Can you bother telling my pea brain how to make this magical algorithm that controls 12 human actions and how each of them interact with each other? In a well written flow chart if possible, pseudocode even better. I’ve been learning machine learning for awhile but this is a whole new level of software magic right here.
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This might be very no sh1t sherlock, but isn’t that the whole point of climbing. If software magic can somehow force people losses and wins where do you put these two factors (effort and teamwork) into the equation?
This whole forced thing is as much mystery as the flat earth theory. People can’t explain how it works in plain, written algorithmic logic, but they’re damn sure Nasa and Blizzard is on their way to screw you. I’m sure that last match I lost because my internet disconnected due to my cat screwing with my router has something to do with Blizzard and their life being controlling magic!
Bravo, what an amazing development has our society come to!
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Where i can see it? That would be first to record forced loss streak.
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I face this forced streak every time. The type of players on your team dramatically change after you go on a win streak.
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IDK if forced losses are a thing.
What I do believe is that matchmaking is janky as all hell.
JUST A THEORY (so don’t jump on me)… but it’s seems as though what happens is that as you perform better, the matchmaking will put you on a team with people who have been losing/struggling, in an effort to keep things balanced, and the game expects you to be able to compensate and cover for teammates that haven’t been doing as well.
Likewise, if you are doing extremely well, you’ll find yourself going against better players within your rank.
The problem is that unless you’re smurfing, not many players are good enough to compensate for other players WITHIN their own rank.
You might be good enough to be the deciding factor on a team where everyone is at least playing their role properly, but you’re not going to carry for a full match.
But I’ve done it on stream no less than a dozen times… I’ll win 3 or 4 in a row, and literally FEEL the matchmaking trying make things more difficult, and I’ll call out “Gonna have a thrower or leaver in my next match”… and BAM! Next match, thrower… late-leaver, etc.
It’s not trying to force you to lose, it’s trying to present a challenge, it just doesn’t FEEL good when your progression is hampered by matchmaking. And I always say if you can feel a system at work… it’s not a good system. It should at least FEEL 100% random, but it doesn’t. Because it isn’t and it doesn’t work well.
Personally, I feel this game should COMPLETELY get rid of ALLLLLL matchmaking beyond matching teams via SR.
The only thing in place should be based upon teammates having a similar SR.
It’s also important to remember that if your higher ranked, you’re not really going to notice it as much, because every plays reasonably well all the time. So it’s much easier for the matchmaking to create a fair and balanced match.
But lower-plat on down… is a complete crapshoot. Some people have abysmal mechanics, some are actually extremely competent. While others might have terrible machanics, but incredible game sense and strategy. So you have people struggling for all kinds of reasons… making the job of matchmaking much more difficult.
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I see that this topic which i really did make just for fun as sarcasm lured a lot of supporters of forced loss streak theory.
So because of that i made new topic fully dedicated to forced loss streaks where anyone can share evidence for it.
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I remember, and double checked with a friend, that Jeff Kaplan specifically said “If we match current winners with current losers, it should balance out.”
And that’s what we see we Overwatch.
I don’t know where the video went. Probably deleted. I can’t find it. But it happened, and some of us remember.
Hey, maybe you’re able to carry your current losers and that’s great. But OW is hard to carry, and so a lot of us feel stuck with constant streaks.
Me, i feel i’d do well about 500SR higher. I don’t think i’m Masters. Just 500 SR higher, and that’s enough to make the entire game frustrating to play when i see these obvious streaks of bad teammates. I feel like “why even play then?” Can’t even enjoy a few wins without knowing the punishment is coming.
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What if i give you higher acc? Are you saying that you will be able to keep new elo on acc which is not “rigged”?
Thats a good thread for the community if you’re being sincere. I’d have to dig up and upload my ssd footage because I didn’t have ttv set to keep gameplay vids (it was just live).
I’ll see if the replays are still there can prob rebroadcast those.
Algorithmic karma. I don’t mean to sound like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, but there may be some physics to it. For most people its this feeling of backpressure - like they did something wrong to trigger the matchmaker into finding weird and unfair matches - by that I mean with/against people not at the correct rank (smurfs, trolls, throwers, leavers, etc).
At some point it basically says ‘try and win this’ which will basically send you back down if you’re not grossely out of rank (like belonging 2000+ sr higher, not a mere 1000).
I think in the Seagull interview, Jeff said there were three levels of ‘direction bias’ (gradient) coupled with the mmr. A +3 means you’re recently really tryharding to rank up and a -3 means you’re basically deranking. A system would be considered ‘rigged’ if it tossed you with other derankers (all -3’s together) or matched you to carry them (your +3 matched with -3s).
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But isnt possible its just all in the head/wrong mindset? I mean its more easy to say that you lost games because team mates were bad instead of being critical to yourself.
Its common thing really, i know people who were like you and when something woke them up,they actualy improved and climbed several ranks.
One of people i know was bronze and low silver several seasons. He was blaming others in his games for his rank. Then he bought new account and placed plat. Guess what , he dropped to mid gold but actualy it helped him to realize some things as he saw different game play in higher rank.
He climbed into high gold/low plat shorty after even on his main. Why? Because he got better at the game. Only sad thing is that he blames his plat team mates now for losing plat games 
That thinking how its team mates or matchmaker/forced lossing is just wrong and its effectively stopping you and others from climbing and its sad, because you ignore your mistakes. Why you should not when there is rigged matchmaker to blame right?
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Is because most of us are fine with our rank and have no reason to spout BS lies to convince ourselves it’s not our fault we can’t win.
Basically “forced loss streaks” is made up mostly of low ranked whiners who don’t want ti accept the fact they aren’t as good as they think they are
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It’s more likely that you’re not able to feel the system at higher ranks.
Think about it… at higher ranks, everyone (for the most part) is a good player, which means matchmaking has MUCH easier time creating “balanced” matches… it’s just making teams based upon SR. Easy.
But in the lower ranks, it’s much more apparent how bad matchmaking is at creating “balanced” matches, because it isn’t just matching SR.
I think the real issue has more to do about the lack of division at lower ranks.
When you’re in diamond, you know exactly what to expect, you know exactly how competent everyone is, and everyone knows their roles.
But in lower ranks, you could have anything going into matches. Some people are actually quite good, way too good to be where they are… BUT not good enough to hard-carry a dysfunctional team, leaving them struggling to climb.
But I’m constantly reminding people that a lot of things in Overwatch are rank-dependent. You’re not experiencing bad matchmaking because there aren’t many bad players above 3000.
But we do know for a fact that a matchmaking system is in play, and it’s purpose is to create challenging and balanced matches. Which is much more difficult when you have such a wide range of skills and players… seeing as 85% of the community is sub-3000.
I think matchmaking is like most things in this game… poorly balanced at lower ranks, but works as intended at higher elos.
Sorry, but this is just finding excuses. Its actualy much harder to create balanced games in ranks diamond+ because there is small population. I have seen many high ranked games filled with very different ranks. Like low masters with top500 players. Another reason for unbalanced games is great number of alt accounts in diamond+.
Carrying in diamond+ is much harder than in lower ranks. The lower you are the more easy is to carry because of bigger skill gap.
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Diamond is the worst. Trying to sniff Masters and keep getting the attack of the bots. Reins who keep charging, dps who die in one second, random positioning.
Rare is any match balanced one team usually stomps the other until you get that one hard match you barley lose and you say, omg I lost but it was such a great match. You que up expecting the game to match you up with those folks again from the last match which was clearly balanced and challenging.
Nope that was the mountain top for you today what you will get is min of 2 really overmatched players. But weirdly it doesn’t seem the other team has those. Seems like their skill level is much better than your team. You can feel this in the first fight usually goes bad quick.
Then 4 more games of the same. Now you are on a 6 loss streak. Then they throw you a bone and you stomp your opponents.
This is not balance!!!
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lol this JUST happened to me
I moved from mid Silver, all the way to a peak of 2605-ish just a couple of weeks ago
Since then, I’ve been on a massive losing streak. I may win one here and there, but I probably won maybe 5 in the last 30-ish games (didn’t really keep count). Honestly, no matter what I did, I would just continue to lose, and went all the way down to 2115
I JUST started to win more than I lose again, and got that number back up to 2260, before going on another losing streak and now I’m down to 2160 (this 4-game losing streak was even more frustrating since it was due mostly to leavers)
I was almost thinking about quitting. But honestly, I probably am just a Gold player that somehow made it into Plat. But it’s no less frustrating
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Just had two garbage games in a row.
First game I was gold kills with 4 as support. The team just couldn’t do jack.
Second game lose on Busan as enemy whips out a Mei and she’s apparently an unstoppable death machine.
Doesn’t help that on map 2 our Rein is picking his nose in spawn and doesn’t turn up for ten seconds, and that the team splits in two so we lose a 3v6 initially (Mei wall splitting us further doesn’t help).
The team then fails to group up once entire rest of the round.
It’s just so damn infuriating. Enemy team won because they’ve picked a broken dps and your dps are playing skill heroes like Widow and Tracer that are nowhere near as effective.
Also enemy team sticks together in a death ball and my team is utterly inept.
Still, my take away is that I need to work on my Zen mechanics. Nearly got their Mei once.
Also that even Cyx smurfing 2k Under his actual lost games.
I’ll try a third game now. Plenty of time for my last team to be in other matches.
If this goes south I’ll wait a few days for the match maker to reset.
Edit. Game got cancelled with pre game leaver. Glad I wasn’t dps that game…
Edit 2. Just stomped it home on Kings Row. Went 19-0 kd and 6k heals as Lucio with full hold and take on first push.
Got 28 sr. Lost 21 and 22 for my 2 losses. Actually happy about pbsr…
And again matchmaker delivering utter stomps one way or the other…
At least I’m not at the start of some huge loss streak…
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I think its more about people unwilling to accept the fact that the ladder is way more corrupt and noisy then they experience in their more comfortable ranks. No one stuck in bronze is complaining they should be platinum. They’re complaining about not getting a fair/clean bronze match, consistently, over and over. They’re spending calories, time, and tilt on matches that are just unwinnable for how good they ought to be to win them.
Where do you come up with this? Thats not how ladder science works. There is less noise, corruption, and transience in higher ranks. Quality is more a function of gradient, not population. Bronze to Gold is a total up/down crossroads. Yes, population will affect queue times - where diamond is as populous as silver - then you might wait a bit longer for a match. But in terms of balanced games, your diamond match will almost surely be filled with people trying to rank up.
Cognitive bias exists at every rank. ‘mY rAnK iS tHe WoRsT’ drowns out the credible side of the story: that there is a massive ladder integrity problem that gets worse the lower you get.
To be systematic about the bronze life, there is going to be more corruption the lower you go, because it becomes accessible for more and more people to corrupt. Few people can ruin high ranks, because of the exclusivity. Anyone however, can try their lot at ruining games in lower ranks. Because of this natural gradient, you will inevitably emerge a kind of lognormal distribution of the ladder (unlike the normal curve that Kawumbaa preaches). Another reason it needs a reset and the current algorithms need to go.
If forced losses weren’t there, ladder mobility was real and accessible, placements mattered, and we cleaned up the cesspool - you might start to be able to tell people to just plain git gud.
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I went on a massive lose streak over the weekend myself, I’m getting myself back up again though.
I hope your games get better good luck <3
No
We can’t feel it, because it doesn’t exist
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This happens to me every time I either hit my season peak or am one/two games away from ranking up. I absolutely PLUMMET down before once again getting a win streak and usually either passing the peak or ranking up.
Literally always. 
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