Are stacks still punished?

[Reciter5613-1618]

A year ago I was told they fixed ranked matchmaking so it’s not punished to play in a stack. But I’m not sure if it really worked as we still have people soloing and being toxic instead of playing with friends.

[Kaedi-11739]

Stacks are played against other stacks of equal number. There was a myth that stacks would also get paired against solo queue and lower stack amounts but those players would be a significantly higher skill rating than the stack, but this was dismissed by Principal Designer Scott Mercer.

@ScottMercer

The first and maybe most common misconception I want to correct is the belief that the Competitive Play system decreases your SR gains and increases your SR losses when playing in a group. The simple answer here is that there’s no SR penalty based on your group status. It doesn’t matter if you’re solo, grouped with one other person, or in a full group of six. If you are a 2800 SR player grouped with five other 2800 SR players, the SR change after a win or loss is the exact same as if you played the game solo with five other solo 2800 SR players. We also do not artificially inflate the SR of the players in a group when finding matches. There is simply no penalty at all for the purposes of calculating SR and matchmaking.

However, it can be argued that the simple matter of the fact that groups play against other groups of equal size in itself is a disadvantage. Players who form a group say through the Looking-for-Group tool is often at a disadvantage as they could face against coordinated teams who play together on a regular basis.

As a personal belief (remember I don’t speak for Blizzard), I believe if groups were not restricted to playing against groups of equal number, it would dramatically change the overall behavior of Competitive to be more team oriented and possibly eliminate demand for features such as role queue or forced 2-2-2. However, it is the believe of the Overwatch Development Team that in order to provide a fair match experience in every match, groups of equal size are paired together.

[Tapsumbong-11888]

I have no friends =(

[Lancer-12727]

I have more than 6 friends. I can’t decide which stack to join =( I wish I can play with everyone

[KSeven7-2463]

That’s interesting, I’ve been playing since day 1 and I was always of the notion that every time I queued in a stack against solo queuers they would be higher SR to compensate for the fact that we would be more coordinated (because this was very often the case). Is it perhaps simply because our MMR ratings were higher compared to the enemy team’s?