Like author of Sherlock Holmes said, “when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the truth”.
Is it possible, that so many players have bad matchmaking experience, with it being merely a coincidence/bad luck/poor circumstances? When it happens sometimes, from time to time, we can write it off as abnormality, random incident.
When it happens regularly, it starts raising certain questions about causes. Can so many people be so unlucky on regular basis? Or luck has nothing to do with it, and causes are a bit more complex in nature?
Common counter argument is “sure, matchmaking specifically tries to screw you over, how ridiculous”. When applied to single person, it is ridiculous, but there are a lot more, than one person.
When you know what to look for, EOMM can be demonstrated very easily.
EOMM is psychological in nature; it plays on your emotions to extend your play time. After a while, it knows the heroes you play and how well you play them (you’ve seen the stats that the game accumulates on you?) and then manipulates you into playing ‘just one more game as I will do better next time’. If the only thing that motivates you is having a greater than 50% win rate (you stop playing after too many losses) then you will get a greater than 50% win rate to keep your attention. If like me you are a casual player and tolerate losses well, then you will become a punch bag; if someone must have a greater than 50% win rate, then because OW2 is a zero sum game, then someone else must have a less than 50% win rate. The punch bags will be the bronze 5 players who will continue to play and don’t care about rank.
The thing is, the psychology behind EOMM requires that you don’t know about it. As soon as you know about it, you can change the odds. My usual routine is a fixed play time (the game knows this, obviously) irrespective of wins or losses. Now I have gone from a patient loser (tolerating 10+ losses in a row) to a stroppy loser (quitting after a string of 3 losses). This means that excessive losses will reduce my engagement (not what the matchmaker wants) and therefore the theory is that it will stop putting me into teams designed to lose. An extended period of play time will show if this works.
I have experience of this in HoTS; this also uses EOMM and when I became a stoppy loser, my losses decreased as I was no longer put into teams programmed to lose. Games became more balanced, more fun and an overall better win rate (going from 40% ish win rate to greater than 55% win rate) since I was no longer being placed in games where I was a punch bag.
I do not trust anything the developers say on match making; the money men have taken over and everything about the game has been monetised. If a developer was to admit to using EOMM, it would possibly destroy the game; certainly it would destroy the illusion that winning was about skill. So they use EOMM but they pretend that they don’t, so that you keep playing ‘just one more game’ and buying their skins.
I don’t think any trust is required, just logic. I absolutely do not agree that badly losing a game will motivate someone to stay more engaged. In the very short term, maybe they will keep playing until they can end their losing streak, sure. But their overall enjoyment of the game has diminished with every humiliating defeat, and they are more likely to quit entirely after that experience. It’s far too risky to do that on purpose. The much smarter move is to just put people in fair games.
This is very convenient reasoning for someone who wants to defend a conspiracy theory. The very things that an honest person would do are also the things that makes you most suspicious of them. What can possibly be done to convince someone like that?
FYI, these are the simple explanations the developers have left out in the open:
It applies to games as well, because constantly losing(and constantly winning) is boring and will make you stop playing sooner. So game will be adjusted to keep you in that area between “this game sucks, I quit” and “too easy, no fun”.
In a completely fair system, long winning or losing streaks will be rare. Your chance of getting a 5 game streak in either direction are 3.125%. It’ll happen now and then, but it’s not common.
In your system, players are still getting losing streaks. It’s just happening on purpose. What’s the point of that? It makes no sense.
There is so much evidence to the contrary of this statement, much of which has been discussed in this thread, that I’m not sure how you could sincerely believe this. The two replies to this specific post of yours already listed several.
This is probably excellent advice because it seems to fit my experience as well. However, given the available evidence or lack of it, it’s much harder to argue, much less prove, than the 50% chance to win each match that is the subject of this thread. Regardless, thanks for bringing this up.
BlackTiger is absolutely correct here in that they are not the same thing. I agree completely, but the similar results of the two concepts in application, and the difficulty for some people to distinguish between them, is academic enough to where they can “effectually” be lumped together for ease of understanding how the system works. Once again though, I am not disagreeing with you here.
This guy gets it.
I admit that I lol’d when I read this. You cherry picked those words so specifically, while ignoring the context of distinguishing between a forced 50% winrate and a forced 50% chance to win, that you could interpret them to mean just about anything. Thanks for the laugh and I suggest that you submit an application to Yahoo News immediately, where you’d likely have a bright future ahead of you.
You’re right, and I’ve described a system that accounts for this observation.
Another person that gets it. Thanks for your post.
Well said. Many people trying to refute these claims with statements such as “this is anecdotal” or “this is just your own personal experience” while ignoring the easily accessible mass of testimonials and experiential evidence claiming the opposite. As I mentioned in another thread, these people seem to not realize that what we call statistics are merely a sum or individual accounts and experiences.
You seem to like to throw the term conspiracy theory around a lot. This isn’t a discussion about QAnon or the pandemic. From how you speak, it apparently would be a wild conspiracy to claim that corporations like Activision are out to make money instead of acting out of altruism. It’s quite apparent that you aren’t gaining any points in this thread by labeling others with this misnomer.
This sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Where is your proof?
Thanks to (mostly) everyone that has participated in this thread so far, even Zek. I did not expect such a strong reaction by initially discussing the subtle difference between a forced 50% winrate and a forced 50% chance to win each game, but I’m glad to see that this has thread has generated so much interest.
It’s not entirely true, however. Who would play in casino, where everyone only loses?
Secret to retention of gamblers is in giving everyone illusion, that they are definitely beating casino. Which is why at least someone will be winning, so more victims…sorry, customers will try their hand.
Proving that the house always wins is incredibly simple. Casinos are highly profitable. This means that on average, they take people’s money much more often than they give it out.
Which, depending from mental condition of player, will either encourage player to try to “win back” what they lost or to “not lose lucky moment”, continuing playing in both cases.
I have had a 53% win rate for years. It is true that there also are people with a 47% winrate. But what reason do you have for thinking that the matchmaker did this on purpose? Am I one of the chose ones?
But if they did it to EVERYONE, NO-ONE would go in. So there has to be some ‘winners’ to give the Marks a reason to go and spend their money. ‘It could be YOU!’