Paranoid players think the matchmaker intentionally forces wins or losses. It definitely does not.
What is DOES do is artificially arrange matches to be as close to a 50% win for each side. It’s not a TRUE SKILL matchmaker, it’s more of an MMO matchmaker. A True Skill matchmaker, gives everyone the same tools, but what you do with them is up to you.
Some side effects of artificially arranged matches:
-High performing players WILL be given very low skilled team mates to even things out
-High performing players are expected to vastly out perform their team mates to carry the win…even though it’s 50% chance.
-Lower skilled players will fall to lower elo’s very slowly.
-Higher skilled players will climb, very slowly. (Months) (MMO style progression)
Here’s an example of True Skill ladder system: National Football League in the US. Gives every team the same tools. Expects the team and coaches to use the tools given to improve their skill. Does NOT match teams up based on perceived skill level.
This leads to three questions:
Why did Blizzard choose the MMO style matchmaker/ladder system?
Which do YOU prefer, True Skill or MMO?
How do you work the MMO style matchmaker to your advantage?
Thanks for reading this wall of text!
(Disclaimer: This is an alt. My main is only in High Plat/Diamond)
I don’t know the specifics of Matchmaking but I’ve always found it wrong that you lose SR on a loss no matter how well you played and you gain SR on a win no matter how poorly you played. Anyway I think Overwatch is too overly complicated for any automated systems to rate any players skill. that’s probably why they just made it a grind.
OW matchmake is fairly complicated, probably over complicated.
As far as the win/loss thing. OW is a team based game, that rewards team play. To get the most enjoyment, find you a group of competent players and play!
This is somthing i have noticed its probably because bliz 1 has never made a fps type game before and 2 ow was made first to be a rpg/mmo type game…then they changed it. I personly wish they would change it to the true skill mode as it is more competative and the matchmaker dosnt become a factor in making it harder to climb and get ur true skill rating(SR) sadly a lot of higher ranks will probly flame u for this post and say “no thats not how it is” but they dont really know besides their idea of “get gud”.
Some days are just crap for comp too though not sure why for me. Ie: yesterday i played a few games and lost more games then i won…the games i lost i was solo healing and i picked heals first off…then rest of my team all went dps…and one switched to tank…dva…mind you this was how ALL of my lost matchs went…i changed to diffrent healers trying to keep up with them but no amount of healing helped. Then the games i won we had a normal team comp the famus 222 and we did amazingly well all the games i felt useless/helpless at the same time…yet it was a lower elo then i normaly play at not sure how to explain it. But i can definently say that i would prefer the true skill method.
Again, how would you ever prove yourself, OP? You really could never fully prove it unless the system wasn’t hidden.
That’s why people should stop ridiculous theories which only serve to waste time, stop worrying about whether they think it is rigged or not, and start asking for things to not be hidden.
Scoreboards are part of games that matter. And no serious sport hides how it ranks you.
Well it’s obviously not TrueSkill (which is owned by Microsoft), but it very clearly draws most of the same functionality from it. Both have a perceived skill value and a confidence value for each player. The primary difference is that OWMM uses an SR as a display while keeping the perceived skill and confidence values a secret. Additionally, OWMM modifies confidence based on in-game stats for players below 3000 SR.
If the matchmaker doesn’t find enough players around your skill level to match you with, it will expand it’s search to lower elo’s to find you a team. The matchmaker has two imperative goals it shoots for:
1- It MUST find you a game.
2- Game should be around 50% win for both sides.
As far as the quality of your team, the matchmaker could care less. If your team is full of toxic throwers, the matchmaker doesn’t account for that.
Best practice?: Find a group of players to play with regularly. By doing that, you take out the randomness of the matchmaker, to an extent.
Can vouch for this as whenever I go like 14-1 or 25-2 or similarly great KDR, my very next lobby is always filled with underperformers. They mostly are on my team and it’s stressful because the skill disparity from one match to the next is terrible at times
here’s where you and the matchmaker differ in thought process
the matchmaker wants to create 2 teams with similar SR (from the pool of the 12 people)
you want to randomize the 2 teams (from the pool of the 12 people)
the way the matchmaker does it is better because the matches will, on average, be closer to a 50/50 chance of winning. the matchmaker should not make games that have a 90/10 chance of winning. the threshold is currently 60/40, and that’s where you see your stomps
why not talk about how low skilled team mates will be placed with high performing players
Yes my friend, this is very good summary for how part of this matchmaker work. As others have state many time, the skill variance between teammate is so huge. When this observer system is release it will be very obvious the skill level difference among teammate.
It’s probably a machine learning model. It’s not in English. The only way to know more about it would be to run simulations against it. This is of course speculation.
…would the OWL players consider their game to actually be more serious and better if everyone got to see their scores in this game, and would they believe they would be taken more seriously.
I’m not one, but I bet they would. Why wouldn’t they want people to know how skilled they are in actuality? It’s one thing to be an OWL player or pro-streamer stomping people as they play, and another to show exactly how much. You’d actually have even more respect for them.
Matching players by SR is secondary to the matchmaker. It uses your mmr primarily. (Which is hidden)
-As for the “stomps” you mention…It normally comes from those matches that the Higher Skilled player does not perform high enough to make up for the lower skilled team mates
You’re right that I did not speak on the lower skilled team mates in my OP. I assumed the opposite would be inferred.
-Lower skilled players will BENEFIT from being matched with Higher skilled players, by having wins they would not normally get. But they will still drop in SR overall, albeit slowly.
The Higher Skilled player will raise slowly for the same reason, but as a detriment from the lower skilled player.
I do agree with you on needing transparency in the MMR Formula.
According to the best information collected in the below article, SR and MMR match, since they move at the same time. The only exception is for Leaver / DC penalties, and Decay. It may even be possible that MMR no longer exists in Competitive.
All according to this article:
The MMR formula for Competitive is transparent. They’ve said it moves exactly as much as SR, and hinted that it actually no longer exists.
I don’t think this is true. According to the article, (which is a well researched collection of all the information that has been made public, including links to the source materials) they try to match solely on similar SR for all 12 players. There’s also the “find a match quicker” mechanism which does accept larger gaps, but there is no evidence that this is in response to someone’s recent performance.
SR and MMR do not match and will very rarely be the same. Here is a quote from your reference article:
“With the exception of diamond+ players who have decayed and the disconnection penalty (see below), MMR and SR are closely linked (22). The SR/MMR convergence is implemented by having each match pull SR in the direction of MMR. That is, if SR is lower than MMR, a player will win more SR than MMR on a win, and lose less SR than MMR on a loss”
“Linked” does not mean equal or match. SR is constantly chasing your MMR, for lack of a better example.
My friends, a proper matchmaker should never, under any circumstance, in shape or form of all kind arrange teams to be fair match. People who do not understand proper matchmaking think this is crazy “why would you not balance match?”.
A forced balanced match create the elo hell, this is what blizz cannot understand, I truly think they cannot comprehend.
Sure u could TRY to find 5 other people to play with that are at or around ur SR…all my friends that use to play have since left the game…lfg is a crap shoot half the time…unless u can comit x amount of ur time to play with or on a discord group that idea is not a feasible thing to do sadly…sorry i have 2 kids i have to take care of…i get maybe 2ish hours a day to play…never at the same time. Ur idea sounds great but bliz never gave us a guild system (for no apparent reason) so unless i know of some discord thing i cant do that. …so my option is to solo que or due que with my wife everynow and again.