Does the matchmaker use SR averages only, or are there unspoken variables?

No. MMR is a single number per player.

“So we are looking at their MMR, and skill rating is very closely attached to MMR. MMR means matchmaking rating. It is a hidden number.” – Jeff Kaplan http://overwatch.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzcon-2016-overwatch-qa-panel-transcript/3

"A second factor we take into account is ping. " – Jeff Kaplan Overwatch Forums

There is nothing particularly weird about streaks. You’d see similar behavior if you were just flipping coins.

Win probability changes slowly with rank because there are so many random factors in each individual match. Unfortunately, it follows from this that frequent and long streaks will occur, and a player’s rank will oscillate widely. Essentially, a player will tend to bounce between the range of where he is nearly guaranteed to win and where he is nearly guaranteed to lose. The range varies from player to player, but +/- 250 SR/MMR is common and +/- 500 is possible. This problem can be analyzed in depth, mathematically ( Overwatch Forums).

See How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 15) for more detail.

i am not sure about the ping thing to be honest i have had people who had a ping difference of 60 or 70 to mine. i think it is not a variable or at least its not highly prioritized in the search system

Unless they do MMR different than any other game in existence, its not. Notice how he didn’t say anywhere in there that it was a “single” number, funny how a quote taken out of context can support a confirmation bias right?

Jeff did however continue on in the next sentence to say “It looks weird and mathematical” which would suggest that it is not as simple as “a single number per player”. :thinking:

Sure, but how hard can you flip a coin? Can you slam heads or slam tails? The point is the quality of the games of these streaks we’re describing. They’re never close.

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That’s just the nature of a game like Overwatch, something as small as 1 person not performing as good as they can lead to a stomp in most situations if said person does not fix their mistakes during the match. A game that relies heavily on teamwork will always have these kind of games when played with random people online, the only way to get around this is to play in online tournaments like Open Division or setup some custom games.

To talk about quality instead of result, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/aatezy/why_match_quality_is_frequently_poor/.

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Weird and mathematical presumably means that it is a floating point number.

You say that I have confirmation bias, but your confirmation bias is to the point where you cannot understand the plain meaning of the text.

But here is another quote for you: “Anyway, this leads me to matchmaking rating…All the system does when it comes to matching on skill is attempt to match you with people of a similar number.” – Jeff Kaplan Overwatch Forums

But if you want all the quotes, see How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 15), references section.

To add to this, Stylosa mentioned internal conversations with Blizzard employees that had MMR as a “horrendously long number”

Nothing concrete to say if it’s a floating point value or an integer, but the point is, it’s not meant to be human-interpreted.

The system is probably a bit more complex than just trying to average out SR’s.

That said, there isn’t a variable that says “this person has been winning a lot, let’s screw them over”. The matchmaker has no control over leavers, throwers, smurfs, or idiots. It can not predict human behavior or interactions, all it can do is place players with similar stats together.

No matter what you think, the game is not rigged against you and specifically you.

Yup, that’s my entire point. MMR being directly shown to the player would confuse 90% of the players and lead to more outrage as to why it changes the way it does. SR only exists to define the in game ranks. They should honestly just get rid of SR and only show the ranks, plenty of other competitive games do this to great success and none of them have these crazy “forced loss-streaks” theories popping up in their forums.

I prefer to call them observations. heh.

I so wish they did this.

Even if players were to believe the 50/50 conspiracy, it wouldn’t matter if their values were hidden, because they’d be free to believe they still net a gain due to the performance factor. It makes the entire experience much more enjoyable than being metaphorically kicker in the balls over and over again as you’re forced to watch yourself stagnate, or even drop.

Unfortunately, I sorta doubt it’d happen. People freaked out when they dropped winrates from Quick Play stats. Imagine the outrage if they were to just say “Hey, remember that SR thing? Uh… forget about it for Season 16. Just trust us with this one, especially you, T500 players!”

When they include baseless accusations, assumptions and insults, towards a company that only benefits when people enjoy their game, I would call them conspiracy theories. Especially when they directly ignore any logical fallacies in their argument.

Yup, this is exactly why the whole “internet outrage culture” is slowly killing the games industry (at least AAA games), people are more excited about finding something they can insult and be outraged at, than actually playing anything.

Here are two players that even went as far as recording their “observations” on video.

All this proves is that people are self-biased (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?) and thus, bad at evaluating themselves and other people. Especially the first dude. He renamed his YouTube videos after everyone rightfully criticized his “perfect play” as he first labeled them.

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Yep, making an observation that this game results in win and loss streaks a lot is fine, because it does, anyone can see that. It is the assumption that this is the company trying to hold you back, that gets into conspiracy theory territory.

Seriously, reread my original post. At this point, it’s almost like you have an interest in gaslighting anyone that has concerns about the quality of games they’ve experienced and the predictability of streaks. It’s not a conspiracy theory. At the worst, it’s anecdotal observation.

You deride “internet outrage culture” but admittedly have no better understanding of the matchmaking system than those of us that lack the patience to suffer through competitive steamrolling. The only thing more predictable than my upcoming win streak is the sanctimonious aid you’ll lend Blizzard in response to this post.

Anyways, to answer your original question: the game doesn’t use SR averages and it doesn’t even use SR. It only uses your CURRENT MMR, which is translated to your visible SR, the only exception being SR drop due to inactivity (Diamond and higher)

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I never once said you were one of these people, no need to get so worked up over a misunderstanding.

Sorry for the confusion, but I was referring to the people literally saying that blizzard is forcing them to stay in gold because they haven’t got out of it for 10 seasons. There’s about 10 of those kind of posts a day on here. What you are saying is fine, just observations and speculations on what they could mean. But there are plenty of people on here trying to use those same observations as evidence that blizzard is evil, and competitive is rigged to keep them in gold.

I have enough of an understanding to know that solid improvement and a good amount of playtime is all you need to get better and climb, which is a to say a better understanding than a lot of conspiracy theorists (again not referring to you here) on here tend to have.

When it comes down to it, any competitive ladder has predictable win/loss streaks. You win and climb until you cant win anymore, then you lose a few, this is perfectly normal. The thing about Overwatch is that it is designed to be played with 2 coordinated teams, not a solo queue environment. The game just doesn’t work consistently when dealing with random people online, which leads to games feeling like stomps a majority of the time, especially at lower ranks. This factor combined with the losing streaks can make it seem like the streaks are forced, when a more likely probability is that the game just doesn’t work in this environment.