When are you actually going to communicate with us?
I could rant on about everything that’s wrong with the game, why it is dying but that already exists on these forums, have you read any of it? Taken any of it on board?
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Post on the general Discussion, AndyB is often there, and is getting feedback to/from the devs.
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Maybe they should do an ask me anything but do it on this forum. Instead of read it
Considering how little anyone on these forums actually understands in regards to whats wrong, there’s a very good reason the devs no longer come here.
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Kind of a catch 22. Fighting with other forums members isn’t going to do a lot in terms of enlightening the community. Developers helping to educate people is going to help everyone including the developers. No one said making billions of dollars was going to be easy.
By the way, did you reply to me a few days ago? I cannot find any of those posts, which is very weird. And I read through some of them (was going to come back and reply a bit later) and was confused to say the least.
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I see the smurfing issue mentioned a lot, Valorant did a mass ban wave on smurfs, where is Blizzards stance on this?
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That was the post about Road Hog. It’s apparently been taken down.
Basil and I were trying to get you to join the PUG server.
But since you seem uninterested I said " you do you, no skin off my back, see you round."
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Blizzard defines smurfing as a high elo player on an alt account where they actively throw games to maintain a low rank or someone boosting another player.
Valorant (Riot Games) did “1” ban. Accounts and email addresses are free to create 
- Most exceptional Valorant players I know, don’t buy skins on their alt/smurf/boost accounts unless they’re gifted them from promotions or giveaways.
Nobody wants to listen to reason. Everyone has to be right.
- The mud slinging continues
That said, the Reddit Overwatch community is monstrously healthier than the forums. People there actually enjoy the game and prefer talking about the game rather than blaming teammates (likely why the devs mostly migrated there).
Asking Devs to discuss proprietary intellectual property is not the same as asking the devs to educate the community.
A majority of the dev players (according to an AMA from Reddit) are between Silver and Platinum. There’s maybe like 2 or 3 who were actually GM players.
Video game designers don’t make Billions of dollars. The companies they work for do. If the company doesn’t want to fund more educational content, expecting someone who just spent 8-12 hrs working on their assigned tasks to work another 2-4 hrs to work on content (for free) in regards to how to play the game is unrealistic.
- Not to mention, there are so many excellent guides available on YouTube that NO corporate institution could come close to replicating.
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The group of test subjects is always under close supervision!
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Why talk to your customers? Spend all your time changing character names. That’s FAR more productive.
I just asked what it was. I honestly didn’t even know. I still don’t know what a PUG server is! lol
And I know you guys are both ranked higher than me, I honestly didn’t think I would be good enough to play with you guys.
I honestly think it comes down to people poorly defining terms and not arguing one issue at a time (which is difficult on a forum of course). So many people are chiming in with different aspects of matchmaking, or skill, or unfairness, or personal experience, and the conversation goes in 50 directions.
I’ve sort of resolved the issue in my own head at this point. Recently I’ve done a lot of reading about SBMM and there’s really no “right” or “wrong” here. All the back and forth is really about one thing: whether you think SBMM is better or worse for players. Some people like it. Others don’t. Others see it as a non-issue.
The question of whether SBMM exists in Overwatch is beyond debating though. It’s here. And “rigging” is being used synonymously with SBMM.
This depends on who you ask I suppose. In general, the reddit forums are much more of a “git gud” environment where people will aggressively gang up on dissenting opinions, downvote, insult etc. Whether it’s a better environment depends on how much one’s opinion comports with popular opinion. Because the moderation is much looser (or nonexistent) dissenting opinions are shouted down with prejudice, and so I think reddit forums users self-select for particular opinions – making it seem more harmonious to people of a certain viewpoint. Here, I think dissenters feel much more able to speak their minds, either because of direct moderation, or the fear of moderation.
You give two different reasons here for why devs don’t participate more. But either way, I think abject silence is a mistake. I could be wrong, but I don’t see devs sharing much with the community, and there’s plenty to discuss outside of intellectual property. They’ve also shared IP with the community in the past, but I think they feel it’s come back to bite them (i.e., "players are handpicked such that either team has a 40-60% chance of winning). So it’s, “Say nothing, and you don’t give people anything to argue about.”
It’s the companies devs work for who set the conditions for how often or how little devs reach out to the community, and that’s who I was referring to in terms of making billions. If Blizzard/Act cared to educate the community they could, but I’m sure they feel that it’s both safer and easier to say little if anything.
I think we are talking about different things now? Learning about the game vs. discussing devs interacting with the community more and hearing their concerns.
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Games dead because they messed up by creating OWL. Game would still be alive if that abomination didnt come out.
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Ask for info here it’s spoon feeding - give info on Reddit considered healthy community.
PUG = Pick Up Games
Basically its similar to scrims in that you and 11 other people are matched together. Where it differs is scrims are generally based around your respective rank.
- if you’re a gold player you’re on a gold team and you compete against other gold teams
- if you’re platinum then you’re on a plat team and compete against other plats
- if you’re diamond, you compete against other diamonds
- etc.
And you tend to stick with that team (for as long as it stays together).
In PUGs, its different because you’re generally playing with a mix of ranks in an attempt to balance the teams. If one team has a GM, the other team might have two diamonds or a masters and a diamond or something.
On the contrary… You’re a cool dude (as far as I can see). That’s the only requirement for taking part in QP and PUGs in that server. 
Rank is not considered in this case.
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Indeed…
This was never a debate. MMR exists.
Using a word incorrectly doesn’t make it factual information. And trying to convince a majority of the community that something is a certain way, while incorrectly using the vernacular, is dishonest, unintelligent and honestly just wrong.
At the end of the day, SBMM (intention design to balance matches for a fairer experience) exists. Its not going anywhere (anytime soon).
Perhaps people understand SBMM and realize why the direction was taken in the first place.
All the same. I prefer an environment where people actually talk about strategy, improving skill, sharing feedback and working to improve the competitive community.
As opposed to listening to people whine because they can’t mentally accept that not all people are destined for Overwatch greatness. Listening to people blame/flame their teammates, blame the boogie man (MM) and smurfs when really its about learning how the game works and becoming better over time.
Or just less of a waste of someones time when they want to actually try and help other people have as much fun as they did in their gaming experience.
Perhaps the community manager should be more vocal and communicative, but why would some software engineer spend his time on the forums? His job is to make Overwatch 2 the best game that it can be.
Go find Uncle Aaron if you (community you) are that hard up for information.
I don’t see how this is a negative. All it says is there’s a percent chance you’ll have a very balanced game and a percent chance where someone is going to have to rise to the occasion if they want that “W”.
- No different than other aspects of life really. I didn’t get accepted to grad school at a top university because I cried about how unfair the system was. #Merit
Up until he left, Jeff was pretty good about having some level of communication and answering questions regardless of the subject matter. So I don’t agree here.
They provided an introductory tutorial that was very relevant at launch. The fact that it hasn’t been updated is a little lacking but… There are much more important things to worry about.
And again… With most of the Devs not being exceptional players, why should we listen to them about how the game is supposed to be played?
They’ve literally stated that Overwatch has evolved based on how the players took control of it. They simply reacted and tried to keep it fair and balanced.
I’d argue that most of the devs probably can’t properly articulate how to execute a dive correctly. Or why you pair Zen with Baptiste. Or what the optimal positioning is based on the current circumstances.
- Some could, sure. but definitely not all of them.
Then what are you talking about here? There’s no reason to discuss match making (in great detail) with the community beyond what they already have or they might as well just tell everyone exclusively how it works.
Other than that, what educating of the masses are you vying for?
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It’s my understanding that rigging is being used synonymously with “match fixing” and match fixing is “the act of playing or officiating a match with the intention of achieving a pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law.”
If it was found out that someone in the NBA head office had subbed in one player for another on one of the teams competing to make the match closer, it would be the biggest story in the news the next day, and it would be an example of rigging/match fixing. Yet one Blizzard does it, it’s not? I understand that these aren’t perfect parallels and if one tried hard enough, they could find caveats or quibbles, since there’s no parallel for what happens in professional sports in Overwatch matchmaking, but broad strokes apply. It is changing the elements of competition to influence the outcome toward some self-serving end.
And it’s not going anywhere any time soon, because it’s the more profitable model.
And here “fairer” is question begging, since it asserts your argument without proving it. I think you’d have to define exactly how you’re using “fair” and if the matchmaking system causes some players to lose who otherwise shouldn’t, and causes some to win who otherwise shouldn’t, I’m not sure how it’s “fair.”
Fair in this context is defined as the folllowing (Merriam Webster’s):
“Marked by impartiality and free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism.” I don’t see how it can be argued that major elements of the matchmaking system are done out of Blizzard’s self interest, prejudice, or favoritism. Happy to go into detail about how the existing matchmaker ticks off each of those boxes.
These days, I don’t assume that any mass of people reach their conclusions based on careful, measured critical thinking. Herd mentality is just as likely if not more to explain their conclusions.
I agree, /r/Overwatch University actually seems to have a mission statement. They’re also much more likely to discuss strategies and tactics to help people climb. Be that as it may, it still doesn’t address criticisms of the matchmaker, but then again, as a forum, that’s not its intent.
It’s not a matter of being destined or not. And the matchmaker isn’t the boogie man. There are valid criticisms against it and SBMM in general. To be fair, I don’t know that you can put anyone who complains about teammates or climbing in the same pot as people who have specific complaints against the matchmaker. And I agree, it’s about getting better, but if the matchmaker has its thumb on the scale, it’s understandable that people would complain. And if getting to your true rank takes longer or is more difficult because of SBMM (and why wouldn’t it, since SBMM is designed to influence outcomes) why wouldn’t some people feel like they’re being exploited? Choosing to ignore SBMM and focus on skill building doesn’t resolve whether SBMM is fair or ethical, it just sidelines it as a non-issue. But not everyone’s goal is to labor quietly in an unethical system, and thank god for that: it’s how many bad systems have been modified and changed.
Getting better at Overwatch and criticizing a bad system aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s room for both.
I don’t think it matters who it is, just matters that someone is doing it and they’re helping to improve the situation for all. Otherwise the situation is more likely to devolve into what’s happening now: negativity, conjecture, frustration.
I go into why SBMM is bad here: What is Competition anyway? Let's start there - #39 by BrightTitan-11773
It’s too much to write up again.
But to address your specific point, having a 40-60% chance of winning a match is bad for anyone who otherwise wouldn’t have a had a 40-60% chance of wining the match. Think about how absurd match fixing would in any other competitive environment when done to give players a managed experience, such that they didn’t win or lose too much. There’s no rationale for that, so how good it be good in gaming? Answer: it can’t be. But then again, it’s not intended to be good gaming or the spirit of competition. It’s good for profit-motive and reducing player churn (so they say). Now I’m fine with the justification that it’s a sensible and shrewd business move, but calling it fair and competitive is just factually wrong.
On the contrary, no aspects of life that I can think of operate like SBMM, and that’s the problem. It’s a managed system that Blizzard has selected because it benefits them by altering natural outcomes – that is literally why it exists. If it wasn’t designed to influence outcomes, there would be no reason for it to exist.
And let me point out, that we are now discussing philosophical and practical differences between an SBMM-based system and a non-SBMM system with either having real world consequences for players, their time, their energy, their commitment to improvement, and the competitive environment in which they find themselves, which is relevant and important in the context of Overwatch. Which is why trivializing this issue as a bunch of complainers denying the reasons for their badness can’t be accurate. Discussions about SBMM vs not is not trivial when you’re talking about something into which people have collectively dumped billions of hours of their lives.
I assumed we were talking about the present. But even before Jeff left, he was only making routine announcements about the game, you know, back when they were actually providing content. 
Explanations about game philosophy, how things worked, whether things were fair or not and why – those communications have completely dried up. Hard not to be cynical about reasons why.
In an official capacity. And I’m not sure that people just divulging company policy (protected IP or not) is going to simplify a given dev’s life. Better to just show up to work and color inside the lines.
Agree here, the devs releasing a re-worked Sombra that was so insanely broken than pros mutually agreed not to use her is not a good look. Still I think devs should be commenting on aspects of the game they’re more qualified to discuss.
I don’t think there’s really much to say about matchmaking that doesn’t reveal how the sausage is made, and it is absolutely sausage. I actually think it’s naive to believe that SBMM is there for the benefit of the players. It’s kind of like saying that the sugar, salt, and fat in a Big Mac meal is there for the benefit of the people eating them.
There is no name change, there is only a huge variety to cover all the workspace. The same variety as your topics. And speaking about productivity, I hope you’ve got a hint. Can’t just walk away, seeing how a player struggle of his own mind misconceptions from topic to topic. Remember this words by the moment you’ll reach your in-game goals:
Never complain to be able git gud
Don’t be scared to fight against a better dude
Fight to the end or suffer as the worst
Set up your mind to reach goals at first
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What do you mean that game is dying?
You have heroes you pick and you fight against other team in order to win.
Doesn’t look like something changed since release.
In matter of fact, you got additions to the game that just enhance the same.
Plus, PvE events but mainly Team vs Team.
Fanboism is your issue.
Merriam-Webster > you
The definition of rigging can’t be more spelled out.
It is entirely disingenuous to downplay the terminology and substitute your own for the sake of defending a lost position. Rigging is precisely what the system does. It’s unethical, deceiptful, psychologically toxic, anti-competitive, and why esports branding is totally fake while rigging exists.
The community is calling it rigged; rigging; to-rig.
You’re welcome to cope. Zero math reasons for MMR. Just more nonsense defense of this garbage system and more evidence you don’t comprehend properly how it works. Fanboism really is a disease. Many are still in denial that it even exists. Only recently did you accept the truth that matches were rigged, but think it’s fine. The math shows it’s still not fine.
Wrong. You still don’t get the math.
The current system is maximally rigged. Every lobby is tailored with big-data selection, with as much rigging as they can get away with. It’s the furthest away from random skill-based meritocracy. It’s the furthest away from contest expression, unadultered agency, and match affectance. Quantitatively the furthest opposite of fairness.
There is no defending rigged matchmaking system. We’re all victims of anti-competitive design. Whether you improve or rank up is irrelevant to what the ranked system is supposed to represent, and doesn’t, because of integrity failures.