No winner/loser queues, right Blizzard?

General Discussion
17

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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18

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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19

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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20

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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21

It’s why I don’t play racing games either, and some fighting games.

Absolutely loathe rubber banding difficulty.

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22

It’s not just me. It’s basically the whole forum except a few people like you who don’t believe it’s happening for some twisted/weird reason…???

Hundreds of people in the past 60 days, across every rank and platform and website, all been suddenly saying the same thing. I’m being generous and stopped very early in the search results, no need to post them all, this is just a very small portion of the full picture.

Something.IS.Wrong.

This wouldnt be this bad with a “perfect” matchmaker. It wasn’t like this with the mediocre OW1 matchmaker. Something changed a few months ago. Everyone sees it except you and a few others apparently.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/solution-about-matchmaking-issue/787091

Sorry bud but I can’t take beating my face into a brick wall anymore. Thanks for the convo, I’m off to bed haha.

12 Likes
23

There will always be times, where you go on a loss streak. The reason for it might just be that you or your mates face better opponents, even tho you all are rated the same.

24

Yes, and you expect to see that.

Ok, so what is it? Because here is the thing, OP’s complaint, and your complaint and the 50/50 players complaints are all VERY VERY VERY different complaints.

Throwing a list of people complaining about matchmaking at me is UTTERLY useless unless you can find something in common with their complaints which are not actually in conflict with each other.

Having a bunch of people yelling that the car is too red, and others saying the car is too blue, and others complaining the car is too green…

And then you coming along and saying “see something is wrong with the color of the car because so many people are complaining about it.” is 100% god damn useless.

I can tell you what is going on.

There was a move to 5v5, and the games became much more stompy. But where is the thing, that isn’t the matchmaker. - that is a bunch of designs choices which mean a game is extremely sensitive to someone being slightly better can cause the game to be an utter rollover. Or even hero choices.

But just like you saying “people should be punished to stop them leaving games as much” isn’t the matchmaker either.

I’ve LITERALLY had people complain that the matchmaker made the game a stomp, when they were stomped in one direction in the first map, and they stomped the other team in the next 2.

What the ever hell could the matchmaker have anything to do with that?

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25

There’s no helping these Blizzard apologists.

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26

Company denies allegations that, if proven true, could cause it’s consumers to distrust them. More at 11 as the story unfolds.

In other unrelated news, corporations have successfully created various systems that maximizes consumer engagement unbeknownst to said consumer.

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27

“Something’s seriously wrong with matchups.”
“nuh uh!”
:man_shrugging: Im slightly less infuriated by it after finally removing game from my hard drive, couldn’t take it anymore

and now I’m removing myself from this topic as well, never gonna get anywhere lol, I suggest you do the same

We are just screaming into the void (along with the other hundreds of people also making the same topics like yours and nothing’s happening)

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28

Here is the thing, you literally have people pointing at something which engagement based matchmaking DOESN’T DO, and are trying to use that as proof that they are using engagement based matchmaking.
see…

ok?

You literally have someone who makes matchmakers trying to explain what is going on there, and listening to your complaints to see if something could be done to fix it.

You don’t want to actually understand enough so you can take part in a conversation to fix it.

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29

OP played (engaged with the game) for 30 games in total, 16 games AFTER going on a 14 game lose streak. I’d say their matchmaking is working perfectly for engagement.

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30

They would be more likely to get frustrated and quit overwatch if that kept up. which is why it is not someone which engagement based matchmaking does.

31

But he didn’t. So it worked.

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32

I have a rock which repels tigers to sell you.

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33

And you just like to debate and hold your ground and read your own paragraphs I think

There’s nothing more I can say

(I have years of personal evidence) “not good enough/gamblers say the same thing/matchmakers don’t actually work that way”

(I have hundreds of examples of other people all agreeing there’s something wrong lately) “there’s different complaint specifics so it’s all useless”

I literally am wasting my time at this point so in case you missed it:

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34

On the contrary you’re the one eating up Blizzard’s garbo denial of reality. I’m just the one pointing out other people’s lived experiences. The devs have also said they fixed the matchmaker 4 times in total including yesterday BUT here we are still.

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35

Yes, and those experiences don’t match up to engagement based matchmaking.

They are talking about tuning it. You know, where I was talking about the same options which you end up tweaking when you run matchmaking earlier and asking which people wanted changed.

They are making it so they increasing the weighting on “distance between mmr” of people in the match, so matches will have people of closer MMR together.

This will however have a bunch of other effects, which people will complain about.

36

Literally gambling.
Like damn, remember when video games used to be just fun?

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