How does the matchmaking elo system work?

never played this game before, have around 80h on it
before I played a lot of fps for almost 10 years, my aim is decent but my game sense is still garbage

what I dont understand is how my rank is 2439 after the 5 placement matches in role queue dps, when me and my team won 4 of those, and in all of them I always finished with at least 3 gold medals and was on fire for most of the games, because I was playing soldier 76 and its quite easy
I see streamers getting 3900 rank even after losing 3 or 4 placement matches and not doing that great
how does this system work? does it make an average of all the previous season’s ranks? do individual stats matter at all to define a rank? Can I get the same rank I got (2439) by just walking around the map doing nothing while my team carries me? I genuinely want to understand this, because I got so much worse results on tank role queue and got 2781SR!!! what is this?!?

you are new to comp, highest you will place with no data is around plat-diamond. plus you arent as good as streamers so you cannot expect to hit the max placement of 3900

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It doesn’t. The matchmaking/elo system is a sham.

The whole thing really needs an overhaul.

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I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to place a new account at 3900. You’re seeing people who have placed in Platinum and played more games to rank up.

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Most streamers who place that high each season are usually GM/T500 players. They have set the SR limit so that GM players can no longer camp their SR.

I.E. you can’t just climb your main account to 4500 and pick up there next season. You have to start from 3900 and grind for T500 from there.

For more information, I recommend this post here.

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ok thank you, from what I understand then competitive is not worth playing, as at least in my level it doesnt matter if I perform good or bad when, and Im not trying to be rude, most of the games Its only me and maybe another person giving calls in voice-chat and constantly killing enemies while the rest of the team isnt doing that great. So I keep losing and losing and downraking, despite having good individual stats. It’s not very appealing playing on a system like this

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the whole point of a team game…is to play as a team, which is why if you win, you gain sr because ODIN was with you, and when you take the giant L clearly you didnt make a great enough sacrifice.

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You can gain 150 SR per game initially if you’re really as good as you seem to think. I’d put money down that you actually placed too high for your skill if you’re brand new, though. Maybe you can be Diamond DPS from playing other FPS. but you’re not going to be above average on tank or healer on a game you’ve never played before vs 5 year veterans.

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5 year veterans? im I not suposed to play against people of my level??? if there’s a 5 year veteran constantly queueing with me then maybe he isnt that good?

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Lol….

Not wrong.

But some people play competitive for a more challenging game rather than trying to climb in SR. Not always true. At all. But sometimes.

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I don’t think you understand. Maybe read one of my threads on how Blizzard starts everyone at the median rank, from the best to worst player imaginable. You’re not playing with them because they’re at your skill level. You’re playing with them because you just started and everyone starts there.

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okok but makes no sense then if what you’re saying is true then I shouldnt be matched with 5 year vetereans if I just started, because they started 5 years ago, no? “everyone starts there” when they start playing, not at each season’s begining (placement matches) right? if it was each season it wouldnt be fair because I would be queued in the placement matches with players who were previously grand master or top 500 as well. So according to that it only makes sense to be queued up with higher level players if theres not enough players on the game, but overwatch still has enough players right?

Time in the game has no effect on who you play with. You’re matched on your SR, not the age of your account, in an attempt to keep you teamed with and against players of equal skill.

You realise that “SR” stands for “Skill Rating” right? It’s a joke that your personal skill rating should go down when you perform well (backed up with stats from the game of course) and others on your team don’t, so you loose the match.

SR is a joke. They should either call it something else or adjust it based on player skill as the name suggests.

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then perform better and gain more sr for wins, and losing have less sr deducted. its simple.

SR stands for Scott’s Rage. As in what he does when people complain about his crap/rigged for addictiveness matchmaker.

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If you “truly” perform well, you’ll lose very little SR in a loss.

If you do not perform well (as most golds do not) you will lose more.

It’s really not that complicated.

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Has anyone seen or heard from Scott in like 3 years? Like is he passed out by his pool can someone knock on his door, check up on him, maybe roll him over? Satellite image shows him just lying there with a spilled slurpee.

I would believe that if MMR didn’t exist. Then you know what you’re getting. SR being a no-reset winrate - a collection of all your historical mistakes and learnings, since they don’t reset between seasons i mean years and years i mean ever.

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You’re going to get a bunch of answers from all over the spectrum by people who claim to know way more than they do about the way any of this actually works. Some will say it’s a great system that rewards hard work. Others will say it’s spawned from Satan himself to bring misery to mankind.

What I can say is this, the way the system is set up, you’re going to have to be very very good to climb. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t care about climbing or your rank, and you love to spend a lot of time practicing aim and learning strategy, and collecting countless tips, and watching replays of your gameplay to improve, and that kind of process in itself is the thrill for you, then the game might be worth your time. But if you want to feel like you’re playing in a system that’s fair above all else, and where your individual hard work and contributions are consistently rewarded, seriously, uninstall the game NOW before it gets you hooked and 2-3 years down the road you find yourself bitterly posting long screeds about how horrible the experience is.

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With respect, this post is a decent and hopefully non-biased honest effort to explain things, but I really don’t see a ton of value in it, personally. It doesn’t know what it’s gotten wrong, doesn’t know what’s current, doesn’t know how the matchmaker weights one factor over another, etc. There’s no way to know what percentage of what’s compiled here is right, wrong, outdated, subject to change, etc. And there’s probably mountains of complexity and trade secrets that are never mentioned anywhere, which influence matchmaking just as much if not more than what’s actually shared with the player base. It’s better than nothing I guess but I wouldn’t qualify it as “knowledge.” To know what’s true, you have to have some reliable basis for testing any data point, and we just don’t have that – not even developer statements qualify: they have every incentive to leave out what the playerbase would not be pleased to hear, while confirming or hyping up the positives/what makes business sense, etc.

I honestly don’t know why people make such a ruckus over the matchmaker. Either you like the game and enjoy playing, or you don’t, and you should stop. Trying to wrap your head around all this stuff when there are so many variables and unknowns seems pointless to me.

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