are likely to put up with before you sign out for the night. I know this sounds cynical, but EA is a numbers-driven company, and honestly, if I was at the helm, it's what I would be doing.
Not 100% sure this is true, or where any of the affecting thresholds might be, but there's a consistent anecdote that when players set the game aside for fairly long periods (usually weeks or even months) then they return to a short spate of easy matches.
Just speculating, and others have suggested this before: the game looks at a couple of different skill metrics, but it also looks very carefully at how many matches you play per day/week/season, how many matches you average in a row, and if there's a correlation between a really horrendous match and a log off. I suspect the game then assigns you an mmr, but also a "willingness-mmr." In other words, how much garbage you are likely to put up with before you sign out for the night. I know this sounds cynical, but EA is a numbers-driven company, and honestly, if I was at the helm, it's what I would be doing.
Not 100% sure this is true, or where any of the affecting thresholds might be, but there's a consistent anecdote that when players set the game aside for fairly long periods (usually weeks or even months) then they return to a short spate of easy matches.
- @reconzero "Willingness" is very interesting! That's gone down quite a bit for me. Last break was for most of the last season. Came back and got torched, but (to be fair) my skills were not sharp at all.
- @ChasingGeekdom I know your kd is low but how is your placement? Do you top 5 a lot without fighting?
@hayhorThat's not how I'd characterize my play style. Is placement a huge factor in how you're matched?
- @reconzero Nail in the coffin my brother! Case studies done by UCLA with assistance from EA kinda supports what you say above.
"Every heard of EOMM? It stands for engagement optimized matchmaking, which is different than skill based matchmaking.
This study by UCLA, with the assistance of data provided by four employees of Electronic Arts, the publisher for Respawn Entertainment and Apex Legends, took data from over 36.9 million matches from 1.68 million unique players.
It discusses the EOMM model using variable inputs such as churn rate to optimize player retention, and discusses similarities to SBMM.
In my own conclusion after reading through this, it appears that we actually live in a state of EOMM more than SBMM, but one that employs known SBMM logic and systems, which would explain why you have three excellent games in a row, which appear to be SBMM-related, only to get steamrolled on your fourth, and so on.
Before you comment and rail Respawn, Electronic Arts, or anyone in particular, I suggest you read the length of the paper (8 pages including citations, not a long read at all). I'm posting this here for discussion purposes, not to ignite a fire in the community.
If presented as EOMM versus SBMM, after reading this paper, would you feel better or worse playing under the parameters of this matchmaking algorithm?"
Here is the paper -
http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~yzsun/papers/WWW17Chen_EOMM
You be the judge.- @NickBeam27 Very cool, thanks for sharing! Plenty of downtime at work today to read for sure. 🙂
@ChasingGeekdomyeah you can practically get to Plat, just by existing and having 0 kills and assists
- @NickBeam27
This one in particular I have not read (though I will), but I've read a few white papers on eomm. I'm not at all convinced that the concept is inherently evil, just that it is poorly implemented in this game, as is the sbmm which it overlays.
For me it boils down to the fact that whenever a game has a skill ceiling as high as this one does, ANY kind of matchmaking algorithm will struggle no matter on what criteria you base it. With that always in the back of my mind, I start to ask myself at the end of any given match: If I know I'm set to lose roughly 90-92% of my matches, does it really matter to me if they're close losses or blow out losses? To me it really doesn't. I know it does to most people, and they're not wrong. Losing 90% of matches because you had no chance of winning is not the same as losing 90% of matches in hard-fought, close call endings. Except to me it kinda is the same. I guess I'm the guy eomm was built to suck in.@reconzerobegs a question, lot of Apex players are game spammers that barely climb ranked ladder but could get 20 bomb game occasionaly,
then... why not reward more RP for kills and less for surviving?
if a guy survives but gets barely kills, give him some RP,
not enough RP to to climb a whol/half a tier... eg: 0/800 to Bronze 2 -> 400/800 to Bronze 2, just bc u survived to top5,4,3...
why not give the 9 killer +200 RP and the 0 killer +20 RP because at least they managed to survive?
"because that would reward killing instead of point of BR which is getting 1st place"
- what's the point of ranked gamemode then?
.... also it's not as if a person that is trigger happy can't run out of resources or get caught with no shields or even low HP..
"because the people would start stalling instead of fighting"
if people cared about climbing ranks, there wouldn't be so many plats/diamonds and smurfs in bronze...
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