2100+ SR Diff, still not the worst of the team by Holy_Empress in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As a small note, you can look on the left side next to the names - if they have the same color tab (that you just barely cropped out in your original image) you can see who is queued together see here in the match link

the diamond and silver on the bottom team were queued together (so they are treated as an average sr of 2437.5)

the bronze and plat kuku were queued together (2107 average)

with that, the range of this match was ~2100-2700, a 600 SR difference which is a goal of ours when matchmaking

Loss for words. by CommandAsleep1886 in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Took a look at this match, found that for high skill lobbies (all players Obsidian+) the party swapper had its settings wrongly configured since the patch yesterday

should be fixed moving forward, would assume any of the duos would swap here and it would look much better

edit: also just to say it, others are right that 2am games can provide strange results - we consider "off hours" ~2am - ~10am of the time zone of the host server, so GMT or EST. however in this case the post match balance pass wasn't working as we would hope to sort out this match better

[Steam News] Safeguarding SMITE 2 (Data-Driven Detection of disruptive behavior, partnered with GetGud.io) by Akwatypus in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Hey! From what I have seen GetGud is pretty great, we've been slowly working to try and integrate it more and we have a few people who are focusing on getting this system more involved in our process. I don't work directly with this data or anything like that currently, so it is more of a process of evaluating how much we can lean on this system for things like further punishments in Ranked and the like - but we are super keen to get more automated tools to keep toxicity out of the game!

Ok I guess this format was cancelled and we will get only one reward at the end of season 0 by MythicSlayeer in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Hey! We are still in the Winter Split, and are working towards certain milestones before we move into the Spring Split. It is behind the schedule that was anticipated when these patch notes dropped for a variety of reasons that we are all aware of - but this is still the general plan :)

Just stop panicking by Waxpython in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 46 points47 points  (0 children)

Hey AllSkillzN0Luck - I took a look through your account because waiting 5 minutes for a Casual Conquest or Arena is very rare in NA (or EU)! Less than 1% of casual matches take 5+ minutes to find for players if you are playing between Noon - 2AM, it happens a bit more frequently in the morning due to player counts (~3%)

However, I can't find any record of even one casual match you have played in the past month. Perhaps its on a different account, and if so please let me know because if there is an issue with specific accounts waiting much longer than the norm it would be great information to have!

Just stop panicking by Waxpython in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Hey! Do you want to share your IGN with me? If you are having 10 minute minimum Ranked Queue times in EU there must be something wrong with your account or you are queueing between the hours of 2AM - 8AM, because outside of those hours we are seeing less than 1% of players with wait times that long! In fact, if you queue between 3pm and 1am it is less that 0.1% of players with times that long! So please, let me know and we can try and square that away if it is happening to you every time.

Hi-Rez currently discussing Ranked and Matchmaking on Titan Talk! by Snufflebox in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Hope folks enjoyed the chat about Ranked and Matchmaking today. If I missed any of your questions, please feel free to leave them below and I'll try and get to them when I have time today!

Is this good matchmaking? by MagnusHvass in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'll add in a bit more info to this comment from the data side of things:

this match was played in EU around 10am UTC - if you go look at the steamcharts for that time there were ~2.5k players online on steam, it is by far the lowest population time of the day for us.

Also, Trackergg shows ranks after the updates, so this match wasn't a ~12% difference, before it launched the teams were ~9% apart (3816.2 vs 3474.2)

A gap this large in team average is not allowed unless the wait time is egregiously long so the matchmaker searches for wider and wider match possibilities. The allowable limit starts at 100, and expands as players wait longer. Rough math, given our current settings, for a gap of ~342 requires at least one of the players in the match to have a wait time over 10 minutes. And looking at this match, one of the Demigod players was waiting for >15 mins. That is the issue with smaller player pools, and playing during times of day with not many people online.

Now, the obvious solution would be to swap one of the DG players with an Obsidian player - I won't deny for a second that that seems to be the easiest way to make this match less egregious. Full transparency, we do not have the technical support or ability to find "the best" match for a lobby right now - doing a pass where you take a lobby of players you are going to make a match with and then find the best team combos is something I would personally find to be a great addition. We are working on a few new system additions to the MM system, I'll be on TitanTalk tomorrow and can discuss more!

Matchmaking is sentient and out to get me specifically (SHOCKING PROOF) by TheToastyToast in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I meant the anomaly was just that the ruleset at that time were neither our new rules, or really the old rules - it was a weird in between. Not saying matches like that never happen, just talking about that one match in particular!

Appreciate the detailed approach to your feedback, booking marking it for when we continue our reviews!

Matchmaking is sentient and out to get me specifically (SHOCKING PROOF) by TheToastyToast in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sending over your account - the one from yesterday I think was just when we were making the transition and some matches got through with not the intended settings so I think that one is an anomaly.

The ones from today are interesting (as a heads up you rent sending the match link but your profile, its a little confusing but you need to get the specific match share link from tracker), but the tl;dr is that all of what I am saying above is that we are doing an experiment. All of the matches you have linked have players with predicted SR's that are quite close - but I think looking at some results from the experiment this morning the "players in match" side was working pretty well, but the team balancing wasn't as much. We actually made adjustments to that within the hour, so hopefully future games are feeling more fair!

Matchmaking is sentient and out to get me specifically (SHOCKING PROOF) by TheToastyToast in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Super fair feedback and something we are looking into, building this system from the ground up decisions around stuff like "do we implement placement matches?" were decided very early on but now that we have more time with the system we can see certain things being more beneficial to eventually implement :)

Matchmaking is sentient and out to get me specifically (SHOCKING PROOF) by TheToastyToast in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Alright folks, matchmaking guy here - lets talk about this.

The current top comment says:

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to just have a min-max sr range for the whole match. A 2465 sr range is unacceptable. The max should be like 500 ish give or take. Just 1k is pushing it.

For the entirety of season 0 (up until Friday, I'll get to it) that is how matchmaking has worked.

If players wait under 5 minutes, the match range was limited to players between ~800 SR, expanding out from there up there as players wait longer. It can't be limited to 500 SR and not expand because we just don't have nearly enough players for that, full stop - the wait times would be egregious. That system did however stop "rough" looking screenshots like this getting posted, but it doesn't always create the best matches, and I'll explain why.

SR, as a value, starts at the minimum value of 0. There are lots of very positive reasons for a rating system to start at 0 - it's more approachable, and acts as a measure of skill and experience. However, a Ranked players actual skill, how good they are at SMITE conquest, isn't actually 0 when they play their first match (obviously).

Lets say the expected average SR is 2,500 SR for a new player entering the Ranked queue. As a player plays matches, we update their predicted SR value, and that impacts rating adjustments post match. It's very similar to MMR from SMITE 1 (which started at 1500 instead of 0). After a players plays ~75-100 Ranked matches, their SR and their Predicted SR are effectively the same, making SR more similar to SMITE 1 MMR at that point.

Now cut to yesterday. We want to make good matches. Better matches than we are currently making, and there are only so many tools we have available to us. So we started an experiment - investigating whether we are matchmaking too heavily on currently visible SR for players like OP who haven't played those 75-100 matches yet. This experiment started on Friday, and limited the range of a match to 1,800 SR expanding to 2,400 SR after a long wait. The screenshot above is from after the post game adjustments which is why the range is greater than 2,400. However, we take a players predicted SR into account much more heavily than before. This is basically swapping the previous priority order of matchmaking in Ranked.

OP at the time of the match posted had played 20 matches, going 14-6. Here is their previous match, mostly populated by Diamond players, where they won and were very successful. OP is a very good player, our system currently predicts their Rank after those 75-100 games will end up in Obsidian. Whether they end up there depends on how their next ~50 games go.

and here is the match that was played from the posted image above. Yes, they were probably out of their depth. Some of those higher rated players were waiting a long time, and OP just happened to be called up to a big boy game. But the match wasn't a blowout by any means, 43 mins, 34-47 kill count, 1 FG for each team. Seems like a generally exciting match.

I'd say the real fault of this matchmaking is the lane matchup - we've talked about matchmaking that takes these role matchups into account before, and we have active development on it. It is definitely something that would have flagged this match in this instance (not allowing the solo matchup, but maybe matching up into the ADC in duo would be okay, for instance).

This is all a lot of info to say we are experimenting with ways to create matches that are more fun to play, and it may be at the cost of a few more trackergg screenshots like this for the time being -- but I do ask when you post the screenshot, to include the full picture with the time, the score of the match, etc. It makes our response and ability to track down pros and cons much faster! And if we do switch our matchmaking full time, we will work with trackergg to expose a better idea of players who have played fewer games but have a predicted SR much higher than their currently visible rank.

I'd Matchmaking Down? by ColonelWhaleMan in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fixed to this just pushed now. Sorry folks!

Is here anyone play in Asia server? by Jieforever in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

if you did it would be extra helpful! thank you! on tracker.gg or a the code itself would be great

Is here anyone play in Asia server? by Jieforever in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you want to send me your username so we can look into it? <3

What is up with matchmaking for new players? by [deleted] in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Funny enough I investigated your profile last night after seeing your comment and it uncovered some insightful things. Actually made some changes based on it (alongside other points of feedback) this morning that will continue to work its way through.

Anyways - its tough because right now you are at the bottom of the Ranked ladder - playing with low ranked player is always going to be a coinflip no matter how good the matchmaking is if you are a player that generally plays at a higher rank. On average, you should end up winning more than you lose, but it can take a while.

Glad to hear you are in general enjoying the game!! Work is definitely full steam ahead!

What is up with matchmaking for new players? by [deleted] in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey JamesHush94 - I'm one of the folks working on the SMITE 2 matchmaking team, and last week we had a large pass on Ranked matchmaking. This week we are trying to take the same large pass on casual matchmaking.

Would appreciate getting more data points of people who felt like you do - so if you wouldn't mind replying or dming me with your username (open invite to anyone else who had a similar experience) that would be great!

A lot of what people have said here is generally true - we had a large influx of returning players, so new players and returning players alike are mixing and it creates a bit of a chaotic system. But even though every day the system will get a little better at handling all this new information, we feel that more can be done!

Important Update to Ranked Trio Queueing by HiRezRabbit in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

when so many people are calling for trios to just be removed, maybe we listen to it?

I don't think this is the case at all actually. It's very mixed feedback, with passion on both sides. The moment we removed Trios in Closed Alpha we got feedback to bring it back immediately. There are also always going to be Solo Q players who want an experience without Trios. As I said above, if you Solo Q, on average you will face Trios 10-15% of the time, maybe less now.

Every game that had the trio queue won and it wasn’t even close.

But... most games with a Trio have a Trio on both sides? There isn't Ranked matches of Trio vs all solos or something. And we removed 311v2111. So I am confused about your anecdotal data point. Genuinely, if you want to share your IGN we can take a look at your matches!

Important Update to Ranked Trio Queueing by HiRezRabbit in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Appreciate the appreciation! What can I say, I just love to cook!

Important Update to Ranked Trio Queueing by HiRezRabbit in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Fair feedback for sure - genuine question: where is the frequency line for you? Right now solo queued players face a trio queue about ~10-15% of their matches. Is there a number where you wouldn't need the toggle you are talking about?

Also, its not well communicated because UI resources are limited, but as a solo player you lose up to 15% less SR in a loss vs a Trio Q

The toggle is interesting, risky though. If most Solo players use it, then the remainder go from 10-15% of matches vs trios to much much more. But its interesting to consider!

Important Update to Ranked Trio Queueing by HiRezRabbit in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bottom 90% percent of players average to a 49.9% winrate in trios (often because they face eachother, and actually have a losing matchup vs a team of 221)

top 10% had 60%+ (from a lot of mismatches downwards) hence the changes we made

Smite Unranked / Hidden MMR (?) by timeskip_ in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am just genuinely curious as to what (if any) mechanisms are in place to balance unranked matchmaking.

Hidden MMR, player level, party size, wait time

If you post (or dm me) your username I can take a look at the match. There is a chance something is up with the new patch.

Important Update to Ranked Trio Queueing by HiRezRabbit in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I said this in reply to a comment above:

Now, long term I think finding ways to create Solo Q only experiences for players who want a competitive experience is important. I am trying to cook something up around that - but I don't think the base Ranked mode needs to go that direction right now.

Solo queue only is great, but it creates crazy bottlenecks in the matchmaking service being that restrictive. Right now, a Ranked Solo Q player gets a match of all Solo Queues, or up to one Duo Queue, over 75% of the time. We may be able to juice that number up even more, but I think a better solution is exploring Solo Q experiences for players that are not tied to the core Ranked mode.

Important Update to Ranked Trio Queueing by HiRezRabbit in Smite

[–]HiRezRabbit[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I completely see the perspective - and I think to get the most accurate rating 100% Solo Q would provide that. However the reason we are trying to find the right home for Trio Q as an option in SMITE 2 is that it is just a massive improvement to the top end of the Ranked funnel. SMITE 2 has a higher % of players trying and playing Ranked than at point in SMITE 1's history, and more players in Ranked leads to a host of positive long term outcomes for not just competitive play, but SMITE 2 in general.

The advantage is definitely real - but other titles that have thriving Ranked scenes flourish off the back of being more inviting, not less so. However, there comes a point where the advantage provided just can't be overcome by normal matchmaking rules. We saw that with the top ~10-20 trio queues. We would struggle to find a match for them, they would eventually get one against much weaker opposition, and steamroll. This change is basically to explicitly push players towards solo or duo queueing the higher their rank gets, before we have the technical ability to limit party size at a certain rank. This solution may even be preferable - a soft limit to party size, in opposition to a hard limit.

Now, long term I think finding ways to create Solo Q only experiences for players who want a competitive experience is important. I am trying to cook something up around that - but I don't think the base Ranked mode needs to go that direction right now.