Vainglory Matchmaker - Technical Discussion

In this thread, @Guest_78 and I started talking about the way the VG matchmaker works, and rather than continue to hijack that topic, I decided to create this one to continue the discussion.

What I’m hoping is that we can pool our knowledge to try to better understand how VG’s matchmaker behaves in different game modes. I don’t want this to be ranting about how bad it is (though we all know it fails, sometimes spectacularly), so expect those types of posts to be moved or hidden. Let’s try to make this serious and as technical as possible. Support your assertions with evidence as much as possible!

Thanks!

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Casual MM should be improved. It’s way too random.

there’s been so many cases where it’s too much of a tier difference between both sides.

There’s 5 Ranked players and 5 unranked players queuing up.

MM puts 1 Pro with 4 unranked newbies VS 4 Ranked players with 1 newbie.

Wouldn’t it be more logical to spread it out so it’s more like… 2 newbies 3 pro’s VS 2 pro’s 3 newbies?

I was going to post about Casual MM but i was wondering if anyone would even care about Casual Matches.
Casual%20Matchup

My understanding of the basic design objective for the casual matchmaker is to balance the matchmaking quality with queue time to achieve something like a reasonably good match without the wait time exceeding 3 minutes. However, since I’ve recently waited in queues far longer than 3 minutes in casual, I’m not sure that’s still correct.

I’m not picking on you, but the belief that “casual doesn’t matter” is one reason VG won’t ever be as popular as AoV or ML …

Also, your screenshot of that match doesn’t really apply, because a VST of -1 is meaningless with regard to the matchmaker, which matches people based on the hidden MMR, of which VST is a rough approximation. If players don’t have a VST, you have no idea what their MMR is.

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I refuse to play casual because it is historically bad for me. Very lopsided matches. Perhaps my low amount of cas games make that matchmaker bad

I only ever play ranked for mostly that reason. Because I dont want vainglorious enemies with credible threat allies which I have seen too many times in the past.

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As I said in the other thread, casual MM prioritize short queues over precision or fair matches, this was said by the support system. Also, my own experience:


I already posted this matches in the other comment, but to have them here in the same comment. Ranked MM is far more accurate though (~1 subtier difference in the worst cases, maybe 2, which is awesome). So in general I think that Casual MM should be improved because realistically having short queues is good, but not when matches are that unbalanced. Look at the matches above, do someone think that any of those matches like destroying or being destroyed like that? It results in a poor experience, specially for the new players as they can’t play ranked and this is the first thing they see.

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That could be. MMR for each mode is independent, after all.

well, even if that is the case, it’s still a reasonable educated guess if the total number of games they’ve played is of such a low quantity (from looking up each player individually) that they’ve never even played ranked before.

it’s also quite obvious in game who’s the newbies and who’s the pro’s.

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If it is -1 than they can’t be any good… If they went unranked they probably have no idea how the game is even played properly.

Casual matches aren’t serious and people try all sorts of stuff in cas making any win or loss not count. Builds and kda scores only matter if there was an actual opponent on the other side trying their best at an equal level.

Our grievances with Ranked 5v5 were all related to the MM being as bad as Casual because it was way too Lax in which match ups it allowed.

Incorrect. VST is -1 for any player who’s less than level 10. Once they reach level 10, their VST is set to something around 1200.

This is a valid point, at least some of the time. For a majority of players, though, casual is the mode they play the most, if not exclusively. So the fact that some players (who see casual as unimportant) actually ruin the game for those who don’t want to play ranked, for whatever reason.

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Again, not necessarily a valid assumption at all. Why? One word: smurf.

that would imply that smurfing is quite wide spread. and the number of legitimate new players is dismally low.

I think that’s not the case, but I could be wrong. I believe the number of new players are infact quite high due the the recent updates of joystick.

edit - just look at the recent influx of new forumer’s looking for answers. is that not an indication of new players on a steady increase?

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A level 10 or lower player…
Heck I will take any one over those… Level 10 means its a smurf or a newbie two cases that you don’t want to see in your matches.

You made my argument invalid by proving an even stronger one…

Sub level 10 I haven’t been that in years…

Smurfing is widespread – it’s actually not hard to identify with a fair degree of certainty through the API. It’s not against the TOS, so a lot of players do it.

Let’s hope so, but there’s really no way to know for sure. I am pretty certain the game is growing in SEA, but no firm idea about other regions.

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Missing the point entirely, I see.

ANYWAY …

This thread isn’t to discuss what the matchmaker SHOULD BE, but rather what it IS. Let’s get back on topic, please.

seems pretty one-sided to me

other casual matches today have been bad too, but not as bad as this one

It is IMO, horrible… if it even exist, and the queues aren’t that short to compensate to how bad it is.

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I feel like MM just tries to get to know players a little bit too hard to the point that it becomes ineffective. As a VG player my cas MM times takes like 5+ minutes because no other VG player is either playing casual or no VG player is playing at all. This results in the MM system to look for the next best thing: POA players. This slowly goes down and down and down and down. They personally matched you against that individual who is also in queue and it begins assigning to basically a full lobby.

So basically casual MM supports the more casual audience as higher tiers have more wait time and lower tiers have less wait time because there are other low tier players playing, trying to play in an environment that is stress free. The only time the amount of high tier players waiting in queue would be when a new hero is released to the week after the new hero is released. Or events like the Idris one. High tier players would party up and wait in casual MM for 10+ min and crush their t4 opponents and picking up a win OR (since there is supposed activity of high tier players) they would run into them instantly and basically have a sweaty ranked match for win on their tracker. A little bit off topic but that is one of the reasons why the game isn’t really about skill but instead partying and steamrolling the opponents who are hopefully not in a party.

Ranked MM is fairly active within high tiers but if there are people playing in “off times” they will do the same process as casual MM. The MM sounds great on paper until there is this amazing thing called “parties” and SEMC will not be able to restrict the way they made parties work in 3s. And that is due to the player base. SEMC just has to make “soloQ” “duoQ/trioQ” and “5-man.” High tiers will greatly suffer from this. They can also try to discourage partying but doing some dividing of the ELO among members so people only party up when they about to get down and play for hours and hours. That would remove boosting from the game, mostly.

TLDR: From what I have noticed MM mostly uses a tiered system that continuously moves down to get you a match you can play. Partying makes MM go kookoo and allows SoloQ players to be in a disadvantage. I look at leaderboard sometimes to see the names and I can point out who’s boosted and not boosted, and a bunch are, oh I will never forget how a VG Silver Varya was losing to a POA bronze Celeste in lane (who reached only POA Gold) and needed a pro player to carry the game.

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the 2 highest damage dealers happen to be smurfs? seems pretty even to me.

i’d say the real tragedy is the WP Adagio player - most probably an account bought from a online blackmarket they visit.