I would like to talk little bit more about placement system and explain why it is bad and why it need rework.
I cant say that i have really issue with seasonal placement. Its used to correct your SR towards your MMR so it is actualy good as it is.
But i have big issue with placement system on new accounts and it is creating a lot of in balance mostly in silver to diamond. Most populated elos.
To explain why it is bad, i am going to explain how the placement works. Overwatch is harder than it used to be in past, there is a lot more knowledge that new player need to know now. But we still have basicly same placement system for 4 years. Actualy its even worse now with only 5 placement games. And new players are going to place in ranks where they should not be at all. Not only them, smurfs and alt accounts too.
Every new account is starting at 2350 MMR, which is instantly bad because if low bronze player buy new account, he will be placed in 2350± match with low bronze skill, same goes for higher ranked people. Even top1 player will start at 2350. Every win or loss is then big jump in MMR/SR. I use both because its not known if people in initial placement already have MMR formed or if system is creating exception and using hidden sr in initial placement.
If bronze player will win his first placement game on his new alt, even when he will play bad, his rating will go up and it will go up every won game. Performance is affecting how low or how high player will jump tho, but it doesnt matter that much if he will be lucky with good team mates and win games.
Even if you hard throw all your placement but win like two of them, you can easily place in high silver/low gold. Hell, even when you leave all 5 placement games, you will end up in gold, because mmr is not changing after you leave match. Based on my experience and by watching placement its possible to place from 1100 to 3500. You need to have like zero stats and 5 loss from placement for 1100 and god like performance and 5 wins for 3500. Most top players are still placing in low diamond or even in gold after 5 games. Thats not all. There is big after placement bonus for like 15 games after you will place. It usualy starts around 100-150 sr up or down and bonus will slowly decrease as you will play more games. I will use one of my friends as example. He did climb into masters on his main account and i know how he playes. His aim+tracking is definitely masters. It would be even good for gm to be honest.
He created new account and did try hard and placed in low diamond. He won first match and went up +150, but then he had complete idiots and throwers in his next like 5 games. Result? He dropped to mid plat in few games because he was losing - 120 - 100… So yeah master player ended up in mid plat even when he didnt want to. I guess he will enjoy smurfing. This was just one example how can things go wrong with current system.
We all know many people from this forum who placed way too higher than their main acc. Its same case as with my friend but opposite. Even bronze skilled player will receive over 100 sr if he wins his first after placement game. Not only this is bad for match balancing, but it create false feeling that player belong higher and system was against him on his main. But thats not the case, player belongs to lower elo, system just do very bad job at placing people correctly on new accounts.
And then we have smurfs/derankers who are abusing this system to place as low as possible. These people use LFG to place in bronze and derank in few next games hundreds of sr lower. What to do with this? I would make their experience most misserable possible so they will have to waste a lot of time to do this.
I want to show one last example how is the current system bad and why many of you can have one sided games because of this:
EXAMPLE 1 - how system see things and place people
Group A vs Group B - numbers are MMR to make things simple
2200 vs 2200
2350 vs 2050
2200 vs 2350
2050 vs 2200
2200 vs 2200
Average team MMR will be 2200vs2200, perfectly balanced game for matchmaker right?
Now, what is the reality? Player on team A is guy who play the game for 2 years and is stuck in low bronze so he decided to try make new acc because as he did hear, people are placing higher on new accounts,his true elo and skill is bronze 700. Its his first placement match. Player on team B is veteran player who is high diamond playing on new alt, lets say he is playing his worse heroes so his skill is at 3100.
So what is the true skill group vs group now? The reality? It will be:
1925 VS 2325 average team power/skill. Group b has obviously advantage and game is very unbalanced. This is happening all the time, sometimes its even worse. Sometimes things will even out by another element as heroes/one tricks, leaver, tilted player or by better team cooperation. But it is still very bad system and its resulting in unbalanced matches very often and much harder chance to actualy climb the ladder because number of truly balanced games will be low.
Now i will try to share few ideas how to change the current system:
Solution 1
I would separate players doing initial placement from anyone else. No groups allowed too and you would need to complete 15 games per role. This solution is little bit extreme and could result in hard times to find a match so i would prefer my next solution more.
Solution 2
I would raise limit for a access to competitive to lvl 50, player would need minimum of 2 hours played on 2 heroes from every role in 222 quickplay. This should be in place for new players mostly so they are able play more heroes in comp. And lvl 50 to fight smurfs to make their life harder. I would too start using quickplay stats to help rank accordingly. People who are playing quickplay have already qp mmr so why not use it as starting point in competitive. Is new player having mmr 1600? Lets start his first comp placement game at 1600 SR/MMR and not at 2350 where he doest belong. And we could probably get rid of after placement bonus if players would start in proper position.
So yeah i hope you like my ideas, we can discuss it more or you can share your ideas how to improve comp. If you like this, post something so topic can live longer 