Fixing Competitive (Ideas)

I would like to hear suggestions you guys have for the Overwatch team on how they could improve the competitive aspect of their game.
I LOVE Overwatch. I have hours and hours put into the game. I enjoy it. But competitive is a mess.
For a competitive game, they are super lenient with how things are.
For a bit of a back story before I get into my ideas, I am a platinum support main (I play mercy but I fill around if needed)
I placed bronze my first season ever playing, I climbed from Bronze, to silver, to gold, to high plat.
Last season I decided to see how far I could make it on a fresh account, and that account placed low Diamond, and I peaked at 3500 last season.
But I can’t seem to get out of platinum on my main account.
So this topic has been heavy on my mind, because for a game that I love so much, I seem to be confused when it comes to the competitive aspect of the game.
So for ideas.
I’ve heard the idea of a full MMR reset each season, would this even work? I don’t know how MMR works, but they say it would help ease the stress of climbing.
Another idea is to change the range in which people can play competitive together. I think this would make it so where boosting is harder to do. I’ve run into a ton of diamond players boosting Mercy mains out of gold (I assume boosting is where you only heal/damage boost that one player) and it’s really impacted my game experience negatively.
I seek to improve on a daily bases, I get regular coaching, VoD reviews from a ton of good players as well as some youtubers.
So this isn’t a problem of ‘‘I cAnT CliMb’’ I can, but it’s much harder than it should be, especially in a rank where people can barely aim.
I dunno.
Ideas?

The concept of a MMR reset is to give everyone a fresh start, however this would make several weeks of Competitive to feel EVEN WORSE than what you may perceive them now to be. This is because we would have bronze players playing with possibly Grand Masters.

A matchmaking rating is basically a simple numerical value on a fixed scale to determine how strong you are in comparison to the rest of the commuinity. It is often referred to as “Elo” as this system works off of an advanced Elo Rating Equation. Your skill rating will increase with wins and decrease with losses but how much it goes up or down is based on the following factors:

  • Your “strength of schedule” which is a basically what your skill rating/MMR is in comparison to that of your opposing team’s average SR. The stronger the opponents are the more you will gain if you win, and the less you will lose if you lose a match.
  • Your frequency of playtime. The more frequent you play on any given account the more certain your adjustments will be. If you haven’t been playing on an account for a very long time such as taking a two-month break from Competitive play, the less certain the game is going to be of your skill rating which can result in more varied gains and losses in skill rating.
  • How close you are to one end or the other of the 5000 skill rating ladder. This is noticeable at the extreme ends of the ranks. But basically the higher you climb the less you will gain when you win and lose a lot more when you lose. This forces players at the top ranks to play at their very best in order to remain at the top. Top of the ladder players (we are talking Overwatch League professionals) typically reaches 4,600 to 4,700 skill rating in today’s day and age.

There are other minor factors like Performance-Based skill rating (in Platinum and lower ranks), win/loss streaks, and more but for the full break down check out this guide here:

The competitive ladder currently allows players in Bronze through Diamond ranks to pair with other players within a spread of 1000 SR or less, Masters 500 or less, and Grand Master players at 350 or less. The biggest struggle in balancing this is allowing friends and coordinated teammates to play together while preventing boosting.

The general term of “boosting” refers to manipulating an account to reach a higher skill rating than the owner of the account is capable of actually playing at. There are two ways this is done, grouping up and account sharing. Grouping up tends to be a problem if the booster (the player trying to boost another account) deliberately tanks their rank (by throwing matches) then groups up with a player at a lower rank and starts carrying games. This also happens when players start alternate accounts to boost other accounts (often referred to as “smurfing”). The other way, account sharing, is where a player of lower skill allows a player of higher skill access to that account and plays it to win games. Both methods are considered cheating and can be tracked by Blizzard to find noticeable changes in any given account. Any attempts to boost accounts can result in account sanctions as deemed by the End User License Agreement and the Blizzard Code-of-Conduct.

It sounds like you are putting more effort that most of the community. I think the only thing you can do to work to control your experience is to try grouping up into a full six stack. Doing so has pros and cons. You get a far more controlled experience when playing with players who knows what they are doing in their roles, however, the game works to pair groups of equal size together so you have to face against other teams with the same mindset so it can feel much harder to play.

The problems right now with Competitive is that players often want to play in specific roles (with most players wanting to play the damage role), and this results in many matches where players have to play in roles they are not comfortable in to try and create a balanced team composition. There are plans to work on solving this in development already including the possible inclusion of a forced 2-2-2 role lock and role queue. This would allow players to play the role (damage, tank, support) they want to play and queue for that role. This would dramatically change the overall game, and while many opponents of the idea believe it will make the game more restricted, it will actually allow the development team to balance the game better to make more heroes viable at once.

I am hopeful that news of these possible changes will be coming out within the next few weeks as we approach season 17.

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Despite the fact you’d likely end up pretty much where you were I think it would be more successful than the initial placements implementation which used to place you lower intentionally so you could get the thrill of ‘levelling up’ for the same ‘effect’.

Realistically though seasons would need to be longer than 3 months for this to work, simply due to the fact it would take a while for people to end up where they should be. So unless season length changes, I don’t see this happening.

This could make competitive more enjoyable.

An earlier suggestion I had was making competitive 6 stack only. The problem is Overwatch competitive is at its heart a ‘casual mode’ so it would just end up alienating all those who want to solo climb and likely result in fewer people playing the game.

In all honesty I don’t know what they can do to fix it in its current implementation. If anything it should be dumped and something like a seasonal league with clans introduced and run from there.

Apart from that I’ve got nothing.

Thank you so much for your reply!
I love learning these new things about the system.
I have never thought about 6 stacking in competitive (especially in the lower ranks) due to what we like to call ‘‘boosting groups’’ which is essentially a 6 stack of smurfs playing with a lower ranked (generally support main) to ‘‘help’’ them climb.
I may have to reevaluate that scenario in my head and see where it takes me.
I am trying to improve every day, because much like with any blizzard game, I want to do/be the best I can be (I played WoW for 12ish years, was rank 5 disc priest many expansions, and always at the top of my server)
I love the thrill of improving, but after making my alternative account, to see how far I can go, and seeing that according to the system I play at a skill rating higher than I am currently in on my main, it’s disheartening.
I will for sure think about 6 stacking from here on.
Hopefully the outcome isn’t as scary as I think it is when it comes to these ‘‘boosting groups’’
Thank you again.

If all six players are truly at their own rank and working together, there is no crime in grouping up. Use either the Looking for Group forums or the in-game LFG tool. Also work to build your friends list with reliable players over time.

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Of course! I’ve never 6 stacked in competitive before, I just hear mixed reviews about the experience due to people “helping” someone out of their rank.
I know there’s a ton of improving I could do, and I will keep attempting to do so, 6 stacking or even duoing may be in my future .
Thank you again for your response, I appreciate it .

It is weird we have a solo player based ladder in a group based game. Especially since this ladder is based more on wins and losses. So on a team effort.

I would love to see a new mode for teams (+6 people teams) like a tournament system. Preferable for each rank a different tournament, with prices for top % every x months, and then a restart from 0. And maybe for the GM rank possibilities to find sponsors and become a pro team.

And for the more casual players the current ladder system. Just adjusted so it ranks people more on there individual skills. (Kind of how the MMR system works, just compare stats with other people playing the same hero). This way players will be ranked better(even players that only play a few games each season) . And the matchmaker can create better balanced games