I like talking maths so long as it’s basic maths any layman (like myself) can understand.
Releasing a game with a role that has over 2x the number of heroes than the other two roles is statistically probable, almost certain, to attract the most players.
Thus, 5-6 dps comps in OG overwatch.
Thus DPS queue times in RQ.
Having 8 tanks in 6 v 6 meant there was 28 different combinations of tank heroes you can have on your team. Got kind of stale with how little tank heroes there were.
Having 12 tanks in 5 v 5 means there is only 1 of 12. 12 different combinations of 1. Very Stale. Same gameplay game in, game out.
Having 12 tanks in 6 v 6 means there would be 66 different combinations of tanks you could have on your team. Waaaay more variety.
More variety = less stale.
More variety in tank aka more combinations = less oppressive singularly powerful tank meta’s. More alternative tank matchups to take down the top synergy.
The OG devs were MMO WoW devs. Wow has something like 6 specs for tank, 6 specs for support, 22 specs for DPS. And this is FINE in an MMO. Raids require less tanks and supports than they do DPS.
This is not fine in FPHS (first person hero shooter). Specifically in OW where 222, equal number of roles, is most desired for balance. Game needs equal number of heroes across the roles.
People need to stop viewing OW roles the same way as MMO roles. They’re not the same.
Yep.
Instead of letting people climb to their natural level, they instead insist on “even matches”, making it really hard for anyone to climb, no matter where they are.
I don’t know if this is some kind of anti-boosting system they have in place as well.
But it feels like walking in drying cement, trying to climb the ladder.
Oh come on now. Call it “thrower” or “bad player”, it does not matter. You know exactly what he means.
And certainly there is a difference between MMR and Rank. Because the game will still try to create games as evenly as possible within ranks, but the quality of the players can and will swing WILDLY. This means that there is a mismatch between rank and MMR.
When the game creates a game, it will look at rank, but within the pool of candidates it finds, it will create equality on MMR.
This means that if you are a smurf, the game will find other smurfs (people with similar MMR to yours) to match you with - or load you up with so many bad MMRs that it ends up as an “equal match” (Blizzard’s stated goal).
This makes the game unclimbable by good players. You will have to sweat to your maximum every single match, and if you win, you will get stacked against even harder (because your MMR increased).
If you don’t believe me, next time you face the scenario I describe with heavy odds stacked against you, try to hard-throw for 3 matches and see what happens. The next match will be like cutting through warm butter, even if you are still in the same rank.
I have tried this multiple times and it works without fail.
I find that it is often necessary to throw to some degree for one or more games when the MM goes nuts to get even half-enjoyable matches again.
The bigger question is:
Why doesn’t the MM just allow people to climb to their natural rank and get the “even matches” there? By having this system in place, it makes certain that player skill is varying wildly within the same rank. In the end you don’t even know what the games in your rank is supposed to look like, and frankly, there is no one answer.
What the MM needs to do is to blindly (yes, blindly, don’t look at MMR) take 10 players of the same rank range and sort them blindly. Sure, due to randomness some matches will be lopsided, but if it happens that all the best players (mind you, all 10 are the same rank!) end up on one team, didn’t the best thing possible happen? All the best players of the match climbed.
Ow2 has been hemorrhaging players for a while. It will never truly die but the game always is better off more popular and loved. Players like OP are the people the devs should be making the game for.
5v5 has destroyed overwatch beyond just a format change it almost beyond recognition and the amount of things that need to be reverted/reworked is piling up.
Im scared that the devs will screw up 6v6 by once again not listening and just doing what they like again.
For once let the devs just make overwatch overwatch again. Not some watered down counterwatch or some crappy sustainwatch. No powercreepwatch. Just fun overwatch again
We can only make guesses, but my personal preferred reason is manipulation for the sake of engagement. You can’t have people win or lose “too much”, as they get frustrated/bored from constant losses/wins and quit.
It’s good at punishing good players by putting more “dead weight” on their team to make it harder for them to keep going. For team-reliant heroes it spells disaster.
It doesnt look at ranks at all. It only looks at mmr.
Thus any disparity with rank and mmr doesnt matter.
Since season 9 they have matched ranks with mmr after each game as well.
But its partly irrelevant as ranks are not part of the matchmaking process.
Regardless, no one is getting throwers or bad players over others.
The matchmaking only uses mmr, to which thiccbuddha also agreed. It does not know if someone is “bad” or “thrower”. All it sees is their rating.
So a GM smurf with a Gold5 Rank will be put in a T500 game where he belongs? Funny that that never happens.
No, he will be matched up against other people of his Rank, but they will have higher MMR (or his team lower).
If there are other GM smurfs in Gold5 with high MMR (and there are - plenty), it is likely that he will face that smurf. It is like a Godzilla vs. King Kong rumble in the Gold jungle
If the game really hated you, it could push you all the way down to Bronze5, and it could do it easily, because it could destroy you with smurfs all the way down - and that is irrespective of your Rank/MMR.
Whether you like it or not, you are 100% at the mercy of the MM.
if the gm smurf has gm mmr, they will be in gm mmr lobbies, theres nothing more to that. It is very straightforward.
If they have gold mmr, they are in gold lobbies - because they are smurfing.
Rank has never been part of the matchmaker.
What you’re describing is backwards to how it functions.
For example, in early ow2 you had players who did u2gm runs, and their mmr skyrocketed. But the visible rank was not updated that fast.
And the result was that they played in gm lobbies with visible plat rank. - Because the matchmaking only uses MMR.
This is what caused often confusion in the playerbase.
As stated above, this does not happen because only mmr is used for matchmaking and if you have “high mmr” you are in high mmr lobbies.
It does happen, because matchmaking has effectively two MMR - your current one and your “basic” MMR. Later one goes up, only after you played “too good” for long enough, otherwise it’s discarded as “anomaly” and your MMR stays where it was.
I don’t know if that was a glitch, but that is not what I see when I see u2gm, of which I have seen quite a few. They all go through the process of climbing Plat (unless they place in Diamond), Diamond, Master to finally hit GM.
Dafran did an u2gm for every hero in the game a while back. You would never see him skip Ranks like you describe. Maybe they are still available on Twitch, so check it out.
That’s literally how matchmaking works - you have to “convince” it, that your current performance is not a fluke. Which is why older accounts generally have much harder time climbing, as matchmaking has big pile of “evidence” they would have to overcome first.
It is not how it works. Old accounts are also not harder to climb.
The only factor brand new accounts have is the uncertainty. And once that goes away, the account is the same as any other. And you see the uncertainty as a modifier in rank up / down screens.
Then whether an account has been actively played for a month, 6 months, a year, is irrelevant.
It was already proven, that it’s how it works. Some streamers specifically picked really bad accounts(bronze 5) and were genuinely surprised, that despite playing on insane(compared to previous owner) level, they still couldn’t get out of bronze. Because matchmaking compares those few crazy good games with lots and lots of previous bad games and discards it as statistical anomaly.
New accounts aren’t “settled” on specific rank yet, allowing much faster climb.
It was in the early ow2 days when it worked like that. Nowadays the ranks match your mmr and you see normal climbing.
Additionally back in ow1 you had visible rank decay if you didnt play. End result: players could have diamond rank but their mmr still remained GM → they played in gm lobbies.
https://youtu.be/vpbK3TOU0VQ?t=248
Regarding the mmr/ranks disparity nowadays: https://i.ibb.co/SV2JzZ7/rank-is-direct-to-mmr.png https://x.com/SrslyPaladin/status/1757144821066870859
You can not talk about how it was in OW1. Decay was a very special system, only in place for Diamond+. It has nothing to do with what we are discussing.
What happened in the beginning of OW2 was that everyone had their Rank bumped down. It was in effect similar to the decay system for everyone. Players that came later with high MMR would then get dumped in GM matches.
That time is long gone, it doesn’t work like that anymore.
But you still have smurfs in metal ranks and they will have been assigned high MMR. And they will be evened out, just like anyone else.
