Before anyone says git gud scrub etc (I’m sure some will anyway) I would like to start the post by saying that I am under no illusion that I don’t deserve my rank. I’ve been hovering around high plat since season 10ish and have recently made it to diamond. I was flattered to reach the top 15% of the player base and am very aware that I have plenty to work on.
The issue I have is that at this stage I fail to believe that forced win and loss streaks - underpinned by mmr and handicapping - do not exist in the game.
I have always felt like I went on runs of wins and losses in competitive and although I do think that external factors such as morale and tilt come into play, there is something more to it. I started to record our games in google docs, including the result and how close the game was amongst other things.
Recently we went on a win streak which saw us reach diamond (me and my brother). We went 12-3 and although there was a definite sense of achievement, quite honestly at the back of my mind I knew a huge loss streak was coming. We carried on, and won 3 more games.
Then it happened. We lost 8 out of the next 9 games and we are now in plat again. 7 by my reckoning were complete stomps and unwinnable. Quite a few obvious Smurfs and some premade groups (some of which I know through playing the game and confirmed they had been playing together for a while). Suddenly there are GM and Top500 players in our QP games. Our MMR has clearly ballooned.
Again, I accept my rank and am perfectly happy with the grind of the game and improving. Going 4-2 or 2-3 on a night with close competitive games I can handle and also learn from! The reality is that the win streaks feel meaningless and the loss streaks you feel helpless while getting stomped until your MMR settles down again. When this happens, the competitive mode feels genuinely HORRIBLE to play. I love playing overwatch and this has made me not want to play the game for long periods.
Tldr; I refuse to believe that MMR and ‘balanced games’ can exist without handicapping and forced win rates / loss streaks in the game. Please blizzard, be more open about the way MMR works and try to make competitive a less hopeless game mode to play.
It’s the first. Trust me I keep about 70% win rate in QP and about the same in Competitive normally the game actually forces you down in %'s GL actively holding above 75% win rate it’s nearly impossible
Unforced 50-50% is kinda normal if one is close to his/her actual skill.
Not having a 6 stack and team synergy can also make it very difficult to control a lot of team related aspects (like having the required skills for the right composition). Those random factors are probably difficult to manage (or they might be completely ignored/unhandled) even by the matchmaker.
Forcing 50-50% in a way that makes the chances of long win or loss streaks lower has some benefits too. It provides a better experience for casual players who don’t play for longer periods of time and want some wins without improving their skills. It provides a chance for those too who want to compete with a bit stronger enemies in order to improve.
For people who believe in forced win streaks, I wonder if you also believe in forced heads & tails because you had too many heads come up so now you are forced to get a series of tails.
OK but you’re just proving OP’s point. A coin flip is literally random. Competitive – and your subsequent SR – shouldn’t be a random coin flip, it should be dependent on a player’s skill level.
It’s not a random coin flip. There are just too many variables to take into account which makes comparing it to a coin flip to simplify worthwhile.
Take for example a sporting event. 2 same teams play each other. Same players. Same coaches. Same rules. Yet one game one team dominates. The next game the other team does. Happens all the time.
We won too many games so our mmr is disproportionately high. Matchmaker thinks it’s making the games fair by putting other very high mmr players on the other team.
Either way, competitive feels horrible to play on these streaks and it’s really hard to enjoy the game and learn from the games.
I think you mostly understand what is going on, but you are describing it very badly. Terms like “forced” and “handicapped” are triggering for me and most of the non-conspiracy theorists on the forums. Most of the people that use these terms are less reasonable than you (they believe that Blizzard is evil, that they can’t climb because of the system, etc.)
We need to differentiate predicted win probability from actual win probability. The game always tries to set predicted win probability to 50%, and in most cases it does a good job of this. However, if a person is incorrectly ranked, the actual win probability can be quite a bit different than 50%. And a person can become incorrectly ranked through a lucky streak.
Actual 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).
This analysis makes it apparent where the issue is: random factors. Reduce random factors and streak length will go down, and rank variability will decrease.
Things you can do to reduce random factors:
Use LFG
Play more consistently (hero choice, style, etc.)
Don’t play when tilted
Play with the same people, the more the better.
What Blizzard can do:
Build even more better tools like LFG
Do a better job of banning boosters and throwers
Mechanically change the game to reduce snowballing
Yeah absolutely there’s no big conspiracy keeping me out of GM other than me being trash ha ha - what you described there very well is more or less how i understood it to work but was typing quickly on my phone.
We do use LFG as I prefer being able to talk to people and get a comp, much better experience and am completely aware that matchmaker has no control over my group. But as we win more, there is a massive correlation between how many 5 stacks + “GENJIPLZSWITCH” level 25 solo queue players we see on the other team.
It’s the oscillation you talk about that I have issue with. I hate knowing that you have to lose 10+ games before you start getting winnable matches again. And the thing is - we were comfortably winning matches at 3000sr two days ago!!! Now we can’t cap first point at 2900. Surely this is because of our MMR, not SR.
Yes. Realize that SR is not used in matchmaking, only MMR is. SR has no more meaning than the tier icons as far as matchmaking goes. See How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 13) → “Matchmaking”, “Skill Rating”, and “But I just read this post from a developer, and it said that matchmaking is based on SR, not MMR” for details.
You seem very accepting and understanding of the influences that might make this happen.
I’ll just add that if you flip a coin a hundred times, you will find streaks as well and it’s weird if you don’t.
Also mmr is a factor that only the dev team understands. Perhaps you were putting up good stats and so the match maker put you on lesser teams and asked you to carry a bit? I guess something like that would be similar to forcing a loosening streak.
