Please make MMR visible!!! -end of story
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Lol, okay so where’s your empyrical evidence that those carnivals were rigging the game? Or is it that only you have the ability to look at a system and see that it’s off?
And if it is working so well, why is Overwatch notorious for having terrible matchmaking? Seriously, Google: “This game has terrible matchmaking”. Guess what game pops up in the top spot over and over again. If it looks like a horse, and it talks like a horse, and when you google “what game is a horse” and Overwatch shows up over and over again…
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It’s spelled “empirical”. You can literally look up how those games are rigged. My dad used to work at one and has a couple stories about the imbalance in the games.
Overwatch is not notorious for bad matchmaking. Online competitive games are notorious for having tons of bad players who think matchmaking is rigged.
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To be fair, I think the main reason Overwatch turns up in such search results is because it is the most popular game of its kind. But not every game in this genre has a ‘matchmaking system.’ Overwatch’s spiritual predecessor, Team Fortress 2, had a server browser rather than matchmaking.
And the fact that there are so many pages on the subject of Overwatch’s matchmaking proves that not everyone is happy with the mystery meat we are being served. Blizzard should be legally obligated to disclose the full terms of use for Competitive Play, including detailed information about Match Making Rating (handicapping).
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I mean…really? ONLY ME? Next you’re going to tell me that the casino can lose money? The guy on the street playing 3-card Monte is totally legit?
Honestly I kinda assumed that everyone knew carnival games were rigged. I looked it up and it spells it all out on a website for old people, known for being easily scammed. https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-07-2012/rigged-carnival-games.html
You don’t have to go very far to show that not everyone is happy. Then again, studies repeatedly show that 90% of people think that they are above average, which means 40% of people are delusional, or rather, don’t have enough knowledge to correctly estimate their abilities.
Despite all the hyperbole in your statements and your tendency to get off track at the whims of your sycophants, I really do think that you’ve hit upon a valid concern. One that deserves to be explained, which is “How does ranking and matchmaking work together?”
Again, if all you want is for the system to not be hidden, there’s lots of people on your side. I don’t disagree, I just happen to think that it’s not as hidden as you think, which is why I try to explain it.
That’s not what your post seems to be about though. I’ve asked, repeatedly, for confirmation of my understanding of your post, but it seems you’d rather move the discussion in circles.
One day it’s about ranking, one day about your teammates, one day about being hidden, one day about stomps, as if getting rid of MMR will stop stomps. Sometimes you even call the Blizzard employees fraudsters and liars, scamming you to get more money, though I don’t understand how you think making an intentionally crappy game will somehow get them more money?
And for a legal remedy there would have to be some harm done. No harm is ever going to be done by someone being misranked in a game so you will never have the standing necessary to take such a petition to court. A bruised ego doesn’t count.
Legislatures have far better things to do with their time than strip intellectual property rights in the name of a meaningless game ranking.
They say a lot about you as a person, the fact that you want a legal remedy to something so petty combined with the fact that you are only willing to engage with those who say nice things about you.
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What are you talking about? When did I imply that rigging games is a legitimate practice? What exactly do you think my point is? I’m sorry if my meandering analogies are a bit scattered.
I was asking a rhetorical question because obviously, you aren’t the only person who can observe and call out bull. By saying, oh I grew up around this game, I can just tell its fixed, and then acting so obstinate when others do it, is a bit contrarian.
And, I don’t know how else to make the claim that overwatch is notorious for bad matchmaking except by pointing to the endless arguments that fill up the forums like cancer. Blizzard’s Red China like refusal to work with people and insistence that they know best only makes things works. You can’t brute force positivity forever.
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Where did you get this statistic from? Imright dot com? I’m sure 90% of people are above average at one thing, and below average at another. Nothing is as black and white as that “study” would lead you to believe.
Again. Attacking the person instead of their ideas just comes off as desperate.
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You sounded legitimately surprised that carnival games were rigged, given that you asked for empirical evidence and all. Which can be easily provided. A big skeptic will have to wait a few weeks and buy my ticket (and a funnel cake), I could easily describe how it’s rigged and show how to anyone’s satisfaction.
Something people that think OW is rigged can’t do.
The fact that 90% of people think that they are above average is a well established fact in cognitive psychology research. It’s actually over 90% in many studies. You probably know a little bit about the Dunning-Kruger effect, but it’s not just one study (or that particular pair of researchers) that have shown the effect. It’s a well funded field as it directly relates to competency in business and self-assessment. The overall effect is called “illusory superiority”.
In almost any endeavor, people think they are above average performers even when they are far below average performers. The worse you are, actually, the higher the differential between actual and perceived performance.
Your description of it, that some people are above and below average at different things, is completely missing what it’s saying. You would be correct that people have different skill sets.
It’s a very important fact to remember, really, that nearly everyone thinks they are far better at nearly anything than they actually are.
I actually did your Google search. OW was one of the top results, but HotS, Paladins, Smite, LoL, Star Wars, Rainbow Six, and Fortnite were all on the first page too. It’s probably impossible to stop complaints as there are a number of trade-offs which have to be made. Trade-offs which will be good for some and bad for others.
But for the hundredth time no one is saying it’s perfect. I wrote a 9 page paper on Reddit on how to improve the matchmaking, which they basically implemented with the new LFG system.
That’s not even what this thread is about. The thread is about ranking, how MMR affects SR by balancing matches. It actually ASSUMES that the balancing is effective, where you’re saying it’s not according to all the complaints. But then sometimes you are…like I said, I don’t think you know what you think.
I agree. However what you quoted are simply facts. He does in fact desire a legal remedy for petty concerns and he also tends to only engage with sycophants. Those things also do say a lot about a person, but nothing that isn’t in common with a lot of other people.
Regarding the second point especially, I’d really like to know if I fairly characterized his concern. As I told you the last time you called me “desperate”, I’ve given him far more intellectual respect than anyone else, especially those who come here to defend without truly understanding his valid, if poorly expressed, point.
I truly believe that he is basing his analysis on the common competitive scenario where you count wins and losses as your ranking. If so, I can assuage his concerns with a better understanding on why that doesn’t work in this type of environment and how a different system does in fact work.
I increasingly suspect that he has either long since stopped thinking seriously about the issue and is simply no longer intellectually curious or is so emotionally invested in this thread (and the others prior) that when someone comes along and actually listens to his concerns and tries to understand them and explain how, as I put it, “What you want is what you currently have”, he doesn’t know what to do.
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Funny how that works, as you disregard everything I say to claim that I don’t think carnival games are rigged. I agree with you though, people think they’re the best at everything, and will always find something to complain about.
That however does not mean that ALL complaining is meaningless, nor is it any reason to dismiss everyone that claims they are great at something.
I would say how people perceives their rank, and the matchmaking variables surrounding it, is exactly what this thread is about. It’s all we can do is relate our own subjective perception of the mechanics, since we aren’t offered anything but a vague dismissive idea and a very confined set of matchmaking variables.
And you did rebuke appropriately, sure, but you tend to lash out and slather your responses in venom. I do the same, it’s a bad habit admittedly. Sorry.
Edit: I mean “and a very confined set of matchmaking rules.” not variables. As in Blizzard wants to dictate exactly how this game is played and leaves very little choice.
To digress for a second, it blows my mind to watch Blizzard transform from a company that created Diablo 2, the sandbox for (in my opinion) the greatest user driven and organically grown video game economy…
(and hands down the peak of what the company has done to inspire the community. except MAYBE SC2, but man they dropped the ball on that. They already had esports in the bag but wanted to rub everyones face in overwatch for some reason? someone needs to be fired)
Sorry. I digress.
…into a company that buries any chance of that ever happening again with one of their games by not taking the community seriously, censoring everything at Red China levels, and forcing everything through their exact specifications of what they think the users will like best. It’s like they are doing satire or something.
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I wonder if that is really true, to the extent that we see it in Competitive Overwatch. I suspect that Match Making Rating is what causes most of that toxic behavior. I don’t see such a lack of perspective and humility in other multiplayer games. I think it is a consequence of the lines being constantly blurred, between experienced/inexperienced and skilled/unskilled players. That cognitive dissonance is a result of handicapping.
When the ranking system is engineered to be dysfunctional, we can’t be surprised that players don’t know their place. Are we such delusional people? Or is Blizzard just screwing with us, through patently evil game design?
Blizzard ruined countless lives with World of Warcraft. Now they show the same callous disregard for Overwatch players. They just do whatever keeps players online for the longest time possible.
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People also tend to forget that everything could be true at the same time.
The same way the game throws people of all skill into a match the same way you get people thinking they are good when they are not and people that can adequately assess their skill lvl and realize they are getting thrown in such matches.
The former just ultimately dilute the data with sheer mass.
Still it’s very apparent for anyone with a decent background in the genre and was so since the start of the system. When someone with pro-lvl background over multiple titles gets thrown in low gold then you just know that the system has absolutely none to think of or a completely faulty way of assessing player skill. And when you know This then everything else falls into place.
Pair that with a 1v1 elo system in a very heavily team based FPS with a lot of skill-gap compression and the total lack of a scoreboard and you got yourself the most toxicity breeding social environment in the history of video-games.
Of course you get constant boosting and deranking because baddies can and will get boosted up and good players can and will get dragged down.
Then we can also believe every word from the devs, except of course the part where the system assesses ones skill level in the placement matches. (or anywhere)
It’s not a nefarious plan from the devs but simply a huge pile of misjudgments/mistakes, to put it mildly.
Or it’s a bit of both, we’ll never know.
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I’m absolutely positive it’s just incompetence. I’m assuming Blizzard got infested with useless american pseudo-talent a few years ago. It’s nearly impossible to get rid of an infestation once a useless person gets promoted twice.
Here’s the model:
One useless person gets promoted. Said useless person will then promote other useless people and heap turds onto the useful people. The useless infestation really gets nasty when one of them ascends further and the useless minions begin sacrificing the over-worked and now outnumbered useful people to flaunt their superior ‘management’ abilities. Like dogcrappitycrud covered rats with peacock feathers glued to their butt.
Most of the American workforce is living in a bubble of incompetence because we don’t actually make or do anything anymore. It’s all service industry or moving imaginary things back and forth and stealing a little.
I digress, again.
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You’re right, incompetence spreads like cancer in any corporate body. But there is more than simple degeneracy here. Blizzard has a clear marketing interest in the secrecy and obfuscation of Match Making Rating. If Blizzard really didn’t intend any of this, then you’re right. But I think the real incompetence is lack of governance, i.e. regulations that would outlaw such practices. False advertising is supposed to be illegal.
I like the way you think. Truth is multiplistic, while opinion is simplistic.
This is why I think Competitive Play should be solo-queue only. Then boosting wouldn’t be a thing.
Blizzard was compelled to this perverted design decision by a combination of greed and ignorance. We might not get closure from the company itself, because they decline to comment on practically everything posted to these forums. But we are within our rights as consumers to exercise and pronounce judgement.
I strongly agree with this. The system is so wildly arbitrary, it is a wonder that players accept it. We have gotten far to accustomed to manipulation from big data.
I’ve also noticed that the only way to climb reliably is to be a standout DPS. Flexing in handicapped games is a liability.
If that’s true, then why doesn’t Match Making Rating apply to all tiers of the competitive system? Why does it only apply to Platinum and below, where the majority of players are sitting?
I have never heard a concern about this particular problem, before Overwatch. It might be a common problem with contemporary multiplayer games, but the games I’ve played the most just match players impartially, and allow them to handicap teams voluntarily.
I would posit that they don’t “work together” at all. Match Making Rating compromises the integrity of the ranking system, by handicapping matches. In an impartial matchmaking system without this sort of tampering, good players would naturally rise to the top ranks and bad players would sink to the bottom.
Not as hidden as I think? Match Making Rating is not listed in our player profiles. There is not a single mention of MMR is Overwatch’s user-interface. How much more hidden could it possibly be? Blizzard refuses to show MMR because they don’t want players to know their matches are being handicapped. It’s the same reason they don’t allow us to have scoreboards.
Anyway, I don’t just want MMR to be displayed. I want it to be removed from Competitive Play entirely. Handicapping is wrong for competitive play.
You’re right, it is too late for Blizzard to save face on this. They never should have designed Competitive Play with a handicapping system.
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they could just drop the mmr entirely and base everything on sr overnight and not tell anyone. Keep the matchmaker, sure, but have it look at sr only. They don’t have to tell anyone they did it, just let it play out.
Suddenly, everything will be like it is above diamond - good players will destroy people floating in rank and rank up. They don’t need to save face, they could just say “made some adjustments to matchmaker to account for player skill”
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I stand corrected. Since Blizzard has successfully kept Match Making Rating a secret from most Overwatch players, they could sneak it out of the game just as you describe.
Your move, Blizzard.
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When I go to qp I see many diamonds, plats sometimes GM on my team. I’m gold.
When I’m play competitive, we are mostly all good with a few plats here and there?
Explain to me why I can que with masters in qp in the first place and perform well and win. And then go to comp and lose with people of my SR range.
Imagine how that would make you feel seeing your mmr as a masters paired with gold? Does that mean he just got lucky to be in masters, but his skill is actually gold. Does that also mean the gold is better than his SR but he’s being held back. Imagine 6 holds being in a match and all of them thinking they should be higher SR. The Ego would shoot way up. Overwatch would be uncontrollable. Toxicity would shoot way up. And also decrease morale for others, maybe the masters who is now convinced he should be in gold but he’s just getting lucky.
I vote no to exposing MMR
Cuthbert, have you thought about making youtube videos explaining this, your podcast etc? I think you could do more and people would listen.
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Because mmr =/= SR?
My emphasis on “thinking”.
If MMR is shown and you have a masters player with gold mmr, and a gold player with masters MMR then the truth is out as they know they are misranked.
Of course toxicity would increase, but not to fellow players. It would skyrocket towards Blizzard. For making a system so obviously broken.
So as it stands your reason for not wanting to see MMR is to simply feel happier about Blizzard. Great logic there.
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Not blizzard. Forget about blizzard.
I know for a fact Mmr =/= SR. That’s why I can que with masters, diamond etc. But if I see that in qp and jump to comp, and my mmr is higher than my fellow golds, why would i want to listen to them. I should be king, no?
Any mistake they make, I would go crazy on them. And would always wanna be right in every situation. It would increase toxicity cos now I know for a fact that I’m better than these scrubs.
Now imagine how all the people I’m talking down to would feel. Imagine you were among them.
I say no. Blizzard would be chilling, I can’t climb so it’s my fault anyway, and toxicity would sky rocket. You May think overwatch is toxic now, just wait till they start showing MMR. You’ll kill yourself.
Why?
To voice Kaawumba: “Citation needed.”
Should you?
This sounds more like a “you” problem. You are toxic, so it looks like you’re just channeling it differently.
You seem to have a limited grasp on syntax. Can you try this one again? I’m not sure I should even mock it…
I can’t argue or dispute your claims. They are, at least to me, so far removed from reality as to be a Lovecraftian daydream. But to each their own I guess.
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