I’ve seen the same player in over 20+ of my games recently. Not consistent, but because its Open Queue I guess we happen to play around the same time with similar MMR.
Anyways.
Their tag is “Venomsnake”. Every time they join a game, it says:
[Snake] has joined voice chat.
[Venomsnake] has started spectating.
[Snake] has left the match.
[Venomsnake] has stopped spectating.
[Venomsnake] has joined the match.
[Snake] has started spectating.
This person is a Moira one-trick, and is usually infinitely better than the lobby, so I’m assuming this is a sort of “spoofing” or abusing queues to get them placed in this game?
It’s the weirdest thing, though, because it’s… let’s say irrelevant? Like it feels to me to be so much effort to get into a lobby just a little lower MMR than your own, if that’s what they’re doing?
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I would just report it. That’s a pretty clear attempt to manipulate the matchmaking.
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This may be what a few friends of mine were doing. People found out that they can queue on new/low MMR accounts, then have their main join as spectator or group with them. When that low MMR account leaves the game, the other account is first in the queue to join to fill open spots.
For what it’s worth, they had 2 accounts get banned for cheating for doing this, so it seems like Blizzard is aware of people trying to abuse the matchmaker this way. I recommend you report them.
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Great seeing the community pushing for ever more antisocial behavior and trying to punish more innocent players. Please do stop and consider that sometimes people just want to socialize with their friends by watching them play without playing the game themselves. Perhaps they’re having Internet issues and don’t trust their connection enough to play without potential repercussions to their own account. Or maybe they’re spectating because they do want to group up with their buddies and are simply waiting for the match to end or for the inevitable leaver to fill an open spot. Etc.
It’s not all insidious ploys to cheat the system or attempts to grief others. 
You’re delusional if you think that seeing this consistently happen 20 times by a player that is “infinitely better than the lobby” isn’t just someone abusing the matchmaker. I know several players who have done this. It’s a trick that’s been abused a lot recently.
High MMR players do this because it gets them fast queues and they get to pubstomp. It’s not some conspiracy ploy that’s hard to pull off.
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Please do tell how you are being matched 20 times against the very same players. Getting matched with or against any player or group 3-4 times in a row is about the max I’ve consistently experienced in all my 6000+ hours of Overwatch gaming. Being randomly rematched even 5 times in a row is exceedingly rare. I honestly do believe you are the one exaggerating to drive your little conspiratorial narrative.
That said, if this truly is happening at any significant rate, then the solution is simple: add a conditional check during the current match to ensure the MMR of the spectating player wishing to join isn’t too out of whack with the lobby. If it is, then simply deny him from joining, and optionally display a message why to enlighten him. He can always be matched into the next game with his buddies with the matchmaker compensating for their wide skill gap. Problem solved; no need to lean on players with their fallible judgement or enable trolls to abuse the reporting system to punish innocent players.
It is pretty pathetic that they need to play against lower MMR quickplayers as a Moira one trick. That being said, it is also hard to care because the matchmaking is loose and they are on one of the worst heroes. I just cannot believe someone would go through that effort.
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I don’t really understand what you’re saying here, and I think you’re speaking of metaphysical, hypothetical ways to improve this potential systems abuser’s situation. I’m all for devils advocate play, but your solution should be directed to the systems team.
I’m personally asking if anyone knows if this IS a known matchmaking abuse tactic, or if its something else. Because, no, I don’t want to ruin someone’s fun if they’re having DC issues, etc. That being said I stand by my word: they’re clearly not meant to be in this rank. They play a flank Moira everytime, which understandably DOES catch newbies off-guard, but they’re hitting 25-0 or 18-4 nearly every game. And the same thing happens EVERY SINGLE GAME; the other account enters, they spectate/leave, then this account enters and the other account spectates.
In this scenario, I’m playing exclusively in Open Queue QP. This has been since last week. In ~65 matches, this individual has been in ~15 - 25 of them. I’ve seen this happen before; its not uncommon during morning queues to see the same person in this mode a few times. I once played against and with a random Doomfist one-trick named “RheaRipley” in around 10 of my 25 or so games. This was during a weekday morning EST 6am - 11am.
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It’s literally a “too loose” matchmaking issue, which even as others said, the matchmaker has already been loosened up where even abusing such a trick is questionable as to why someone would even want to bother going to such effort. Right now, a bronze player can queue up with a T500 player and get into a match. There is no rule against it, and if there was, then the game should simply prevent them from getting into a game at all, like… in comp! Also, regarding comp: you also can’t spectate other players, so this only affects QP and arcade modes (which again… why bother when no one really cares in those modes??)
Finally: Blizzard should be able to detect this and know about it if it’s a serious issue. The fix is simple, as I already stated. Simply filter out spectators whose performance metrics deviate too far from the current lobby from being able to join.
Also I should add that the philosophy for matchmaking appears to be to create fair matches in narrow skill ranges for comp, and in other modes, to create lobbies as fast as possible, with fairness in skill levels being de-emphasized.
Sounds like it could be a single person with two accounts of wildly differing MMRs and using them to ‘swap into’ lobbies where they can punch below their weight.
However… there is no way to know if that is the case or not. If you ended up with them trash talking chat or admitting it, maybe you could put a report in. But as it stands? I don’t feel it would be worth a report at this stage.
I mean, they could be friends with dodgy internet connections for all we know, there just isn’t enough to go on.
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It’s not really uncommon at all, depending on rank or game modes you play. For example, I play a considerable amount of Total Mayhem (and in the past CTF). Both of these modes had the “regulars” that everyone knew. There are plenty of people I’ve probably played against 100+ times. If you play at high or low MMRs where the player pools are much smaller, you’re also very likely to run into the same people. If you just play QP role queue in mid gold, then yeah you might not see the same people that often.
That said - “conspiracy narrative”: Bro I literally know people who did this. Each of them had 2 accounts get banned for this. They learned to do this from someone else.
Am I saying it’s common – no not at all. But neither did OP. They said they saw one person consistently doing it, not a bunch of random people doing it in all their matches.
Honestly, I don’t play arcade much at all, but if this is such an issue there, then I’d petition Blizzard for a matchmaking algorithm change over pushing for players to report more based on suspicion. The automatic actioning system currently seems rather vulnerable to abuse and makes it too easy for innocent players to fall victim. I’ve spectated my friends and they sometimes spectate me, and I don’t want to see or have to experience a chilling effect on using the built-in feature for its supposed intended purpose.
I’m not advocating people report anyone for seeing combinations of spectating/leaving/joining. I’m advocating that OP report that one individual player.
Happening once, sure. Things happen. Sometimes players DC while their friend was spectating, it happens.
Happening twenty times with the same pattern, happening conveniently only at the start of the game, and having the person go on to play well above the MMR of the lobby… It’s extremely clear they’re abusing the matchmaker.
That’s the part that needs fixing right? A player should never have the power to decide who is matched in queue
This could be one way to approach the solution, but it eliminates the ability for legitimate players to join their friends. I suspect the people who abuse this are a tiny minority of people compared to those who legitimate join a group with their friends mid match and get backfilled when someone leaves. So they may feel like it’s not worth doing if it causes more unhappiness than it fixes.
This was always bizarre to me from OW1.
On one hand, its nice if someone gets to play with friends, since ideally the spectator is there because they have social stake in the game they’re viewing.
…on the other hand, its very easy to manipulate and leads to the forever-toxic behavior “hey can one of you leave so i can join”. Which is rare, but still an annoying thing to deal with (and begs the question why spectators can even use match chat to begin with).
I forgot about that because noone I know plays OW :V
To me spectators are just observers that should not interact with the match, no joining or chatting.