Source
r/truegaming•
uky0kuonji

Is there "Elo hell", or are people at the right rank for their skill level?

A thing I see often for games that have a competitive/ranked mode is that people ask how to climb ranks or get out of Elo hell. League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch... I see it as a semi-common topic on subs like r/siegeacademy or r/overwatchuniveristy . I myself don't play ranked modes, but I wonder: Ranks ideally are given based on skill level. A person that sucks at a game should be something like Bronze and good players should be Platnium/Diamond. If the ranking system is functioning correctly, as a person plays enough games shouldn't they end up in the proper rank for their skill level?

Posted Feb 16, 2019, 4:24 AM UTC

1137
Stokkolm•

I believe elo hell is a thing if the matchmaking pool runs out of bad players, and even people at the bottom have a solid grasp of the game mechanics. What you get then is that the level of challange at the bottom of the elo distribution is not much different than what goes on at the middle of the elo. So if you are a player that belongs at the middle but you play at the bottom you don't have enough advantage to make a significant difference and climb up.

18
FTWJewishJesus•

I played around 8 seasons of overwatch. In my experience you can only carry to about 500 SR (about one full rank) under your own skill level.

I made it to about 2850 my first season, and at first the game had a system that would rank you a few hundred under your final rank so you could climb back up. It was a crap system and they eventually did away with it. But there were times when I would be gaining rank with a negative win rate just because I was playing better than my ranked peers. I think the worst it got was at about 30 games into the season I had a 37% win rate but had gained 100 SR from my placement.

So if a game takes individual performance into account, it might allow you to still climb despite elo hell. Unfortunately I think overwatch has done away with that system.

4
herrabanani•

I think taking individual performance is a very bad way of doing things. If you have a sub 50% win rate but are warding a lot in league of legends then you don't automatically deserve to rank up if it isn't winning you games.

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DrBubonic•

ELO systems usually work out with a large amount of people. That doesn’t stop people from purposefully losing so they can feel better by beating a worse crowd.

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championofobscurity•

If the gap between you and the next rank is too wide, it can absolutely happen.

I remember when I hit Platinum in Starcraft II after being in Gold for multiple years. What ended up happening is that, my best macro performance was average for people in platinum. So I started losing hard to cheese, and the counter was centered heavily around micro in the early game. It actually took a jump in how stressful it was to play the game, and killed the enjoyment for me.

In gold, I was able to win with good strategic decisions. But platinum is sort of the entry level of needing high tactical proficiency.

7
Kered13•

That's not Elo hell though. You ranked up and got more difficult opponents, so your rank stabilized. That's how Elo is supposed to work.

Elo hell is the idea that you can be ranked below where you "should" be because something outside of your control is keeping you down, usually teammates in team games.

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championofobscurity•

That's not Elo hell though. You ranked up and got more difficult opponents, so your rank stabilized.

My rank didn't stabilize. I was caught in a tide of Gold and Platinum. I'd lose outright to platinum players and completely ace Gold players. There wasn't enough nuance to account for the difference in skill.

usually teammates in team games.

You have control over your teammates in 99% of team games. Choosing to match make your team doesn't mean elo hell exists, if this is your justification.

Like I said to the other poster. The logical extreme of this is: Don't play with randoms.

1
AquilaPolaris•

Leagues were never used for matchmaking, your MMR, which was eventually made visible to the player, is what has always been used. Leagues like gold and plat have always been purely cosmetic. Your case isn't 'elo hell', you have just aren't good enough to push higher.

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ThePineapplePyro•

To be fair, I think the concept of "Elo Hell" Is generally applied to team games. People believe that they should be at least slightly better than their current rank, but find it impossible to get above it due to their teammates.

6
Zardran•

It's just an excuse though. Pure invention.

The reality is that if they are a better player than their rank, don't AFK, don't throw games etc, the opposing team has a higher chance of containing "bad teammates" than their team does.

It's flawed mentality because they overly focus on losses due to teammates but completely discount wins due to the same reasons. They create this mentality where all wins are deserved and due to their skill, whereas losses are always due to "bad teammates", not their fault. However a player of a higher skill level than their rank will win more games due to AFKs and such than they will lose.

People just overestimate their skill level a lot of the time. When I used to play League the ELO hell whining was constant. You had players convinced they were ranked far below their skill level. The common analysis from them being "I always win lane" as "proof" of them being better than everyone else. What they don't realise is that laning is only 1/3 of the game and doesn't guarantee you a win just because you come out of the laning phase ahead. They don't realise that they aren't actually that good at the other phases of the game but instead of addressing this and improving their game, they convince themselves that being better at the laning phase means they are the better player, that losses are not their fault and that they are consistently getting screwed by bad teammates. They won't entertain the idea that people on the other team might have just been better at the game. That's why they invent the concept of ELO hell.

One other cause is that these systems are generally going to produce the correct ranking for players but it can take a large enough sample size to properly normalise. I think a lot of people don't realise this and just get frustrated because they don't automatically climb but that's not how it works. If they played a thousand games then they would see an accurate end result but that doesn't mean it's going to happen over 50 games. The sample size is too small. Think of tossing a coin, I can get 10 heads in a row, doesn't mean I don't have a 50/50 chance of getting heads each time. However toss it 1000 times and the odds of flipping heads every time becomes astronomically low. The more times you flip the coin the more likely your results are going to get to being 50/50 or very close to it.

The only thing that really upsets the system in any appreciable way is people smurfing and intentionally playing at a ranking below their skill level. Depends how widespread smurfing is as to how much of an unbalancing effect it's going to have though.

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championofobscurity•

This argument is at least a little disingenuous.

The logical extreme of your statement is that people shouldn't play with randoms. In which case Elo Hell doesn't exist.

But the alternative is that it does exist, and that it exists for single player games as well.

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Frakshaw•

So what you're saying is everyone should have 5 friends that are always online when you want to play, are in your skill range, try hard and play to win, and also play diverse characters so you can get a meta comp going?

That's a wishful statement, mate.

I don't understand how not playing with pre-mades and thus getting to elo he'll plays into it being also in 1v1 games when the sole reason for elo he'll is being held back due to teammates.

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championofobscurity•

So what you're saying is everyone should have 5 friends that are always online when you want to play, are in your skill range, try hard and play to win, and also play diverse characters so you can get a meta comp going?

Yeah. Have shit team mates? Get better team mates. Nobody is forcing you to match make with bad team mates. You are not entitled to a good team. If you can't coordinate something either accept that ELO hell doesn't exist and that you aren't putting in the effort or find better people to play with.

Also, even then your argument is disingenuous because it doesn't take a 5 man composition to create leverage. You could be playing with just a single other friend and have an advantage over 5 randos.

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[deleted]•

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BaltasarOnRails•

I stopped playing Overwatch when they revealed, that they purposefully reduce your last seasons rank, so you'll feel better by the fast gain. My problem was, that I won around 1/3 of my games and it would have required three to four times the number of matches that I was able and willing to play per week.

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HeartfireSR•

The reducing your SR after placements in Overwatch has been removed over a year ago as everyone hated it.

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BaltasarOnRails•

That is good to hear!

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This_is_sandwich•

Well, those games rely heavily on team play. I don't know how Overwatch or LoL ranking works, but Siege is only based on whether your team wins or not (or at least it was last I checked). A low skilled player can be carried while a high skilled player can be dragged down and people who rely on random matchmaking could have either case happen. In the long run, I suppose eventually their ranking or ELO would even out assuming the random matchmaking is actually random and a sufficient number of games are played. I know there's some worry with smurfing (high skilled players making fresh accounts so they are matched against newer/less skilled players 'for run') and deranking (purposefully losing to lower your rank so again you're matched with less skilled players) in the Siege community (or at least there was last time I checked). So yeah, ideally ranking is supposed to even out and generally match a player's skill level, but there's a lot of different factors that can affect it.

And if you look at team sports, having the best players doesn't necessarily mean the team will win. It helps for sure, but there's plenty relying on strategy and chemistry and consistency. All of that stuff can apply to ranking in video games that are team based as well.

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Stokkolm•

Law of large numbers evens out randomness caused by what teammates you get. But you may need a ton of matches for that.

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vuduhx•

The answer to your title is both yes and no for both questions, in my opinion. ELO hell is not actually a thing. People with enough games will balance to where the ELO system will put them. At the same time, that doesn't mean that they will be of equal skill as others at their ELO. Let me explain.

There are many different skills a person can have in any given game.Let's use Siege and LoL as examples because I know them both fairly well. In Siege, your primary expression of skill is killing people, but there are also communication skills like call outs and interpersonal skills of interacting with your teammates. Someone can be an amazing fragger; perhaps even a more skilled fragger than people higher ranked than them, but they could have terrible call out or interpersonal skills that result in their team losing any round they get picked early in the round. This person's ELO will likely be lower than someone who is a less skilled fragger, but is considerably better at the other skills involved in the game. In this person's perspective, they will often perceive themselves as considerably better than their teammates because of their disproportionately high fragging ability for the ELO and see themselves as in ELO hell.

The reality of the situation is that they get placed correctly based on what the ELO system is matchmaking for, but that is not what some people think the ELO system should be rating. Siege's ELO (or GLICKO or whatever else) system rates you on your total contribution to win the game. That, however, contains soft skills that cannot be represented in a statistic.

This explanation also ignores Siege's lack of solo queue which means that group communication is another skill that is wrapped into the rating which can create an even greater gap in someone's fragging skill versus their MMR rating.

When you consider a MOBA like LoL, there are dozens of individual skills, most of which are qualitative in nature, that contribute to your total rated ELO. This makes the rating itself even further separated from quantitative metrics that people like to use for skill level justifications so even more people feel out of place.

TL;DR: ELO works in the broad sense, but skill is a complex topic that not everyone values and perceives the same way. This creates disparity in perceived skill and rated skill.

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jack_epicster•

In over watch I placed originally just under gold, my friends all higher gold. Could still play with them but discouraging, each season when I tried to play I would place lower regardless of how many wins/losses and my performance. The most recent placement matches. I attempted I was getting gold Medals in most games and got placed in bronze at around ~1200-1300. If I still played I can’t Imagine it would go much lower.

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[deleted]•

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SenatorBeers•

I find it a somewhat irrelevant question. The only really important question is do you find the games compelling for you to play? People get toohung up on ranks.

1
LokarinBBX•

It's definitely a thing in unranked Dota 2. This is because in unranked the "normal" bracket contains an absolutely insane number of players compared to the next bracket, something around 100'000 to a MILLION times more players

It's also possible that there's simply not enough gradation in ranks in some games. In CounterStrike GO, a game I like but don't care enough to 'git gud' - I've always felt there should be two more softer ranks so that people of definitely below average skill can have a fun challenge for them.

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weaboomemelord69•

I think so. It’s quite inevitable with current matchmaking systems, because eventually it gets to a point where players of higher skill level are stuck do to playing with players of high skill level.

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TheRNGuy•

Even if players have better skill rank than "elo hell" they just not good enough for escape velocity. Maybe they're mediocore players after all.

Being able to escape elo hell is one of best proof of being good player.

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The--Nameless--One[Insert Info]•

Have you ever seen all the discussions about The Oscars? Many people claim that the voting system is flawed, that mediocre movies end up winning because of the way the algorithm works.

If something that can move millions of dollars, like an Oscar Nomination or Win, and has been around for decades now, can still be considered to be "flawed", what can be said about the way Match-Making and Ranking Systems works?

When you say: "If the ranking system is functioning correctly, as a person plays enough games shouldn't they end up in the proper rank for their skill level?"

The issue is how much is really enough, Statistics tend to usually take very big numbers for things to "balance out". You could be talking about 10000 matches for "Enough Matches".

There are tons of variables too, even silly things like "time of the day" may influence how good the matchmaking may be.

Some Games struggle with the relationship between the "classify" period and the climbing the ladder. In Paladins (great game, by the way), it's way easier to make a Smurf, play your MD-10 and end up with very high rank. Than to take your main account that is sitting on Gold for example, and climb to the same rank.

0
Stokkolm•

Oscars are not a good analogy. Even if a matchmaking system is flawed the result of an individual match is determined entirely by the game mechanics, there is no subjectivity involved, unless there are things like white moves first in chess.

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The--Nameless--One[Insert Info]•

Actually, the issue that people bring up is not because of the subjectivity of the voting, that is well, subjective. But because of the way the results are calculated by the algorithm: http://www.dailycal.org/2018/02/28/oscars-voting-explained/

2
Do_The_Upgrade•

It only takes a few dozen matches to place players accurately with Elo. It can depend on what K factor they use for the algorithm but I've never seen a game cause a situation like this by making their k factor too low.

You can absolutely get sccrewed in the short term by being matched against unusually good players or have bad ones on your team, but the chances of the happening 20+ games in a row in infinitesimally small. In the long run, it will balance out just from simple randomness in who you play with and against which is why it usually only takes a few dozen games or so for your rating to be accurate.

There are tons of variables too, even silly things like "time of the day" may influence how good the matchmaking may be.

not sure what you mean by this other than the player pool varying with time of day which has a minimal impact on Elo rankings.

From what I understand, Paladins has a longer placement period than most games where it will increase its k factor and let players move through ranks faster, but that doesn't mean you will get stuck in a rank long term.

I was top 2.5% in Paladins but I only played casual and I liked switching characters a lot so I never really had a main. I was annoyed that I would frequently get ranked against top-ranked players playing their best character when I was just there to try something new in casual. Even though I could compete against them, it just wasn't fun anymore and one of the reasons I ultimately stopped playing.

1
EmperorOfOwls•

Elo hell is nonsense generally, you can get unlucky in matchmaking and have you rank be a lot lower than it should be - but the likelihood drops with increasing ammount of games, and with the gap between ELO you have and ELO you should have.

Of course it depends on the specific game, if you are good player and play against really bad enemies you can often effectively solo the game even if your teammates are super horrible, making dropping below certain level impossible.

Great player with a lot of games under their belt could theoretically end with low ELO, but its probably as likely as winning several loteries in row.

0
mithrillion•

There might be a little truth to the idea of Elo hell: activity measurement. If the scoring algorithm has any kind of activity bonus or score decay (it should), then in theory the most active players will end up with a slightly higher tank than their skill level because players who are better but less active may drop below them.

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aanzeijarresident Dark Souls hater•

Note though that the scoring decay is there to make it easier for returning players to get back into the game because no one plays their prime games after not playing a month.

For the general concept of ELO hell this is insignificant because that's about people who think they should be in diamond but are kept in bronze by the system. Which is nonsense.

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placeholder368•

In a game like LoL there sure as hell is. There's no way to get an accurate elo ranking when you're one of five in a team game and you've played maybe less than 100 matches. No scientific study with such few data points would ever be taken seriously. You'd need 1,000s possibly 10,000s of matches for people's elo ranking to be accurate.

Thats not to say the best won't separate themselves from the main herd quickly. But in the lower brackets say bronze-gold those players are very often in the wrong bracket for their skill level.

Anecdotally back when I played LoL, I rose all the way to Gold then fell back to bronze. I didn't magically get better and then somehow get worse. If anything I got slightly better over time as would be expected with continued practice. It's just the luck of who I got matched with.

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placeholder368•

You can't carry a bronze game all by yourself on the regular if, say, your actual skill level is silver rank.

If you are silver it would be extremely easy to sit in bronze or gold depending on how luck swayed.

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ReganDryke•

It's actually very easy to carry a bronze game by yourself. The disgusting advantage you can accumulate by amusing the enemy endless amount of mistake is almost impossible to come back from unless you start chasing KDA like an idiot.

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