This competitive system isn’t meant to be competitive. With the changes of presentation, game feel, and overall community satisfaction when it comes to the competitive system, one thing becomes apparent. Even with all the transparency and changes the dev’s have been making in regards to the latest blog post, this new competitive system, especially in presentation is a psychology trick to make you play more. It’s a dark pattern.
For those who do not know what a dark pattern is, it is (according to wikipedia):
…a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.
You may be asking, “how does the overwatch 2 competitive system fall into a dark pattern”. The removal of the SR system.
Now, don’t get my words twisted, SR does still exist is some fashion. It’s now just completely irrelevant to matchmaking now. Nor do you get the instant feedback of knowing where you sit. That lack of instant feedback plays into the dark pattern.
Usually people associate dark patterns solely with monetary parts of UI/UX design. It’s what recently got Fortnite and Epic Games sued for. However what is more valuable than money? Your free time. This “7 wins until rank update” is nothing more than a cheap trick to increase playtime. It reinforces typical behaviors when it comes to addiction. The most common one you’ve most likely heard of is the “sunk-cost fallacy”. If you’re 2 wins from a rank update, you usually feel inclined to finish it since you’ve already gotten this far. So why not 2 more games?
Aha! There is the manipulative tactic. The system lays itself out where usually when you think of 2 more wins, you perceive it with the mentality of only playing 2 more games. Usually this is after some players have played a number of games, so you’re most likely already fatigued in some way.
Do I believe that the matchmaking system intentionally rigs games? No, I just believe without rank as a baseline with matchmaking, regardless of what you do games are going to feel poor. However the new system tries and manipulates you into playing more.
The 7 games makes the difference that was 100 SR in OW1 seem so much more grandiose.
If you were 2589 SR, you were just 2589 SR. Not Plat5 3 wins from a rank update.
This is the problem I have with the new competitive system. Competitive rankings need upmost transparency to be accurate. Presenting all these new systems to “lower competitive anxiety” is a good excuse to hide the real reason of “we want to manipulate players to blur the line of wins/games to boost overall playtime”
We want the old SR system back. We don’t need our games riddled with psychology tricks because you think playtime = more purchases in the shop. Its sickening.