Based on the Seagull & Jeff stream they decided to not reset SR and MMR for 2-2-2 because it made games too chaotic. (The bit about the making games chaotic was from the Overwatch Central interpretation)
But in the past they stated that MMR was accurate after only 15 games.
"Smurfing – and I know this isn’t what you want to hear – isn’t really that big of an issue. For example, a few weeks ago one of the Pro Overwatch players created a smurf account and was streaming from it. We were able to watch his MMR internally and compare it against his “main” account. Within 15 games, the MMR’s were equal. I know there is a very bad perception of Smurfing. But the reality is, skilled players are moved rapidly out of lower skill situations. " - Jeff Kaplan 04/11/2017 08:27 AM
So which is it, really?
Are there any blue posts that clarify the seemingly contradictory statements?
Your skill is relative to other players and if you reset everyone with a real hard reset to the same baseline it would require more than 15 games more than likely.
You also have to keep in mind that with references to match people the system think is near based on the existing MMRs it’s also allows for more accurate data because the chaos that would come if just throwing GMs with bronzes it would also make many games give really weird data.
What you’re saying makes sense, I suppose. Basically that MMR reset via smurf/alt/new account is not a big deal because it doesn’t affect the larger player base from which it draws its data.
Still, Jeff saying that MMR was the same after 15 games and then not mentioning SR similarities or differences makes me wonder why SR isn’t reset, then.
Especially if someone has exclusively played a particular hero or class on an account, it seems like it would be warranted for 2-2-2.
People often claim that SR and MMR are closely tied together, but I have never seen or heard an actual developer statement indicate that.
Jeff talks about why he don’t seem convinced about roleQ.
He also says something that you see on every “This is not Overwatch anymore. I quit.” post
A more recent example of Blizzard is Sigma void thingy (the ability that eats projectiles).
Why call Dva’s Matix “a moment of regret” because it can eat ults and then give that ability to another hero? Although way more harder to use, it still can eat ults.
Or Blizzard saying “no” to hero limit during beta and then putting it on comp to end the 6 Bastion horror (I can only find an old post on the forum where someone says that).
Instead of doing a hard reset they did a soft reset and just made SR swing wildly, but not too wildly, for ~10-20 games. We knew it was going to do this but didn’t expect SR to drop so much even if you win the majority of your role placements.
“There’s two versions the community has proposed, and neither is fully satisfactory to me,” said Kaplan. “One is the honor system version where I queue up as a tank, but actually I want to play McCree, and the game lets me do that since Overwatch is very much about fluidly responding to the enemy team’s composition. The other version is that it locks you in. I think that also hurts the spirit of the game.”
The 15 games thing only works if the entire rest of the playerbase is established at their ranks. Also, that came at a time where you had much higher winstreak bonuses (but also much higher loss-streak penalties).
Going from Season 1 to Season 2 (where the SR scale went from SR 1-100 to SR 1-5000), there was somewhat of a reset. Pretty much the entire playerbase was compressed into the middle again but not fully like in Season 1. And games were very, very unbalanced and it took nearly the entirety of Season 2 (which was a 3 month season still at that time) for proper sorting to happen again.
The statement about SR and MMR being linked is here:
Pretty much everything Blizzard has ever said about Competitive matchmaking is compiled into the References section of this topic:
What can be inferred:
You win a match, you may gain MMR
You win a match, you may not gain MMR
You lose a match, …
Notably, he does not say that MMR will never increase when a match is a loss. I have had a feeling that even when a person loses a match, if they have like 5 gold medals then their MMR is probably not going down.
IF that’s the case, in a way it’s like shooting yourself in the foot. You lose the match you couldn’t carry, you lose your psychologically rewarding SR, but your matches could become harder to become more “fair”
So it’s Chaotic. Who cares? The system is great right now? I’ll take my chances with a full reset.
It’s like a new game with Role Queue and i think it’d be fun to start fresh and new and see how things go. I bet it would bring a lot of former players back too.
It would be completely awful. I don’t even understand why anyone would want it. People complain about playing against Smurfs- it would be 100x more brutal than that.
Thing is if Blizz claims are accurate that means that within 15 games per role per account the MMR is the same as it would be on the smurf’s ‘non-smurf’ account.
I think that a lot of people assume someone is smurfing when it’s really just their own MMR making their games too hard.
Duh heffe… If a smurf wants to climb to their real rank they can, the point is they do things to keep their rank down lol.
Anyways, personally I placed within less than 100 sr from where I left off, so it seems like it is a very soft reset or my sr is just right where I belong. While I don’t really want an mmr reset, that does seem a bit contradictory
But if they’re doing things to keep their account down, how are they stomping or otherwise proving burdensome to anyone? I’ve played tons of Overwatch and don’t believe that I have encountered a ‘smurf’ as the community seems to define them.
I’m on console where you can make unlimited free accounts and there’s a smurf in 9/10 comp games, despite that personally I don’t find it much of a problem, most of the time there is a smurf on both teams lol and the times when the smurf really impacts the quality of the match is fairly rare. I just think it’s stupid to say smurfs aren’t a problem because their mmr is accurate after a few games, bc the entire point of smurfs is that they’re below the person’s true rank and therefore they have to do things to keep their rank down
The “dedicated” ones would usually form a 6-stack through LFG and throw a bunch of games to drop in rank. Then they would solo queue and stomp some games, which would of course increase their rank again.
Then they go back to a 6-stack and throw some more.
It sounds ridiculous but believe it or not people are doing that.
The thing is, mmr is only accurate when you are out performing by a huge amount. I’m a 3.8k player on all roles but I placed low diamond on dps and 2300 on support. It isn’t always accurate and unless you can 100% hard carry you mmr is going to be dragged down by your team. Example being support, you can pump 30k healing into your team but if they never push you aren’t going to win. That one loss alone is going to throw your mmr of by a mile
