How Matchmaking works in Arc8

To provide fair competition and the best-balanced experience for all players, very skilled players cannot fight a newbie in a 1v1 battle. That is ensured by the matchmaking system.

How does it work?

The core of matchmaking is that every player is collecting points reflecting their skills in every game they play — separately.

• Qualification — When you start playing, you have to go through qualifications to get a rank. During qualification, you get the same amount of MMR* points as LP* points. That effectively means that after qualification, a player who won 3 matches already cannot be matched with a player who won none, etc.
• MMR gain — If you win a 1v1 match, you gain MMR points
• In case of a draw, both players gain a small amount of MMR points.
• MMR loss — If you lose a 1v1 match, you lose MMR points
• Streaks — If you win more matches in a row, your MMR gain is boosted to get to your level quicker. The same happens when you lose more matches in a row — you are descending faster to get to a level where you will have a chance of defeating your opponents sooner.
• Matching an opponent — you keep collecting your MMR points throughout the season, for the whole season, you can only be matched with opponents within a certain range of your MMR balance
• Opponent bonus — MMR of your opponent is within a narrow range, but still not the same as yours, that’s to ensure enough opponents for your battles. So, when you defeat a bit stronger opponent, it means you gained some skills and you get a small MMR bonus to get closer to your level. When you lose to a weaker opponent, you get a small MMR deduction to play the next match against an easier opponent.

LPs vs MMR

• *LPs aka League Points are the main points you gain or lose for winning or losing in Arc8 battles (1v1 Premium battles only). LPs decide which rank you got in the given game
• Basis of *MMR gain or loss is equal to LP gain or loss for the given match, but, as mentioned, multipliers and bonuses affect MMR (not LP)
• Also, to ensure your MMR really reflects your skill, you are getting the same amount of MMR points for practice matches. That way you can be sure that someone who gained skills by only playing practice won’t hit premium matches as a hurricane and beat all the players who just started playing without spending a significant amount of time in practice matches.
• To level the playing field up after a season, LPs and MMR points are reset to the same level for all players on the platform — the starting level for next season depends directly on your LPs at the end of the previous season. Basically, every player is moved down one rank, Bronze players are moved to the lower third of the Bronze rank.

Conclusion

Effectively, a combination of all the factors mentioned above can lead to a situation where you are being matched to players above or below your rank in 1v1 premium matches. Providing fair competition is the priority.

We are updating MMR settings to provide wider range of opponents and we are currently analyzing the data we already have from S1 to improve the experience in S2.

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