results don’t matter, just like in poker, we don’t want to look at “was” it the correct move, we want to examine “is” it the correct move
overwatch doesn’t spell out that the game will work in the EULA, but, ya know…
No, I don’t know. If you’re going to make the claim that Blizzard has made a solemn vow to me, I’d like to see some evidence of the vows. If you’re just saying that they vowed something because you think you’re entitled to something past what you agreed to in the EULA, you’re wrong…
overwatch could shut down tomorrow and not be in violation of the EULA, so I don’t know why you’re bringing that up
This is irrelevant. Where’s the evidence of the vows you claim that Blizzard made?
on the developer updates and orange posts.
Link please, or admit that you’re just making stuff up. I just searched the forums for “vow” and “vows” and got exactly zero developer / orange posts.
I used the word vow because it was super cool, they never promised, but they said they would. when they talk about how SR works, they are vowing that it works that way
So you’re making stuff up, got it.
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if blizz says how SR works, they are vowing that it works that way
By the way, I’m still waiting for a link to that board game you made. Is it called “Tactician: the Game of Battlefield Strategy”? That’s what I found when I searched for “tactician board game”
It’s a tad more complicated than that I think. There are many, many people throwing and boosting all at the same time.
Also, technically, you could be the one on his team when he is throwing, but then be against him when he is climbing.
The ‘randomness’ of the matchmaker complicates things
I have a BS in Applied Mathematics but that doesn’t make me correct and it doesn’t make my word law
when people complain about throwers and leavers, I always say this benefits them because there are six possible leavers on the enemy team and only five on yours.
but what about smurfs? there’s a higher chance they’ll be on the enemy team, but we all have those same odds of being against a smurf, so it all equals out in the end.
this would be my understanding of “misranked” players
I ran some numbers the other day, comparing smurfs throwing and stomping in soloq versus smurfs stomping in soloq but throwing in 6 stacks (essentially not affecting the soloq experience, neglecting the rare case of solo players vs. a 6 stack).
It turns out that if you’re actually climbing, throwers in soloq (whether smurfs or otherwise) are actually a disadvantage to you. Because thrower games are at a fixed 54.545454…% win rate (i.e. 6 out of 11 games), averaging those games in with ‘normal’ games moves your average towards that ~54.5% win rate. That means if you’re climbing with a win rate higher than that, throwers are hurting you. Only if your win rate is lower than that do throwers actually help you.
On the other hand, smurfs who are stomping give you a win rate of 45.454545…% (i.e. 5 out of 11 games). Those games then hurt your win rate if it is below ~45.5%.
It’s generally considered that you’re not really meaningfully climbing with a win rate of less than 60% (for a variety of reasons including both the number of games required as well as what your win rate indicates about how close you are to your equilibrium rank), so basically everyone who is climbing at a rate where they could reasonably rank up with their current skills is being hurt by all of throwers/leavers/climbing smurfs.
On the other hand, it is mathematically impossible for smurfs to be responsible for anyone’s 40% win rate, or any rate less than ~45.5%, and since smurfs do not always throw in six stacks, even that isn’t realistic.
If all smurfs threw and carried games in equal numbers all in soloq, it would of course balance at 50%, and so everyone’s average would be dragged towards 50% by them.
In reality, there are also throwers and leavers who are not smurfs, and games with them are also ~54.5% for you, the same as games with deranking smurfs. I don’t have exact numbers, but based on my experience, I’d say that if you add up all the derankers, troll-throwers, and rage-quitters they are somewhat more frequent than smurfs who are carrying so the average effect of all these ‘uncontrollable’* games is a win rate somewhere above 50% but not nearly the maximum of 54.5% you’d get if the only abnormal games were throwers.
How much this actually affects you depends on a lot of factors. Supposing a 52% win rate for all abnormal games, a moderate natural climbing winrate of 60% in normal games, and a smurf-and-troll heavy rank with 25% abnormal games, then your actual winrate would get dragged down to 58%. Not insurmountable.
If literally half your games had trolls/leavers/throwers/smurfs then you’d be down to 56%. This would make it really tough to climb in a rank in a single season, but you’d get there eventually. (For the record, I don’t believe that any rank actually has this ratio, but many people claim that their rank does so I thought I’d put that number out there.) You would, of course, be better off to improve your skills to a natural win rate of 65%, and then in this theoretical Elo hell, you could still climb out with a respectable actual winrate of 58.5% after factoring in all the smurfs, trolls, leavers, etc.
Edit: I should note that you can’t, I believe, really effectively have a rate of ‘abnormal’ games above 50%. Once you do, you’re also increasing the number of games where the abnormal factors start cancelling each other, e.g., a carry smurf on both teams, a leaver on both teams, a leaver and a carry smurf on the same team, etc. The exact rules for calculating that escape me at the moment, but as I recall those kinds of odds start stabilizing somewhere close to but not exactly 50%.
*of course, you could have some effect on the rates of troll-throwers and rage-quitters. If you are getting an abnormal number of them on your team, you’re probably doing something to trigger their behavior. The numbers assume that you are not, in fact, the triggering factor for other players and that their behavior is effectively random.
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Most smurfs in say low silver are not GM cause they are only 1 percent of the playerbase.
Most smurfs in this game are about plat to diamond mainly high platish. I dont care about climbing so muh anymore. I do care about getting 1 game where you curbstomp and the next game is the reverse.
The comp system is a total binary bipolar experience and I have had enough I am sorry. People just want fun balanced games not 30-3 one game and the next you have more deaths than elims and the last 2 seasons has been just that.
Skill variance in silver has always been a problem. It’s just getting worse with each passing season.
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The real problem with overwatch is the game is 3 years old and there just arent enough new players coming in to replace the ones that have left and thus it gets harder to climb the ladder for us all. The ponzi scheme is basically failing which is what happens to all ladder games eventually it’s inevitable.
The constant derankers and smurfs are just a symptom of this problem. Also there really is no incentive to stay where you belong to boot.
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Smurfs are a major problem in this game. Because the game tries to force an even match each time, so if you’re doing very well you don’t get to just keep playing vs. normal people in your rank. The matchmaker cancels you out with a smurf. If they were NOT in your rank, which they should NOT be in your rank. You would never have to play with them and then you could rank up easier.
this doesn’t seem to make sense. if you have a +3 inherent bonus because of throwers, it doesn’t matter what your win rate is
whether your win rate is 55% or 85% an extra 3% from throwers is always good
It’s because you’re averaging in ‘thrower’ games with ‘normal’ games.
If your natural win rate is 60%, and by definition the thrower winrate is ~54.5%, and you have 25% ‘thrower’ games and 75% ‘normal’ games, then your actual winrate is .75 * 60 + .25 * ~54.5 = ~58.625%
The other calculations I did are by this same reasoning.
this doesn’t make sense to me/ I don’t think it’s the right way to calculate it, but if you say it’s the way to do it, I can’t argue with you 
Any easy logic test of why you can’t call it ‘an extra 3%’ is that it is unreasonable on the face of it for a set of games with a 53% winrate to ever cause a winrate to rise above 53%. The more of them you average in, the closer they bring you to 53%, they don’t simply bring you ‘3% higher’.