So which team is handicapped then?
No it doesnt.
Speculation, not supported by evidence.
Well yes, but I would say its expectation, not speculation. If you have certain MMR, you are expected to do more to climb which is logical.
Number of players complaining on forum doest make anything true even remotely. Just saying as number of people who believe something to be true, doesnt make it true.
we are handicapped by the terrible match making you have created. placing level 25 players in gold, to start with is ridiculous. stop making excuses and rework your awful system. read the writing on the āliteralā wall here
Why do you as an official Tech Support for Blizzard weigh in on this? Do you have any proof of your positive claims about matchmaking? I sincerely doubt youāve been given any special insight into the runnings of the matchmaker and itās quirks.
Yes it is. Weāre talking MMR here though, wich is an entire different beast.
To the OP:
Itās possible your MMR put you into a different āTierā of matches in your SR range and so matches got more difficult without warning, leading to string of losses before the system corrected again.
Itās also possible that youāre being fed moronic teammates to ābalanceā your above average skill. Or harder enemies.
Handicapping:
The matchmaker tries to create 50% win chance matches. In a so-called competitive mode.
The implications of this is that if youāre better or worse in skill than the average of your SR the matchmaker creates matches that are either easier than average or harder than average for you to achieve this 50%.
Letās say, skill-wise, youāre 500 SR better than the average of your actual SR. The natural win chance of any match you are given should be above 50%, letās say 70% (dropping off as you apporach your natural SR).
Instead you are given a handicap of -20% winchance by the matchmaker either by getting worse teammates, equal teammates and equal enemies or average teammates but 1-2 equal enemies.
āBalanceā 
You will still rank up if youāre better but this handicapping can make it take longer and be severely more annoying. Esp. in low gold wich frankly is the pit of hell match quality-wise.
MMR handicaping is an affront to any notion of fairness and competitive spirit of this game. Welcome to Quickplay plussā¦
That said your drop in rank could just be ārandomā too: bad days, bit triggered etc etc
Except itās not when there is a thrower or a smurf in your team. Itās not your sr if 1 person is ruining the game on purpose, you try your hardest and play well and earn -25sr because of it
If you arent smart enough to understand this, you shouldnt even enter the conversation. Willful ignorance isnt a good look, neither is playing the fool.
It has to in order to balance teams for 50% chance for either team to win. Thats math. Again willful ignorance and playing the fool isnt a good look.
The theories were based on something the dev team said. Im not gonna gonna trudge through the forums to find it. Its other peoples stuff.
If ranks and skill levels were uniform this would make sense. Instead the matchmaker will either pull someone in to match you or sandbag you with low mmr teammates or both.
Honestly, do you think comp forums would be flooded with people complaining if the majority of the player base was happy? No, it wouldnt be, and you should know since you and your alt are in literally every thread on the forums trying to argue and silence anyone who doesnt like matchmaking.
Itās not really fair as it lets people float if they play irregularly.
Which is super annoying to those stuck with them as teammates. When it is clear to EVERYONE in the match that they belong 500+SR lower than where they are, but they donāt play enough to drop, and they donāt lose 100% of their game due to the āfair matchā handicapping system that is used in this game.
Iām not really sure how they can fix this. The matchmaker clearly knows they donāt belong, and tries to rig the match in a way to make it competitive. But because of that they donāt drop fast enough to stop ruining games.
I think on these ārigged gameā discussions, the defenders focus to much on the conspiracy theory players vs the reality of the incredibly large ācasualā comp player base. When combined with multiple alt accounts , smurfs, throwers, paid booster duos and trios. Really , destroy the competitive integrity of the game.
Wow the rare ocassion of appearance of a member of the tech support is stained by a false statement!No one will address the elephant in the room!
and of course when valid points are thrown,I here silence or crickets!
Keep the game the way it is!Itās not a full mess of alternate accounts and smurf accounts making the whole progression ladder worse!On some point I dont even feel there will be any change for the better
MMR is a good thing especially for arcade competitive. As an example, itās used as a guideline to your rough skill level of the entire game. I placed and played a bunch of comp CTF games when it first came out when I was a low plat player started playing it today now a high masters support and was clearly ruining the games but it was due to my MMR at the time and because id already been placed my sr gains were the usual 25ish. although a month ago I think comp no limits came out and after placement and during them was around low masters and the games were fair so MMR is basically just a background tool of overall skill.
In terms of people saying it limits growth think about how janky the ladder would be if each loss or win was - or + 100 per game.
What does this even mean? This is what PBSR does if you place a new account and get too low/high. provides +100/-100.
Also your description of MMR is just fantasy. Devs have said MMR isnāt a increasing number like SR (hopefully) is.
They can keep the hidden MMR or w/e for non-stomps in casual modes. There isnāt the a label/reward/payout structure there. But when people play ranked, they expect to be assessed by rank (only), ranked, and paid out by win/losses on rank. Not this hidden test taking so we can rigg you into full-clench for 600sr matches.
But itās kind of an all-or-nothing package. SR-only matchmaking works provably well in ladders that get periodically reset, and arenāt flooded with alts.
I can say this, again tonight I am a bit of a losing streak, granted when I try to ask folks to switch and such I get shouted at and called toxic. However I will once again say that although people hate the matchmaking system, I think it is fair. It just sometimes throws you on the one team you another night may be stomping on because they donāt know how to work as a team. Some games you will win, some games you will lose. The loss you need to shake off and move onto the next match. However sometime you will notice you could win a game if other people counter picked instead of just you or the fact that your team is not listening if you try to offer them advice aka, āHey rein donāt just charge in there aloneā¦and you are deadā¦nice.ā
Blizzard just wants your money like every other company. They make these games to be addicting, end of story.
Why do you think they give you medals but then theyāre like āoh no the medals mean nothing thoughā, ok then why do you give them to us and why do you show us stats that mean nothing?
Blizzard has been playing mind games with us since day one they wont even let us see the score board.
Imagine spending all your development time trying to figure out ways to mess with players heads instead of focusing on making a fun game. Blizzard put a bunch of useless stats and medals in the game, how about a screen that shows me the health of my teammates.
You are 100% incorrect.
Competitive mode is handicapped. It has to be to allow people 1000 SR different from each other to group. They donāt wait for 12 players at the same skill level to find a game. They take 6 people on one team and 6 people on the other who AVERAGE to the same MMR, but donāt care how much the individuals differ. That is handicapping. If I have a lower MMR than the average player on my team & at my rank, my team either gets someone with a higher MMR to make up for it, or the other team also gets someone low. It creates horribly imbalanced games.
I would be happy to explain MMR/handicapping to you. Here is my thread on the subject:
If only any of it was actually true, too bad Blizzard has never posted on that thread. Stop spreading lies.
As opposed to true lies?
Shh Iām drunk, you knew what I meant.
Gee I wonder why this keeps coming up by DIFFERENT people yet the SAME people swoop in and defend it.
Folks its all speculation - for MMR, because really it could be true.
Folks its all speculation - against MMR, because really you could just suck.
Lets raise this to the next level and ask why we havent been shown anything. 1) no matter what will be shown no1 will believe it. 2) what could be shown could be exploited (but then how its a perfect system?). 3) what could be shown could answer everyoneās questions and two sides can come together and we can just talk about higher level stuff.
It would be nice if DIFFERENT people come on and say I just had a 10 game losing streak, and ONE person could calmly say well, you were with x people, and after the next session and or the Tuesday āmaintenanceā the system decided you need to play with y people. OR hey when you had that 10 game win streak that was Wednesday, and the play population are worst on Thursday so your lobbies were smaller and you had less āLUCKā the next day.
WE GET NOTHING.
Or, and stay with me here, when your MMR rises, it puts you with other players that also have that same MMR. WHAT!?!?! I know, itās a wild concept, but if youāre crazy enough, it JUST MIGHT MAKE SENSE!
Also, back when they had SR decay, you would see players in lower ranks playing in higher ranks, just because their SR had decayed, but not their MMR.
That doesnt make sense - only because of the overall win probability.
Never at any give point will it actively seek out similiar MMRs - the player lobbies is based on random people clicking queue for game.
At some point MMR is treated super accurate, but then they stick the new players in the middleā¦ any MMR is a guessā¦?
I personally think you want to be in a situation where the game thinks you suck, and it gives you a high MMR person because you are the weighted chain. Then you get the win streaks cause your with people who have the āhigherā MMR.
The next day it finds your MMR is better than it thought, so now its like, ok now YOUR the carry and you just cantā¦ and you lose lose lose. (but its based on time of day - which day - which event is running).
I think it would be a grave mistake that the MMR of a dps is mixed in with the MMR of a tank. I think thats why we are having some really bad games because the MMR diff of the tanks are SUPER tilted but it should have split the tanksā¦ (but then comes the idea about teams), if you have a tank duo and the game CANT split the tanks.
I dont envy the problem, but I do believe they SHOULD make more experiments and communicate that. I also think they should have a team channel for folks who do teams. They should average the MMR per role and not just per team. If they do that now (?) then lord help us.