SR being part of MMR or SR being part of matchmaking? Either way, show the link then.
Reading the thread will help you learn. As I’ve said you seem to be a poor judge of information, and clearly don’t take the time to process it before spouting:
So anyway, ready to try something that hasn’t been discussed and moved past? Or are you going to suggest that this somehow doesn’t actually mean SR, or that it somehow doesn’t affect matchmaking when that is specifically what it is talking about?
You DID read that thread, right? The entire wording of it is confusing and on its face, contradicts Blizzard statements that MMR is used for matchmaking and NOT SR, but you need to put those words into the context of the topic where it came from. Anyways, this is the VERY first paragraph of that topic:
With the debut of the new competitive season 8 in January we’re going to be making a few matchmaking changes to increase match quality. The first change is limiting the maximum Skill Rating (SR) difference between the highest SR player on a team and the lowest SR player on the same team. This will especially help players at both the lower and higher limits of SR, where there are typically fewer players available. If a player has an SR of 4500, there are not that many other players who have a similarly high SR. The matchmaker has previously assigned players who are of a much lower SR to the same team as 4500 SR player, and hasn’t always created the best match experience possible.
As that paragraph stated, people at the most extreme ends of the SR scale tended to be matched with far lower/far higher teammates for balancing purposes. Keep in mind, this is VISIBLE balancing, not “distribute the strong and the weak players of the same SR evenly” balancing that Cuthbert keeps talking about. So the appropriate example here you would see is an SR4500 player teamed by the matchmaker with an SR4000 player, with the rest of the team being SR4250s, vs a team of 6 SR4250 players. And keep in mind, many streamers/pros have seen larger visible discrepancies on their own teams when solo-queueing (Top 500s with DIAMONDS on their team vs 6 high-master/low-GM players, shown many times on their streams).
Now remember, inactivity decay exists. A player can decay from, say SR4500 to SR3000 (the limit of how far inactivity decay drops you), BUT, if that player starts playing again, he IMMEDIATELY goes back to playing against the same GMs/Top 500 players he would have been playing against had he continued playing and not decayed.
Case in point - see the following Surefour video:
https://youtu.be/yXOwh6l8aBI?t=5
and in the same video:
https://youtu.be/yXOwh6l8aBI?t=640
“Yeah, I’m diamond because of decay”
Now revisit Jeff Kaplan’s statement about how MMR and SR are closely linked except for high-level players that decayed:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20758686566#post-6
SR closely chases your MMR up and down and is a more “digestible” number. With the exception of top players who have decayed, MMR and SR are closely linked.
The part about SR being a more “digestible” number potentially (I use potentially in this case because Blizzard has not gone further into the subject for the general public) means that MMR does not take the appearance of a number that looks like SR. However, combine this with a Stylosa video that had him partially talk about internal conversations with Blizzard on what MMR exactly is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oXV5hsdYu8&feature=youtu.be&t=189 (which again, I admit is not exactly concrete proof of anything, but it makes sense when talking about the “digestible number” thing of SR being a friendlier representation of MMR, which Stylosa described it as a horrifically long string of digits).
Putting those two things together explains why the term SR MUST be used sometimes by Blizzard devs in place of MMR (using SR and MMR interchageably), because it allows Blizzard to explain things like not allowing SR4500s to play with far lower SR players on their team unless there just isn’t enough players online and in-queue to play Competitive, or to set SR limits of groups (1000 SR for if everyone in the group is Diamond or below, 500 SR if the highest player in the group is a Master, 250 SR if the highest player in the group is a Grandmaster). But it ALSO means (as also documented previously by Blizzard) that MMR is actually THE sole factor in matchmaking, as seen in the Surefour video above, among many other existing-on-YouTube/Twitch streams that show decayed-from-GM-to-Diamond accounts still playing with and against their usual non-decayed-GMs.
That’s an amazing amount of text for something already discussed and almost everything you’re arguing for debunked.
I can’t be bothered going through it all again. I’ll just settle for pointing out your arguments hinge on SR being unrelated to match making. The entire house of cards crumbles once you remove that assumption. (And it’s what you asked for, and I gave you.)
Anything new?
1 Like
Link the posts where I’ve been “debunked”. You posted the above no more than 10 seconds after I finished with that last post, so you made it clear that you weren’t going to address my points.
I might be faster at reading than you, and recognize the points.
The link I give you is this thread. Read all of it.
1 Like
This thread is me debunking Cuthbert’s ideas. How about you read my previous post and personally debunk it, line-by-line, paragraph-by-paragraph?
Oh god no.
Nothing in there is worth my time.
What happens after I do that is you start talking about climbing.
Actually it is not confusing unless you try and mix MMR and SR like you seem to be doing.
It is simple, they use MMR to make matches, but also restrict that match to have a range of SR. Two, separate checks.
The paragraph I mentioned was in response to iterate that SR ranges are set and an MMR is used to make a match within that SR range. So using this to dispute the fact that MMR “balances out” match sides is misplaced. This does NOT prove that it does not do this, nor does it prove it. It is a different argument.
Blizzard is pretty consistent to say SR when they mean SR and MMR when they mean MMR. They do not interchange these or infer that they can be. Only when you are trying to make them the same do you get confused. But they do not.
in the words of Inigo Montoya “You keep using this word, I don’t think it means what you think it does.”
MMR is a number, big string, unwieldy it may be, is not SR.
1 Like
So Custa recently placed plat on his dps only account after going 6-4 but then proceeded to go 16-1 until he hit masters. Why did he not get “forced losses” to keep him at 50% winrate? How come he will no doubt hit gm on that account? Shouldn’t he be handicapped in such a way that it would be impossible for him to climb? Please explain this to me you flat earthers… I mean elo hell believers. 
Inconceivable…
You seriously went there?
A flaw in matchmaking design =/= what you think it means.
1 Like
Couple things, I never stated people cannot climb. I am climbing these last few weeks. I still suck, but I climb.
My angle of attack is that people will be set into MMR 50/50 matches where in if you are an outlier, your team will have an equal outlier or “balancers” to even out that match to as close to 50% win or lose.
the 50% win ratio element is a different animal and a different argument. To which has been directly addressed as being false by the devs.
Calling people names is not a good way to have an argument ;/
1 Like
Look at my stats on Symetra and tell me that I shouldn’t be climbing? Your supposition is an excellent example of what’s happening to me at this moment. The issue being I get placed against the same people every match. It’s gotten to the point that they think I’m a smurf and will take my main character so I can’t play it, however they don’t realize that it’s the MMR that’s punishing them, by preventing me from attaining the SR I need to climb up.
1 Like
What you’re explaining doesn’t work via the decayed GM example.
Again, counter-example would be a decayed GM account, unless you’re saying that the matchmaker would have to find 11 other accounts in the same area that all went through the same amount of decay (it didn’t then, and it doesn’t now).
That being said, I agree with you that this isn’t actually relevant to Cuthbert’s topic. I was just explaining the purpose of that post you referenced because you and Patman were discussing a theoretical player of 1400 MMR but with 800 SR (which actually cannot possibly exist).
I don’t know why you would quote Kaawumba’s interpretation of MMR based on reference link 23 (https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20758686566#post-16) of his guide?
MMR works very similarly to SR. There are some minor differences that make it feel worse though, when you just watch that number. For example, it’s possible to win a match and not gain any MMR. We make it so that if you win a match, you always gain SR – even if it’s just a little bit – to feel psychologically rewarding. But MMR’s entire goal is creating fair matches – which isn’t always fun to look at and certainly not “rewarding” for players looking for pats on the back or a sense of progression. So SR “chases” your MMR very closely, except in a rare case of severe SR decay at GM/Masters/Diamond level of play.
If Kaawumba’s interpretation of Kaplan is that SR is a visible and friendlier approximation of MMR, then where’s the handicapping? As far as the matchmaker is concerned, if a game consists of 12 solo-queue players, ESPECIALLY at the most populated SR ranges, thus high-silver/gold/low-plat, then everyone in that game is a similar number. Remember, the average gain/loss is around 25ish, so comparing someone at SR2200 and someone else at SR2300, that’s just a difference of 4 games. A tangible skill difference that would be tantamount to handicapping would be something like 3 SR3200 players with 3 SR2200 teammates vs 6 SR2700 players. However, that kind of game would NEVER be possible unless those 3 SR3200 players and 3 SR2200 players formed a 6-stack premade, because SR and MMR are closely linked except for the extremely-high SR players that decayed.
This is the POINT. Blizzard does this with many games in order to keep stringing you along and to keep you coming back for more.
What you’re suggesting and what they don’t realize, is that people would come back and play a FAIR competitive system even more.
I often see the opposite: many experienced players with lots of stars on a single team vs mostly inexperienced players. At the time, I thought it was to force the less experienced team into a loss for “forced 50% winrate”. I still strongly believe that some games are rigged to be “unwinnable” or tilted severely in one direction, in order to reduce the MMR/SR/Winrate of players on one team. Perhaps they are more rare.
1 Like
Matchmaking is broken overall because there is no role based queue. You have no good hitscan player, enemies pick pharah --> You lose. You have no main tank player? You lose. You have 3 mercy mains in your team? You lose.
I never fill and never will, this is insane to force people to play “a word that is not allowed” they dont like to play. Just get us a system like in LoL and we good. Enforce meta, enforce at least a hitscan dps and a flanker dps, an off tank and a main tank, a peeler support and a main support in every team, then we are securing the future of overwatch. But for me, this system is just troll. We still have the medal system in place which is complete garbage, I hear the medal arguments in every game and I never see medals be a viable argument. Just show the deaths and number of ultimates that every player has compared to his average so he can try to determine faster how well he is performing, even if it should be easy to know without these stats already.
If this game doesnt get a role based queue soon, your new precious players will leave the game as fast as they got it or just stay in quickplay, which I dont give a damn F anyway.
1 Like
I have this all the time. When I was duoing with a friend of mine (which left the game because there is no role based queue), everytime we had a 3+ win streak, we always got a troll in the next 1-2 games at least. It was obvious that blizzard wants us to stop the winning streak.
I also dont get why we have endorsment level at all. When I have endorsement 4 I get endorsement level 1 teamates and these are always the trolls. I never saw a troll which was high level endorsement. So why is endorsement not respected in the matchmaking? I thought it was to deny them spreading toxicity, but they are not locked out, what the actual F ?
1 Like
You’re right, experience isn’t always spread evenly across teams. But it is the case more often than not. And even when things appear unbalanced on the surface, MMR ensures that things are balanced under the hood. MMR knows who’s rising or falling, and who’s Smurfing.
Yes, Match Making Rating exists to perpetuate a vicious cycle. It is designed to make the game more addictive, by making it more intractable. I think we agree that the game would be much more enjoyable without MMR.
Exactly right, bang on.
Yes! Why are the detractors of the thread so confused on this point? Doesn’t seem like such a hard thing to perceive…
1 Like
I have no clue why people bother talking to conspiracy theorist, they’re not going to change their mind no matter what information you throw at them. They will twist everything so their small bubbles won’t burst.
Cuthbert just wants attention, he hasn’t played the game since December, but always comes back to talk on the forums. Imagine if all of the time he wasted typing on the forums he actually found ways to improve at the game, how much “could” have actually improved?
That’s the problem with all of people that think the game is rigged and out to get you, it’s not. You just want an excuse to not improve or it has to be someone else’s fault you’re stuck.
In the year that Cuthbert has been writing his fake news, there hasn’t been one time where he used math to back up his claims. He hasn’t even bother writing an argument based on coding inefficient algorithms.
Stop wasting your time complaining about things you know nothing about and focus on becoming a better player or person.
1 Like