Most complaints are from players who don't WANT a competitive system

Competitive Discussion
1

This is the truth about almost all complaints on this forum. Some people do not understand what a competitive system is, how it has to work, and the fundamentally harsh nature of it. They want to be coddled and told they are great just for trying.

Let’s go way back to Overwatch beta. Under intense community pressure for a competitive system, Blizzard released their first attempt towards the end of beta. It was terrible as a competitive system.

You won/lost a flat amount (10 points), and moved up through tiers. Except for the highest tiers, you had all sorts of ways to win additional extra points, but could never lose more points. Go on a winstreak, get the most medals, whatever. So this meant anyone could climb to “masters” just by grinding games, even with a 50% win-rate or lower. In addition, once you hit a tier you couldn’t drop from it, no matter how much you lost. You bottomed out. It also reset you to the bottom of your tier every month (monthly seasons).

Most people harshly rejected this. It wasn’t a competitive system at all. It was a farce, where you simply grinded up every month. At the time, I didn’t understand how or why they would ever suggest this. Now I do. Now, I see people sometimes asking for the same things, because they don’t want a competitive system. They want an easy, grindy, participation trophy.

Blizzard afterwards implemented the competitive system we have now. While it has been tweaked, the core has not changed. Based on the principles of Elo, you have a number that represents how good you are. Win and it goes up, lose and it goes down. The same basic MMR system you see in many games, from CS to LoL to Dota to Rocket League.

This is the most accurate system anyone has created to judge skill. Many truly competitive players have worked, improved, and climbed through the system with great satisfaction. However, many less-competitive minded people find themselves very unhappy with the fundamental truths of competition.

  • You can’t win unless someone else loses

Every game is against other real people. You can constantly find threads talking about how they get “unfair” losses. Where are all the people getting “unfair” wins? Who is on the other team of these posters? Everyone gets the occasional bad luck and bad game, but everyone also gets the occasional good luck and good games. You aren’t special.

  • You can’t climb unless someone else falls

The extension of the above point for multiple games. In a very real sense, you take your SR from other players. To climb, you have to win more, and cause other players to fall. When you say you deserve to be higher ranked, you are saying you are better than players ranked above you, and that you deserve to push them down lower as you climb up. There is no objective measure of how good you are. All rank is relative to other players.

  • You will always fall from your peak

This one is infuriating, the number of people who complain about “falling after a season high” is insane. Stop and think for a moment. After you reach a season high, there are only two possibilities: You either win forever and climb to 5000SR, or you lose and fall. That’s it, that is every option.

“But I shouldn’t drop so far!” Oh, so you expect to hit a new high point in your SR, and then maintain a perfect 50/50? You expect L-W-L-W-L-W-L-W-L afterwards?

Here’s the truth, just like everyone gets bad lucks and drops sometimes, everyone gets good luck and climbs higher than they really deserve. Your season high is NOT how good you are. Where you sit normally is how good you are. Enjoy the peak, be proud of how high you did reach, but don’t pretend that’s your real skill. In a competitive system, it is EXPECTED people will fall after reaching peak ranks.

Okay, I don’t want to rant too long. I wish people would be more open with what they want. Instead, many of these complaints are combined with requests for a “real” or “fair” competitive system. When what they are actually asking for is the opposite.

Can’t climb? Want to blame your system or your teammates? Well guess what, every player with higher SR than you had the same types of games, but unlike you, were able to win more. If you can’t win, you don’t deserve to climb. It’s that simple. That’s the harsh truth of a competitive system.

It doesn’t matter how good you think you are. Win and prove it.

79 Likes
2

I agree with you on a lot of points but it’s not that easy. I actually do complain about unfair wins. It’s the steamrolls I complained about. I get steamrolled or I steamroll. That’s not saying I shouldn’t be in this SR range. What I do mind is the kind of matches I get.

You can climb by getting better. The Sr system is actually accurate, that is undeniable. If you play a 100+ games on multiple accounts with the same heroes, meaning those you know how to play, not simple OTPs. If you do all those gamea all your accounts will be very close in the ladder. There can be a 100 to max 200SR difference but you won’t get one in bronze and one in masters or stuff like that.

While the SR system and ranking is actually pretty accurate, it’s the matchamking that is my main complaint. And: gold/silver/plat have huge amounts of players in their ranks. The problem is that there is actually an increidble varied range of skills in every single rank there.

I’ve seen silver genjis and tracers that were just amazing and didn’t understand how they could be so low. And I 've seen horrible high gold players. You need to thin out the crowd in those ranks.

But again: while the SR seems to be pretty accurate, the problem is really the matchmaking. Honestly for you: how many tight and fun matches did you have?

For me personally I could count them on my hands. I have very few matches where it’s really fun because I don’t consider a steamroll of the enemy team a fun match.

That’s my main complaint. You often either get steamrolled or do steamroll. And that’s my issue

16 Likes
3

A lot. I’d say a majority are “tight”, in that both teams could have won. The reasons people don’t feel this way are many…

  1. Lower ranked players are terrible at resetting

Overwatch is a game where the winner gets a small advantage. This isn’t a big deal at higher ranks, but I’ve watched a decent amount of silver game play (I know a silver player) and they are awful at dealing with it.

People stream in one by one. They waste ults. They feed ult-charge, etc. Compared to players who actually regroup and manage their ult economy, this gives the team who wins the first fight a huge advantage.

The key point is the game wasn’t necessarily unbalanced, it just played out one sided. If you repeated it, how many of those games would have changed? Do you know how many games I saw with old KotH, best of 5, where one team lost 2 points only to reverse sweep the next 3? Happened all the time. Yet, people will now walk away from getting 0-2 on a KotH map and say “what a terrible game”.

  1. People are awful at recognizing what is going on in a game

Even at high ranks, I’ve had people say “this team sucks, matchmaking sucks” because we were losing, and then we turn it around and win. Often we aren’t even being “stomped”, the game is fairly close but they perceive losing at all as evidence the game is unbalance and unfair.

Most of the time, a single fight can dramatically swing the outcome of a game, and one pick can swing the outcome of a fight.

  1. On skill variance between players, everyone values their own skillset.

I’ve seen this exact sort of thing play out in Overwatch and other games too. DPS-dude has good aim and mechanics, doesn’t join voice, doesn’t work with his team. He gets solo kills regularly, but doesn’t bother playing around his team.

Support-guy likes to watch the pro’s and learn strategies, but has terrible mechanics. Tries to organize their team, and get everyone to work together. However, they struggle to stay alive in fights.

You put them on a team together, and these conflicting skillsets will cause problems, and often lead to a loss. DPS-Dude will complain his support was always dying, and he got picks but his team did nothing. Support-guy will complain the DPS just ran around on their own and wouldn’t group. Both will walk away thinking the other sucks, deserves a lower rank. Neither reflects on what they could have done better themselves.

Overwatch is a complex game with many skills that can lead to victory. Aim, movement, positioning, gamesense, teamwork, communication, even your attitude is a big factor. So yeah, at anyone rank you’re going to have people with different skillsets. Unless they are a new account or you think they were boosted, the player is actually about as good as you if they are at your rank.

That’s not even going into how people might just have a bad game, be trying to fill a role they aren’t good at, etc.

32 Likes
4

The world is your oyster! Besides for picking your teammates. Blizz will coddle you in that respect whether you like it or not.

5

I agree with this.

The only thing I would add is that one of the problems is the the system as it stands does a poor job of telling a player how skilled they actually are. Since they go up against players of similar skill and the only performance metrics given are medals, it seems they tend to get put into a false sense of personal skill.

Players tend to end up moving up in the system through the hidden MMR and play against and with better players but their SR value remains the same. They end up losing those games and have nothing to tell them that they were bested by them.

Players also may encounter someone who is slightly better and knows how to punish bad positioning or predictable movement patterns. They run out into the open and get picked off and think that person is a smurf but may just not realize how easy they have made it for them. A Bronze and silver player may not be able to tell the difference between a Plat, Diamond, Master or GM player because they never encounter them and leaned how to beat them.

A bronze player could play against a deranked Gold player and think they are high Elo. They just have terrible movement habits and would die over and over to someone who has at basic aiming skills and less predictable movement.

It’s hard for a player to learn how to
Improve when they have no clue what good looks like. They can watched high level streamers and OWL games but that does not replace actual practice.

I think the system needs to drop things like gold medals and maybe give the player feedback on if their performance is above or below average for their level. That way at least the player knows if they are doing poorly. A player can have gold medals but still be performing below average.

I also think MMR has to be shown as well so a player can tell if they are improving or not. If they see their SR go up but their MMR not increase as much then the player at least knows they have hit their performance ceiling and they need to practice more to go higher.

5 Likes
6

This does not happen. Under normal play, your SR follows MMR very closely. You need something (decay, placements, etc) to mess with that. Even if your SR did separate from your MMR for some reason, there are bonus gains that will bring it back.

That said, over time reading this forum I wonder if visible MMR would be better. The current system works well, and if you take the time to learn how it works it is clever, but the “hidden” part clearly frustrates some players. Is that just a tiny vocal minority, or a meaningful chunk of the player base? How much would it improve if they could see their MMR? I don’t know.

4 Likes
7

Yes, it would be. It is pretty silly having the real number be invisible, and it’s distorted shadow be visible.

Probably the greatest value of having the real number be visible would decrease the number and variety of bad theories regarding matchmaking and ranking.

8 Likes
8

I’m not pointing this out as it being a bad thing. From the sounds of the explanations we have received from the devs, MMR is a larger number then SR so it has a wider level of variance. Because of that it moves in larger values which gives a wider spectrum of players. As an example If I move from 2100sr to 2125sr
my MMR might move from 2,865,227 to 3,124,876. in the next game I’m placed with players who are around that MMR range. However players at the 2125sr range may have MMR values ranging from 2,600,000 to 3,500,000. If my MMR moves upwards enough to hit 5 mil and I still have not lost performance then it will start moving both very quickly.

In my own observations I do notice that when I start to over perform in a few games the next set of games get harder. Players have better movement and aim and I find myself having to put more effort in to achieve the same performance and my mistakes are punished more often. I believe because the MMR values are so large that the higher values will allow for players of verious skills to be at the same rank. Its like a tier system within a tier system.

I can literally see where my MMR is higher and lower based on how easy the opponents are. It’s my theory that as your MMR increases like that and your performance suffers the system knows to keep you at that level and it keeps your SR gains average. However if your performance is not hindered by the increase then the system knows it has you misplaced and will accelerate your SR gains at that point. It will also work the opposite way and drop you if you keep underperforming. It’s almost like you end up going fluctuating through three tiers at each level the way these two number systems interact.

  1. Promotion tier: Playlng with players who perform better a their rank and winning games. You are less likely to win these games if you are above your average rank.

  2. Standar tier: You are transitioning between one of the tiers because of wins/losses and your MMR is dead centre of the average for your tier.

  3. Demotion tier: You performance has taken a down turn and you are placed with underperforming players. If you had unlucky games you are more likely to win these games if you are at or below your average rank.

Wins and losses determine which direction you go and performance determines how fast.

It’s a proving system and why it does a good job of accurately judging skill. This is also way very skilled players end up on the fast track to a higher Elo. Their performance does not suffer even as their MMR increases. The game pretty much finds your average performance point this way. This is also why players who find their performance level will fluctuate up and down.

Your true skill level is the mid point of that fluctuation. For me roght now, my low is 1900 and my high is 2300 which puts my true skill at the 2100 range. Every season that mid range gets higher which tells me I am actually climbing.

If players had the ability to see their MMR it would at least give them a visual feedback on how they are fluctuating within the system. They see their MMR moving upwards and downwards and will be able to equate that with the performance of the other players in the game.

If the player ends up with lower MMR and starts to tilt and still performs poorly they can then see the MMR also drop and that might tell them to take a break. This would also maybe help them to understand why the players are having a win/loss streak.

This is all just theory but I feel it explains everything I observe of how the matchmaker behaves. It also helps me to understand why I struggle in some matches and not in others.

3 Likes
9

Technically correct, but not particularly interesting as far as the math goes. Think of it as a conversion between Celsius and Fahrenheit. They both indicate the same underlying quantity (temperature) but use different scales. Converting between one and the other is a matter of a simple formula.

Similarly, instead of showing “true” MMR, Blizzard could show “scaled” MMR, where the median is moved to 2350, and the variance is rescaled to about 400.

The formula (if you care) is sMMR = (tMMR - mean(tMMR)) * 400/stddev(tMMR) + 2350

4 Likes
10

I STRONGLY DISAGREE…

with the fact that I can only like this post once.

Sad face.

8 Likes
11

Thank you. I can finally be in peace now.

3 Likes
12

To be honest, even the competitive system that blizzard currently has isn’t very competitive.

13

You’re right that there are a group of people who want to be coddled and get rewarded with wins they don’t deserve, they believe they are better than what they are.

Then there’s a group that are intelligent, down to earth, logical, observant people who play many hours of competitive and have come to the fairly simple conclusion that the matchmaker has something seriously wrong with it.

Just because there is a subset of people who are unreasonable doesn’t make the entire group of people who share the same opinion unreasonable or wrong.

We do want a competitive system, a true competitive system that does not create even teams, but allows the ladder to work itself out which will eventually create even teams organically. This will require the removal of smurf accounts and boosting which probably leads us to a new “Prime” matchmaker where only one account per hardware ID is allowed, you cannot group with anyone (to prevent people down ranking so they can boost friends), no performance SR boost or any matchmaker creating “fair” teams. Nothing extra, just a pure, raw, matchmaker with no hidden MMR.

6 Likes
14

You keep saying this but don’t explain how it’s supposed to work that’s different than what Blizzard says their system works.

Like, what’s this artificial vs organic? You’ve answered before “what gives it away” but not what you mean by “artificial vs. organic”. I’m not sure what you think the MM does that, while certainly hidden, is is not “pure” or “raw”.

Unless you just mean getting rid of PBSR…but that’s an awfully complicated way to just say “get rid of PBSR”.

1 Like
15

Most complainers just want to get more SR with least effort instead of improving their play. Comp, while it has many flaws (ts totaly missed abusable duo que which generally helps climbing, and group influx in general), unfair to everyone. You are the only constant.

7 Likes
16

Do you have any data showing this effect? A significant increase in SR gains after a number of wins? I have not seen any evidence of win streak bonuses since they were “toned down” a number of seasons ago.

I can’t tell how much of your discussion of tiers is allegorical and how much is literal, but there are no tiers in matchmaking. You are just matched by MMR, a continuous number.

1 Like
17

Last match the highest Gold Elims was me playing as a shield tank. We also had a DVA, Soldier, and Genji on our team.

The match ended with 4 Gold elims and we lost.

How is that supposed to be competitive? No leavers!

18

I think the difference is you think the matchmaker already works “organically” like I described above, where as I don’t.

19

I didn’t mention how I thought it worked.

What is it about how Blizzard says it works that makes it not “organic”?

20

You know I think the point about people thinking season high is indicative of their true rank is indeed a huge culprit contributing to overinflated ego. So Blizzard, throw in a “Season Low” While you’re at it. No, seriously. If people always have their season low and high staring at them, whatever their current SR is at should seem a lot less unfair, as it will always be somewhere between the two points (unless of course you reach a new low/high).

1 Like