Algorithmic Handicapping (MMR) is Wrong for Overwatch

[OzoneOOO-1681]

@Palm-21617

I think many players would rather lose because they got unlucky than lose because the game wants them to have a winning chance of 50%

Let’s imagine a game where we are of exactly equal skill. It’s not hard to imagine as there are a lot of games like that. The kid’s card game War, for example. Lets simplify that game so that we each draw a card, the highest card wins a point, equal cards are discarded with no points awarded either way.

In this game, if we play 100 games each of us will win 50 of them. We are of equal skill. No one wins more than another. Losses are truly “unlucky”. Each person has an equal chance to win each game.

Lets move on to checkers. If you win MORE games than me that’s in fact because you are better than me. If you are JUST AS good as me, you will win half of your games against me.

What I’m getting at here is that 50% chance, equal skill, and uncertain outcome are different words for the exact same phenomenon.

The game puts teams of equal estimated skill together. The game wants people to have a winning chance of 50%. The game creates games with unpredictable outcomes. These sentences are all saying the exact same thing in different ways.

In fact, what I think people think of as the weird randomness of the game is precisely THAT, like the card game, whether you win or lose is pretty much up to chance if everyone in the game is in fact correctly ranked.

Note that I didn’t say that it’s up to chance if you are under ranked. If you are underranked you have a large effect on the game.

@Palm-21617

If you are at the rank you are supposed to be then yeah thats great balanced games, but what if you aren’t.

This is a common and worthwhile question. So common that I should have it bookmarked rather than go back and find it again. Short answer, if you aren’t correctly ranked then the games aren’t actually balanced. It happens. A lot.

Competitive matchmaking's MMR system is VERY good

First, if your win-rate hovers around 50% you shouldn’t expect to change ranks, right? Even if you just put 2 random people together, in any game, if they both won about half the time you would say that they were evenly matched. One is not better than the other. If you are not better than your competition, you should not expect to increase in rank. That’s not what you’re asking though. What you’re really asking is “If the MM can produce a 50/50 match, then how can it expect anyone to advance e…

@Palm-21617

MMR should be removed for the simple reason of it being hidden.

Or, you know, just unhide it. For an explanation of why they do it like this see the following. I’m not trying to argue for or against here, just explaining why. I’d venture to say very few people see hidden MMR as anything better than unnecessary. Even I’ve come around to the view that having it visible would at least allow open source bug checking.

@Cuthbert

Then why doesn’t the user interface of Competitive Overwatch show Match Making Rating, or refer to it in any way? Why does Skill Rating exist?

As to why it exists at all, I explained out above, but if you would like more specifics I understand, but would need to know which part or parts need clarifying.

OzoneOOO:

It allows decay, punishment, sense of accomplishment, and translation of statistical data to something humans more easily recognize.

@Palm-21617

Protecting lower ranked players from smurfs is good and all

MMR doesn’t protect from smurfs. Smurfs throw games to lower their MMR to have easier games. It’s true that your games will be VERY hard at the appropriate MMR. So hard that half your games will be losses. You will have no easy games unless you are misranked, which is why smurfs intentionally get themselves to the wrong rank.