Handicapping Competitive Play With MMR is Wrong

Competitive Discussion
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I’m not sure what you want with matchmaking. We keep going over the entire 50/50 semantics. I asked this multiple times already, but do you think it’s acceptable to have matches where you have a 6-stack of Diamonds and up taking on a full team of solo-queueing Plats? Before you tell me that I’m strawmanning Cuthbert’s arguments, Cuthbert was the first to strawman Scott Mercer’s arguments. And going by some of the other posters on this forum, it seems like there are a lot of people that really do want to rank up to higher ranks but do so by playing stacked matches in their favor rather than playing with and against people of whatever rank they currently are in.

And yes, people deal with winning and losing streaks with matchmaking. You’re playing with and against other human beings. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to be expecting, if you think everyone should be able to “rank up” or if you honestly think that Blizzard intentionally “handicaps” players rather than people honestly trying their best to work with other people despite their differences.

Maybe instead of thinking that Blizzard intentionally gave you bad (or good) teammates for winning (or losing) too much, try working with other people, and use VOD reviews to honestly see what went wrong.

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Reporting in.

I don’t play Support often. But i decided to queue up with my support duo partner and try it out. So, we’re both supports all the sudden.

We really surprised that matchmaker! Which usually just tosses the worst support it can find on our team to balance out my duo partner, who’s a great support. Can’t have a great 2nd support, even though they are out there, or it wouldn’t be an “even match”.

Long story short, we won 4 in a row. Easiest games in ages. Know why? Becasue we surprised the matchmaker, which just gave us the typical games. We are better than that, so it was easy.

Then, exactly as we predicted, the system caught on and figured we needed a thrower in our team, then a leaver.

Suddenly, two auto losses.

And that’s how Blizz thinks they can force even matches. By having the system find horrible teammates to balance out any anomaly.

So yeah. It’s in line with exactly what we’ve seen for 4 years. Handicapping matches, holding players back from ranking up too fast, allowing idiots to ruin people’s games.

By the way… the dead giveaway is longer queues. We had very quick queues at first, because the game didn’t know what to make of us being a support duo. Now that it wants to balance things out, it has to search harder to find idiots for us to play with. Always happens.

Edit: Wow. Yest another crap team. Three in a row, and i KNOW the reason is because we too too big, too often. Unbeilvable how fast this matchmaker canceled us out. We mix it up, take it by surprise. It sees that it’s “unfair” cancels us out within 4 games.

What SHOULD happen is… we rank up!
Instead, we’re artificially stomped down by the MATCHMAKER.

Horrible idea, Blizz. Glad your game is dead.

3 Likes
248

Occasional games =/= all games. You are intentionally dense on these matters. So yes it kicked in, but doesn’t stop climbing or deranking.

So please, stop being so dense.

Mmr, not sr, is used for matchmaking, so you made an invalid question. This is why it is ignored.

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By handicapping you mean matching people of similar levels of play that lessen the chance you will absolutely ROLL them? Without MMR the game would be worthless competitively. Only players who aren’t looking for ACTUAL competition are against a system that gives you just that. Get good.

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Personally a match maker that is at least semi transparent. Walk into a 2400 game that is 2400 and not manipulated with a hidden metric. Let people rise and fall when they are better or worse.

No, this scenario is NOT acceptable. the 6 stack of plats should go against a 6 stack of plats. You see, being able to stack and then go into comp should put you against stacks. This part of the match maker is pretty clear as they stated explicitely that they try to do that.

This is about the 50/50 metric you also stated is focused on. Here’s the cards. If you are at the rank you are meant to be and in a game rank match with similar rank you should naturally be at a 50/50.

What I would want is that when you are not at the rank you should be, the system not try to force that match 50/50 because the further away from your rank you should affect it, good or bad. This is also why I support a stagnant SR when you do not improve or slip. I know psychologically this will make some not feel as good not seeing improvement/movement. But, its technically competitive. Thus inherently to rank you among the population.

Not entirely sure this was directed at me. But, I have done vods. I do not go into a game and win/lose and scream “my team mates sucked.” I play for fun. Along the same token, I also run into competitive to try and win every match. Right now, I am silver, and I suck.

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Totally agree with this. Matches should be based strictly on rank. That is probably only possible through solo-queue, but if that is the case then grouping should be limited to Quick Play mode.

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The matchmaker has to do this idiotic sort of matchmaking because Blizzard doesn’t want to fund their anti-cheat team. Blizzard knows your mmr, but they still stack despite that because they don’t have a handle down on the humanized bots, and don’t wanna actually deal with them. I run into hard cheats daily independent of the SR, so it looks like Blizzard just flags some dedicated players into the poop tier matches with them, to babygate them away from new players.

Really looks like if you have a lot of hours clocks in weekly, Blizzard decides a few cheaters won’t make you quit. It looks like they toss them around against who is least likely to quit in mind.

2 Likes
254

I have proof now I ran into an aimbotter last night. I went back and recorded a replay from the cheater’s perspective after I realized his IGN was the same as a discord user tag on a discord aimbot server.

Discord proof:
cdn. discordapp. com/attachments/657343529902669844/658444638872404003/unknown.png
cdn. discordapp. com/attachments/657343529902669844/658444803469737984/unknown.png
cdn. discordapp. com/attachments/632931249995907112/658419034294976538/Capture.PNG

That is what a humanized aimbot looks like when they’re playing lowkey enough to not be mass reported.

Btw, it was a cheater vs cheater match, the enemy had one too.

2 Likes
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That’s basically the ultimate proof of this theory, that handicapping occurs and that game goes at great lengths to make it 50-50. Same thing with smurfs being matched vs smurfs. It should not happen. That’s the proof that handicapping occurs and that game rapidly gauges MMR for someone despite them not actually being at their correct SR

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Yes. And at launch, smurfs didn’t exist. Throwing wasn’t wide spread. Maybe the system works in a perfect world, where everyone is trying, and everyone is not secretly on their 5th account.

At this point though, they should give up on the idea and go with more personal SR. I believe people want to see their rating reflect THEIR game play. For instance, i just dropped 50 SR because two games in a row we had tanks that had absolutely no clue what they were doing.

Did i put 1500 hours into this game, learn as much as i could, practice my aim, make simple callouts… just to have some random trash tank ruin my SR? Blizzard has to understand that is extremely frustrating. My SR reflects THEIR crappy play tonight. This type of thing is the reason for all the toxicity.

People want to log on, get quick games, play, see how they did. Try to rank up. The harder Blizz tries to CONTROL the entire experience with role queue, handicapping matches, etc… the less you feel in control of your own rank. That’s just not fun.

6 Likes
257

this can occur because the matchmaker hasn’t been updated to account for 2-2-2. it was originally designed when everyone could flex to their (perceived) strongest role.

now that we have 2-2-2 the matchmaker is throwing high MMR supports with low MMR tanks/dps up against a team with high MMR DPS and low MMR tanks/supports (as an example).

this is exacerbating the game to game inconsistencies.

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Strongly agree with all of this. Smurf accounts would not be such a major thing, without the handicapping (Match Making Rating) system, and people trying to circumvent that system. Think of Blizzard’s business interest, in players being compelled to buy new accounts for what they feel is a ‘fresh start.’

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Competitive system is basicly very simple. If you play enough and play to win, you are in a rank where you belong by your skill, period.

No, it has been reported and also demonstrated many times over by streamers that when you play the same hero on 2 accounts they get stuck in brackets very far apart. Also the practice of buying a new game id when you’re stuck in a low bracket would not be a thing if it didn’t work. There is nothing simple or natural about the matching system, period.

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Ok if it was reported and demonstrated many time give me one link where it is demonstrated. It should be easy. I can link you many streams where people do exactly that, climbing on different accounts to their own elo from low ranks.

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Please view this thread for a rational and logical approach to how handicapping is likely implemented, and some analysis of it’s effects and results.

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It’s not tinfoil hat stuff while Blizzard actively tries to hide it from us.

1 Like