Dota 2

[Captain Planet]

But how does knowing what rating other people have make you a better player? Public ratings will not work. I'd rather just play with people and NOT HAVE TO CARE about what their rating is. But the moment you see someone's rating you start to judge them before you even play with them. I don't want my opinion to become biased like that and I dislike even more having such a system foisted on me. If there was anything, I'd want something that had nothing to do with W/L, but rather something based on the sum of your progress bars. Something that shows your ACTUAL skill with heroes.

But even then I would only want it to be private, for you to share with others if you so choose.

Not that I even want that, but if there was anything, I wouldn't want it to be any more than that.

[Snuffeldjuret]

Bambi: I am not going to respond to your post.

Captain: There is a reason why clans have 5-6 players and not 20, because you play better when you know the guys you play with. The better you know your teammates, the better you perform yourself. Please do not even try to deny that.

Again, I don't care what you want as I think it is pointless to discuss personal taste. I want what is best for the game. It is obvious you are only interested in your own agenda so I'm done with this stupid discussion.

...I bet it is useless to discuss the advantages with a public mmr with you, so I won't bother. ...

Why didn't I listen to myself? Snuff out!

[Draphcone]

^snuff out XD

[Captain Planet]

@Snuff: I completely agree that you play better when you know the strengths and weaknesses of those who you play with. That's a given. But if you're part of a clan, why would you need a public MMR for that? Wouldn't your experience in playing with your fellow clan members be what you use to determine their individual skill levels? Furthermore, a single MMR rating doesn't give enough information about your teammates' strengths and weaknesses. Rather, having an option to make your hero progress bars public, to either your contacts or everyone, gives your teammates an idea of what sorts of heroes and roles you are good at, which I think is a much better, and more accurate, system.

I can also agree that, on the one hand, a public MMR does allow players a very broad sense of the skill level of the other members on their team in a match to get an idea of where they might do well. However on the other hand, I can also see this being used by some players as an excuse to abandon matches if they see a couple of players with ratings that are perceived to be rather low and therefore feel they have a low chance of winning, or use this as an excuse to flame them if things go badly.

It is this latter scenario that I am most cautious about when it comes to public MMR, as well as people seeking to try and abuse the determinants of the rating to boost their own. I guess in the end it's not the rating I have an issue with, per se, but the way it would be used. In a perfect world it would be used as a means of objectively evaluating the makeup of your team and using that to best assign roles to each player based on their skill.

But as we know, this community is about as far from perfect as you could probably get, and a public MMR would very rarely be used this way. People like yourself would be unlikely to abuse a public MMR system this way (that much is obvious) but I fear those who seek to use it properly would be in a minority in the community and thus I am cautious about supporting the introduction of something that I feel would be more misused than not.

I don't understand why you're seemingly taking this personally, because I'm not directing (not intentionally, at least) any ill-will towards you, I am merely trying to counter your points with reasons why I feel a public MMR may not be beneficial. I also want what's best for the community, we just have different ideas about what that might be. I don't have any personal agenda in this and I don't know why you think I do.

If a public MMR does get introduced, then that will probably be the end of it. If it doesn't then we can be assured that discussion about it's introduction will continue, so saying that you don't want to back-and-forth about the pros and cons of a public MMR with anyone who doesn't agree with you is, therefore, a bit strange.

[Snuffeldjuret]

Based on what you wrote, it was not surprising I thought you were talking about your personal taste.

Reading through some playdota topics I am sure mmr is way better than win% or the performance bars. The mmr is based on wins/losses. The simplicity of it makes it so good. You do play to win and not just to appear good right? My point is that the win% WILL be public, and I hope we can agree on that win% is the worst tool for measuring skill.

The performance bars have one major flaw atm, if they were to be public in any way. "Your performance bars shows how well you've played each hero compared to other players at your skill level...". What skill range does "at your skill level" have? There will often be a significant difference between the players in-game, probably enough to screw things up if the performance bars were shown publically as they are shown to the players. They would need to alter the bars, based on the mmr. In fact the performance bars are already heavily dependent on mmr, so it seems a bit strange to be fine with public performance bars but not public mmr :/.

The second problem with performance bars is that it basically says "this is the skill of the player", while the mmr is purely the track record of the player. The track record of the player cannot be disputed, it is the ultimate truth. There is no arguing with the truth. You can argue a lot regarding the performance bars though, since the formula is secret. It's probably better than public formula, but still bad with secret stuff when it comes to telling people how good they are at a game.

Again pointing out that I never ever saw any issue in-game in HoN related to public mmr.

I find it sort of useless to argue about this since I am quite sure the end result is not affected by our discussion. Maybe it could be worth discussing over ts3 or IRL, but forums are from experience very bad places to discuss complex issues like this. I know what I know and I know why I think what I think. I have thought things through many times as I am interested in systems like this as well as math. Really no offense but I really don't think you can enlighten me. If you think I have written something stupid or strange, it is probably either me having difficulty expressing my thoughts or you having difficulties understanding them through my writing.

[Captain Planet]

I don't mind the Battle Level system, tbh. Methinks that's the public number Valve will be going with.

[Draphcone]

well i doubt so because the dota 2 store sells items which increase the battle exp rate by a huge 75%. but then again if it's not "the public number" i don't see the point of gaining more battle exp.

[Snuffeldjuret]

I heard from a random comment on something HoN related that HoN was supposed to have designed a "much better system than simple mmr", or was about to design it. Would be interesting to know what they have/had in mind.

I see nothing wrong with the Battle Level system, as it sort of keeps track of experience and not skill.