Part of a matchmaking algorithm that increases user engagement is telling a story about how it's more fair though.
Like our tolerance for losing is acquired. Most normal people losing in League for the first time stop playing, usually forever. Just randomly visit your friend's match histories in League, frequent players have many days of long losing streaks.
If you're just conditioned to play despite losing, great, in a Darwinian way (surviving, being around to be measured) you will be representative of the average player in League. And there are so many League players with such long retention you cannot possibly argue that skill-based matchmaking is the core component of user engagement.
His dataset is interesting because it will necessarily overrepresent people who kept playing despite the old system. That sort of refutes its importance - I mean sure people complain but they keep playing, so was it really that important? So what if complaints go down?
Those are important goals, and also, it's still an interesting twist in multiplayer game design. You just gotta interpret it as a commentary on a whole system even if it doesn't narrowly talk about a scientific objective like performance prediction.
Player retention was significantly lower before the new rating system was introduced. It wasn't just complaints, it's just that is a more direct metric because multiple changes may have affected the retention.
Like our tolerance for losing is acquired. Most normal people losing in League for the first time stop playing, usually forever. Just randomly visit your friend's match histories in League, frequent players have many days of long losing streaks.
If you're just conditioned to play despite losing, great, in a Darwinian way (surviving, being around to be measured) you will be representative of the average player in League. And there are so many League players with such long retention you cannot possibly argue that skill-based matchmaking is the core component of user engagement.
His dataset is interesting because it will necessarily overrepresent people who kept playing despite the old system. That sort of refutes its importance - I mean sure people complain but they keep playing, so was it really that important? So what if complaints go down?
Those are important goals, and also, it's still an interesting twist in multiplayer game design. You just gotta interpret it as a commentary on a whole system even if it doesn't narrowly talk about a scientific objective like performance prediction.