I have played this game alot, since launch, almost having a diamond border now. And I have always suspected that there is foul play going on with the match making algorithim. Mainly because I have noticed for a long time now that I the enemy team will always have at least one excellent player and the rest of the team will be mediocore at best. And on my team I will be the excellent player having very little difficulty securing kills getting 3 sometimes 4 gold medals even if I play a tank, while the rest of my team seems to be mediocore at best.
Then a friend told me that he knows for a fact that overwatch uses an matchmaking algorithym that will rank you not by your SR, but by your stats, better players will obviously tend to have better stats even with a poor winrate or SR. He said that the game will purposifly match you with teammates that counter your stats all for the goal of having as close to a 40% winrate for all players. So, this means if you are a good player with good stats, you will always be matched with bad teammates with bad stats to lower your chance to win. And if you are the best player, then you have the worst disadvantage always be matched with the absolute worst players. I have been unable to prove this with any statement released from bliz, but it is the only thing that makes sense. I will have days where litterly all day I wonât get a good group, losing up to 400 SR in a single day with a never ending line of throwers, players who onetrick, players who never counter, players who purposifly try and mess up a good comp and claim comp doesntâ matter, and just out right bad players.
I am horrified if this is true, which as I said, I cannot explain my matchmaking if it is not. I play this game to have fun, but there is nothing fun about a game that creates a toxic atmosphere by purposifly matching you up with the worst players every game because it doesnât want to you win. How can this be?
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I love all these matchmaking âtheoriesââŚyesâŚthe game is actively trying to ensure that your playing experience is as terrible as possibleâŚ
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I think the theory stems from your ego not allowing you to come to the terms that the reason youâre not climbing is you.
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Itâs mathematically impossible for the average winrate to be anything but 50%, if you donât count draws as anything.
Youâre proposing that the average winrate is 40%, which would require there to be more teams that lose than teams that win; which is nonsense, because for a team to lose a team has to win.
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I have no ego, I so however have the best stats as I said almost always securing at least 3 gold medals a match and getting a card. Now I know you can still be like well you canât get out of plat so your obviously just not good enough. But lets be real for a miniute here, this is a team based game, and you donât think so then just tell me how many games you have won 5v6, I have won 2 out of I would say 40 games I have played like that. So obviously just one person not doing well can easily make your whole team lose. And as I said, only players with good stats would be negativily affected, bad stat players would actually benefit from this as it assures there is always at least one excellent player on your team always. But for the excellent player its nothing more then a system designed to ensure they lose matches that they would of won if the matchmaking was random. I am just saying, how do you know for a fact that there is no foul play going on with the matchmaking?
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Im no expert but from what i gathered the match maker does put you with different players with different skill sets. And it tries to put you with players that are as skilled as you and as skilled as the other team, I see no foul play here, just matchmaker trying its best to negotiate with players who can have a good or bad day and that have varying skills, cause we are not robots, we cant be in teh top of our game every day.
Id say there is a bit of ego to your theory, but maybe you are stuck in a rank thats below you⌠dunno.
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Your medals mean nothing if youâre not working with your team, peeling for your healers, working with your dps etc.
4 golds doesnât mean youâre doing well, just means the rest of your team is suffering for x reason.
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You misunderstand me. I did not say that the average winrate was 40%, I said the goal of the matchmaking system is to get as close to a 40% chance of win for all players in the match based solely on their stats. There are many ways this can be done, for instance matching 6 dps mains together, even if they all agree to attempt a good comp your still playing with people playing tank and healer with little experience doing so, and by placing bad teammates with bad stats on your team until the game thinks your odds of winning are around 40%. Do you really think the average que taking 4mins is because the game is just looking for a random player withen 250 SR of you? If that were the case the que times would be much lower, just first come first serve. So its obvious the game is using other metrics to matchmake during ques.
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There is no proof but it is a common thing for the game to give you completely underperforming teammates just to keep you at the 50% winrate.
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I mean you are right that the match maker shoots for a win porcentage, it has to, it tries to get two teams together that have the same chances of winning, after that it comes down to you and your team and how well you play. But i dont think its forcing you to win or loose.
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But if one team has a 40% chance of winning, the other team has a 60% chance of winning.
The matchmaker can troll all it likes, but no matter how it arranges people, itâs impossible for both teams to have a win chance below 50%.
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For those that say:
Maybe Baja should just skip straight to Jeff Kaplanâs blue post on that forum (from original forums) and restate their comments, matchmaking is absolutely a thing, not just a âTheory for Egoâ.
As for
Can you explain how you believe an âimpossibility of the average being anything but 50%â is possible please?
There is a matchmaking system, but any programmer would and do admit, to get any algorithm perfect, more-so in such a diverse game as Overwatch, would be like saying that all humans are perfect, âMathematically impossibleâ
The more games you play and the more accurate the matchmaking system is, yes, the closer you do get to that average 50%, but also means that you would never actually hit 50%, like halving any number and then halving the result over and over and over and over will never get you to ZERO, but can get you close depending on how deep you look at it, because you will never actually get hereâŚ
There is always going to be some metric to judge how well players did in the game. For DPS players the best metrics are elims and overall damage done. Not saying their perfect, but we all have to have something we can look at and say ok, you did not play well this game, as junkrat you got one kill and only did 2k damage all match. You canât just blame the healers or the tanks for such poor stats. Even with no tank and no heals I am still going to get the most kills and damage done. At some point we all have to take responsibility for our hero picks and how well we played them. And the game uses medals and cards as a way to gage that. Not saying its perfect, but its pretty obvious who won the match if the enemy team got all the cards at the end. But this is not a thread about medals or how to judge players, we already have that in the game whether you agree with it or not. This thread is about questioning overwatchs matchmaking algorithym and the accusations that is actually acting out maliciouly towards better players as an attempt to make bad players feel better.
Of course the matchmaking will always try to âbalanceâ games. But itâs still a system designed with efficiency in mind.
A malicious bias towards âbetterâ players, a metric youâre placing yourself in and defining with medals, is just impractical at best.
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I would like to challenge the algorithms of the matchmaking system, especially for Mystery Heroes (MH).
The amount of times you can tell, straight off the start, which team is going to win when the RNG returns one team consistently rolling all tanks and heals over and over on a control point map.
Whilst the other team struggles to roll one or the other at a time, and this happens game after game, on top of the team not understanding what is meant by âGroup Upâ.
I think more than anything, it can be frustrating.
no, thereâs literally no reason to do something like this. Itâs works like that in any team-based game when youâre playing alone.
Luck and random is as major part as your own skill
Thanks for that link! Sounds to me like Jeff is saying they pretty much include almost every stat in the matchmaking, refusing to give specifics because there is definatly some sort of foul play going on with the matchmaking.
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Not sure âfoul playâ would be correct, but borderline impossible to get a perfect algorithm that works for everyone in the game, maintaining that such a diverse game with such a diverse player base would be impossible to get perfect as stated in above post.
Well whatever facts you are referring to, itâs a fact that the game creates a match where both teams have statistically an equal chance of winning. This doesnât mean that matches will be close, since other factors like team composition, team work, role competence, consistency, etc. can affect the match heavily but either team has a similar chance of winning the game in theory.
The MMR (used for matchmaking) does not always match the SR and includes more than the SR but it doesnât force you to loose either, because itâs based on a huge compilation of statistics (likely things like map related, heroe related, performance related, sr, etc.).
If you are outperforming your rank, you might get put on a team with someone underperforming statistically but the same situation will likely be the case on the enemy team. Also weâre not talking about a huge difference but minor differences.
So far I personally havenât had any problem with this kind of behavior. For multiple seasons I had 55-65% win rate without running into troubles. The matchmaker doesnât try to hurt you, it tries to create fair matches and itâs your job to turn the tides in your favor if you wanna have a positive win rate. 
You get matched based on your hidden MMR value. Its basically the SR the system expects you to be at, if you would play over a long period of time at your current skill lvl without decay. Then the match maker tries to create a balanced comp and calculates your chance if winning. If you have a better team you will have a higher calculated chance of winning and gain less SR as a result, while in the other hand if you go into a game as a underdog you will lose less SR if you lose. If you win while being underdog then the system interpretates that as improvement and increases your MMR