Either way it’s hard to take it seriously.
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I’m sad to read this as I too don’t know what is going on. I have reached 3.2k sr multiple times. For the last season I was all the time between 3.0 and 3.1k. I think my peak sr actually represents where I belong. Ofcourse the closer you get, the more will your sr strive to 50/50 winrate. Makes sense.
However, what I don’t understand is how I fell to 2.5k. How the hell did I stay at 3.0 to 3.1 throughout whole season but somehow randomly fell to 2.5k. I want to point out that I am competent enough in all roles to be at 3.1k atleast. Falling for 500-600 sr is just a few days is really… RANDOM.
How did I fall? Why? Did I just randomly start underperforming on all these heroes that I was previously good at? It did feel like I am getting really bad people in my games though. People that refuse to group, or some egoistic dps who thinks symmetra is answer to everything.
I don’t really know what to say.
Playing overwatch feels like sisyphus work. All that hard work is then nullified by throwers, bad team mates, toxic people, people who refuse to play anything but their favorite hero, enemy team which sucks,…
The list can go on and on. It’s too effing random to play competitive, that’s what it is. RNG. RANDOM. Do peopel realize how many games you would have to play just to get an ACCURATE average because of all these random factors?
what heroes did you play. it could possibly be the massive power shift causing this to happen.
Can we all just take a moment to admire this.
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The problem isn’t that Overwatch’s matchmaking is rigged. I believe Blizzard’s explanation on how the matchmaking works in OW, and my own winrate is close to 50%. The problem is that, for various reasons, playing Overwatch is not fun. I can play a fighting game and have a win rate of like 15% and have a better time than I do playing Overwatch, due to several key differences in their design philosophies.
The first thing is that we need to establish what we actually want to get out of online play. I feel like there are two clear goals for playing online. To get better at the game and have fun. If designed properly, these two things shouldn’t be at odds with each other.
Let’s talk about fun first. What makes a game like Overwatch fun to play? It will vary for different people, but here are my own experiences based on Overwatch and similar games.
- I have fun when I can play with my friends
- I have fun when my teammates play well
- I have fun when I do something good, and get recognized for it
- I don’t have fun if a match is very unbalanced
- I don’t have fun if I’m vastly better than my team
- I don’t have fun if I play very well, but we lose and I receive no recognition
- I especially don’t have fun if I play well, but we lose and I’m penalized for it
- When I lose a close game, I want to try again right away
Improving at the game is arguably more simple. Generally, the best way to improve is to play against players who are a bit better than you are. This way, you can pick up new techniques from them and playing against them will push you to improve your skills. Note that if they are too much better than you, you won’t really learn because their techniques will be too advanced for you and you may not understand what they’re doing better than you.
So how should we make matches to fit the criteria above? I feel there are a few simple guidelines.
- One of the most important factors for the matchmaker is speed. If people are given a long time to stew after a loss, they get frustrated.
- We actually don’t want to ensure that everyone in a match has the same skill level, because then people don’t learn. We don’t want them to be crazily far apart, but we can be much more generous than OW currently is.
- Player feedback is important. Things like play of the game, the fire system, scoreboards, etc. can help players feel rewarded for good play, though they must be tweaked continuously to ensure they actually represent playing well.
- All forms of post-game Stat Tracking and Win / Loss tracking are valueless and only create toxicity. When we start tracking stats or W / L, people start to focus on that instead of learning or having fun. Players will actively avoid playing against good players (even though this is the best way to learn) because it hurts their W / L, and this creates problems like smurfing and boosting. Stats are generally not useful for improving your game, as they depend heavily on who you’re playing against and many elements of good play are not easily tracked. If playing the game is fun, you should not need stats or a rating number to convince you that playing is worthwhile.
Unfortunately, very few games do these things well, and those that do frequently forget what they were doing well and ruin their systems in their sequels and such.
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Eehhh… I dont think that I have to say why this is wrong…
No! No its not. Lets try to apply occams razor here. For your hypothesis to be correct, we have to assume that blizzard is lying, and we have to assume something is true without evidence. For the hypothesis that says that the MM is not rigged, you have to assume that blizzard is not lying. Which is the one that makes more sense?
And just to finish it off, here is a thread that talks about what we do know about the mm(with sources):
man that reply by Jeff needs to be stickied, would solve a lot of confusion people constantly are asking
If you have the better team that still result in the same SR gains as usually you would get.
The matchmaker avarages out the stats your team has, making sure that the winchances are always near 50%. This usually results in a sceniario where if you done an outlandishly great performance the system will try to find players im your current SR range but with same mmr range.
Meaning the matches get progressively harder by either empowering the enemy or weakening your team to offset your mmr difference.
IF the SR system would be actually accurate and wouldnt have any hidden absurdish balance mechanism than it wouldnt need the hidden mmr system to balance matches.
As far as i know we have no real evidence for either side so it boils down to faith.
Do you have faith in them to say they wouldnt lie on this for any reason?
I used occams razor in that example, and this is not the only reason why I trust the matchmaker. And a company lying to their customers is less likely than them telling the truth.
the evidence is that people can and do climb, and this makes perfect sense with the matchmaker that the devs have described, and the conspiracy theory mm cant work like that.
Why do you think you get steamrolled for 3 matches in a row then suddenly you see the other side’s best players be swapped to your team and you win and steamroll other people for 3 matches in a row?
It’s fixed and rigged, it wants you to stay at 50% winrate as close as possible
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Now I understand why anti-vaxxers exist.
Why the toxicity? 
Why the assumption of toxicity? I just thought it was funny.
I don’t understand why everyone on the forums seems to think every conversation is a yelling match lol.
The MM system is broken, but not that way. It’s not that it on purpose makes mismatches, it’s just that it’s programmed to simplified to take important things into equation. It’s programmed to match quickly, and as such has very few parameters to match up with each other.
This is why you get somewhat horrible one sided matches a lot of times, the system isn’t taking any skill into the equation, nor even tries to take it into the equation.
I liked your post.I find myself in a similar position do i want to have fun or do i want to rank up?
I have 2 accounts both placed at mid gold that tells me the sr /mmr thing is working as intended.So now i have the luxury to use one of them playing whatever i want and the other to try and rank up.
But if i want to play whatever i want i can just queue qp.So now i am in the phase where i dont even care for my alt account i just want to try and rank up.
My second account is now useless to me.
Time schedule is busy so i 've only have few games played but now i am in a mentality where i am willing to fill and try help the team win no matter what i am playing.
I am curious to see if your willingness to flex for the team can boost your sr or not.Normally me playing anything but my main should cause me to start falling like a rock so if i actually climb then it will mean the system favours flexing.
Am also curious whether picking heroes suitable for each map ups your mmr or not.Like playing dive heroes on king’s row second part paylod to touch or gibraltar first part.
Now the only thing i wish for and i ve said this before is for a way to be able to see a hero rating for your teammates.
Like even a simple help as the name of the teammate or lets say we give colors like in dota 2 for each teammate above the hero icon.
So above each hero a small coloured line will show which one of the strangers has the best mmr on that hero.
Hell it could be all heroes blue if you have a smurf on blue so be it.Or it could go beyond that and have colors in ascending order.That would a nice quality of life change.
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Its the fault of every single person who doesn’t respect sightlines or have the awareness to naturally do so.
It is not a single players fault.
That’s a totally new “counter” i have never heard mentioned before. There are probably better options.
That does take some legit skill. Respect.
Yet your go-to counter was just expressed as hanzo, a projectile dps. Mixed messages there…
Good advice in a 1on1 scenario and as a general rule of thumb, but dependent on the rest of both teams comps, the map, and point on that map.
Both work against hog or phara just fine with some coordination.
Even still, those stubborn players are not being put on your team soley because the matchmaker is “trying to bring you down”
Try different communications tactics rather than making demands for others. Instead just do what’s needed; while making teammates aware of what you’re doing “I’m going soldier to deal with phara, we’ll need an offtank.”
“I’m focusing hog! Hog hog hog”
People will rally behind someone saying what they’re doing and providing focus. Certainly before rallying behind someone telling them what to do.
One tactic I’ve used before is, as rein on a slow push comp. “That widow is a problem. Want me to go widow and try to counter?” Nine times out of ten, someone will jump in, “thats a terrible idea! I’ll go deal with her.”
(I know it’s a bad idea for me to swap, but it goes smoother than “hey dps, its your job to hunt the widow!!!”)
You know, maybe since this topic is posted everyday, and a lot of people have similar excercises like OPs, maybe just maybe there is something to it?
I receive a complaint of “the printer is broken again, WhY HavEnt wE BouGhT a NeW OnE?!?!” every other day.
Only thing to it is the fact that people are generally too lazy to take the time and identify the real problem. - It’s just out of paper…
Repeated opinions =/= facts.
People being able to climb does not counter these theories, it just prooves that the system is not perfect.
“Just because i have a picture of a bunch of fat africans that does not mean there are no hunger in Africa.”