No winner/loser queues, right Blizzard?

General Discussion
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I’ve just played 30 matches of quick play, yesterday and today. I first lost 14 matches in a row, most of them complete stomps, and then it turned around and I won 16 matches in a row.

No winner/loser queues, right? Let me break down the mathematical odds of this happening naturally:

If there is a 50/50 average loss/winrate, it’s the same as tossing a coin on the same side. The chances of the same coin flip over 14 coin tosses is 1:16384, so a 14-game losing streak is literally also a 1:16384 probability. That means a streak like that should happen naturally once over a 16,000 games. And after that, I went on a 16-game WINNING streak, mostly complete stomps. The chances of a 16-game winning streak is 1:65536. Meaning it should happen naturally once over 65,000 matches. Not one streak, but TWO streaks like these happening back-to-back are literally 1 in a 1,073,741,824 chance. That’s one in a billion, which means that this should happen naturally only once, over a billion games.

And this happens to me all the time, even in QP. Lose tons of matches, win tons of matches. And it happens to my friends also, to streamers, even to top 500 players.

The matchmaking IS rigged, whether Blizzard want to admit it or not. Putting players on these streaks is written in the algorithms. No question about it. And anyone who thinks it’s not is absolutely delusional.

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So what have you learnt about the claims that the system forces a 50/50 win rate?

People get short streaks, “It’s the system forcing a 50/50 win rate, it’s rigged”
People get long streams, “It’s the system having winners / loses queues, it’s rigged”

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I mean those are the same things. It’s forcing a 50/50 winrate, but it doesn’t mean it does it like “win one-lose one-win one-lose one-etc”. The streak system is probably designed to be addictive. If you keep winning, you wanna continue playing and just play more and more. If you keep losing, you wanna keep playing until you start winning a lot because you know that it’ll turn around at some point.

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In that case it is just the system getting you to play against people of your own skill.

You lost 14 games in a row, the matchmaker REASONABLY thinks you are not as good as you used to be - maybe the hero you were using as a crutch got a nerf. Maybe the meta shifted in a way you can’t keep up with.

Either way, your not as good as it had you pegged as.

So eventually you start being put in and against people who are not as good, because you are playing at their level.

Say, the issue is temporary.

Then you win 14 games in a row, obviously, you were playing at a rank which was too low for you, so, you go up in rank, and are playing with / against harder people.

It doesn’t mean there is winners or loses queues, it just means there is matchmaking.

What do you want the system to do?
Adjust the matches faster? Then the people who complain that the game is forcing a 50/50 win rate will be more upset.
Adjust the matches slower? Then the people complaining about winning streaks like yourself will complain more.
Don’t do as much matchmaking? Then the people who say the game shouldn’t put much higher or lower ranked players in their games will be more upset.

What the hell do you want the matchmaker to do?

It sounds like you want it to adjust FASTER, to push you into low ranks quicker, so you don’t end up with as long of a streak when you are playing below your rank.

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See the title of this topic. My whole point is asking, did Blizzard really say that there are no loser/winner queues? It’s 100% clear that there are, and it’s programmed into the game. The point is that they lie. I haven’t implied anything that I want to change the system.

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There is not, they have confirmed it.

Nope, it is just a natural outcome of matchmaking, and the choices you make of how you tune the matchmaker.

No they don’t. I’m literally giving you the choices they have to make here, and YOU don’t want to make any of them.

In their position, you would have people complaining to you the same way, IN BOTH DIRECTIONS AT THE SAME TIME.

There isn’t a way which they could tune the matchmaker to make you happy, since… you don’t like either direction they would have to move it in.

So. Do you want them to move your MMR faster? (so you have shorter streaks, but, then it really will feel like they are forcing a 50/50 win rate. )

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My last stretch of playing before I uninstalled few days ago was something like 7 free ez stomp wins in a row then 8 hard crush impossible to win games

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They literally came out and said those queues don’t exist. When anyone with a half a brain realizes that there are. Did you even read my OP, the odds of this happening naturally? The matchmaking system finds players in your team where it already knows your team will lose, or win. And opposites to the other team. That’s literally the definiton of a winner/loser queue. And they said it doesn’t exist, when it clearly does. I don’t care about it personally, I’m not complaining about the system. I don’t wanna make any changes or suggest better alternatives. Stop saying that I do. The whole point is that they lied to us and that these queues DO exist.

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And people with a whole brain realize they are not.

Yes, and you are making a VERY weird assertion that the matches are utterly independent.

If you fall far enough that your play style isn’t right for the ranks you are playing in, you will keep falling.

If you are tilted you will keep falling.

If you are teaming up in a duo with a drunk person you will keep falling.

If you are having an off day where you are not playing to anything like you could normally play, you will keep falling.

It is trying to make a balanced game. You are out in crazy conspiracy land to think it isn’t.

Because you can’t.

No, the point is you THINK they lied to you, because you can’t understand the stats around matchmakers or spend any amount of time trying to work out what changes would be needed and what other problems would come up.

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RobotWizard is patiently explaining to you why it is not a lie.

What you are suggesting is that the matchmaker is designed to put some people into winning matches and others into losing matches. That’s the only way a concept like “winner’s queue” and “loser’s queue” makes sense.

That is, the matchmaker would literally say that you, Melissa, should now lose a bunch of matches and then say that you, Melissa, should then win a bunch of matches.

What RobotWizard is explaining is that the matchmaker does not do this. What it does instead is try to find matches where you, Melissa, have a roughly equal chance of winning and losing (and so does everyone else in the match.) So that there is no winner’s or loser’s queue, but instead the matchmaker is striving to give everyone a “fair queue.”

But… and this is what RobotWizard was trying to explain to you… the matchmaker is not some all-knowing god. And the players are not robots who perform at the same level all the time. So the matchmaker does not know when a player is trying out a new hero (because it does not know who the player will pick when they queue), or slightly tipsy, or having a bad day, etc.

So players can perform worse than their average (or better). This can turn what should have been a fair lobby into a lopsided lobby. What the matchmaker does do is learn more about the players as they play, so if someone is having a bad day, they will get better matches after a bit. And they may very well win those matches.

What I just described (and RobotWizard described before me) could look exactly like the experience you described. But there was no winner’s or loser’s queue involved. And, just to throw it out there, this isn’t some Overwatch only thing. The Apex Legends devs had to put out a blog post recently explaining the same stuff and explicitly included the same explanation that they don’t have a winner’s or loser’s queue in their FAQ, because everyone in the history of competitive matchmaking has made the same complaints.

It’s not about Overwatch. It’s just that people do not like being rated on their skill over time in a competitive environment and love to blame things outside their control for their skill rating.

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The matchmaker does do this. Even if it’s not intentionally programmed to, it’s the reality many of us live in.

After hundreds if not thousands of times of going thru this and seeing it happen to me,

I cannot be anything other than 100% convinced matchmaker flips back and forth between “it’s your turn to win for a while” and then “It’s your turn to lose for a while”

Like you’re forced to replay the same experience hundreds/thousands of times (Ive been reporting on it since 2021), the pattern shoved in your face hundreds/thousands of times, forgive me if I’m not convinced it was all in my mind when someone goes “nuh uh” :laughing: :melting_face:

Like there’s more than just someone’s word…photoshop collages of the tab screens Ive made/ or matchmaker history showing the same (5 losses then 5 wins then 4 losses then 5 wins then 7 losses then 7 wins) pattern endlessly for almost 2 years now, It’s (___) ridiculous and the main reason I uninstalled finally

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If you go to as casino you will hear people talk like this ALL the time. Or go to a role playing game… see people swap dice because “this dice hates me today”

It is human nature to see patterns in noise.

Or attribute things they see to outside forces.

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There is no noise, we have a hard, direct log of matches in the match history

5 wins, 5 losses, 5 wins, 5 losses, 5 wins, 5 losses, 5 wins, 5 losses, for almost 2 years.

no matter how good or bad you play. If it’s your turn to lose you’re gonna lose, no matter how hard you carry

But Ive learned I cannot convince anyone around here who doesn’t look close enough so these topics are pointless

(I think its funny there’s finally so many lately, hundreds of other topics the past few months ALL saying the same thing…hmm…)

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And yet, other people are saying they are different in length…

This tells me you have about 5 games worth of attention span before you need a break.

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Okay, RobotWizard and taleswapper are completely delusional, now I’m convinced of it. I won’t even debate this anymore with people who can’t even understand facts, logic and mathematical probability. Delu players.

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Nah the reality is that no amount or type of data will be good enough for you

No amount of collages of tab screens where losing team has 3-5 total elims and winning team has literally 70+ (I have made them, I would say I can post the imgur link but it’s a waste of time)

No amount of anecdotal years of evidence will convince people who just handwaive it away and go “gamblers fallacy/delusions of noise and human-pattern seeking brain” which is quite honestly more frustrating than the actual endless stomp streaks themselves

It’s almost impossible to make someone change their mind on this kinda thing without them going thru it. And I can’t fathom how they aren’t going thru it too. Maybe they play with a group of friends only/have perfect games nonstop somehow idk

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The POINT I am making is a perfect matchmaker will throw all of the same things you complain about.

Sure, you have a smurf… now. What is the matchmaker to do about that?

No amount of saying “Ok, these are the things you have as tradeoffs in matchmaking, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?”

And people people just bail the hell out of the conversation because they don’t like the tradeoffs is also frustrating.

What changes do you want done?.

Do you want them to matchmake closer in MMR and accept the time difference in getting matches and more patterns in win / loss streaks?

Do you want them to make the matchmaking loser and get more " where losing team has 3-5 total elims and winning team has literally 70+ " games?

Do you want them to move the MMR faster, and get people saying “it is forcing a 50/50 win rate” more?

Do you want them to move the MMR slower, and get people saying “it has winner /loser queues more?”

WHAT CHANGE DO YOU WANT? Specifics. How do you want the tuning to change?

You have width (people getting picked from further away MMRs or only from closer ones)

You have speed of MMR shift (one side gives people complaining about 50% forced rates, and the other gives people complaining about streaks)

Which direction do you want these things to be moved?

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I’m not sure what you’re saying here sorry

Doesn’t have to be perfect; even mediocre-ly better would not have this issue. OW1 didn’t have this issue until the very end of it’s life, that’s when me and a few others started posting about it (we called it “forced 50% winrate” back then)

There’s something fundamentally wrong in the code. There should not suddenly be literally hundreds of topics in the past month about this issue all from different people, from bronze to top 100 on twitter

For one, implement deserter timeout for leavers in casual modes like most other games have had for 20+ years. Everything I’ve been talking about is quickplay by the way

There’s zero penalty for leavers (besides a exp rate reduction slap on the wrist after 10 leaves within like 10 minutes), and because 75% of challenges revolve around getting wins in unranked modes, people leave at the slightest hint of struggle (aka as soon as the initial teamfight is lost, 20s in)

This in itself was already a horrendous problem in OW1 before this forced wins/losses and hard stomp streaks issue. But now the issues compound themselves and you have a string of backfillers/leavers which cements your loss even further

And then The next change Id want them to…idk how to describe it well… But whatever they did, it’s blatantly clear they prioritize quickest queue times over match-up closeness among people’s skill level.

We do not need 5 second queues for every match. I think if they spent a little more time we could get better match ups, and not utterly ridiculous ones like GM and top 500 in half of all my matches when I play at a high plat/diamond level,

or when it switches and Its my turn to stomp for half a dozen games and I get put against console players and people who are comically bad, over and over.

When this happens I usually just stand around or do funny stuff, It feels bad to farm them and it’s not fun hardstomping new players like that

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If the code was perfect, people would still give the same complaints - so, honestly, you complaining about it doesn’t mean it is broken.

Nothing to do with the matchmaker. I mean, I approve of this, but it isn’t matchmaker tuning.

Ok, so make the MMR range which it is getting games from narrower. BUT… this will make it so you see more of the same people each match, (and people will complain the game is dying) AND you will see more of the x wins / x losses patterns since, you will have more of a defined gradient in how hard the games are - which I note you are already complaining about.

Basically there will be a narrower range you COULD get a fair game, so you will spend more time bouncing from side to side in that range, and the games will feel more like they have been “forced” by the matchmaker, since MMR will be more ‘highly defined’.

As it is, I would ALSO prefer this direction, but you will get people complaining MORE about stuff saying the game is even more rigged, and will call the matchmaker change a bad one because of it.

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I think that part of what is important to understand here is:

  1. Players will always report that there is a thumb on the scale forcing them to lose/underperform in any competitive ranking system. I see it daily in my job as a graduate entrance exam coach- people looking to enter top ten competitive graduate programs (so, a very elite group of highly educated adults) will often begin our conversations with an understanding of the matchmaker (that is the algorithm that rates them on a competitive ladder and selects the difficulty of the opposition they face- in this case- how hard are the questions they are tasked with answering) that suggests that it is causing them to underperform. But it also comes up in any competitive online game environment (including but not limited to that of Overwatch.)

  2. A fair matchmaker also yields win/loss streaks.

  3. While everyone says, “No, morons! The matchmaker will always result in these weird win/loss streaks of this sort, because it is forcing them,” people report wildly differing results- some people experience shorter streaks, some people do not experience consistent streaks, some people win more than they lose, others lose more than they win, etc. So the anecdotal evidence that everyone supposes supports their idiosyncratic position and counters what we know about how these systems operates, does not in fact do this. What it actually supports is that player perception is faulty and everyone thinks their own limited experience is more universal.

  4. It would be counterproductive for Blizzard (and every other system dev) to design the matchmaker in this way- all it does is increase player frustration and churn. (We have data to support this- including the same paper that everyone always cites in order to suggest that the matchmaker optimizes for engagement- that paper points out that long streaks of the same match outcome, particularly losses, are the worst way to optimize engagement.)

So, what we know, is that players always report this in any given competitive ranking algorithm and that it would be counterproductive for the game to include a matchmaker that does this intentionally. What we are being asked, then, to believe is that either there is a vast conspiracy of everyone who has ever designed such a system to design these systems such that they decrease their own revenue, or that everyone who has ever designed such a system has somehow independently decided to design them in such a way as to decrease their own revenue.

It beggars belief.

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