Overwatch is the first shooter game I’ve played with a matchmaker. Before that I played TF2 and before that, Quake2, which both had dedicated servers. Since OW, I’ve played WoW, CoD, Destiny2, HotS, PvZ:GW, Paladins, and a couple others. All are very bad matchmakers for the same reason: human discrepancy.
I would like to know if there are actually any good matchmakers or if there are any publicly accessible algorithms for any games’ matchmaker, as Slyther mentions above. Only one I can think of is Chess, the original ELO.
There are. Problem is, matchmaking has it’s limits.
For example, if you take game like CS:GO, matchmaking is simple - all players are equal in terms of potential. You can tweak and adjust teams with high precision, based just on player’s performance, to create generally fair game.
I agree. I often wonder if it wouldn’t be better without some magic algorithm, like back in the day. Players also used to be able to switch teams when there was an obvious imbalance.
But in games with class/hero systems, matchmaking like that can not properly function. Players no longer are equal, impact-wise, and no longer interchangeable, due to playing different heroes.
Which is where matchmaking and hero/class balance cross paths. If all classes/heroes are same in terms of power, then you can continue using simple matchmaking, where players are treated as equally replaceable cogs. But if they are not…well, we can see what happens then.
That’s a weirdo opinion if I’ve ever seen one and considering how the game did die to these issues. Here’s how it actually goes:
You lose multiple games and have no power over the outcome of the game rather than just how long the game will last. You get upset because the game is fundamentally cheating you as human psyche has an extremely strong negative reaction to things that don’t meet even your minimum expectations that they’re passionate about. You’re just having in general bad time and your time is running out so you most likely end up switching games (which is what almost everyone did somewhere along the way)
Then the game flips it around because your MMR just flipped around as recent games have a strong effect on it. You just watch your teammates stomp the opponents and sometimes you join them. Again you have no feeling of control what-so-ever and there’s no challenge. You again have no impact on the outcome of the match, just how long the match will be. This tilts you even further because your wins don’t matter, they’re not challenging, they’re not deserved, they’re not gained and hence overall they’re extremely unrewarding. You realize that there’s no point in winning and you end up not playing the game because it’s a waste of time and move to other games (like most of the players did)
Then there’s fair games that are the source of all the juice that the game has to offer. Your actions have constant impact on the outcome of the game which means that when you make a massive play it feel extremely great. You feel like you’re in control, you’re responsible for things and most importantly your personal improvement comes into full fruition. You’re actually playing the game and most importantly you’re actually playing the game as a functional team, which is the whole entire core idea of the game.
If there was a way to enforce the latter consistently, players would actually sit up to 30 minutes in the queue and the game would have a lot more players playing it
You can not feel in control in team-based game. If you do, matchmaking did poor job of neutralising your overly high impact.
Most players do not care, which way they are winning - only about fact of winning itself. Which is why cheaters and smurfs exist - both are paths of least resistance, when it comes to winning.
There is no strict definition of “fair”, to begin with. If Genji gets to slice whole enemy team in half - it’s unfair for that team. If Genji constantly gets CC’d to death, it’s unfair to Genji.
HOTS had the same issue that OW has except even worse because 1500 point difference in MMR meant that the better player was essentially 3 of the worse players put together, and that happened A LOT. We just got sick of getting random sperg teammates while not being able to find a full group so the only option was to quit the game as much as we liked the gameplay itself
EDIT:
Both are just false. High tiered players keep buying alt accounts because it’s the only way to get rid off the DDA system temporarily that keeps ruining their overall gameplay experience heavily.
I could go into details but you’d just never pick up everything so I guess I’m just doing it never from now on. Arguing this is just dumb
In my opinion, the first driver is the lack of content/new heroes/events.
The second is horrible hero favoritism/balancing by the dev team.
The third is the horrible matchmaking/elo algorithm created by a map designer.
I’d say it’s fair to have the lack of content/new heroes/events up there, but I don’t think it’s #1 considering how it didn’t effect majority of the playerbase since not many players ended up playing the new heroes to begin with besides a few select heroes like Ana, who was the only other main healer option besides Mercy back in the day (and because she broke the game). Events have always been looked down upon by the community at large and engagement to event content has been very low and the devs even said this at some point
Maps are probably the only real content you could put in the game since map variety = hero variety, but many of the new maps like HLC and Paris have been universally hated by the community.
So overall I do think it’s easily a top 5 issue, but since it’s not an universal issue for most players I’d say that the other 2 that actually are, are much worse than them wasting resources on OWL
thats every game played with more than 1 player, WoW and CoD have way less team reliance and more focus on individual skill which results in a better gaming experience, not having to worry about using meta, fearing that you will have a troll or a thrower or that people are not switching while being hard countered is a huge plus
Yep, that pretty much perfectly explains my feelings about the game. It’s a teammate roulette simulator. You either lose because game was meant to be lost and nothing you could do, or you win because it was meant to be won and nothing you could do to lose it.
I wish that 4 years ago, when someone at Blizzard actually cared about Overwatch, there was an option to rate from 1 to 5 the match that just ended. I think the result would be surprising for developers of MM.
The Magic OW Forum Witches will be here soon to tell you that there is nothing wrong with the matchmaker. They’ll tell you it’s all in your head and that you “just don’t like losing.” They know everything. That’s how I know they must be magic witches. Whatever problems you and everyone else, myself included, experience with the matchmaker, they will be here to tell us all how we only “think” we are experiencing what we are experiencing, and then they’ll tell us what they have decided we “really” experienced.
It did.
And this is not your first post blaming the MM mate. We all know each other around here, do we?
Matchmaker is not getting worse, its the lack of players. MM cant make up players that dont exist or left the game so if its bothering you now, I advice you to uninstall asap because its going to get worse.
Yeah but it can ask me if I don’t mind extra few minutes playing skirmish to get a closer game instead of being thrown into match 30 seconds after queuing as support or tank in QP and then my team completely falls apart after first brawl and it’s 6 minutes of entire enemy team being on fire during the whole match while my team won’t even group together. Again.
Hindsight is 20/20 or even better, probably the latter for the devs since these issues ended up pretty much killing the game along with a few other major issues
But if they would actually care for the players and their experiences they’d have a completely transparent matchmaking system because the reason for their own for being a secret is simply the fact that they’re not trying to give us the fairest games possible, which is a pre-requisite for the longevity of the game. If a game doesn’t have this, it dies off extremely fast. This simply didn’t happen to OW because the game is still way above any competition to this day on almost all aspects when the stars align and 2 even teams play properly for a win
It’s just that rolling a D10 to get a perfect 10 for this to happen is not something players are willing to do hence the game never became popular beyond it’s excessive release hype Because the sad fact is that even Halo MCC has better matchmaking than OW has when it basically doesn’t have one. It’s a similar system as what we would have if matchmaking was purely based on your SR or hidden SR in other gamemodes
EDIT:
I personally would be ready to sit up to 25 minutes in the queue for a proper game and I know players who would be ready to sit there even more. It beats shuffling matches for 25 minutes before you see a game where your opponents are GM and your teammates are gold/plat; or half the lobby is smurfs which is like playing Mystery Heroes Player Edition®
Because the sad fact is that even Halo MCC has better matchmaking than OW has when it basically doesn’t have one. It’s a similar system as what we would have if matchmaking was purely based on your SR or hidden SR in other gamemodes