I have a feeling that an artificial system, which I will call “Force balance,” existed in Overwatch1, but it feels much more present in Overwatch2. Force balance is a way for the game to favor one team in order to make it more “balanced” and less frustrating for the losing team. It seems like it was implemented or at least buffed to counter the latest complaints about one-sided games or steamrolling games in which there is an obvious skill difference between the teams. If I had to guess how this system behaves, I would say that at one point in the game, when one team is undoubtedly losing, they will suddenly receive an increase of about 20% in their hidden stats, such as aim and damage, and a decrease in the damage they receive or their body area. I can testify 100% that I have experienced this type of “sudden superpowers” both on my team and, in other games, on the enemy team. There have been clear cases where I’m holding a point or a cart and can’t figure out how on earth I’m still alive, and in other cases, short bursts in the game where the other team’s pretty mediocre DPS suddenly get numerous headshots from the other side of the map with Mei, Hanzo, or Ash.
The other thing about this “force balance” is that it almost never changes the outcome of the game. The team that was steamrolling throughout the game will usually win. They will face a 2-minute burst of total annihilation, and the score will balance, but then the table will turn again, and they will ultimately win.
The way I personally feel about this “force balance” is that, although it creates more exciting games and tries to eliminate frustration, in the end, it creates a lot of mistrust between the players and the game. It’s like the reason why I will never play Blackjack vs. a Casino machine because, even if the machine was programmed to be balanced, it can very easily be programmed in favor of the house. There is no way to know if that Hanzo who just had three headshot streaks is a skillful player who’s popping off, or maybe he is now in a 30-second time frame where his damage and accuracy were boosted substantially. The truth is that no player in the game can tell, not even the Hanzo.
balanced? by what measure? balanced rigging? what? OW1 rigged matches just not as frequently and aggressively as OW2. there has to be a common denominator amongst those who deny it and those who experience artificial outcomes daily. the common denominator is payroll damage control, thus artificial outcome exemptions. or server specific rigging is occurring. but odds are, selected accounts exempt from rigged matches which brings us full circle back to payroll damage control. think about it. since rigging is occurring, then whoever implemented it, isn’t gonna rig friends and family accounts. very few players stream ranked due to unfair matchups. which when such should occur in unranked, leaving is a breeze.
What is this copium HQ?
Dude you need to let go of the game/internet for a few weeks it’s gone a little too far.
Like you are 20% closer to a full schizo episode
I believe someone mentioned that there’s actual evidence of hitboxes being rigged in games like call of duty. If alterations of game variables exist on games like that, you can bet it’s possible on OW. Just search it on YouTube, there’s so many videos on it. I’ve had games where my team was dominating and toward the end of a King’s Row map, the enemy team all of a sudden just dominated us. The enemy team themselves admitted “there’s no way we should’ve won that”. IDK MAN. Call people like me crazy, but there’s for sure questionable patterns in this game.
blizzard does have patents for something called DDA dynamic difficulty adjustment
where it can do things like increase or decrease player hitboxes, reduce hit registration by a percent to slightly reduce your dmg, alter handling on the fly of skills or weapons, etc. to “adjust” the difficulty of a match in real time to try and “make it more even.” artificially of course.
so the fact they have those patents would make it pretty obvious to an extent this is being used actively in all of their games. to what extent i couldnt tell you but there is definitely some amount of it in everything they touch. when things are really stupid make no sense get hit in impossible ways or people survive things they shouldnt i just assume its this system in play and the game is trying to handicap me. its whatever at this point. overwatch is a casual game with zero competitive systems or interest in being competitive.
also, consider that in starcraft2 they have a system that pits ranked players vs nonranked players to reduce queue times. for instance it will take a ranked person, pit them against someone in nonranked, but will show all the ranked related overlays, and such for the ranked person but the nonranked person will appear as if they are just playing a random unranked casual match. then get sweat on super hard not knowing why.
since this is a system in starcraft2, it is very well possible they could be doing something like that with OW with maps that would be hard to tell if they split the system. for instance… why push maps were so incredibly disproportionately chosen for games in earlier seasons… or capture and contest point maps… it wouldnt really work on defense/offense games due to the nature of how they work. it would work perfectly sliding quickplay people into ranked games for push or cap/hold maps since it would change nothing about the way the game presents to them.
im convinced that sometimes the game will kick someone to force one team to win/lose. There have been times where I had no internet problems whatsoever but I still get kicked for some reason, and am not allowed to rejoin. I’ve seen it happen to other people as well.
Thank you so much for this knowable response, I knew that I wasn’t imagining sudden shift in team strength and power.
It only make sense that if Blizzard hold a patent for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment , they will implement it in their games.
I appreciate your reply and the info you provided, and Happy it’s not me not taking my medications, like other people commented in this thread
Yeah, you aren’t crazy. People just trying to gaslight you. The best thing you can do is simply ignore gaslighters and just focus on yourself. Posting anything here on the forums is a huge waste of time because the only people who will respond are the people you won’t want to talk with anyways. The shills, the pedantics, and the contrarians.
it’s a common practice to introduce “rubber banding” in games, less frequent in FP shooters though. And yes, “rubber banding” is the real name for your “force balance”, it’s usually a thing in driving games such as mario kart, need for speed… where the “opponent” adjusts it’s speed to make a game more challenging/close. I highly doubt they’re using it in OW though, however the match maker clearly is doing it. Who knows at this point, the game feels so busted that any theory could do.
