long read but worth it imo.
Overwatch needs to take another page out of rivals’ playbook like hero bans and implement something so completely obvious to anyone who plays the game
Tldr: add performance based mmr in ranked as it will make the game more rewarding and less frustrating by reducing the impact matchmaking issues have on the individual’s match to match experience
What is the biggest issue with the game rn? Obvious to anyone who has queued a game in the last year.
Matchmaking. Poor match quality. Terrible teammates. Stomps
How do you fix that? You cant. You can never make perfect matchmaking. You nor the system can predict what random teammates will or wont do in a match. Its not possible to matchmake ‘balanced’ teams because anyone can do anything at any time. The game can put 10 ‘equal’ players in a game but if someone decides they want to play a different hero than usual, or the hero they usually play doesnt work well in the given situation it all falls apart. No one can predict that
So What can you do? Create systems to help reduce both the likelihood and frustration of those bad matches happening.
In comes performance based mmr where the game actually heavily weighs the amount of rank you gain or lose based on how you played in that match and less on your performance as a team.
What does this do?
Make playing well more rewarding
If you play well and therefore climb faster your time feels more respected as a player. If you play really well but lose, cus you have a leaver or cus you have someone who is dragging the team down etc, you feel less penalised because the game takes into account your performance and drops you less than normal
make playing badly have consequences
If you play badly you should drop. End of story. Someone who is not performing should not be being babied and kept at their rank due to rigged mmr. If someone plays poorly they should be losing way more rank than they currently do.
If this bad performance is a 1 off, just a bad game yknow, then the prior point helps address this case. If 1 game they played really badly but normally theyre good, they may lose a lot of rank that 1 game and they should accept they played badly and take the hit. If every other game they perform well and it was truly 1 bad game then they should bounce back due to how performance based ranking works. If its not a 1 off and they consistently perform badly or are very inconsistent then they shouldnt be being kept at their rank which is what the system currently tries to do. It says they are diamond and tries everything to keep them there despite their gameplay saying otherwise
reduced impact of leaver & throwers
Pretty self explanatory. The more weight is put on how you perform the less impact a leaver or thrower has on your rank. You can have a leaver but if you play well you may only lose 5-10%. This has 0 way of being abused unlike other options for solving leavers like making the team with the leaver not lose any rank. You still lose rank for the loss, the leaver just has less say on how much you lose and more is placed on how you play
less toxicity and avenues of frustration
Pretty logical. Game and rank is more about how you perform. Game is less about how teammates perform. You will have more focus on your gameplay and care less about how your teammates are doing. Less toxicity and frustration toward teammates because what they do or dont do affects your rank less. The 1 trick widow who cant get a kill and loses you the game, as long as you did well your rank will be largely unimpacted from that widows performance. + you will feel great only losing 5-10%, knowing that widow lost 50-60%.
people care more
If your rank is more about your solo performance people will naturally care more about how they play. If someone is playing badly rn there is 0 incentive for them to try. With more performance based ranking suddenly playing poorly actually has consequences and that player is more incentivised to swap or try something different knowing if they keep hard forcing a hero that isnt working etc they will drop massively.
Please for the love of god add something to actually reward player performance and make the game less reliant on randos. Ranked is largely unplayable due to the major swings in match quality from 1 match to the next. I dont feel like my time is respected.
When i sit down to play for 3 hrs, that should be 3 hrs of me trying my best to win and being rewarded for my efforts. Not 3hrs of grafting trying to get 4 other randoms to work together. Trying to get 1 tricks to swap where it clearly isnt working. Losing games in the spawn room because people are not willing to adapt or listen to win the game.