A discussion about "learn to carry" / a math problem

Competitive Discussion
61

For reasons I posted above, matchmaker will generally have at least 1-2 crap players per team. Sometimes it’s me (Had a Lucio game where I was bronze heals behind our Hog and Ana. But we still won), and moreso if I dps, as I’m far too high on the role right now.

Matchmaker is forced for sure. Played with a GM smurf in gold and we either faced enemy smurf or got the most rancid thrower team mates to balance it out. My GM friend said that GM was easier to play in.

But he would get there eventually on that account.

He’d smurf as Pharah in gold and get 90+ elims per game. He’d lose some of those games, but with that kill power he’d inevitably climb.

Someone mentioned Mercy being a bad carry. Certainly harder than others, but certainly doable.

62

The term carrying on this forum refers to deathmatch play, and people fixate on that and don’t understand that there are other ways to carry.

The centralized problem is that to the majority:
Tanks create space -> ask anyone what this means here and they’ll most likely reply, “A shield that people can shoot from behind”
DPS -> “Supposed to kill things”, true but I don’t think that statement is fair.
Support -> “Heal”. There’s a reason why raw healing output is less favored in higher tiers.

A mindset of I’ve done my job (held up a shield until it breaks but doesn’t truly create any space at all, healed and damage boosted a DPS that can’t hit anything, cleaned up 3 kills and then died after my tanks and supports have died why are we not taking the point), is a dangerous thought process to hold as it only promotes not helping your team win unless your team vastly outskills the opponents team (someone able to solo all 6 or you feel as though you’re getting carried).

This method of carrying is only valid when you’re placed in a tier so much lower that you could probably win one handed. If you aren’t doing so then you need to switch up your mindset faster or you’re going to lose because the kill all carry mentality is not going to work in this match.

Next identify what the problem is and solve that problem first. Not everyone is going to help you in solving this but if you do so, you’ll make a new friend and at the very least have a 2v1 partner for that game. If Rein charges in a lot and you’re on DPS, target confused targets or look at where the Rein is starting his charge and most likely is going to end his charge and focus that area. As Zarya I think that’s pretty easy to bubble him, D.Va can follow with Matrix, Orisa/Hog can pull targets that have turned around etc… Use everything that is going on to your advantage, as dumb as that sounds if Rein moving in with a shield to only have it break immediately isn’t creating space then him charging in and having enemies scatter and confused is his way of creating space. As soon as you have chaos the less likely the supports will be able to focus on their healing prioritization and thus your team should have an easier time with getting kills.

Truthfully I feel that no matter what role you play, the focus should always be how can I make the other roles feel better about playing the roles that they are. When a teammates is in danger, are you helping bail them out? Are you in a good position to get a synchronized attack in?

The whole thread topic of I put in 36% effort in so I should win only applies when the game has the solo potential, Quake/CS/UT, games which give you all the tools to do everything. This game, the carry potential is no longer in the sense of DM based games, it is solely around how carry is defined in Moba games. That means, you identify someone and everyone helps them to succeed. Zarya can be a carry, Rein can be a carry, Lucio can be a carry, Genji can be a carry. The issue currently is that out of those listed people only see Genji as the carry because he’s in the damage category and is “supposed” to get kills.

1 Like
63

Well, the only thing matters is win percentage. And amount of matches played.
90% matches won with 5 matches played mean nothing.
10% matches won with 5 matches played mean nothing, who knows, may be it was his neighbor playing.

You win 50% -> you stuck and need to add effort.
You win 60% -> you will rank up until you reach point where your win percentile reaches 50%

To carry -> effectively means to increase team’s winning chances.


Was this battle won by one single player? No.
Did he increase chances to win? Definitely.

GM vs gold player -> GM has astonishingly higher chances to win. Gold team vs gold team with a GM smurf have terrible chances.
Gold vs silver -> gold has a bit biggest chances to win. silver team with gold player vs pure silver player has a huge advantage.

If the system was flawed as some say, GM played would not easily reach GM whenever they want. Well even diamond player will wreck all the golds -> which leads you back to single statement, to rank you have to carry.

64

The term “carry” is short-hand that isn’t strictly correct. Players can only hard carry if they are playing ~500 SR below their ability, but players can rank up at any SR below their true ability.

However, you have a number of misconceptions in your original post.

This doesn’t happen. The matchmaker tries to make each match fair. If one team has a silver and 5 golds, the other team will have something similar to balance the match.

The system doesn’t match by rank, it matches by MMR, which is a floating point number. The matchmaker runs the MMRs of all players in a prospective match through some mathematical modelling machine, and won’t make the match unless the predicted win percentage is between 40% and 60%. Tier icon doesn’t matter.

The key to ranking up is for that machine to be wrong. That is, your true ability must be higher than Blizzard thinks it is. You will then win more than 50% of your games. Of course, as you win more, Blizzard will update your MMR and SR higher to do a better job of predicting your performance in future matches.

I go into this in more generality in How Competitive Matchmaking and Rating Works (Season 18) → Summary → Summarize matchmaking, ranking, and progression for me.

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Yes, but a silver-skilled person can easily hop onto a gold account. Like I said, that data is real. It really happened.

To this, I disagree - You’re personal stats (healing/dmg/elim/obj time etc) can steady increase but you’re win percentage can stay at 50%. This I contribute to the matchmaker finding the average MMR/SR for your team - but the min and max values, where the average is calculated, are too far apart (in efforts to decrease que time)
EXAMPLE: say (out of a score of 100) team one has players that have separate scores of 10, 15, 15, 15, 15, and 30 - where as the other team has scores of 6 people at ~16.5 - the more well balanced team is destined to win because they’re all just contributing their average. Where as the other team, the 30-scored player shouldn’t have been teamed with the 10-scored player and due to the others not being able to carry more than their average - the team loses.

Just so you know, I enjoy and thank you for your well thought-out contribution to this subject.

More often than not, but if each are used to contributing extra (which is how they supposedly ranked up) then if each contributed extra during these matches, at least one extra win would happen. Especially if they’ve been in gold for a while, they should be able to carry (or contribute extra) an even higher percentage than they did when they first ranked up. Regardless, my point of mentioning all that is that that theory is flawed. You’re rebuttal suggests that the study was flawed from the start, whereas my study suggests that it should be good enough to show at least 1 extra win (as in the 9th win - one outside of the 1/3rd guaranteed group) in order to prove that there’s some truth to the 1/3rd theory.

For the record, I’d just like to clarify for readers, that my definition of carry that I refer to though out this discussion is
Carry: To do more than the expected amount of effort. For example, in the video that BestPapa provides, I would consider this carrying - not because soldier got substantial kills -because as damage he is expected to get substantial kills - but if these are more kills than he usually gets, and his co-dps teammate isn’t get many kills, mixed with the fact that he puts down his health pack for him and others to heal themselves - yes in my eyes this is carrying.
If a Baps was, saving lives with his immortality field, healing others not in the field, while cleaning up low health enemies in between (all while his co-support teammate is still not providing gold-medal healing)- yes this is carrying in my eyes.
Carrying: Not only doing the best in your role - but providing extra help in other roles.

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You did not differentiate between ability and rank in your original post. Anyways, if a silver skilled person takes over a gold account, he will lose more than he wins until that account falls down to silver. The other players in that match may get an undeserved loss (or win), but that is just one game. Over many games (about 150) all these random happenings average out, and you get a decent measure of the gold players’ skill.

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Yes I agree that the study would hold stronger if there was more data.