That’s not how journalism works at all.
Journalism works to uncover the truth by presenting facts and evidence.
Journalism does not work by presenting opinions.
(See Fox News - they never report anything, only opinion articles)
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That’s not how honest/good journalism works/should work. That does not stop people from manipulating others under the veil of journalism/news, even if they’re still “reporting something” as details can be emphasized, left out, or embellished in different ways to push a narrative, just like how statistics and science can be used in disingenuous ways to push a narrative if an unscrupulous person wants to.
Look at most people who call themselves “games journalists” or even just “experts” in almost any field and what a mess that is and it’s not hard to see how easy it is to manipulate people and/or blindly push narrative if that’s your goal.
Even people who believe the earth is flat can find ways to “logically” explain their belief, even claiming to be using “science”.
The terms yellow journalism and propaganda exist for a reason, especially historically. The main point is, the label/claim does not earn any credibility on its own. In the same way there are doctors out there I wouldn’t trust with my health and teachers who shouldn’t be around kids, there are definitely people out there who call themselves journalists who care more about pushing a narrative at all costs over finding any real “truth”.
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So nothing like what been done in this thread? Considering we have 0 facts to go on.
lmao Fox news has been lying to people for almost 30 years, it wont change now.
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You guys talk about journalism in this thread like it has anything to do with the rigged MM this company implement into their games just to make it a grind 
Listen. The MM IS handicapped in many games. Overwatch is only one of them.
If you are NOT a hardcore competitive player you wont even recognize it.
Its like SBMM in CoD. It just punish good players and protect newer/worse players.
But there is a HUGE difference between SBMM in CoD and the Matchmaking rating (mmr) from Overwatch.
What fans doesnt like about SBMM in CoD, Apex etc is that they use it in PUBLIC modes. Casual. There is NO ranking, no ladder etc. But there are still „hidden brackets“ you get in when you play. And this is just to protect bad and new players. But in a CASUAL PUBLIC mode where it just doesnt matter if you win or lose.
Well the difference for OW is that in OWs „competitive mode“ SHOULD be SBMM. But it isnt. It has a ranking system you can see and a ladder you can climb. So in that mode SBMM is normal.
BUT: SBMM in a ladder system means if you climb higher matches become harder. But thats not true in OWs case.
Like I said I had harder matches in low diamond than in GM, Masters etc. how is that possible?
Well it is a team game of course. But you can clearly see huge skill differences on many players on the SAME ELO and SAME SR.
And there is the problem. The „cherry picking“ and the „forced losses“.
OWs MM with MMR is even WORSE than SBMM. Because it is NON competitive in a competitive mode.
Again: forced 50% winrate does NOT mean that all matches have a 50:50 calculated outcome. No. It means that if you are playing on a too high winrate you will get matches that are rigged for you to „hopefully“ lose.
They CANT tell the future of course. But they can still give you 5 low mmr players in your team and let you play against 6 high mmr players the system calculated on stats that they are better than the players you have.
BUT: even the 50% outcome blizzard is talking about is active rigging.
If I play on a 3500 SR account I want to play WITH and AGAINST ALL players that are on that SR region BASED ON SR ONLY!!
I DONT want to get calculated teammates and enemies even IF it would „calculate a 50:50“ scenario. Because it is NOT fair.
And everyone that can’t understand this has NO IDEA of fairness and competitive play.
It is an evil designed system to protect new and bad players and to „handle“ very good players. And I have enough of this nonsense.
Battlefield 6 is confirmed to have SBMM btw.
Rip gaming.
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Well, just to generally respond to the topic of journalism, it is to show what is true and why.
Logical arguments don’t really qualify as facts, despite how “factual” they may seem when presented (and thus wouldn’t be journalistic).
To use your example,
Journalism on flat earth would consist of a reporter finding new facts or evidence that the world is flat because of x, y, and z and reports their findings. Usually then their reporting must stand up to scrutiny, as other reporters can report on their lack of journalistic integrity. If the evidence on flat earth is solid, it would indeed make positive news. But in almost any real case, such a “report” would immediately be met with criticism from just about any scientific domain.
It’s a noble profession that thrives on truth, but it’s not something that should be taken at face value. That’s where propaganda and other types of false reporting start to become mainstream. It’s reporters who stop being journalists that are the most pervasive, because simply reporting something that isn’t true (an opinion or a lie) stands in the opposite direction of what journalism is.
The most important thing anyone can do is think for themselves and do their own research.
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Suppose your SR is low for your skill level, and you are the best one of twelve players in a match. In that case, handicapping/MMR singles you out by placing all of the next-best players in the match on the enemy team.
Yeah, I’ve certainly felt something like this happening on my old main account, stuck down in silver while my alt sits pretty in high gold for seasons. I wasn’t necessarily always the most under-ranked in a match, as sometimes I’d seem to be counterbalancing a super-smurf (presumably with other poor trapped souls), or some other winning combination of enemy players.
I got so fed up, I decided to run a comparative statistical analysis of my matches (that I’ve just posted on the forum). It was able to (I think) demonstrate, with several graphs, that my tank role really was over-performing, but trapped at a 45% win rate. Neutrally buoyant, thanks to the performance based adjustments.
But after 30 matches like that, something temporarily changed, out of nowhere, at the start of season 27. I got a 10 game win streak on my tank role. When it’s unprecedented for me to have more than 5 in a row. Even on my DPS role, that climbed from 1500 to 1900 with ~64% win rate.
Anyone else seen anything like that? The matchmaking felt different, like it was balanced for me, instead of balancing me (or random unwinnable/unlosable). Like, if I had a rubbish team, so too were the enemies. And overall lower skill feel (almost like a parallel dimension of high silver players). Unfortunately I fumbled an 11th winnable match, then sadly went back to the 45% win rate (not sure if that was causally connected).
I was also testing to see if QP stats/MMR could influence comp matchmaking. Based on a hunch, from the quality of my games seeming to feel inversely correlated, in the past. And I saw circumstantial correlation with that, in the study, oddly.
Seems like a slightly crazy thing to do, but I threw 10 support QP games before the analysis. Then my comp support climbed from 1900, with a ~60% win rate, while my tank dropped and then stayed stuck at 1900.
My alt is pretty stable at 2400 support, 2300 tank (which also looks a little under-ranked, still, from stats). I estimated my QP MMRs from a long winded study too, and they eventually came out around 2500-2600 for tank and 2400 equivalent for support (once I’d un-thrown my QP MMR, which was a mess!).
Anyway, I also demonstrated to myself that reliable climbing is possible, with my DPS role. Although that seemed to hit a glass ceiling at 1900 SR, too, for the last few matches. Despite my alt being comfy at 2500, at the same time.
So, Cuthbert, I feel that you’re talking a lot of sense, above. But only within a limited field of effect, like ~500 SR, maybe, does this counter-productive stiction prevent climbing. From my experience. And also from watching many a GM streamer blow through the low ranks, be it on their own alts, or bought accounts starting all the way down in bronze.
Also, I might have to side with Kaawumba (and the devs), that an SR reset probably wouldn’t achieve all that much, for the amount of chaos involved.
I think 50/50 odds matches make sense most of the time. Especially in the context of smurfs who deliberately hang around in lower ranks. Unless you magically remove that kind of behaviour, you kind of need to counter-balance them, so that anyone else at all will get a chance to influence the matches that they are trolling.
But there really needs to be more mechanisms to promote rank mobility, for those somewhat close, but still a fair way out of where they should be. Something aside from getting better than yourself. Which, to be fair, is kind of a natural thing to happen, for many new players, particularly.
I wonder if what I saw (on tank in my analysis) was something like that…? A smoothing of the matchmaking for me, perhaps triggered by my very high stats, for a significant amount of time beforehand. Something either already there, in the system, or newly implemented…?
Or if it was just a ~3% probability, totally random series of match outcomes. But then I don’t feel consecutive matches even have independent probabilities, from the lack of other win streaks (beyond 5), in my experience. Fewer than might be expected from pure randomness, within the context of a background win-rate.
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I also would guess that it weights your MMR on an average. SO you (and I) may have been terrible at this game when it first came out. (it’s why it’s so hard for our longest held accounts to climb out of an SR.) As we’ve improved, the average may be weighted down by how 'bad" and how long you were 'bad"
That’s why having an alt account, seems to keep you where you are. This is why I think that both things in competitive is a bad thing.
This is speculation and anecdotal, but on multiple platforms I stay in Gold. Right where I want and need to be. This is the only one that’s a struggle.
(also I don’t like that the game starts new players in a gold SR. )
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That sounds like you’re saying the system somehow pulls you towards a set notion of where if thinks you belong? (Something I’ve seen others say.)
But there’s no room for that, if we believe (and I think we should, from the evidence) that SR is just a projection of MMR. And that only changes on wins/losses, as we see it. (I’ve not experienced much unfair looking SR gains/losses, myself.)
That’s why my hypothesis, on this subject, is kind of reversed: that the matchmaker sees one’s above average stats (either just in comp, or maybe from QP, too, in some cases) and counter-balances you with equally good enemies (or worst allies). In order to give even match outcome odds overall. An extension, or parallel, of what Cuthbert says.
Raw MMR (and group) balancing, alone, surely can’t be enough to get close enough outcomes. Not enough of the time, in messy mid-ranks.
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Thats what I believe, yes.
I am of the belief that too many systems ruin the integrity of competitive. Regardless of which excess system there at least one should go. More like 2 IMO.
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BTW I won’t and can’t refute all the data you collected, I am speaking anecdotally for the most part of what I believe. I think we are similar in our conclusions, with ‘the worse teammates’ part of it.
Better enemies I expect. that’s a consequence of getting better… but also a consequence should be better teammates. In theory anyway, I do know there is a ladder of up and comers, and those who are falling. so this theory will never stay in place
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Simple question, that I’m still not sure of, having watched through your video, too: do you think that SR is not just a direct mathematical conversion of the MMR value?
(Excluding decay & penalised leavers)
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I think SR is a granular version of performance/MMR.
MMR itself is only useful in the context that it is an accurate metric of your player skill and/or performance.
Performance of what exactly, I do not know.
I think it only becomes a problem when it’s used as a metric to determine the preemptive outcome of a game.
Say, matching players of the same MMR value, instead of counter-matching players of opposite relative MMR value.
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This is great… 1,738 replies, thread open for 2 years, a very common topic that players raise a lot with very good reasons… and not a single blizz post reply. Pretty much as expected.
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What I don’t understand about this whole theory (although my experience of playing is exactly this, a 4 year long SR stagnation), is how can the MMR both handicap your game and doing it so for everybody else in the game.
Like for example you say (I’m simplifying) if you win too much the game will put you with 5 lower skill players and pitch you against 6 higher skilled ones. But then why isn’t the MMR/Handicap system not applying to them? How come those 6 higher skilled players get to crush your team and not also be handicapped according to their skill?
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they are in the next matches. Note if you have a couple of stomps in a row with a good team… you will be followed by almost the same amount of stomps back. If you have a good game where you’re actually carrying through your actions, but it’s tough and fairly even… and you lose. You will likely get a better game within the next two with better teammates.
As much as I love this game, I’m not doing statistics for it, so this is all anecdotal. But it happens quite often to me.
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Thanks everyone for continuing the discussion, and sorry for the delay getting back to you, I have been indisposed. Starting where I left off…
You’re lying to say that I didn’t quote the entire sentence/paragraph. The basis of my thread and my video is five contiguous and unadulterated paragraphs of direct quotation from Overwatch’s Lead Designer, Scott Mercer. He made his statement on Blizzard’s now-defunct Battlenet forum, which is where I made my original post on the subject of MMR/algorithmic handicapping. So what you are saying about me is a blatant lie.
Additionally, I don’t think you understand the meaning of the accusation you are making. Exactly what “context” do you think is missing from my quotation of Mercer? What context would you give?
I agree that journalism should be fact and evidence based. Presenting information that is not factual (i.e., lies) is an indictment of both the presenter and the channel/medium that is hosting them. The justice system’s failure to prosecute cases of fraudulent reporting is causing profound public harm. I have been campaigning for prosecution in this case because I share your sense of despair, when I watch cable news.
I would say that opinion has a place in news; it is the impetus of all reporting. The very purpose of news is to form public opinion. I think reporters should be clear with readers about their own qualifications, motivations, and loyalties. But opinion must always be treated as secondary to facts, anyways.
There is nothing “unscrupulous” about presenting statistical and scientific information if it’s true. You are confusing manipulation with deception. There is a difference.
That’s all I can handle for now. I’ll try to respond to other posters soon, thanks for your patience and your interest in this subject.
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All of the above aside…I maintain the complete absence of change to remove the completely unnecessary and not beneficial mmr…or even address it, or even respond to a forum post like this… basically says everything that needs to be said. Blizzard has 0 plans to improve in this area.
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I agree with your sentiment, but of course I feel there is much more to be said. I hope that every Overwatch player who cares about fair competition will continue to discuss this topic and demand change ad nauseam. The present and future of online gaming is at stake.
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i still don’t get why they hide information ( something prob for money from investors)
about
- present active players online
- popularity between tiers ( 1% gm 5% masters 10% diamond etc)
- how much players left competitive matches and stick to arcade,qp or workshop maps
- base statistics of KDA per team
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But you didn’t quote the entire thing?
You twisted what you did quote to fit what you wanted to portray in this thread, while leaving out other key points.
On this point, even though it wasn’t directed at me, I do agree, the problem is, you have 0 evidence outside of player/personal experience to support the claims you’ve made, unless you can provide details directly from Blizzard, this thread is worthless, and should be/is looked at as “he said she said” childish argument.
Not every player is demanding change to a system that is working as intended, only those “hard stuck” “rigged propaganda” players want it, other players are having minimal to no issue with the current system (myself included), the fact players are still climbing and falling, based on their level of skill, proves the system is working, as intended.
Sure it sucks having to grind, or be at your skill max (like I am) and never see change, but those who truly believe the system is against them, should take a look at their own gameplay, and really pick it apart, I do not believe in forced wins/losses, in every single match I’ve played, if ONE person did “x” it could have changed the entire pace of the match. The major issue being: people DO NOT look at the win condition, and instead blame the matchmaker (yes sometimes it can be out of your control, smurfs, throwers cheaters, etc), but this isn’t on the system, it’s on the players.
If they release how the system works, we (as a community) would face players farming necessary stats to climb, and end up exactly where we are now.
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