Explain how MMR is fair...you can't

That’s the whole idea. The integrity of a competition game can only be verified when all doubts about systematic manipulation can be dispelled.

I can agree with most of your answers. But please don’t confuse MMR with a realistic rating or the division of players into leagues.

I dont know whenever i read throught the various threads about surfing, sudden streaks of impossible to win/lose matches, seen my own 1000 sr fluctuate from bronze to low gold back to bronze makes me think that there are some horrible stacked flaws in the system.

We know that mmr has somekind of decay system but how much exactly is a mistery.
We have no clear idea on what is our mmr we only know that its close to our sr.
We have no idea exactly how does the system calculate our sr/mmr gain/lose.

It would be greatly helpful if blizz would release all crucial information about these but they dont want to what also manages to further fuel conspiracy theories.

By basic logic even with long quene time a player should never be matched with lower ranking players because when you lose it still gets calculated for you. Theres no such thing as losing nothing you will always go down.

You’re free to basically call the Blizzard dev team liars, but the playerbase itself can also be extremely problematic.

Here are examples of players who believe that the matchmaker intentionally gives them bad teammates:

All these players managed to do was prove how bad they are at evaluating themselves and their teammates. Especially the first topic. That player clearly had or still has an ego problem, because each video he posted initially was titled stuff like “PERFECT Mercy gameplay” or “PERFECT Moira gameplay” and then he ended up changing the titles on each of his videos after getting called out all topic long.

And if you paid attention to these forums, a lot of people on here think like these two players. A lot of posts here still about how they’re so much more skilled than what their SR is yet Blizzard is handicapping them so that they don’t rank up. That’s why I recommend that people go elsewhere like the OverwatchUniversity subreddit or coaching Discord channels if they are legit looking for help or actual discussion. This forum is just too poisoned and add to the stereotype that gamers are immature children.

Anyways, back to your post:

A)Get wildly different skill levels for the same SR

There’s going to be variances between “perceived skill levels” in the same SR, but the matchmaker doesn’t know or care about that, because as Jeff Kaplan stated, MMR and SR are “closely linked” with the exception of decay.

B)How they balance for a 50% winrate on such wild skill differences

And because MMR and SR are linked, it can’t balance the way you think it does. It’s very possible to randomly place all the “good” players on one team and all the “bad” players on the other team, because as far as the matchmaker is concerned, all 12 of them have the same MMR/SR and that’s all that matters.

C)Keeps players wanting to climb because bases on SR

You can’t reasonably expect this because for you to climb, you have to kick someone down the ladder. The entire point of this mode is to approximate how good each player is in relation to the rest of the playerbase. It’s going to be a rough approximation because this game is balanced for 6-v-6 play between organized teams, but people wanted solo/dynamic queue matchmaking.

D)If MMR was showed and instead of SR, people would have a cow at how wildly different the skill levels are being matched onto a team so this gets masked under SR and noone is the wiser.

Dont believe everything the Devs tell you especially when they dont provide proof and take there word as gospel.

If I had to guess I would bet MMR veries by at least 500SR ± over your real SR.

As I said earlier, you’re free to call the devs liars, but it has been stated that MMR works like SR, and that they’re closely linked.

If you really think that MMR is something that can wildly vary from SR, you’re going to need to explain why. But I bet that your explanation will probably go into the same kind of territory as the two examples I gave earlier.

Let’s talk constructively about this subject and not speculate about personal motives, it doesn’t make sense.

The Devs have to prove it’s not rigged. Otherwise, this game can hardly be considered e-sport. The Devs are also the only ones who can prove anything in this matter. So far they have only proven that they are not interested in making matchmaking more transparent.

Every single Blizzard statement on competitive mode and its matchmaking has been compiled into the following topic (check the references section):

Blizzard devs used to post on the Competitive forums, but when they get ignored in favor of topics complaining about rigged matchmaking or being called liars and other immature behavior being committed by players that post on here, I could understand why there’s no point trying to reply to everything or even coming on here to read.

We know that mmr has somekind of decay system but how much exactly is a mistery.

MMR is stated not to decay, only your SR can decay, and it’s for inactivity if your account’s SR is over 3000.
https://twitter.com/ww/status/867570441182826499

We have no idea exactly how does the system calculate our sr/mmr gain/lose.

Way too much to go through, but it’s covered here:

The onus is on you to prove that it’s rigged.

Also, e-sports does NOT have randomly generated teams at all. Teams scout and sign players, and if the players can’t perform, they’re out of a job.

Everything Blizzard ever said about Competitive and its matchmaking is compiled here:

People ignore it though, or flat-out say that the dev team is lying, because they want to believe that matchmaking is rigged.

Looks like we’re talking about this right now. And it looks like a similar thread is being created every day and there are thousands of other players talking about it. Personally, I don’t care what anyone else thinks about Overwatch. I didn’t develop the game and it’s not my reputation.

As I’ve already said, Blizzard must make the algorithms transparent or include traceable, detailed statistics in the game. Otherwise there will always be these accusations.
Even if it may sound wrong and unfair at first, it is important what the players subjectively think of the matchmaker.
And I’m convinced that with so many posts there’s always a bit of truth.

In all current e-sports games, Blizzard is the only development studio where secret MMR and secret matchmaking algorithms are applied.

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I think i have already read that some months ago, the problem is that we cannot really see whenever a statement is true or not.
When someone wants proofs that the system is not rigged they in most time want to see something they can clearly observe and not just statements, like for example an application what shows exactly what is your mmr, how much you gain and lose pet match and exactly why.

The problem is kinda the same as what warframe has with the riven mod system. Its an equipment what is randomly generated for random stat bonuses and weapons. The devs claimed that the reason why a player can only owe 90 of them is because the data takes up too much place but they have an uprise of tech people who can only shake their heads on this because even the worst system they can come up with would still allow lot more rivens to have.

Because the devs there are unwilling to share their exact storage methods the conspiracies loom, same as here because we have no way to get exact info on how ot match gone expect the endgame sr± the conspiracies thankd to the different various statements loom.

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How can the MATCH MAKING RATING not be fair? All it does is place you in a game with 11 other people with the same or very similar MATCH MAKING RATING!!!

You think your MMR is too low - just go out and WIN some games and it’ll go up and you get to play with and against better people.

You think it’s too low - just go and lose a bunch of games and you get worse opponents and worse team mates.

Why is this a discussion again? I think we all agree that a diamond player is better than a gold player and that a GM player is better than a diamond player?

Not in the rank you belong? Go and win some god damn games then and you’ll climb. Simple as that…

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It makes sure the mecahnicallly skilled stay high rank

No mmr put silver with top500.

Please, God no. Playing against people I cannot hope to stand a chance with is a miserable experience.

hidden ranking stats are terrible in any comp game, it only happens in certain online games because they can’t admit to fault of their own to make it fair. Name one RL game where stats are hidden and I’ll accept OW MMR is fair.

a person deserves to know how good he is, not make it hidden. Its only hidden because blizzard are not 100% sure.

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a lot of people believed in witchcraft in the past, as well as believing that the earth was flat. did any of that have any bit of truth? no, it didnt.

Be more concerned with the facts and less with the people.
It is relatively easy to prove that the earth is not flat. Do you know why? Because the science of physics is not secret. And that’s the big difference between a person who believes in the flat earth and someone who says that the matches in the game look manipulated. --> Verifiability. Blizzard has to deliver here or it stays as it is.

I think there is some confusion about PBSRR and MMR. PBSR affects your SR gain or losss in a match. MMR is for matchmaking and the fact that it is hidden is suspect.

Blizz is tight lipped on MMR, but what they have said is that it is used to make fair matches. So basically, if I’m 1500 or 2000 or 2500 or 3000, MMR will attempt to make my match fair…

I dont know, I feel like the people I play against are consistently better than me. I can carry only about 1/10 games. Why dont I get placed in more fair mayches with players closer to my skill level?

Its because the MMR and SR use averages. And it feeks like I am commonly the weak link. Losing isnt so bad and I enjoy the game and am getting better, but I do feel bad for my team sometimes. I do not feel like the matchmaking system is very effective, in general, in the tiers I am playing.

There is far too much discussion in here about ranking up without looking at the real issue related to MMR, and this is match quality. Match quality has tanked significantly since season 2. You cannot attempt use MMR as a tool to balance teams where as if one persons mmr is a good bit above their sr they should not be balanced by another player. That person should just perform better and move up. Ranks and skill levels would then balance out organically like any other competitive game.
I think bliz tried something new here and it didnt work for whatever reason. Its time to revert to a classic competitive rating system where either

A) It places you fresh every season or
B) Everyone starts at a predetermined sr and moves up(or down) from there.

I think enough people have played thousands of games and gotten an fair bit of expirence with how garbo the match makers is. This is double apparent when you play other games and come back to overwatch and see just how bad it is. If Blizzard truly wants to stick with the mess thats underdog/pbsr decay ect, then they need to move to a glicko based match maker and just nix mmr altogether.

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Gold is even worse as its the default placement dumping ground for 90% of players, almost regardless of their actual skill.