Is this competitive? Sorry." - The Apology That Proves Quick

General Discussion
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I need to describe a Quick Play match I just finished because it left me feeling more confused and heartbroken about your matchmaking system than ever before.

The map was Junkertown. On my team, there was a D.Va player who, during the first phase, didn’t even know how to get to the high ground and was just walking on the ground floor. Some teammates started to blame him, and the atmosphere became toxic.

Because of these mild complaints, the D.Va player genuinely seemed to believe he had accidentally queued for a serious Competitive match. Then, the moment that truly crushed me happened. He typed in the chat: “Is this competitive? Sorry.”

That “sorry” was absolutely heartbreaking.

I need to ask you, should a new player, in QUICK PLAY, have to apologize for not knowing the map or the hero? He absolutely should not. The only reason he felt he had to apologize is because your matchmaking system threw him into a match far beyond his skill level, forcing him to endure blame and pressure he never should have faced.

And what makes this situation completely absurd is that on the enemy team, the DPS player was Top 500 .

So please, explain this matchmaking logic. How can a brand-new player who doesn’t know the map, a Diamond-ranked player from last season (me), and one of the top players on the entire server all end up in the same “casual” game?

And this is not a one-time incident; I have encountered situations like this many, many times. How can you justify matching new players in the same Quick Play games as Diamond players?

This is no longer a question of a “bad experience.” For that new player, it’s humiliating. For his teammates like me, it’s agonizing. And even for the opponents, it cannot be a satisfying or engaging game. It’s a ruined experience for every single person in the lobby. This one match is undeniable proof that your Quick Play matchmaking system is fundamentally broken and is damaging the experience for everyone.

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This might sound controversial but yes.
What you have described is something that can be solved straight up in the training range, which is : Using the boosters to move upwards.

You don’t need to know the map really (that part is fine) but you should be able to walk forward, look up, see where you want to be, press Shift and fly there.

Not saying you should eat ultimates and flick / block DM like a pro but that is an ultra basic move that should not be an issue for anyone in QP.

Knowing the basics that can be learned in 2mins on Training of any hero is not a “Competitive Mode thing” mate. Learning those basics so you don’t waste anyone’s time and feed / grief your team horribly is basic decorum. But I guess people can’t even do that these days :man_shrugging:

This is a different thing and thats no one’s fault. The previous thing is 100% player responsibility. And a trillion % doable.

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Do I really need to tell you how?

Let me point out the part you seem to be missing

The fact that one of your teammates was taking it too seriously does not change the mode that you chose

And how are they all in the same game? Maybe the diamond player top player and new player all wanted to play together. That’s what casual game modes are for. I’m always amazed when people come here confused by what casual game modes are, lol

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The introduction of hero cards has shown me that there’s a lot more new players milling around than I would have previously believed.

I think Blizzard have done a good job in recent times. This particular season is the best one we’ve had in a long time, imo. So maybe they can turn their attention to all the newbies being fed face first into a wood chipper.

They often talk about Competitive in their blogs, but Quick Play? Not so much, and it could use some love.

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That’s because quick play is just “quick play.” It’s not meant to be a serious game mode.

Maybe it’s because I’ve played a lot of games and I’m old, but anytime I’ve played quick play, or unranked, or casual game modes, I’ve never expected them to be close matches or anything other than just practice type modes with players of all skill levels. I’ve never expected anything other than that from a casual game mode. But maybe when it was my first game I did? I don’t think so though

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Well said.

I was shocked to see so many newbies on my QP OQ 6v6 teams when I looked at their Ranking cards. It was really eye-opening to see and it gave me a new perspective to give the newbies more patience and grace. :relieved:

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Yeah, a new player definitely shouldn’t be anywhere near a Top 500. New players should be with new players unless someone is far exceeding move them out ASAP till the system put them in the correct area so smurfs don’t go too ham. And mix newer players with seasoned veterans slower.

Also I don’t mind QP players taking the game seriously, I don’t think they need to be toxic about it. But just because it’s considered a casual mode doesn’t mean others want their time wasted either. And if basic controls are an issue they could go play against the bots or go to practice rang. Yeah those player were rude, but it’s also rude to the others to not even have that concept down.

But you are asking them to make the casual mode, more competitive. If it’s loose it is casual, if everyone is all the same rank, then that’s competitive. At times it’s like you’re arguing that it’s supposed to be casual, but if players that gap other players are present, it means it’s not casual, so you want more stricter matchmaking, which is asking for it be more competitive, so it can remain casual?

I’d rather you just say you want QP to be more competitive, it would make a lot more sense.

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I get where you’re coming from and I agree for the most part with how I view quickplay (nothing serious, steam-roll/unfair matches are to be expected, etc). At the same time though, I also think that the quality of quickplay matches has degraded overtime, especially after the transition from Overwatch Uno to Dos.

We can only speculate whether that’s caused by the new matchmaker prioritising faster queue (at the expense of quality matches) or due to 5v5 (or maybe both).

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Fair enough. I will say with my experience with OW, they do make a lot of adjustments to matchmaking. I remember in OW1 there were a few days after a patch where competitive matches took about 5 seconds to find, lol.

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I cursed a new player’s ancestors for the transgression of their birth. That was before I realized they were new, but, well, I am ashamed to admit it happened. It was kind of annoying to hook someone off height only for our Dva to boost away to… Do something. I am sure she had more important things to worry about. It was still better than when she boosted into the Reaper messing up my combo before, again, leaving to… Uh, you know. Patrol?

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"Even though this is Quick Play, players still expect a relatively fair and engaging experience.

The ideal Quick Play match is one that is ‘back-and-forth.’ It should have a degree of challenge and competition that makes the game fun and suspenseful, but without the intense pressure of Competitive mode. That is the true appeal of this mode.

However, the current matchmaking system frequently throws brand-new players into the same lobby as elite Top 500 players. The result is a complete steamroll where average players like myself, along with the novices, are utterly powerless. This isn’t a ‘challenge’ anymore; it’s ‘torture.’

A match like this isn’t a good experience for anyone. The new player feels humiliated and confused, we feel helpless and frustrated, and even the Top 500 opponent gets no satisfaction from such an easy win. What we want isn’t an effortless victory or a crushing defeat, but a satisfying, competitive game that we can all be invested in."

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Yeah could have been a grouping thing on somebody’s side or something. I’ve played qp matches with friends who are brand new to the game to help them learn. And i had a new mercy on that same map yesterday. Could tell she didn’t know the map considering we were almost to 2nd point and she comes out of spawn and starts heading towards 1st spawn and she kept getting lost in the side rooms. But it was qp and nobody said anything toxic to her even when we lost. Does suck for your new player that they were treated like that though. And no they shouldn’t have to apologize or even be treated so badly that they feel they even have to.

Not everybody is going to sit in the practice range shooting or healing bots for ages to learn everything about EVERY hero. That would take ages and be really boring and let’s be honest you can only learn so much from that anyways. Best way to learn stuff like that is playing the characters. So best place to do that is qp or if they don’t feel comfortable enough start with ai but again you can only learn so much from that too. Got to start somewhere and everybody was new at 1 point too.

I always try to be more patient in qp or when you can tell somebody is new/learning. I remember starting out and now nerve-wracking and scary it could be especially in a game that’s been around so long that has people that actually know what they’re doing.

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Is engaging with the actual argument you’re quoting this difficult for you?
Nobody wants your advice if you clearly even lack the ability to assert the problem and instead make out your own problem and solution.

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Immediately opening with Sarcasm.

Followed by taking a small piece of the original question to engage with while simultaneously ignoring the context of the question asked.

Immediately dismissive again, followed by a clear indication you deliberately or ignorantly display how you didn’t even read the post you’re responding to.

Dismissing again, to not engage in any conversation as clearly you are above critical thinking triggered through AI instead of furthering the topic in a genuine manner.

Logical dismissal?
Couldn’t have that.

Hey pseudo human what’s your next creatively bankrupt approach to not engage with actual arguments of the topic?

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Grouping.

My guess is either that brand new player was grouped (though based on their comment I doubt it) or the T500 in the enemy team with a similarly bad player. Then, because it’s quick play, the matchmaker doesn’t wait for a similar group to match against because that could take a long time, but puts solos with those MMR differentials against the wide group to facilitate said quick match.

You want that fixed? That means either those groups will have to endure significantly longer queues or they won’t be able to group at all. In this case it’s obviously just speculation on my part, but it’s most likely generally true.

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This is completely false. I think you didnt finish reading the post mate because this is addressed afterwards.

There is no universe where learning how to use Dva’s boosters to reach high ground is going to take you “ages”. That is absolutely ridiculous. Its not even an exaggeration, it is straight up false.

QP is not the best way at all, IDK where people get this impression.
AI matches yes, sure. But the order should be:

  • Learn how skills work : Training range
  • Learn to use those skills and map traverse/knowledge : AI
  • Practice those things: QP or Arcade modes.

Point stands:
Having absolutely zero clue about how to use a hero skills is not admissible in QP , because it takes literally 2 mins to learn SEVERAL heroes in the training range.

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i disagree with others, no QP is QP , some people learn differently, playing against training and AI can only help you so far. or has specific uses, nothing is the same against playing real people
I dont say anything to anyone in QP ever. aside from silly jokes or compliments on skins, or gg

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They just need a wood tier mode for QP. If you’re wood tier and would rather play with humans instead of AI, queue for that. Players that outperform in this queue for more than 2 matches in a row join the rest of us common folk in regular QP. Accuracy above 15% on heroes like Ashe or Zen? eat with the big kids. Less than 12 deaths? Come sit with us. Managed to get more than two kills twice in quick succession in a round? Take off the training wheels.

Anyway, I think truly newer players need a way to play the game in QP away from the rest of us. I’m a total sweat in QP, so I get it. It’s not fun for me to toss players around that are nowhere near my “skill” or experience in the game. Doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on them either.

We already have too many segmented modes in OW. That’s a problem too.

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That sounds like sarcasm to me… I would of been laughing after they said that… It is a pretty funny comeback to tryhards in QP.

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The problem here is you’re blaming the wrong thing.
The match making is not at fault. The match making is doing exactly what it was designed to do. QP is not for evenly matched games. You can have anything from Bronze-GM in the same QP lobbies. This is also not new. In fact, it’s how it’s always been.
I know players like to point out that games are supposed to be matched against players MMR, but this pretty much all goes out the window for a couple major reasons (and some minor reasons).
QP’s goal is to make the quickest matches. It’s the number one priority. Blizzard designed it this way for short queue times.
This is one of the reasons you can have a wide range of skill level in the same game. The system just grabs players to make a game quickly.
They also allow players to group up with friends of various skill levels. Another reason you can have literally any rank level matched up with any other rank level in the same lobby.
And lastly, the system can’t always find evenly matched players to put on opposing teams, so it instead tries to compensate for that. An example, it may find one Masters player to put on one team, but not another Masters player to put on the opposing team, so instead it tries to “make up for it” by putting 3 Plats on the other team (to “equal” the Master’s player) and may also put a Silver player on the Master player’s team to try and “balance” the teams. This obviously isn’t actually balanced, but that’s what the system tries to do and you can see how quickly things can get very wonky.

It’s not to say that this is how every game works, but it’s also not uncommon.

So since this is how the mode is designed, it’s not to be blamed. The issue is the players in QP being toxic and or even being upset that there is essentially a brand new player in the mode that allows for brand new players to play in and learn the basics of the core game.
They can’t learn about the core game in arcade games and they obviously can’t play in Ranked until they have won at least 50 games in QP.
Most new players also don’t know about the mode to play against AI, but even if they did, there isn’t any official rules or even an agreed upon etiquette that states that new players must play against AI before playing in QP.
Even if there was, what wouldn’t be an agreed upon time frame that a player must play against AI until they can play in QP.

QP is the mode designed for new players. There is disagreements around this, but since the existence of QP/Ranked, QP has always been this and only in the last 2 years has this been challenged by some players.

If players don’t want brand new players in their game or extremely wide range of skill levels, they shouldn’t be playing QP. Ranked solves all of those problems.
In Ranked, they will have much closer matched players/teams in the same lobby. They won’t have brand new players who don’t know the maps.
They are simply playing in the wrong mode themselves and then getting upset that the mode is doing exactly what it should be doing and blaming others for their misunderstanding.
It’s not new. If anyone is surprised by this for QP, it’s on them because it’s been this way for nearly 10 years.