OFC it exists, because w/o it, competitive games based on MM won’t make much profit for developers.
From my personal experience
2 accounts: 1700 SR (Silver3) and 2800 SR (plat2). I am 4371 SR peak by that time.
Played around 30-40 games on a 1700 SR account, and matched the 2nd account’s SR (2700-2800). Games became insane with 95% winrate in there, which I felt even earlier, but thought this was just an unluck. In these very 2800 SR I felt like I am playing in masters+ already, but it was just mid-plat. Every game I got a half-dead furniture tanks, and if I compensate, I get +1 furniture, then a 4stack of furniture players or until I lose.
Tired of this crap, I Hoped on a 2800 SR account which has been played by a hardstuck player with golden border icon. He’s been playing 2500-2800 for 6 years. The games felt like I was back in silver where I started on the 1st account, but in reality it was almost diamond. Games were stable, I won half of them by almost doing nothing, no sweat, no heat, no stress at all.
This experience kept happening all the time, and I am sure that is not a skill issue. The more you win, the harder the games become, not because the rank is getting harder, but because you play vs the MatchMaker now, not players.
This was actually one of their major undertakings early on in the development of OW2. Aaron had director’s takes on it. They wanted to understand why stomps were happening and decrease their frequency as much as possible.
It’s not the matchmaker though. (They did investigate that, though, because they really don’t want players to have those sorts of negative in-game experiences- they want to make a good game and they want to make money, both are powerful incentives.)
If it were, they would change it- because it’s anti-Engaging. Which is one of the things pointed out early on during this conversation. People keep bringing up the boogeyman of EOMM in order to explain their negative in-game experiences. But EOMM exists to remove those negative in-game experiences as much as possible. It doesn’t want to see players get stomped. So EOMM does not cause stomps.
Stomps are caused by player behavior, player psychology, random interference from the networking gods, map design, game design, etc. Human psychology is a lot of it though. If the stronger team loses map 1 on Control, they lose map 2 60% of the time- even though they are the stronger team. Why is that? If you can answer that question, you can start to understand loss streaks and stomps much better.
Obsessing over the matchmaker causes folks to miss the actual causes of their negative in-game experiences.
Don’t forget I’m 60 years old the “title” might have changed to keep up with the times.
Ya see young wiper snapper computers would break if you add an extra loop making a big O(n) vs n^2.
Another reference I read Michael Abrash’s black book. That’s the type of software engineer I am. Now a days chips just overcome bad algorithms. But unlike those bad algos - chips can’t overcome stomps.
Anyhow we establish the 50/50 nudged or naturally occurring IS the engagement. Going back to the white if someone wins too much or lose to much have a hefty 50/50 algorithm would prevent that “ideally”.
How it’s doing it… neither side needs to know. Why… well to keep it “fair”.
Back to algorithms, again I have a thought that sometimes you have to step back and analyze is the algorithm forcing the outcome that you want (not a match outcome), or is the algorithm actually finding the “natural” occurrences of the situation. With stomps… I actually think the algorithm “nudges”, and what’s on paper doesn’t work out thus stomps happen.
If you just throw your hands up and say it’s a people problem…. That’s the wrong approach.
that’s not how statistics work or how an algorithm would play out, especially if it’s to not be obvious. there would be at min a set +/- %to the 50/50 as well as an allowed rate for outliers to exist as they would organically. just playing devil’s advocate, no real skin in the race either way.
Engagement - to keep people playing
Optimized - to find the perfect balance of wins and losses
Match making
Ow team long ago (but not predating eomm), found the best way to challenge players by implementing their match making using their Mmr system. Ultimately produces a near 50/50 win loss for players which gives enough wins and enough losses so players feel engaged to keep playing.
Why wouldn’t work? It’s been working for nearly 10 years. What should I know better?
It nudges people toward a 50% win rate by matching them against either harder opponents or with weaker teammates. - the “fair” and competitive system. It engages players by making them believe if they’re good they rank up.
I’ve always said this is a classification system, not a progression system.
They just needed a system that wouldn’t produce constant wins or constant losses. If the player is “at their rank” that’s exactly what happens.
It’s just sad their Mmr system doesn’t account for player knowledge, play time, and other bad actors. Nor does it account for bad metas, or flaws in character design and personal play styles. Ultimately people will creep up past their natural limits and make them look foolish when faced with a team that counters them.
I believe you guys want to stay in the ow team terms and verbiage. You have to raise your level of abstraction. A lot of folks on here worry about “how” it’s doing it and ignore the fact that it simply IS doing it - 50/50, which is engaging the masses.
You establish that yourself by playing on words. Overwatch uses SBMM in its traditional meaning.
You’re the only one who keeps confusing the two all the time. You cant fault others for not being as confused.
Dunno why you keep doing that though, maybe so you don’t lose an argument in your mind by changing the meaning of words on the spot.
Or randomly start using weasel words like “nudging”.
Going by your definition, everything apparently is eomm unless its completely random, ie, no matchmaking at all. Which is quite pointless argument.
We do know how and why it happens. You maybe don’t, but that’s all on you.
Nope. There is no “nudging” to any player specifically to get them to 50% winrate.
If you are playing in a ranked environment you would expect to be ranked by your skill, and that’s what it does. If you’re better than others around your rank, you rank up, because that’s how it works.
As you win your MMR goes up, you then get matches with people of that same MMR. If you lose, it drops,
Win rates will naturally balance out at around 50%, because that’s what happens when things are reasonably well balanced and played over and over (coin flip test).
Kinda true?.. If you win more matches, you do get better opponents.
Thats kinda the Point of an ELO/MMR system.
That one is just nonsense.
Matches are balanced per role anyway, having a “lower teammate” would make the enemies have an equivalent one anyway.
People believe this because they look at some teammate to blame anyway, and just mark the first one they see doing something bad as the “lower teammate”.
Just think about how many times you were seen as this player.
This is the central issue. You are asserting, in the absence of evidence, that the matchmaker is attempting to nudge players toward a 50/50 win rate in order to engage them, based on a very surface level read of (possibly only 1) EOMM paper.
You have repeatedly refused, however, to engage with the fact that SBMM’s result in 50/50 win rates naturally, and that all evidence suggests that OW uses an SBMM that functions in this way. Nor have you engaged with the point that in order to correctly rank players on a ladder, the best must play against the best and the worst must play against the worst.
It is as though, you are only capable of entertaining a very particular self-serving hypothesis about the matchmaker, regardless of the evidence. Why is that?
Why is it, that you cannot entertain counter-theories? Why is it that you find the notion of a vast conspiracy that is somehow perfectly capable of hiding itself to be the more plausible hypothesis? And why, if that is the case, did they not suppress these EOMM papers that everyone assumes are ironclad proof that OW uses an EOMM? Why even publish those papers in the first place if they are damning evidence? And if they were okay with those papers being published, why have they gone on to somehow perfectly ensure that everyone who ever talks about the matchmaker lies about it consistently?
It beggars belief. I mean, sure, maybe the moon landing was faked. You cannot prove a negative. But why? And how did they perfectly cover it up?
What evidence? Matter of factly your camp repeatedly says match making is only from wins and losses, I don’t refuse I just don’t acknowledge because I don’t believe ow uses it.
“It only uses Mmr which only fluctuates based on wins and losses”. Now we’re saying it uses skill based match making too?
These last two paragraphs kinda going off the rails here. What is the counter theory? That it’s naturally occurring? Yes! I’ve acknowledged this already didn’t I?
It does this by using “natural” tournament style match using mmr? No? I just think it’s flawed by using ONE variable. Do I think it gives special treatment or a white list for ranking people up? No of course not. It’s an algorithm it DOES something greater than random groupings of people.
It’s at this point that I think you guys just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing, or too close to understanding the bigger picture.
Engagement can be accomplished by multiple means. Every video game wants engagement no? So the tool of using a “fair” system according to them is engagement.
I get the feeling “a serious conversation” was misleading. Click bait.
What you wanted was to give your theory and find people in agreement with you. Not a conversation.
It only uses this, and thus a version of skill based match making.
Anything EOMM/EBMM is an interesting theory, but nothing more than that.
You’ve not enabled a discussion about it. You just want people to believe you that they use it. When they don’t. Something they’ve explained in reasonable detail in the past.
On the contrary I changed my views on this, maybe you didn’t catch on but I thank you guys for your time.
Like I don’t think streaks and queues are eomm it’s just due to the flawed design of the match maker. You guys can hold onto “it’s a player problem”, and that’s why it will never be fixed, flawed classification of the issue.
A match maker by itself using anything is a mechanism of engagement. To your point I don’t see them using historical skin transactions to award wins. It’s not that I should “know” better, I already knew that. It’s you pigeon holing me because I recognize and address engagement to keep players coming back.
Also I still don’t agree ow using sbmm. Unless you know other wise but I didn’t see any reports about them using k:d ratio or accuracy or any other skill stat. A WIN is not a skill stat, a win is an outcome.
You’re getting there. But it isn’t “flawed design”.
Streaks are just human performance so bug all you can really do.
Queues are down to MMR matching being quite tight. To lower the times would risk match quality.
In an overwatch context. Match making and engagement don’t really over lap.
Just look at how the talk about the game and what they push. Overwatch does use engagement tactics (all games do to some extent). But what tactics overwatch uses to bait engagement is literally cosmetic.
Gamble boxes, battle passes, events, challenges, collaborations . All that nonsense is the stuff the use to bait people to engage and play and pay.