Can Somebody Explain How Matchmaking Works?

Competitive Discussion
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I’ve been playing Overwatch on the Xbox for shortly over a year now and I was wondering if anyone can provide details on exactly how matchmaking works. Last season, I decided to get serious about comp and play the game the “right” way to see how far I could climb as I finished the previous seasons around high silver/low gold. I bought myself a headset and started using the LFG feature for every game for proper communication and always queued up as a healer as Moira/Mercy are two of three mains (Reaper being the other). Anyways, the highest I managed to climb was up to around 2300 after many, many hours of gameplay. I was very frustrated because I thought I was doing more than my part in healing my team yet I was experiencing around a 50% win rate which I thought was mostly due to the DPS on my teams not getting the job done.

Long story short, I decided to go back to solo queuing this season and simply having fun as I noticed I wasn’t having much fun trying to climb rank. I started the season at round 2100 and in the week, I’ve managed to get to plat by solo queuing (I also stopped using the headset as the one I bought is very uncomfortable and heavy). I basically autolocked Reaper instantly and was able to use that to get 2400 and then flexed my way to 2500 with a mixture of Orissa, Mei, Moira, and Reaper. I have a 59% win rate in comp this season which I assume is pretty decent?

Anyways, that leads me to my original question, exactly how does matchmaking work? I’m aware there is a system that when you group with others, it matches you up with other groups so you’re naturally going to be playing superior teams than if you were to simply solo queue but to what extent does that work? How big does your group generally have to be where you’re being queued up with other teams as opposed to other solo queuers? Is it true that if a certain amount of time passes and the game can’t match your six stack up with another group, it will queue you up with players in solo queue? I keep hearing conflicting information about all this and was wondering if there is any detailed answers to my questions. I don’t know, I guess I just find it disappointing that it’s easier for me to rank up through solo queue than it is through trying to play the game the right way with proper team comps and communication.

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Composite MMR from groups isn’t really something they’ve made fully public. However, they have confirmed that the system does not match groups with higher MMR solo queue players.

There was a post a bit ago by one of the devs (Goodman I think) with the actual statistics on group vs group. The system tries its best to keep an equal number of groups of the same size on each side. Of course, there may not always be a group that matches the composite MMR, so you may have games where you’re in a 6 stack against a 5 stack with a solo. It’s ridiculously rare to see 6 stacks vs 6 solo queue players unless you and your friends decide to queue at like 4 in the morning.

Yes, the game will prioritize queuing you against groups, but it may be forced to put you against solo queue players if it can’t find any within a reasonable time. The larger your group, the longer that wait will be.

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I can post the link, but just search the forum user Kawuumba and look at his pinned topics. He has a really in depth guide in regards to the SR system.

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Here’s the link ^

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Thank you fellas for the helpful responses.

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In a nutshell? Poorly.

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Thanks XD I don’t think I have forum privileges yet lol

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The reason you grouped was to try to gain a competitive advantage. The matchmaking system in place is about giving fair matches, not advantages. So it pairs you with other groups who are people trying to gain a competitive advantage too. The net result is that you don’t gain a competitive advantage.

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too be honestly honest…no one really knows…

just is what it is…move on