Why am I placed against way better players?

General Discussion
1

This seems to be a recurring problem in quick match every time I return to the game after a few months. The first 10-15 matches I play I’m placed against players of much lower skill level and I win a majority of the matches. Then, all of a sudden, I start getting placed against players who are significantly better both in game knowledge and mechanically than I am. I’m not getting placed against coordinated 5 man teams or anything, I’m just getting placed against players that are so above me in skill level and map awareness that I don’t even pose a slight challenge to them. I’m sure my teammates find it frustrating as well

What causes these kinds of match ups to happen? Is there anything I can do so I’m placed against players closer to my skill level in quick match?

2

QM is only build with rainbow lobbies because the game doesn’t have much players left. The only thing you can do is to continue to play until your MMR has settled, after that it will be pure luck if a match is “equal”. Most QM are stomps in one direction or the other.

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I’ve encountered the exact same phenomena.

My best guess is that your hidden Quick Match MM score undergoes a soft reset after being away for a while.

4

In order to hide evidence of imbalance and make player ratings as meaningless as possible, the matchmaker forces each player toward a 50% win rate no matter how you play. Welcome to the era of garbage online games.

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5

or poorly informed players that keep repeating the same tin-foil theories that are perpetuated by willful ignorance

@op

there’s a few functional issues with mmr matching:

  1. it tries to project a consistent value for inconsistent things. You might lose to a player in a game and think how could you ever be matched against them, but later find replays where they make mistakes, or play other heroes, or a variety of things that end up making them comparatively mortal in the math-picture the system uses.

  2. MMR is not based on role or hero, so players just trying things out can end up with players hard trying or hardly trying; it can’t gauge intent or %effort applied, it just compares average expectations

  3. MMR is prone to rubberbanding: it’ll stretch and either snapback, or launch something ahead. The system has a hidden confidence value that determines how quickly you adjust mmr; if you exceed expectations that it may bump you up faster as an effectual “smurf detection” to put overperforming outliers out of a particular mmr averaging-block.

  4. the game does not enforce specific ability and knowledge capabilities to any particular mmr; even with a larger playerbase, match quality can be all over the place because the game does not do a good-enough job of teaching players how to succeed at the game. So
    while you might see extremes of good/bad play, sometimes it’s the work of 1 person in a game making calls and the next game, they aren’t there and all the follower-types just meander instead of playing up to their expected level of “gaming”

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Low playerbase = rainbow matches. Nothing new. You win a few games and are then forced to play with 4 zombies while enemy team have 5 good players that know how to play. Thats how QM is.

I’m already on a 4-11 game win/loss ratio the past 2 days now. 90% of the lost games was with zombies while enemy team half the time was a 3-5 stack with proper comp and teamplayers with a working brain.

This game punish solo players for being good so it force you to play with zombies so you end up with a balanced winrate. You are not allowed to win too much or you get matched againts a premade and your team will 100% be a newbie team you have to carry and you will 100% fail at doing it.

Solo players have no power in this game. Just join a stack and enjoy the free wins it provide.

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I could rave on myself about matchmaking, but instead…
… I historically find, that the only sensible way to play QM if you actually care about it, is to play 10-20 matches in a row with the same hero, absolutely always.

  • Sometimes you are meant to carry, sometimes you are just a tagalong.
  • Sometimes you get nice team synergy, sometimes none at all.
  • Sometimes you get a stack, sometimes they do.
  • Sometimes you need a bit of practice to see how a hero works. For example, I’m very positive that Blaze is absolute trash, playing a few and watching master games. But he isn’t. (Kinda glad Grubby had the same experience I did.)

Eventually this means that it’s perfectly normal even for a GM to simply lose 6 matches in a row on his bronze-yet smurf, however they’ll most certainly win the next 15 in a row as well. Sometimes it’s a plain win-loss-win-loss-… streak.

Normally, this means you’ll have a representative but also not extreme winrate distribution. Bad hero? 25%. Good hero? 75%. Some people are less bipolar but you get the point I guess.

Switching heroes after every match or two doesn’t just reduce your mechanical skill, it also adds a dimension to the above factors and you have an inflated chance of running away with mathematically impossible streaks. You get your free win, but you play a horrid hero, so fail anyway. Switching role after 5 matches with 10 Hammers, now it’s 10 tanks. :wink: should have stayed on Hammer.

Yes, and sometimes you play Valla for an evening and lose 15 matches in a row. It happens, too. Then again, the next day you can score 15:1 like I did.

Another rule I made is play until two losses. Playing until just one has a tendency to detrain you, I just ended a two weeks loss streak yesterday, and having 0.8 matches a day, each of them unfun, is basically skill suicide. With two losses daily, you play an average of 4 and you allow yourself to react on the initial loss. (Ideal sustainable pattern: lose-win-win-lose = practice, fun, fun, tired.)
You can, of course, enforce a better serious winrate by going on throw streaks. Lose 10, sleep, have 10 days of 2:1, repeat. Not a life insurance though.

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Who cares QM results? That mode was fiesta straigth from the start and will be as long as the servers are running Hots. If you want balanced games there is a simple way to get em: play a Draft.

I only play QM to test out heroes and there basic mechanics, especially if some opponent impressed me.
Im quite strong on my often played SL heroes, but ofc im underperforming playing heroes that i barly touch.

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I appreciate the responses. A few people had mentioned rainbow games and i understand that in QM there are going to be crazy comps and sometimes even relatively uneven comps. When you say rainbow matches, does that also refer to the players’ ranks though?

It doesn’t seem like it’s just one or two players better than me though, it’s more like everyone in the game is a couple or more leagues ahead of me. Either way, sounds like most people are experiencing this as well. Hopefully my rating will settle down to a proper spot if it’s inflated due to those early wins after returning.

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Yes.
Obviously we don’t actually know the QM rating of people, and it’s possible that ratings are much less spread than they seem. The next best thing is to look at SL ranks. If you make it to gold-platinum, you can play with anyone from B5+0 to Master+5000. Having failed big time the last two months, these days my teammates are bronze and my opponents are silver-gold, and the odd platinum 2 today. But, it’s rather unreliable, my matches involving Silver and even Gold players tend to go down with a really sad score, even funnier when my opponents are showing bronze.

The other element, which I often notice when also seeing the SL rank, is that people can have massive skill difference per hero. The amount of Bronze 5 people who single handedly dominate matches is astounding. Not to mention people that aren’t really caring. (However, if they consistently don’t, their rating will follow suit.)

Bottom line, close your eyes and play :smiley:
You can overanalyse if that’s your hobby but nobody really cares, so you can even depress yourself in the process.

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Its worse in ranked. 5 stack with 4 silvers all 90%, and a plat 1 vs. Gold 5s all 48-50%. Every single game. Literally no more equal talent matches (at all)

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it is 50% system. Uneven matches the easiest to force is 50%. The developers said that their goal is 50%. Just forgot to mention that it will be a swing.

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I have the opposite problem. I get qued with inferior players on both sides. My team and me. Just had a match where an Artanis as our only front line would constantly dive and chase. Letting their Imperius and Naz constantly flank and hit the back line. We kept dying so i said “well thats a loss”. Zagara was like you must be new and i’m like nope i’m a pre-alpha player with great prediction skills. Artanis becomes outright hostile along with zagara. They proceed to feed the enemy team constantly (not on purpose) due to lack of positioning and awareness on the map while they gank our heals.

We ended up losing of course like I predicted with Zagara leaving mid match because she kept getting dived on and got mad. Artanis gave up and didnt try once zag left. I ended up with MVP with top stats, most damage, most siege, most kills and assists, 1 death. While trying to lead our group and 2 of em just ignoring me and insulting me. This is QM so yeah “typical qm andies”.

But yeah back on topic i get qued with a lot of low skilled players on enemy and allied alike.