Competitive match quality at ~3000 has become horrible

Competitive Discussion
1

Hello!
I’ve been playing Overwatch since season 1. I’m playing mostly competitive, usually with a friend. We’re both at high plat, been diamond a few times.

I play competitive for the challenge and to enjoy the experience of intense games where everyone tries to win. Games where I can feel that both teams are at their limit.
However, I can’t help but notice the seemingly extreme lack of quality in the competitive matches we find, and it’s causing a lack of enjoyment in a game I otherwise really like a lot. Since many seasons ago.

This is true for both matches we win and matches we lose.

In those we win, we often stomp the enemy into the ground and they seem completely unable to adapt. Many don’t even try, they stick to their heroes and just keep dying. We even joke about how becoming ‘invisible’ to the enemy is the best over-powered move. No challenge at all.

In those we lose, we often see the other side of the same thing … enemies seem to be hidden in plain sight. Teammates don’t care that they die all the time. They stick to their heroes, respawn and repeat. We try to adapt and do something, but 2 people can’t fix everything. Many of these games feel unwinnable and end up being very frustrating.

About 1 in 10 matches feels like a quality match where everyone seems to have an idea what they’re doing.
Sure, no one plays at their best all the time. I know we don’t do so either. But what we’re seeing is beyond reason. It’s a joke. It hurts to watch.

I remember a day close to the end of season 4 … I had over 10 great matches in a row. Most intense session I’ve ever experienced in the game.
That was awesome, that’s what I want.

The funny part is, I have been expecting stuff to go down the drain as soon as the changes for season 8 were announced.
I had heard about PBSR before, and how it could potentially distort the SR of one-tricks who farm stats well. I immediately disliked it. Its entire concept has no place in a competitive team-based game.
With no more PBSR above 3000, I was expecting many one-tricks to fall down to ~3000, and those below still being able to get to ~3000 because they farm stats better than other players.

Now I can play with lots of one-tricks or otherwise unflexible players.
I was expecting this, and it sucks more than I imagined.

Maybe there’s another reason why quality became so bad, I heard PBSR doesn’t actually make that much of a difference anymore? Who knows.
Still feels like many people of very different skill level now end up at a similar ranking. At least the matchmaking does a good job of distributing bad/inflexible players, so most matches have high chances of being like a lottery now.

/rant

1 Like
2

Border ranks often have alot of burnt out yo-yo players who are frustrated they cannot climb and take it out on others or stop caring, as well as this particularly around 3000 SR you get a decent amount of smurfs as well as widely inconsistent decayed players who could be rusty or just ranking their accounts back up with ease, the stabilizes a little in mid diamond though the problem still persists somewhat.

1 Like
3

Hmm.
It’s weird because it didn’t seem to be that extreme back in season 4 for example.
I’d say the amount of throwers/toxicity isn’t much different, to me it really looks like an actual skill difference, resulting in much more one-sided or otherwise weird games.

As for the decayed players … if I understood correctly the matchmaking uses only the hidden MMR for the matchmaking, so players with decayed SR shouldn’t even be matched with ‘normal’ 3k players anyway.

I’m curious about other peoples opinion about match quality.

4

Eh, as a one-trick and hovering around there, its probably the same usual day for me since season 7 or 8.

Maybe I’m so used to negativity, that I barely notice the difference anymore. Though it does make wins feels a lot more better.

Use the LFG system with your friends, make the roles clear and go form a team to your liking. It probably helps a lot more.

1 Like
5

This is a consequence of Match Making Rating. The Skill Rating does not rank players according to their skill.

6

These days I play much more QP, it’s where the real enjoyment is because I get masters+GMs+top500 and really smooth games where everyone actually does things that make sense, instead of clueless nonsense or even thrower comp games.

1 Like
7

It all comes down to people ls refusal to do anything cooperative in a team based game. 9/10 games will be won at the spawn room. When people are toxic and refuse to help the team you might as well just stand in spawn the game is already lost. The team that has cooperative players wins

8

As someone in a Discord with ALOT of 1 tricks-
This change did not affect us for the most part.
Why? Because we didn’t 1 trick to farm stats, we 1 tricked to get better and improve. Therefore we WERE where we belonged and the removal of PBSR didn’t change anything for us.

9

If you think the quality of matches around 3000 is bad, go and play in a gold tier or plat tier (sub 2800) match and you will remember to be thankful for being in 3k.

10

From my point of view, the 3k range (like 2800-3200) is pretty unenjoyable to play at for the following reasons:

There is a wide range of players who have over- and underdeveloped skills in many different areas of the game - there are players who are good in a few things and bad in another few / very good in one or two things and seriously lacking in another few / just above average in everything but no serious specialty

People have big egos, try too hard and think they have to carry their “trash team” to win the game. Team work can be lacking as everyone (well often enough) assumes they are the best and their team mates are always bad which clashes with people that have the same mindset

Following this, a lot of players attribute the wrongs of a game to external factors and don’t think they have to play better. Things like “my team and the system is holding me back” or “no matter how hard I try, I can’t climb” or “climbing as support is impossible”. They don’t realize that they might have to work on themselves first.

This goes hand in hand with the other points as well, as being overdeveloped in one skill makes you realize if another player is not as good as you in the same skill. That player might be better in another skill that you lack however and so they both think the other player sucks, without realizing that they both are lacking in different departments and could learn from each other.

Also a lot of people are resistant to feedback and criticism or oppose it. I once told a Zarya “it’s okay to only grav 2 or 3 people if it wins us the fight” as a serious advice as she’s been holding on to the grav for 3 minutes already and we still hadn’t captured the first point. Their reply was along the lines of “and that’s why you’re still in plat” - ironically that person after playing Zarya for about 30h in that season still hadn’t made it to Diamond when I checked again. I think it’s pretty clear why - they always blamed others instead of working on themselves, assuming they already play perfect and know better.

As long as you don’t give up and make conscious effort to improve, you can definitely make it anywhere you want in the game. Just takes some time, especially if you’re improving slowly but every little bit counts!

Focussing on myself more and seeing the great scheme instead of single games made the competitive mode much better for me personally. I stopped caring about losing one game or having trolls in another 3 in a row because I was confident enough that I could make up for it within the next few games while learning how to deal with these situations better.
It doesn’t improve the quality of games of course but it gives you a reason for why even the bad games are worth it, making it less painful to deal with them.

As for my personal view on this seasons’ quality - I only did placements and am already decaying, but they were all great (well one wasn’t too great but not too bad either) and they felt like actual competitive games (I played with people from the 3500-4500 range in those placements, looking at the profiles that were public so probably about 3600-4100 team avg games)