[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Baaaaaaaaaaaaah In fairness though, with the exception of people that have never lost, it seems that the small sigma increases after the calculation is run through are almost insignificant. I have been thinking though, if they were to bump up that variable a bit, it might appease a lot of the people that are upset with the system. Stale sigma seems to be the root of a lot fo the problems. However, it would probably have the unfortunate effect of dropping Microsoft's new account purchases![/quote]I previously felt the same way you do until some recent info was brought to my attention and looking over the MS pages for like the 600th time. Even after a player has matured his level in a playlist, winning/losing a large amount of games in a row can raise sigma. MS states between 50-100 games for the system to be able to track a players improved skill. I take this to mean that the player has won/lost enough to get his uncertainty back up a bit. A few weeks ago I created a thread asking in Opti about using streaks to both reward players who win a streak of games and hamper people who lose a streak of games. It dealt with the boosting problem in TD (losing a large number of games to boost a new account) and helping those that seem to get stuck trying to go up. There was some support but there was also difficulty in proving how streaks are statistically significant. I believe they are when applied to H3 MM but others did not. [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=21387354]That thread is here[/url] This week I have been participating in another thread where the OP's idea was something I didn't agree with but I did eventually toss out the idea of increasing the amount of sigma that is currently added back in before each match. We know this is the current method of tracking skill increase and the idea is to get the system to be more responsive and prevent this "feeling" of level lock for some players. [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=22194501]That thread is here.[/url] If you are bored enough, you can check them out and see what some of the discussion was about.