The game is rigged

[Pondo2theTop]

Hi,
I could not find this issue on the web, to my surprise.
I'm now fairly convinced that the opponents/mates are not sampled fairly, but as a function of the number of games played (and perhaps other non trivial factors).

From what I found in forums, people dismiss these kind of notions (e.g. engineered streaks of winning losing), claiming that it's merely a psychological bias - when you lose games in a row then you tend to notice it. Also, that your performance is correlated with your mental state.

I've played enough games by now to suggest that this is not the case. When you start playing after a break, you get easier opponents and better mates, as you play more games, this trend reverses, independently from your progression in ranks.

Doing stuff like this (although in other domains) is my job (data scientist). This is very easy to do for developers (basic machine learning). I'll save you the details. I know for a fact game companies use machine learning on players' data to increase earnings, and it shouldn't be a surprise to no one.

Here, it may serve any general purpose. Most intuitive one is to increase the amount of time spent by gamers - after a break you unexpectedly succeed, it sucks you in.

This phenomenon has been observed in other games. This was noticed by many player of the popular mobile hit "Clash Royale". One of the best players of all times stated that he does not know why this happens, but the more you play, the harder it is *inherently* to win. He consequently suggested players to take a break every X number of games if they want to rank up faster.

This is anti-consumer. It has undesirable psychological effects, and it significantly increases the toxicity in the game (when you get unplayable mates for 5 games in a row, it gets to you).

[Wolfie]

Haha I used to think this back when I was a scrub plat 2 or so.. I am now Champ 1 (play 2v2, only just now started 3v3) and this is nonsense. You just lose 50/50 when you hit your current performance level. Over time your rank will increase as you slowly get better.

[Brimstone]

Definitely crate gambling is rigged to keep kids opening crates though.

[Poor Bastard]

I feel like this could be true. I always have a great winning streak after a break.

But how would they implement this? If they just put you against players with lower MMR, you could see this with bakkesmod / alpha console.

[Brimstone]

Originally posted by Poor:

I feel like this could be true. I always have a great winning streak after a break.

But how would they implement this? If they just put you against players with lower MMR, you could see this with bakkesmod / alpha console.

Nah, its because your fresh when you come back to it.

[Feng Timo]

I agree the matching sys is broken I win 1 in 20 games

[Pondo2theTop]

Originally posted by Drake:

Many games are rigged, It's known fact. I recently stopped playing "MTG Arena", because it's very obviously scripted, they do that to urge players into buying, new, awesome cards. You mentioned "Clash Royale" - pay2win mobile game, no Sherlock is needed here to investigate why they might want to affect matchmaking, but with RL motive is not that strong. There is no pay2win mechanics, when you lose you don't think it's because you don't own that batmobile or don't have that new topper.

If Psyonix could have information gathered on machine learning about players skill, they could use it to make ranking games more balanced. The only thing they could do is to make better players stuck in lower rank in order to use them to boost noobs, but many ot those noobs are such a hopeless cases that they will still drag that players down, so it would be pointless. I have to carry most of games now, and I had games with 3/4 goals, saves, many shots of mine, but still lost, because of extremely awful teammates and I was deranked and now 80% teammates are awfully bad, but I don't think it's rigged. I agree with Korhan saying that, if you lose few games, then you get worse and worse teammates, but it's done because of you deranking into worse territories. Noobs don't need to be matchmaked to be carried, that's what's ranks suppose to do, place players at same skill, so noobs vs. noobs, still noobs will win. Players that win too much don't need to be stopped by matchmaking, they will be eventually when they will start playing against better players. so not much reasons for rigging it.

You said that after break you'll have winning streak. I'm playing more or less regularly. Now I'm dealing with totally bad teammates for most of the time, but I had once winning streak that get me from G -2-3 to P-1-2 within 2 hours, I lost 0 or maybe 1 game only, but that streak was not followed by any breaks or anything, I quess I was very lucky that day and was getting decent teammates.

Reason why people think it's faked, is that ranked system is completely broken and majority of players are playing in a higher ranks. Given points for win/lose should be based on personal performance in a game, that way carried noobs, wouldn't get so high, and better players could peacefully and faster escape noob ghetto. Also bad players are climbing on each other, and play in ranks they are not ready for, if f2p would come to this game, that would be disaster and end of any chance of decent teammates. I would vote on Psyonix's incompetence instead of purposeful affecting matchmaking.

Lastly, upcoming update is also against your theory, since they will let us do quick parties with random players we played before and liked.

I postulate the motivation they have is to increase the pool of active players. This in turn should either increase revenue directly, or just increase the value of their product, which they had intentions to sell to EPIC (future potential revenues).

The upcoming update will also increase the pool of active players, so these two mechanisms both contributes to their goal.

[CoSa]

So basicaly you are telling us that after around 10 games , your opponent will be way better then you , or you will get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ teammates .

How about the 10 games before that , where you have 100% winrate . You have to make sure you take those into your calculation ...

If you play 5 games with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ teammates after winning 10 games . You still won 66.6% of the 15 games . Which is clearly better then the 50% you were talking about .

And then again , did you calculate how many games AFTER those 15 games you will win again ? Cause to me this is basic math .

You calculate on "your games" "your amount of games" "your skill level" "your region" "your console/pc/mixed game experience" .... Makes me believe that your degree didn't realy help you with this.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

I could say that about anything related to MM's. I get crap mates in csgo too for instance, but super strong opponents. And thats in silver elite :/

[Pondo2theTop]

Originally posted by KozzmozZ:

So basicaly you are telling us that after around 10 games , your opponent will be way better then you , or you will get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ teammates .

How about the 10 games before that , where you have 100% winrate . You have to make sure you take those into your calculation ...

If you play 5 games with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ teammates after winning 10 games . You still won 66.6% of the 15 games . Which is clearly better then the 50% you were talking about .

And then again , did you calculate how many games AFTER those 15 games you will win again ? Cause to me this is basic math .

You calculate on "your games" "your amount of games" "your skill level" "your region" "your console/pc/mixed game experience" .... Makes me believe that your degree didn't realy help you with this.

You never have a 100% winrate, it's a noisy process. I'm suggesting you get a little a bit over .5 in the first couple of games (0.6-0.7 maybe), and a little below .5 afterwards (.3-.4 maybe).
These are probabilities. A probability of 0.6 means that if you player a large number of games, then you would win approximately 60% of them (with a Bernoulli variance of p(1-p)). Moreover, the probability of 0.6 is also noisy since the output of the algorithm also has variance.

[Inph1del]

While possible, saying it keeps people playing can also sound like if they didn’t do any influencing of the games many ppl would just quit or be perfect teammates.

How about full premode teams? If your tired of garbage teammates get some friends. Run your study on that.

[CraZy_SkuLL]

Originally posted by Inphidel:

While possible, saying it keeps people playing can also sound like if they didn’t do any influencing of the games many ppl would just quit or be perfect teammates.

How about full premode teams? If your tired of garbage teammates get some friends. Run your study on that.

why he should start his study on premades when the problem it's with random Qeue, all what people said here about after a break you win more etc... i experimented that also, but i will go further i experimented that my car it's faster after a break, the more i play the more slow my car is, jump less and take more time to fly, for the shake of god i even spend 100% of boost and i was unable to make it fly sometimes and i went directly to the ground.

i'm a solo Qeue for almost 90-99% of time (2.5k hours) and i can tell that there's always a cicle of lose streak and win streak.

you see how opponent teams belong to the rank you are playing but you also see how your mate it's a total garbage, then on win streaks it's the opposite.


i'm on plat 3 on 2v2 and 3v3 right now however i got my champ rewards with random Qeue this seasson and last seasson (100% random Qeue) how you explain that?

i absolutely don't have any problem on champ rank, in fact is where i play better.



my record and i'm not joking it's have a 25 lose streak on 2v2 last seasson then 1 win and then another 13 lose streak, went from d3 to plat 3 in just 3 days, then a miracle happened the next day i went from plat 3 to d3 winning alllllll the games except 1 lose and almost ranking up in every game i did, how you explain that?? (bad day??? 3 consecutive playing like always and the next day playing exactly the same as the other 3 days god came to help me??)


no, the MM of this game have something hidden, idk what it is, but have something and the proof it's that thread where more people felt the same and got the same situations about win streak etc......

[CoSa]

Originally posted by Pondo2theTop:

Originally posted by KozzmozZ:

So basicaly you are telling us that after around 10 games , your opponent will be way better then you , or you will get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ teammates .

How about the 10 games before that , where you have 100% winrate . You have to make sure you take those into your calculation ...

If you play 5 games with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ teammates after winning 10 games . You still won 66.6% of the 15 games . Which is clearly better then the 50% you were talking about .

And then again , did you calculate how many games AFTER those 15 games you will win again ? Cause to me this is basic math .

You calculate on "your games" "your amount of games" "your skill level" "your region" "your console/pc/mixed game experience" .... Makes me believe that your degree didn't realy help you with this.

You never have a 100% winrate, it's a noisy process. I'm suggesting you get a little a bit over .5 in the first couple of games (0.6-0.7 maybe), and a little below .5 afterwards (.3-.4 maybe).
These are probabilities. A probability of 0.6 means that if you player a large number of games, then you would win approximately 60% of them (with a Bernoulli variance of p(1-p)). Moreover, the probability of 0.6 is also noisy since the output of the algorithm also has variance.

still makes no sense . The point i'm trying to make is that there are way too many aspects they should take into consideration , and those aspects would basicaly overrule eachother ...

i know where u are coming from , meaning i understand what u mean . But as i said , if u keep in mind : Region / Type of comp (1v1/2v2/3v3) / Rank / amount of games played that session / pc,console,mixed / and way more , there is no such thing as "rigged"

[Drake]

Before I was not believing in your theory, but then I've read people's stories and I was shocked. They had EXACTLY the same situation as me... When I was in silver, at some point I felt ready to advance, they let me have a sneak peak on gold, then dragged me down to mud with worst case teammates ever possible, back to mid silver. I had to put way more games and time than really needed to escape that ghetto. Now the same story happened with me trying to advance to plat. I had normal teammates, advanced and played for a while in plat, after that I only get crappy teammates, and got deranked to low gold ... Now I have 0 fun of playing, best case scenario is teammates that are carriable bad, but most of them are way too bad to do anything ...

They boost noobs, but ruin game for better players and it might lead to stopping playing that fake ass game by them, which is opposite of what you assume they're aiming for, but there is probably way more players that suck and don't want to get better in the game, than players who wants to improve . Also that kind of matchmaking is reason why this game is "toxic". Before that lose streak shenanigan I've never been punished for "toxcitiy" and because of annoyance and frustation of dealing with trash teammates again and again I got chat banned twice ...

I think their goal is to keep you longer in a rank that you're in and slower your progression, also boost those ball chasing kids, cause they have no intentions to improve their skill on their own, so need a help with that... I noticed that if you'll get to middle of a rank, then it's more or less legit, but when you're ready to move to next rank, game is countering your skill and use their special agents of misery in almost every single game to pull you far away from your targeted rank. You need to be better by 2/3 ranks in order to advance and pierce through their noob teammates walls.

Also people saying about having own team - they're punishing for that and only give 50% of MMR points, so either deal with BS solo matchmaking or earn half points with your own party.

[(Clever Name Here)]

I noticed every tier gets harder. Every time I get to Platinum it becomes impossible to go forward. Almost always losing. My teammates tend to be really bad. And yet at other tiers like Gold and what not I am usually the one in top place in my team. Something is fishy to me.

[Shenmue est vie]

Yeah I do confirm that. I won't complain too much though