Algorithmic Handicapping (MMR) is Wrong for Overwatch

MMR does really need overhauling for the casual gamemodes that don’t have as strict thresholds a competitive does, because the current handicapping definitely doesn’t work at all. I’m personally heavily inclined to play on my alts rather than my main since nowadays playing solo on my main means almost automatically that I’m gonna get gold or even silver players as my teammates while my opponents will be overwhelmingly better than them, leading to a situation where if I stay in for 1 second past the assembly phase and then leave only to check the replay later: The teams I left get absolutely decimated. Then on the other hand the games that I decide to stick into, because it seems like I have a strong team, are usually just steamrolls from our side instead

There’s also one thing I’ve noticed that has started happening: If I don’t get lower tiered players or something fickle like Rein mains trying to play Widow, I get random stacks in my games. And it’s almost always the worse weird stack that is in my team which makes the games also rather unplayably bad when they can barely leave the spawn despite being in kahoots with each other

Handicapping just doesn’t work at all and it more than often makes the game unplayable. So the option is pretty much to get rid off it to the best of your extent and hop on your alt account to play instead. Mains for higher MMR’d players in this era are just to stack with. Then again IIRC we went 12-2 last night which was really fun for us since thanks to the very lenient matchmaking our queue times were under 2 minutes quite often and we could do really trolly stuff yet still do very well in the games. But I’m not sure if it was that enjoyable for the opponents…

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MMR seems to put with with people of my skill. Or similar. Which is nice. Smurfing is for people who want to stomp on people.

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For high ranked players sure. But I don’t see how no mmr would help the average or lower ranked players.

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It is not like you would have NO system at all. That would be insane, and would very likely chase away lower level players.

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What about new lvl 20 players, mistakenly ranked in Gold, playing in Plat matches and feeding 99% of the times, because they have no idea of what’s going on?
It happens very frequently.

You again with the SAME SUBJECT you are spamming EVERY TIME?
Here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/hey-microsoft-forced-50-is-wrong-for-online-games/649583/333

And Here: THANK YOU for Talking About Matchmaker's MMR and Forced 50%

And Here: Algorithmic Handicapping is Wrong for Online Games

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As far a rating systems go, Overwatch has a fairly sophisticated and, ostensibly, well designed one. Could a cruder, more transparent system, such as employed in Apex, for instance, function in Overwatch? Probably, but I don’t see it as a better fit for this game in any regard.

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The vast majority of players would have a worse experience as way more games would be stomps or stomping. How do you believe that would strongly improve the quality of the game? :confused:

Also this OP really needs to be prevented from making a bunch of identical threads with the same pointless misinformation and misunderstanding. I’m forced to believe that this individual is trolling.

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Smurfing is literally high rank players going on ego trips via crushing new and bad players. So what you’re saying is you want that to be the normal of this game? No thank you. New players deserve a chance at winning regularly just like everyone does. They shouldn’t be forced into matches where they are obscenely worse than those around them and forced to fail over and over.

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Well excuse me, but in my other threads half the people say TLDR and miss the salient points of my argument. So I am focusing discussion on a single unacceptable fact.

And by the way, the definition of spam is not ‘talking about the same subject.’ Obviously that does not warrant the censorship you are calling for. Pure intellectual cowardice on your part. The content of the threads is not the same, even if they are about the same subject.

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Nah dude, you are making duplicate threads with the same subject, the same nonsense argument and the same lack of evidence. Stop it.

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The definition of ‘duplicate’ is “a copy exactly like the original.” This thread contains no duplicated material.

I don’t know how you can say that I “lack evidence” when I am citing primary source information, from Overwatch’s principal designer and the patents of the game holding company. You seem not to have read anything I’ve written. I don’t know why you are so strongly opposed to me. Would you like to explain?

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You post the exact same youtube video.

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Speculation is not evidence.

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It legitimately doesn’t. People that are for the removal of SBMM (MMR) are almost assuredly in favor of it because they want to stomp pubs. It’s not like I don’t understand it either. CoD was more fun for me when I could semi-regularly go 40-0 vs playing with other sweaty tryhards. That’s less fun for everyone else though and we need to average it out.

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We were better off without any matchmaking. Unless they are going to disclose it’s inner workings, it is impossible to trust such a system. It feels like these matchmakers are more concerned with making money than making a fair match.

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My issue with mmr is in less popular arcade modes like ctf. Where I have insane queues if I’m not grouped with lower mmr friends to reduce the groups mmr. I think it should be more relaxed to get games in a reasonable amount of time. But for popular modes like qp it certainly needs to stay.

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matches could just use the mmr that blizzard calls “SR”. its a proven system. in fact, most games do not use two types of MMR, nor do they try to make their system as complicated as blizzards version of MMR.

win when you should win, 20 sr, lose when you should lose, 20 sr. win when you shouldnt, +1-5 SR, lose when you shouldnt, lose 1-5 more. games are made and balance based on SR alone, only use mmr to detect outliers.

play way out of your SR ranges ablilities, warning, then ban. add in a feature to “link” another account for the gm that simply MUST have another account to do whatever with, to help the matchmaker better place you.

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It’s always been that way though. With team averages, the matchmaker will throw one new player on each side and call it a day. Meanwhile both new players have an absolutely aweful time.

Now replace “new player” with “carry” or “potato” and it’s no wonder everyone is having an awful time.

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??? I have no idea how this relates in any kind of way to what I said. Nobody wants to have no system at all. All I’m saying is that heavy handicapping doesn’t work in OW as the games more than often become unplayably bad and polarized which means that this system is not sustainable in solo gameplay for higher MMR’d players and that’s a massive reason why they feel inclined to play on alt accounts when they’re going in solo. That’s why the system should be properly adjusted so that the only option to opt out of heavy handicapping and “fighting your own shadow” is not switching accounts

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