How Competitive Matchmaking and Rating Works (Season 20)

No thank you, i was interested about your opinion, not about reading some kind of patent.

So is it applied to overwatch or not?

Well of course, if you play few games below your usual stats you will lose games and you will have worse team mates. Thats how it is since ow started. If you play worse, you will play with worse people and you will face worse people lower in rank. Isnt that logical? I didnt know companies are patenting common sense these days.

Ah you mean matchmaker will give you better teams? Not worse? Thats weird. I dont see a point why. If you are consisten 2600 sr player and you will suddendly underperform few games, lets say 6, you will play against worse people than you if you are back in the form after these 6 games, so games will feel more easy and you might think you have better teams, but in reality its you enabling your team to be better, to not be on so much preassure so they will play better.

When i was in silver i provided so much value that even my team mates were popping off and played very well, because they had enough space from my tank or healing from my support.

If player will play consistently same as others in his rank, he will never climb. You have to outperform to climb so anyone who is in climbing process should trigger it right? . But i know many people who did climb over time slowly getting better at game and didnt experience it, even I didnt experience it. Hell even i have games where i am like ā€œwth why are my team mates so bad when i am at my peakā€ ? But then i realize i did mistakes which caused loss too. Like even if that patent is present, effect of it is almost invisible, not marginal at all.

People play because they like the game. Not because system is somehow rigged. Actualy opposite as many people is leaving game because game feels rigged for them. But feelings are often far from reality. There is too much randomness in OW competitive to have in place the patent you suggesting. Matchmaker has often troubles to even make normal balanced games, now imagine how incredibly hard would be create system which would target individuals to keep them in place, system which would need almost psychic power to do that and know the future and what will players do before match is created.

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Read the patent, until then there is no discussion even possible here.

Edit: after reading everything in your post it showed a complete misunderstanding of anything of worth here. Iā€™m not going to bother educating you on the stack of mistaken concepts youā€™ve gone through as it would take weeks.

I see, you simply dont have answer to anything i asked. What a lame way how to avoid discussion lol. I guess you think you know better than anyone else here right? . And when someone actualy makes you wrong or ask questions you have no answer for with your theory, you come up with this superoriority complex of yours.

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Read the patent? Right now you appear to be a clone of iloveyou, if not a dupe account. You asked my opinion and before that can be discussed you need to read and understand the patent. Look through my post history if you want to delve into the questions youā€™ve asked - Iā€™ve answered them all (no joke) before.

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I am not him lol. But i agree with things he said. Why do you want me to read patent if you are not able to answer simple question if that patent is in Owerwatch.

Is patent you talk about and all his parts used in overwatch? What is your statement. YES OR NO? If you are 100% sure its in the OW then i will consider reading it.

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Thank you for considering to read the only known current matchmaking patent that exists in regards to Blizzard.

Does my opinion matter to you that much? Do you know what inference is?

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Can you please stop avoiding my question and tell me if its in OW or no. If you dont know, simply say it.

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Tell your story walking. Iā€™ll quote myself for you.

Ah yes, good point. So perhaps they are separate effects. I did keep some data about my performance in these games when I felt I did well or poorly, and whether they were close games or steamrolls, but itā€™s obviously subjective and doesnā€™t show any strong relation either way.

I did notice (unrelated, and this started in season 18) that you gain significantly less for winning after an opponent leaves. But losing after a teammate leaves still seems to cost as much as a normal loss. I didnā€™t encounter enough leavers for that to have any noticeable impact though.

Its the same. If you have leaver very early you will lose a lot less too. Last time this happened to my friend he lost 2 SR.

My friend, I truly believe that not even the OW devs know fully what is the matchmaker doing. It is using data science and algorithms so complex and now the water is muddy. Just as vehicles are tested and released to the public and then later recalled because they are exploding, we are still waiting for this matchmaker to be recalled.

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Oh, thatā€™s never happened to me but you could be right! I only recorded if we had a leaver, not when, and I couldnā€™t say from memory whether it was early in the first round or late in the third. I know Iā€™ve never lost less than 20 but have gained as little as 5 though.

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Yeah, everything Iā€™ve heard and seen indicates that SR changes now take into account leavers, in a somewhat sophisticated way (including dependencies on how many people leave, and when). This went live with role queue, but Blizzard never announced it.

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Iā€™m still wondering how much of the ranking system is using a plane-jane elo/trueskill derivative, and how much is using hidden and unexplainable ai/ml metrics for pbsr and matchmaking.

And everything Iā€™ve heard and seen (including the patents) suggests the mmr/sr+pbsr system isnā€™t promoting enough ā€˜fair pay for fair playā€™.

For most people the same issues persist in 2020:

  • The noise and antagonistic corruption effects certainly arenā€™t ā€˜balancing outā€™.
  • Upwards mobility is just resource infeasible.
  • Intent/trends are backpressured and arrested.
  • Placements still donā€™t reset anything and donā€™t matter.
  • The sr vs. mmr ranges are too scattered per match.
  • The dev commentaries are too sparse and outdated for most people.

I trust Jeff, Scott, and the rest of the Overwatch team to speak and develop in good faith. If they say something that is not true, it is a mistake, not an intent to deceive. If something about the matchmaker is not ideal, it is because they are not perfect, not because they are trying to entrap players.

My post is roughly two-thirds a summary of what Blizzard has communicated, and one-third other investigations. This is a service that many people value, even if they donā€™t agree with everything that I say. If you donā€™t value it, you donā€™t have to read or comment on it.

I donā€™t trust everyone at Activision-Blizzard, including those people who wrote the patent. The patent is an embarrassment, and I believe that Jeff is angry about it, but doesnā€™t feel free to criticize other people in the company. I would be shocked if it is implemented in Overwatch.

If you donā€™t share my trust of the Overwatch team, that is fine, but it precludes us having a productive conversation.

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I trust them to pull all the stops to both make the company money, and to keep OW players playing.

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I reposted the missing links and fixed them.

I added a brief discussion of this to the end of the skill rating section. Thanks again.

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are talking about the patent where they manipulate match maker to keep people playing via lootboxes or something like that?

https://kotaku.com/activision-patents-matchmaking-that-encourages-players-1819630937

Is this the patent youā€™re talking about. I donā€™t believe Overwatch uses this, and even if they do; itā€™s going to have minimal effect on your SR, itā€™s only going to slow down your progress, and itā€™s not going to get you hardstuck is silver. Thatā€™s what Iā€™m going with on pure faith and intuition.

Yes.

Accurate SR is not the only thing that matters. If this was implemented in game, then Blizzard would be lowering match quality to increase profits, which is an unacceptable trade.

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