Insightful commentary on ranked by Jeff

From interview with Emongg: Twitch

From interview with Fran: Twitch (starts slow, gets more interesting towards the end).

WyomingMist wrote a text summary here (including the parts that have nothing to do with ranked): Jeff Kaplan on Emongg's & Fran's streams (Concluded) - Talk about Competitive Changes & More.

Quick summary.

  1. Jeff is generally aware of the the issues, and understands them better than 99% of the forums.
  2. He’d like to fix things
  3. Nothing major to announce, maybe sometime in the distant future
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Only had time to watch emongg and gonna watch fran later but I mean ofc Jeff knows more than 99% of the forums and he wants to make the game better. And as their style is they wont talk too much before there is something to talk about.

I think the most important thing Jeff points out for the forums is that sure there is problems, but you cant just go boom do this and it fixes it, because it causes other problems. There is no simple and easy solutions, those have been done already.

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Keep in mind, everyone: Jeff Kaplan, aka Tigole, used to be like some of y’all ragers

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From Emongg’s stream:
I must admit it isn’t clear to me why the problems of mandatory 6 stacks in comp outweigh the rampant toxicity and disenfranchisement people are having with Overwatch and the competitive system.

I’m not saying people who absolutely want to solo queue wouldn’t complain, but surely they could understand the need for compromise in a team based game? I honestly don’t see the harm of playing a game intended to be a team based game as a team in a ‘competitive’ environment leaving QP and all the other modes as is.

How many threads about toxicity, the ‘unfairness’ of the MM and people leaving are we going to see if we keep going at this rate?

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A large fraction of the player base gets frustrated by being forced to play in the meta way. Forcing grouping before queuing leads to much more pressure to play in a meta way. Non-meta players will likely quit. I’m not just talking about Bastion 1-tricks, but also people that just refuse to play GOATs, or whatever the flavor of the month is.

Ideally those non-meta players will just group up together, but in practice part of being a non-meta player is not being interested in going along with the program, including finding other like-minded players.

A more general point (which I think Jeff made somewhere) that forcing your players to play “the one true way” is usually bad game design (that is, un-fun). As much as possible, game designers want to give players tools, and let the players be creative in using them.

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He actually used to be far worse. And I’m sure he still is. He wasn’t exactly that young when he made those raging posts either.

And I can’t tell if he’s completely out of tune with the game or a liar. He says very few people actually play the meta, yet he’s balancing the game around pro level meta play, to get rid of GOATS.

Sorry, this last patch just seems like a desperate move to remove GOATS before OWL starts to maintain and increase OWL viewership.

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There are simple/easy solutions, they just can’t figure them out. Jeff explains the matchmaker has extremely complicated engineering. If the matchmaker was just placing 12 people of similar SR and ping together then what’s complicated about that? Nothing…but he describes it as complicated because it is doing far more than that, it’s meddling with matches when it shouldn’t be.

I picture these developers falling down a metaphorical black pit that is Overwatch dying as I hear the distant echos of their screams “the matchmaker is goooooooooooood” as they hold on to dear life to all of this garbage data they have to try and prove it’s fun/good.

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There is? Enlighten us… No, you cant? Ah thats what I thought.

Sure I can, things like this come easy to me.

  1. They need to limit the competitive environment to one account per person as much as possible. They can’t eliminate all duplicate accounts but they could cut down on it by an extremely high amount. Other games have already done this, and it can be done even better.

  2. They need to trash the garbage matchmaker along with MMR. Make a new basic matchmaker that just grabs 12 people of similar SR and ping and places them randomly onto two teams and does nothing else. NOTHING else.

  3. Invest in better, more clever ways of stopping cheaters. When they are caught they should be banned and their username exposed.

  4. A proper scorecard that shows performance metrics in the game. When someone does 1hp of damage to an enemy and gets credit for an elimination that’s called STUPID. Whoever dealt the most damage should get credit for the kill. There should additionally be a metric called “SR based performance” which displays how well the player is doing compared to the avg person playing at that SR and with that hero on that specific map. This will truly show how well a person is doing with the hero they selected and whether they are under performing or over performing.

  5. ADDED: Quickplay should always place you with, and against, people of your same competitive SR so that you can practice new heros in quickplay instead of the game forcing you to do this in competitive. How else are you going to practice a hero in a 6v6 environment? The Quickplay matches me against people who are around 1000SR under where my comp SR is, that’s not a good practice environment.

I could go on with a bunch of more easy fixes that would make comp way better. People like to use the excuse “it’s complicated” because it sounds better than saying “I can’t seem to get it right”. If you say “it’s complicated” then it makes you look good because people think “oh well he’s working with complicated things so he must be smart”. It’s not complicated, they just have the wrong people working on it.

This is the part where you pick apart my post to find holes in it, not so much because they aren’t good ideas but because in general when people see someone they perceive as “cocky” they make it a goal to “put them in their place”. The above ideas are good, and would make OW much better.

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This is what, not how.

This is what, not how.

Again the same, I guess you got the point already.

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The people who work at Blizzard know how to implement these things, they just haven’t thought of it or think it wouldn’t work. I don’t need to explain to you specifically how.

no, they need to engineer a matchmaking system which takes into consideration that someone may have 100s of accounts. Think about this problem as if Overwatch was free 2 play, as it will enevitably be.

this is fine until the end…if you grab 12 people this way, why not shuffle them around so the teams’ average SR is more equal. If you randomly make teams out of these 12 people some games all of the best players will be on one team and all the worse on the other team.

basically agree with 3 and 4

Hahahahahahhaa. Sure m8 sure. They just need to implement, its that easy. Like guilds. They just need to implement guilds, they are so stupid because they havent just implemented guilds like they havent completely just remade their matchmaker. Its just so simple.

They already did that, this is one reason the matchmaker works as it does right now. Even when OW is free to play there should be one account allowed per person in competitive.

This is what most people cannot grasp and I don’t know why. It is mathematically asinine to have the matchmaker balance teams, this is actually what creates ELO hell. When you have two players that should be dropping in rank but you keep balancing them with players who pick up their slack then everyone stays at the general SR at they are already at. i.e. the bad player gets placed with a good player to make the teams fair. This balancing is what keeps bad and good players at the ranks they don’t belong.

I don’t know why only a few people can actually grasp this concept. Balacning teams in quickplay might be a good idea, but not in competitive. I could give a presentation that blows the idea of team balancing out of the water.

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post it to YouTube, I’ll watch.

the reason why shuffling the teams to create the closest overall SR doesn’t confer an advantage is because everyone is subjected to the same rules.

but everyone has to get grouped with these noobz, so where is the inherent disadvantage?

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I’m not saying it gives anyone an advantage. I’m saying it keeps people from ranking up or ranking down because it constantly forces even teams.

Same thing here, I’m not saying it gives one person an advantage and another person a disadvantage, it doesn’t.

I wanted to add a comment to this point: after everyone has played enough games, there will rarely be a time where you grab 12 people of similar SR and have one side much better than the other. Only in the current garbage matchmaker do you need team balancing between 12 people of similar SR in order to create fair teams.

Thanks for compiling, Kaawumba.

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I’m saying forcing even teams does not keep people from ranking up or down.

and this is preceicley the problem. At 3am on a Tuesday. the 12 people it will select will be 500 or more SR apart. the computer needs to balance the teams.

check this out, you know a the computer won’t create a match that has a greater than 60% win rate, correct. so there’s a way to get 12 people when shuffled someway it’s greater than 60 but shuffled another way less than 60.

listen, if you want to find out any more of what I think about matchmaker (I think it’s pretty good btw) let’s talk on comms. typing at length is cumbersome.

It doesn’t prevent them from ranking up or down, but it makes it far more difficult to rank up than it should. It makes for a confusing, frustrating, bizarre matchmaker that most people feel “something” is wrong with but they can’t put their finger on it. People are playing in matches where they are obviously significantly better than the people on both teams, except for one or two of the players on the opposing team which are there to even the teams out. Let’s put it this way, I can halfway try and stay at the same rank as I do when I try as hard as I possibly can. The reason is because when I halfway try (not throw) for a few matches, the matchmaker realizes this (by analyzing my in game statistics) and places someone on my team to make up the difference. So what’s my incentive to be the person who tries hard? None.

That should be the exception, not the rule. If after two minutes of trying to find people of similar SR to place on each team they are unable to do so, then it should change over to team balancing.

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no, the matchmaker doesn’t know your past SR

at least there has been no official statement on this.

edit, well maybe it kinda does because there is an unsureadness variable in play, but regarless

you know all the facts but come to the wrong conclusions, you’re a deciple of the one who shall not be named :slight_smile: