How accurately does current mmr represent a player’s true skill? Would it make more sense to use some kind of lagging indicator, like a trailing average?
Can you capture the differences between players like bloodninja, who fluctuate up and down, and those who are on an upward trajectory?
When bloodninja fluctuates up and down, does his true skill remain constant, or do the fluctuations represent his current level of play?
How do you determine those who are value for their mmr?
If there is no matchmaking abuse, and assuming players are not initially overvalued, mmr should theoretically converge to “true skill” and there shouldn’t be severely overvalued players. However, due to factors such as new patches, and boosting, there may be anti-value players. How do you determine them?
For mmr vis-à-vis true skill, clearly there is a lot you could consider.
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Setting aside the above problem, let us consider badges.
If every badge tier corresponds to 154 mmr, a player with a certain badge could have any mmr within a 307 mmr range. (Because a de-rank isn’t updated until you’ve fallen farther than one star away. See here. Note that matchmaking is done “on MMR and not medals, and thus sometimes a game can appear to be good or bad as a result of the medals not representing reality.” Conclude for yourself how much sense it makes for us to use medals instead of mmr in RD2L.)
If you always draft players at the top of their “mmr buckets”, and another captain always drafts those at the bottom, by the end of the draft you could theoretically build up a 307 x 4 = 1228 mmr advantage!
This is significant, but is there a way to tell who is at the top and bottom of their buckets? I’m not sure.
In any case, a strictly numerical approach isn’t likely to get you far anyway. The appropriate consideration is still: who is value and anti-value.
MMR, and also badge stars, are familiar and intuitive for me. The draft-sheet numerical equivalent, less so. I’m not sure how I’m going to work with the draft sheet yet. Do I just translate to mmr and do what I’ve always done? I’d like to hear ideas from other captains.
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