Starcraft 2 does this, telling you if they are slightly favored, favored, etc. during the loading screen.

sent to your email as you requested:

also, why did I lose 42 elo that game, and I won 12 in the previous one? Isnt that a bit unfair, particularly with someone who ragequits at 1300+ elo?

EDITED BY LYTE :: Saved the screenshot, thank you!

What about calculating margin of victory on a per-minute basis?

For example, calculate the following:

(Kills / Minute) * a
(Assists / Minute) * b
(Gold / Minute) * c
(Towers / Minute) * d
(Minions / Minute) * e
.
.
.
etc., where a, b, c, ... etc. are some constant weighting factors to keep all the values closely weighted. Gold is typically a much larger value than kills, for example, so Kills/Minute would need to be weighted up to measure against Gold/Minute.

Take the top 3 and bottom 3 values from that set. Use those values to calculate ELO gain. So in order to gain extra elo, you have to 1) be helpful in more than 1 way, 2) be helpful in a manner that is to scale with the game's length, 3) avoid being really really terrible in your worst areas.

I really appreciate you looking into how matchmaking works Lyte and be expecting to get your inbox spammed with screen shots starting tomorrow on my 3 day weekend :)

What if the K-factor varied based on the champion you were using? So the first time you play Annie ranked, there is a larger K-factor than if you are playing Vayne for the 40th time.

I am at 1300-1400 elo after 80ish games. I feel like this really is my skill range at this moment. I mostly play support and jungle, never really have played the other 3 roles since I don't really feel like fighting for them.

This is largely because of the thin amount of people above 1900 elo. There are over 100k people stuck in 1200-1500 and 1/3 that above 1700? People call this elo hell.

Hmm, the last imbalanced thing I've seen in matchmaking was a ranked game where the average elo of everyone was 1400, and there was a 1600 on the enemy team.

I didn't grab a screenshot though, so I'm sure it'd be a waste of time to email you.

Best. Rioter. Ever. Thank you.

Wouldn't allowing people to pick their desired win percentage lead to problems if choices were systematically skewed in one direction? I do like the idea, though. Different Normal Elo "profiles" would also be fun. I think it would be best in combination with a system for flagging your role prefs. e.g. a Veigar-mainer could flag "mage" as their role and use their "SRS BUSINESS" Elo profile.

It seems like this would be better than relying on MM to realize "Oh, CupcakeTrap is trying to play Riven now; better drop that Elo like a rock to find reasonable matches."

I have a perfect example for your poor matchmaking. Last game I play.
Someone calls bot graves, someone calls mid, someone calls lee sin jungle. All good so far.I go top, playing Shen. Next pick...jungle gangplank. Does not speak forever in lobby or game. Person who called Lee Sin jungle then proceeds to pick jax(on "accident", said he "tried" to pick janna). He then proceeds to give up first blood,second blood, third blood. Trolls our team by stealing buffs from people who could actually benefit from it.

Yes the gp trolled us, but the guy who picked jax could have rolled with it,nah he wants to make us suffer for 39 minutes because he refused to surrender, as did the gp I think.

This is the stuff we need to clear out of the ranked game, and possibly the game completely.


edit: I just looked at the Jax from that game. 54 normal wins and 9 losses and a leave on his last 10 games page and no complete tier 3 rune page. We probably would have lost if he played jungle lee sin as well, as he has a 21% win rate with him, but he just picked jax to annoy us.