Unfortunately there can’t be handicaps for the team with less people even with scaling differential based on time of the match. It really does open the door for exploitation. This was a serious problem back in Season 1.
I’m not talking about handicaps, but the reverse of that.
So you want the team with the leaver to be punished more?
handicap
ˈhandɪkap/
noun
noun: handicap; plural noun: handicaps
1. a circumstance that makes progress or success difficult.
I’m not an English native, but I think I’m correct.
BlockquoteIt is important to know that performance-based metrics are a very small factor in your SR calculation. So it is important to know that unless you are consistently losing more than winning, I would not worry too much about PBSRAs.
The system is not transparent enough to make a statement like this. I am yet to be convinced, that they are comparing apples to apples, as Scott said during an interview last Gamescom. There are just too many factors to consider. So the system in essence is not a fair one, which should be enough to render it obsolete.
Also, if it is such an insignificant number, it would be all the more reason to get rid of the system as it is and finally roll out the more group based SR which is in place for the players Diamond and above and which makes more sense in a team based game such as Overwatch.
The point i was trying to make was (apart from fairness and transparency) that i would indeed like players below Diamond to be able to not have an eye on their PBSR, but think about the group tactics at hand in the present match aka win conditions (for the entire team) and not how to capitalize on moves that have most impact to your SR gain. Remember the old Mercy days before the rework, where players would hold on to get the big rez, instead of saving the team fight by rezzing two players straight away. Which is only one example of how to play the system and one reason, why they changed it for the higher ranks.
As someone else here rightly said: PBSR is outdated and can go into the archives of Overwatch history.
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Scott,
Many thanks for the info dump. I will be updating How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 10) - #18 by SkraggleRock-1674 with the new information.
However, one point that you do not address (and add confusion to by implicitly contradicting old posts) is the existence and use of hidden MMR. Below is my standard post on the issue. Could you please confirm or deny my understanding? I know it is long, but you could help make it much shorter if you speak clearly and definitively on the topic.
Thanks.
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In gaming and sport terms, handicap refers to providing an accommodation in the game based on a circumstance in that game. For example in bowling, a handicap game modifies the score based on known skill level of each player.
But basically what you want is that the team with the leaver to not be impacted by the leaver in terms of skill rating. This is what I am against. If the remaining team members can be accommodated by not having their skill rating be reduced so drastically, then these situations would return to Overwatch:
- Players would bully other players into leaving: Oh we lost the first team fight! Hey, you stupid Mercy Main, leave the game right now you [expletive]. We don’t need to lose as much SR because you can’t rez me!
- Groups would use dump accounts to exploit into leaving. Especially on console where creating additional accounts is free and easy.
Ok, I understand now, and also agree.
Btw, don’t miss out on Ariakon and Kaawumba posts.
if grouping is so close win % to solo than the competitive game mode is failling at being competitive(in the context here it should actually not matter if the solo only and group only players are int he data). People should be showing better syngergies than a few percentage over just rolling the dice on teamates.
Blizzard need to think about these #s actual meaning rather than just thinking fair and 50 %.
Hopefuly these social features will start to make an impact on those #s because they look like poo. Also hopefully the penalties for grouping that are mostly gone now will make people group more which makes them better at grouping rather than fighting the matchmaker.
I still thinkt he best solution is to have different SR that you can associate with teams or clans or guilds or whatever tis called and stop pushing all these different playstyles into 1 number that creates a mess(not to mention specific hero SR)
It would be really nice if Blizzard gave us 3-5 different SRs we could choose from. One for 6 stacks, one for solo, one to just mess around on and a couple just for kicks. But then all the people who bought multiple accounts would be up in arms.
Thanks for this very detailed & informative post, Scott!
One quick question - do the stats you’ve quoted include console as well as PC, or are they PC only stats?
LFG Demands a Scoreboard!!!
How are we suppose to form the best groups with out a scoreboard?
You say you want to give us control over our Overwatch experience. Yet you give us no information (DPS/HPS number, MMR calculations etc…)
Overwatch is a great game, but it could be so much more.
I expect all these things to come to fruition in the next three years. Ho Hum
We’ll see. It’s sad that we had to wait this long to get a grouping feature.
The people who play Overwatch have, for the most part, soured me on the game. Whether it’s the jag offs who jumped off the map costing me hundreds of SR points to the player who threatened to kill me “in my own front yard” over the game’s voice chat, I just cannot help but have a tainted view over anything Blizzard adds to their games. The LFG tool was intended to put groups together more quickly in World of Warcraft. Players turned the feature in to an exclusionary feature (“No huntards in my group!! /kick.”) Players can ruin a free lunch. And have on many occasions.
I’ll try this LFG feature Blizzard is adding. But I’m willing to bet my soul that it won’t take long to encounter someone who sees I have more than thirty hours on Mercy and deduce that means I am a very low skilled player and kick me.
Just because you give the devil a holy sword doesn’t mean the wretched little cretin will use it for good.
How i understood what was said.
Indeed there will be differences in expected win chance but the matchmaker tries and from the stats is doing a good job to prevent such uneven games. It seams over 90% of the games i played had a near 50% chance of winning with the remainder having adjustments in SR gains or losses.
So it’s “winnable boyz”
Have a more positive outlook, play what you can, group with people who want to play with you and just have fun. No pressure.
If one person in your group is much higher sr they’ll lose a little more sr for a win/loss. Your sr was 300 above the team average, so if you lost it reflects badly on your sr since it thinks you should’ve had a good chance of winning. I’d say its 100% intentional they just glossed over it a little to promote the LFG.
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what exactly is your point?
the matchmaker hasn’t really changed from my understanding, its just the same as before but it appears we don’t really get unfair games as often as i believed and the one time i do, SR gains and loses are weighted to cant cry much.
This makes sense, you cannot be the most high rated player on your team by like 200SR and expect, to lose or win as much as the lowest player by 200SR too.
I think when grouping up we also have to be very clear about the objectives of the group. Is it to just have fun with friends or is it to get as much SR.
If we really want to gain SR then it may be prudent to ensure that the most high rated player in your team is a DPS player rather than a healer & i say this as a support player myself because if you get matched with and identical SR team and the most rated player on the enemy team is a good dps player you very likely will lose. And also grouping with players that you synergize with. If i had a dollar for all the time i saw duo’s and triple stacks jump into a game and start harassing other players not in their group to complement the heroes they individually play and in just there thinking 
“why couldn’t you just group with a friend who could play the Mercy you need”.
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Oh god stacks that don’t synergise are the worst. I played with a 4 stack of all Mercy mains the other day (one with only Mercy time). Why would you play with 3 people who play the same hero? Me and the other solo queue person didn’t play dps so our team was at a huge disadvantage. I’ve also had a 4 stack of all dps mains who picked 3 dps and Zarya, like what. Why wouldn’t you just queue with people of varying roles >.>
The big question remains - when will this be live in game?
I’ve stopped playing Competitive until such time as the LFG system is added.
(In fact I’ve pretty much stopped playing altogether at the moment because Arcade doesn’t interest me and Quick Play is just too toxic and apathetic.)
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