I take it that you are referring to them server with the toughest games to win? I don't think you can judge that from the number of top-rated games and their implied MMR alone. You'd have to consider how much the players in their respective servers tryhard as well. Also,you'd have to assume that MMR is an accurate reflection of skill across servers, which I find rather presumptuous since players in different servers do not compete with each other. I think a global matchmaking system would be needed to answer your question.
Really players in different servers regions compete with each other a lot. I frequently play on two servers, sometimes 3 or 4 and I have played at least one game on 7 of them.
But SEA certainly is never playing USeast or EUwest. There certainly are problems with the comparison, but how important are they to answering the question of which server is the toughest?
What reasons are there to believe that an MMR of 5000 is worth significantly more or less on one server or the other? Of course winrate can be very distorted by server habits...but if you don't play against the highest rated players you can't get higher MMR than they have. Your wins will gain 0 points if the gap is much more than a few hundred. You have to beat someone with 5000 to go up if you are at 5500...and you would have to do it a lot really. Most gains would be 1-2 points with a gap that large.
I think cross-competition between the servers would serve to spread the high MMR around the world. I don't think it matter whether individuals tryhard in a certain game. I'm not checking who wins the game...only who was rated highest from their overall performance in all games.
It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I expect the top spots to rotate around the world as the best players in different regions are up and playing at different times. I was thinking about checking every hour, but then games will overlap. I think every 2 hours would be the best way to do it. The first 2 pages would be enough to have 144 games in a day, that should be enough data to see patterns.
I took a sample at 4 GMT and predictably its dominated by USeast since most of Europe is already asleep...It should shift to USwest 2-4hr from now and then maybe another 2-4hr start picking up SEA? I don't know when people tend to play dota in different parts of the world.
4 GMT sample top MMR games.
1 USeast
2 USeast
3 EUwest
4 China
5 China
6 USeast
7 USwest
8 USwest
9 USeast
10 USwest
11 USeast
12 EUwest
Yes...compared to nearly everyone...but not compared to the people who are always on page 1.
The system seems to be rotating toward Asia faster than one might expect. Of course from my experience USwest is weak so it might get overshadowed easily.
6 GMT sample top MMR games
1 China
2 USeast
3 USeast
4 SEA
5 USeast
6 EUwest
7 USeast
8 EUwest
9 Russia
10 China
11 SEA
12 SEA
Mmr is obviously comparing between players in a server. U shldnt compare across servers. Besides, comparing at different time intervals is not accurate either.some time zones its sleep time, lesser people online
No, MMR compares everyone in the world whether they play directly or not. The fact that people play at different times is exactly the reason you have to use lots of different times to compare the servers properly. Maybe you only play one server, but nearly everyone plays some games on servers besides the one closest to them. That is how MMR is traded around the world.
8 GMT sample top MMR games
1 SEA
2 SEA
3 EUwest
4 SEA
5 EUwest
6 SEA
7 EUwest
8 China
9 EUwest
10 EUwest
11 EUwest
12 SEA
i dont see how this tracks anything more than which server is more popular at each specific time period.
a player in the uswest server can have the same mmr as a person in the useast server, despite a big difference in skill because the competition in uswest server isnt as competitive as useast.
think about it this way, each server would have about 100 guys with near equal mmr and those 100 guys would have near equal mmr to the other 100 guys of other server because they consistently beat the people in their server, but this doesnt mean the 100 guy in the uswest server is equal to the 100 guy in the useast server.
Apart from doing it 12 times in one day, I would suggest gathering this data for multiple days for further accuracy. Larger sample size for more reliable data.
It might make a difference over the course of a week. Let's see what the results are for one day first.
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While a player who only plays USwest would have a higher winrate than the same player playing only USeast the MMR does not work the same way. That is because when people from USeast and USwest play against each other MMR is transfered to the winners who take it back into their servers "pool".
Also, as I explained before...just like in your team matching games you can't win MMR from players ranked far below you. So the top of the strongest server will be higher MMR because the only way to match them is to beat them directly and take those points from them. You cannot reach the same level by defeating weaker teams many times.
It may be a bit more difficult for points to transfer between the eastern and western hemisphere. But there is plenty of traffic from Russia all the way to USwest. I am usually told by friends that pings to China and SEA from USeast are fairly high. I got 200-220 to SEA last time I tried it. That's high enough to really stop me from playing...but USwest players probably can manage it since they are a bit closer.
I am very close to USeast; I get pings of 10-20 ms. USwest is 40-60 ms. BR is 120-140 for me. Russia 80-100. EUwest 120-140. EUeast 180-200. EUeast, SEA, and are probably to far to play and I have not even attempted China, AUS or SA... but any of the others can be done.
What pings do you get to other regions?
It depends on the time as EU will be sleeping so there will be other regions on top. But generally it's almost always EU servers on page 1 games. Sometimes some Chinese games who has pro players from iG and DK in it get the top spot as well.
There were some DK players on in the #1 game from 6 GMT. So far EUwest is looking very strong.
Here is the next one.
10 GMT sample top MMR games
1 EUwest
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 EUwest
5 SEA
6 EUwest
7 USeast
8 EUwest
9 EUwest
10 EUwest
11EUwest
12 EUwest
Yeah right it's afternoon at EU West where most people play their games. So it's mostly that server at the top pages.
So you're just referring to MMR across the world. I think that it'll be very difficult to rule out SEA as the top server convincingly, as from experience almost no people ever play in other servers due to its isolation and resulting high ping. Also, I do still think that gaming attitudes affect the MMR of the top rated people significantly. A tryhard culture would result in the MMRs of the top players fluctuating much more than in a non-tryhard one, which would result in an MMR of a certain value being worth much more. Just an opinion
Oh, and perhaps consider taking larger samples at the different times of day? Really, apart from the occasional massive pro player tryhard stack top games, page 1-5 are generally about the same average MMR.
I am finding a mix of about 2/5 pros players and 3/5 non-pro players on page 1-2 games....that's just an estimate. I know a lot of pro-player names and aliases, but I'm sure there are plenty more aliases I don't know. I don't think it is true that pages 1-5 are "about the same" just judging by the tMRR of the players I am seeing...page 1 often has players on teams over 5k...by the end of page 2 they tend to be more like 4,600. It would be interesting to see the results from the top 4 or 5 pages as well, but so far I have not thought of an easy way to do it. Also people's names are so often changing and unoriginal it makes sorting them out tedious. Most people on page 1-2 have stats on...but there are plenty who have stats off as well that cause problems collecting the data.
I missed 2 sets due to sleeping...will just have to come back and fill out the time slots later. EUeast has some of the top spots at 16 GMT.
I noticed some Brazilian pro players in this last one, but they were on EUwest. If that is a consistent habit BR server will probably not be on the list at all.
16 GMT sample of top MMR games.
1 EUeast
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 EUwest
5 EUwest
6 EUeast
7 EUwest
8 EUwest
9 EUwest
10 EUwest
11 EUwest
12 EUeast
AUS on the list for the first time now.
18 GMT sample of top MMR games
1 EUwest
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 USeast
5 EUwest
6 EUwest
7 EUwest
8 AUS
9 EUwest
10 China
11 SEA
12 EUwest
It's almost always EU because a lot of pro teams and players are from EU servers and even players from US East play on EU West server.
20 GMT sample of top MMR games
1 EUwest
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 EUwest
5 EUwest
6 EUwest
7 EUwest
8 USeast
9 EUwest
10 USeast
11 USeast
12 China
22 GMT sample of top MMR games
1 EUwest
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 EUwest
5 EUeast
6 EUwest
7 USeast
8 EUwest
9 EUwest
10 EUwest
11 EUwest
12 EUwest
0 GMT sample top MMR games
1 EUwest
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 USwest
5 USeast
6 EUeast
7 EUwest
8 USeast
9 EUwest
10 China
11 USeast
12 EUwest
wahbanana.
sea; not everyone stacks as 5 btw.
and I think it's true people on pg 1-10 have very similar mmrs.
I only have a couple friends from South America and they play USeast or EUwest. They tell me the Brazil server is really bad with lag and dropping people. So I imagine the top South American players are probably also on USeast or EUwest. I've never seen anyone from South Africa in my games or any games. Russia seems to be struggling to reach page 1 also. It may be that most of the top teams from the western hemisphere play EUwest no matter where they live.
2 GMT sample top MMR games
1 EUwest
2 USwest
3 EUwest
4 USeast
5 EUwest
6 China
7 EUwest
8 EUwest
9 EUwest
10 USeast
11 USeast
12 USeast
The sets I missed should show the full transition from the eastern servers back to Europe. I will try to pick those up tomorrow.
As for scoring this I think I will value the #1 spot at 1.275 times the #12 spot with a grade between them. Hopefully that will be approximately the ratio of average MMRs of the players. It can't be that good a guess since its just based on the team MMRs of the players in the games (not the MMRs of the group of 10 in the game which is hidden)...but it will at least allow some rough idea of the strength of each server to be represented simply.
So each spot would be valued as follows...
1 = 1.275, 2 = 1.25, 3 = 1.225, 4 = 1.2, 5 = 1.175, 6 = 1.15, 7 = 1.125, 8 = 1.1, 9 = 1.075, 10 = 1.05, 11 = 1.025, 12 = 1
Its just the way Valve sorts the games. They put them in order of the average MMR of the players.
My alarm failed to wake me up by 12 GMT again. NP Chris got it for me. :-)
13 GMT sample of top MMRs....mostly EUwest again, with Vici Gaming randomly deciding to grab the top spot for China
1 China
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 EUwest
5 EUwest
6 EUwest
7 EUwest
8 EUeast
9 EUwest
10 SEA
11 EUwest
12 EUwest
15 GMT sample of top MMRs...nearly all EUwest again
1 EUwest
2 EUwest
3 EUwest
4 EUwest
5 EUwest
6 EUwest
7 EUwest
8 China
9 EUwest
10 EUwest
11 EUwest
12 EUwest
Overall EUwest appears to be the strongest server with 69.1% of the points
USeast 17.2%
China 8.62%
SEA 8.57%
EUeast 4.8%
USwest 4.0%
AUS 0.76%
Russia 0.75%
This data is only one "day", but I think the overall pattern of EUwest dominating the highest MMRs would be true any day. EUeast and USwest are far weaker than EUwest and USeast. I think the central location of those servers makes them the prime location for competition between the best stacks from all over the western hemisphere. Only the pro team stacks from China and SEA seem to match the MMRs that are frequently at the top of EUwest. It may be that the eastern pubs pings are too high to go over and take points from Russia or USwest.
That's where the most pro players play.
The other thing is probably the server distance. I'm from India and I play with pings of 120+ in Sea server.
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From time to time the question comes up: which server is the hardest? Lots of opinions and perspectives have been given but no actual test of the strength of each server has been conducted. So I am considering the following test of the strength of the servers.
Games from which server appear most on the top pages...and therefore have the highest MMR players? I expect that this will change with the time of day...and of course servers that more players use will be at the top more often. But that is all part of the question...whatever the reason I expect to find that there will be a measurable difference between the servers.
I am thinking I will check the top games at number of different times throughout the day. What other factors, if any really need to be considered for this test?