Mtchmaking is still rigged

Competitive Discussion
228

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753625906#post-13

From Scott Mercer:

We’re always trying to put you in fair matches that we think you have a 50% chance to win, and do it quickly so you’re playing Overwatch instead of staring at a queue timer. We never intentionally seek to put you in an unfair one.

I’ve seen comments like “I just won three games in a row, so the matchmaker put me in a bad stomp to get back to a 50% win rate”. It doesn’t do anything like that at all. It just keeps on trying to find fair matches. If you do win more than you lose, your SR will slowly go up. As that happens it’ll also put you up stronger opponents that match your new SR. That’s not so you lose, it’s to keep your matches fair.

There’s one other thing to remember, though. The results of a match that the matchmaker thought was perfectly fair don’t always result in a match that is hard fought every meter of the payload and you win by just holding them off from reaching the final checkpoint at 0:00 time remaining. Matches with teams of equal skill result in 3-0 stomps more than you think. Maybe an early fight snowballed out of control due to staggered spawns, maybe a player decided he was going to try to pickup a new hero that match, or perhaps your’s cat decided to play with your keyboard right before you used that Graviton Surge and it wildly missed its mark. We’re all human, and we don’t perform at the perfectly same level all the time. It’s one of the reasons competitive games are so much fun to play and watch.

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229

For sure, i love rolling the dice too. But atleast i know my odds if i roll the dice.

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230

So your solution is to fill everyone into grandmaster so that everyone is satisfied? Wow what a thoughtful idea!

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We all know this. One side’s argument is “You’re terrible at deciding what a 50% chance to win is. So terrible, that we frequently experience stompfests and losing/wining streaks” and the other side’s argument is “OMG YOU’RE SO ENTITLED YOU JUST DON’T KNOW HOW THE WORLD WORKS. IT’S NOT RIGGED OR HANDICAPPED THEY JUST DO THIS THING THAT IS EXACTLY THE DEFINITION OF HANDICAPPING”

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232

I think you’ve been reading and believing way too much of Cuthbert’s “handicapping” thread.

Here’s the real explanation:
Welcome to a 6v6 extremely-team-oriented game played by human beings.

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233

What?

That’s not what I’m saying at all. Like not even close.

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234

It’s funny, if you follow the simple rule of “take a break after two losses”, those streaks disappear. I wonder if that means these loss streaks are just due to upset and tilted players, or if the game forgets to force you on a loss streak if you take a break?

Lot’s of players DON’T get these swings back and fourth, for those that do, here is what happens:

  • For whatever reason, they get a win streak. Good day, luck, whatever
  • They end up ranked above their “real skill”
  • Luck runs out, and they lose a few games as they are going against better players
  • Now tilted, they continue to play terribly and lose a lot
  • Eventually they either take a break, or get lucky, and win again
  • Below their “real rank” and untilted, they win-streak back up…
  • Repeat cycle

Look I’m not trying to be high or mighty here. I’ve done this exact same thing. I’ve not wanted to take a break, and kept playing thinking “I have to win again SOON right?”

I’m just not delusional enough to think it’s the system targeting me. It was my playing in a bad mental state, so I lost a bunch. Once I reset, I was able to climb back up to where I belong. Loss-streak, then win-streak (Oh my GOD rigged handicapped game! /s).

Following the simple rule of “consecutive losses = break time”, these streaks disappear. You are the cause, not the match maker.

235

Hi everyone!

This has been my personal experience. I am someone who has been in Diamond, Plat, Gold and even low Silver. Low Silver was easy wins and I had four golds and 70% kill participation. Gold was similar. When I hit Plat then everything changed. I was at nearly 30 more wins than losses on record. My Soldier stats was top 97% on Overbuff, same with DVA, Zen and Orrissa. But when I hit Plat the enemies were more challenging and I was NOT able to get four gold in every match anymore and I was no longer getting 70% kill participation. I actually started losing but my record is still nearly 30 more wins than losses.

In contrast, when I was in Diamond I mostly lost matches and kept losing until I dropped down to Gold and then climbed back to mid-plat and stuck there. I think this is mostly my skill cap to be honest and not any rigging of the matchmaker.

Below is my theory and personal experience with the matchmaker.

If you perform extremely well and carry super hard and can do this consistently then the system will put you in fairly easy to win matches where you do not need to carry because you have a great team who all have great teamwork and focus the objective together.

If you perform super good but die a lot even if its because you have no good healers or bad tanks then it does not matter how good your accuracy, elims, or damage was. All the system focuses on is your K/D ratio. If you died a lot then the system figures it was your fault the team lost even if you had 75% kill participation. So in this case having four gold is not good.

So when your climbing the system does not see you as a threat causing your team to lose. If you do lose then you lose very little SR and if you do win then you gain more SR than usual cause your climbing and consistently performing good and not dying a lot and are frequently onfire throughout the match. If you keep this up then you will climb not only due to your performance but also do to the system putting you in easier to win matches.

However, if you get into a match where your team is destroyed and you die a lot (even due to a leaver), then the system thinks that you may be too high now and you caused your team to lose by under performing or dying too much or you did not go onfire but your teammates did.

If you end up having a few matches where your losing over and over again and now suddenly find that the matches seem impossible to win then this means either the system is putting you on hard to win matches to help you go down a little cause you causing your team to lose (what the system thinks even if its wrong) or you climbed too high and you really are struggling and are not carrying as much, dying more often, and not onfire as much cause your playing against higher SR/MMR enemy teams and you are at your limit as far as skill goes or a combination of these.

However, if you suddenly were able to start performing well, getting onfire a lot, not dying hardly at all, and winning one sided wins rather than close calls that you barely won then the system will start helping you climb again.

That is what my personal experience has been with matchmaking.

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I don’t classify playing on a smurf account at 2800 with less than a total of 30 hours combined between QP and Comp as “Still Climbing”

You don’t even master a single character in 30 hours unless you are a GM level player from the start.

So how about you show us your ELO hell main account instead of posting from your smurf account?

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237

Why do people revive extremely old threads…

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I’ve climbed to my correct rank (just under Masters). The problem is that getting to my correct rank was astronomically more difficult than it should have been.

I have a second account that I mainly tank/heal on. Because I’m not DPSing I can’t carry these games so the SR tanks to around 2500. When it gets too low I decide to DPS so I can push it up a bit so the teammates I get aren’t so bad. At first I win around 4-5 matches easy, but then the matchmaker realizes I’m playing really well and offsets my skill by either placing me with potatoes or placing someone just as good as me (mid diamond player skill) on the other team in order to make the match fair - then the epic struggle to rank up begins again even though I’m around 800 SR below where I should be and am trying my hardest. Will I rank up? Sure, but only after heroic efforts.

The matchmaker creates ELO hell by prioritizing fair matches over allowing people to get to their correct rank.

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239

It is hard to not buy into the “forced loss streak” sometimes… This season my main account went from mid diamond to mid plat, it felt like I could literally do nothing to stop it. I hopped into my alt account (which I have to play with different friends and practice other characters with no penalty to my main SR). I started playing my main characters, and quickly climbed from mid plat to mid diamond…

It was really strange, but I just put it down to luck… That’s all it is sometimes, you get lucky with some teams and unlucky with others. Sometimes you have a sub par, but the enemy team is even worse or has someone throwing!

What I have learned, is your average SR over your season is where you should be.

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Oh yeah, a man defending his business is all the proof I need.

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Ok, let’s assume that you’re right then, and that matchmaking is rigged (I don’t agree with you, we’re just going with an assumption for the sake of this argument). If it WAS NOT rigged, then what would happen to you?

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Ideally I should have fair matches, with roughly equal skill levels on both teams. If the system wasn’t rigged I wouldn’t get awful teammates, throwers and leavers just because I’ve won 3 games in a row.

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243

Yes you would.

Sometimes players have a bad day and play like garbage. We have all been there.

Keep in mind, for every game you play with a garbage teammates, there’s a game where you are the garbage teammate to someone else.

Ultimately there is no way for the system to know you’re going to have a bad game without literally reading your mind. There is no way it can know that someone is going to throw or leave games without reading their minds, either.

That means they A: Can’t not put you against them, because they don’t know, and B: Can’t actively put you against them to “rig” the game.

All they can do is retroactively punish those players.

That’s all anyone can do without being literal gods.

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The system obviously knows very well if a player is better or worse than the average level of his team, or if he has the habit of throwing/leaving games.

245

Excellent evidence. Your point is completely demonstrable and undeniable.
Oh, wait, it’s none of those things.

The burden of proof is on you.

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If you really feel that way, then stream/record those matches and post them, like this player did:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20761027557?page=1

(I’m really only posting this because you clearly come off as someone who thinks he’s far better than he really is and is probably also a quick tilter, just like the guy in the above link who tried to prove “rigged” matchmaking in his videos)

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247

There’s one little thing you’re not understanding.

The players on your team that you are calling trash, are the same skill level as you are.

Maybe they don’t have the same skills as you do, but they are the same level.

It’s really easy to see what skills a player doesn’t have, so you see those mistakes and think they’re a terrible player. But they do have skills that make them just as good as you, you’re just not paying enough attention to see them. Because it’s hard to see that a player is good unless they get a 4k that fills the feed.

It’s important to remember you also probably make mistakes that make them rip their hair out.

Also, yes, they do know if that player has a habit of throwing/leaving games. This is something they keep track of. But a player who’s never done either of those things can do so at any time for any reason and it’s entirely out of Blizzard’s control. Furthermore, even if a player has left games before, it is functionally impossible for Blizzard to know if it was malicious or just a lost connection or something along those lines. And you know what they do about that? They treat every leaver as malicious and punish them accordingly. What more do you want from them than that? Throwing generally will get them banned pretty quickly in my experience. If you report them, that is.

Side note just in case: Don’t report leavers for leaving. It does nothing, Blizzard will just ignore the report. They’re already punished automatically. If they do something else like be toxic feel free, though