Noob placements in high gold matches. Forced loss, WITH EVIDENCE!

Competitive Discussion
61

Not always. I have low lvl borders every 2nd match, tbh, it is mostly a Plat or Gold skill player on an alt account, nothing in particular where they would stand out or be the reason for the outcome of the match.

Last time I had a true smurf was like maybe I dunno 2 weeks ago or so. Cannot really tell. I’ve learned to ignore those game, and only focus on my own gameplay. I personally get discouraged for not being able to do smth against them, but that only tells me how much I still need to work on my own skills.

62

The solution to deranking smurfs is to deal with deranking smurfs directly by detecting deranking and then removing them from the system through bans. Skilled alt accounts can still rank up fast and extreme cases can even be elevated to a more appropriate rank wihout even touching the ladder in between bronze and their actuall rank.
Dealing with derankers is an programing/statistics problem. Not one that cannot be overcome - even if YOU don’t see how. Keeping things as they are guarantees disatisfaction.

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63

I don’t see how any of what you said is relevant to me, why you’re responding to that specific quote with that, or why you assumed that I can’t see how deranking can be dealt with.

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64

Because you respondse to why people aren’t started in bronze was to point out that smurfs would love it, implying that’s the reason for not starting people in bronze.

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65

Well yes, because that would make the situation significantly worse since people wouldn’t have to derank in the first place and derankers would still exist to get back to low SR. Literally nothing about detecting smurfs or programming has been said. it is a very valid reason to not start fresh accounts in bronze.

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66

no it isn’t. you just deal with the problems acociated with that and then do it.

67

So you wanna solve deranking first and then make it so deranking isn’t needed to get into very low SR? Man you should be a dev or something.

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68

you give uranium a run for the money dude

69

Explain then how putting literally every fresh account in the lowest possible rank would help solve deranking and wouldn’t aid smurfing in every way imaginable. Without pretending that Blizzard will put an anti-smurf system in place.

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71

Yes? What is it that you think about this

72

unfortunately new players with decent mechanical skill can get boosted by the mmr system into gold and even low plat. i believe i place plat my first time then lost my way down to silver that first month. unfortunately lots of well versed player actually suck majorly 6 at mechanics and get grouped together with the mechanically able noobs.

73

ok I’ll bite don’t know why this is so hard to imagine:
Derankers: They just need to map peoples average stats over time and then detect when someone has a massive spike in k/d or any relevant stat. It’s essensially anti-cheat for derankers. Reverse MMR if you will. Then you can have an automatic system ban them or flag for review and have a human GM review some games. I mean if the skill is very strong it shouldn’t be possible to stay in Bronze for very long. Stat based anti cheat already exist.

For people that are new and dont belong anywhere near bronze but dont actively try to stay there (dia+ or whatever you decide), you can just give them 500, 1000 or whatever SR to get them away from bronze fast. No need to wait for people to rank up and ruin other peoples SR.

When this is done you start putting new players in bronze.

74

When you have a 50% win rate it means you are where you should be

No, it means an algorithm thinks you are where you should be, and it is programed to keep you there at a 50/50 W/L rate until the end of time. It will “Unluckily” pair you up to keep your L’s up and “Luckily” pair you up to keep your W’s up. This is clear just from the predictable streaks that occur to everyone in every season. If you lose more than two in a row get ready to be force deranked by 500-1000 SR. It’s going to beat your SR down by pairing you with the most keyboard licking idiots until you prove you can 1v6 the enemy team. Alternativley, if you win more than 2, get ready for the enemy teams to be full of throwers and leavers for 500-1000 sr.

75

Thats logicaly nonsense. Explain to me how matchmaker knows where you belong?

Not true. I climbed with mercy from bronze without 1v6 and with many win streaks. Mosr sr i dropped after loss streak was like 200.

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76

If this was true I would regularly be in plat and gold, yet I’d have to throw to reach those ranks lmao. The worst I’ve been in a while is 100-200 below my season high so this is just completely false.

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77

Ok so you proceeded to explain exactly what I said you didn’t need to explain and not what you were supposed to. Anyway let’s say your anti-deranking system is in place and now a GM player buys a new account and gets put in bronze with the intention to make that account just an alt account and not a smurf to stomp low ranks. So now, instead of being put as close to his appropriate SR during placement matches, they need to climb from 0SR, or whatever you consider the starting point.

Now you say this

How do you determine who get’s a boost of 500-1000SR? Do you just give it to someone who happened to pop off a few times? I’ve certainly had streaks of games where I played insanely well, got called a smurf among other things, yet I still deserve to be at high plat to low diamond at best. That I’ve had a spike in stats doesn’t mean I should get and entire rank worth of SR for it. How many games would it take for a player to get this boost?

How exactly does putting every fresh account at such low SR make a masters/GM smurf ruin fewer games than if they were placed at 3000-3500 after palcements? Do you seriously believe that giving 500+SR boosts to a player under the assumption they’re smurfing is reasonable? Such numbers are absurd in a system where 5000 is the ceiling. The first couple games after placements are already quite drastic with amount of SR they give.

As of now, if a genuine GM/T500 player tries to climb as fast games as possible on a fresh account, they can be near GM SR in as few as 10-15 games due to being placed above 3k and post-placements SR boost that net 100-150SR per game. How many games do you think it would take to climb out of bronze?

What’s stopping someone who wants to stomp low SR from buying a new account and abusing the fact that they are now at the lowest possible SR by default? What’s stopping them from doing that again if they climb too high for their liking? Your system would only make the entire ladder infested with smurfs climbing out of bronze instead of gold and plat being by far the most impacted.

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78

It’s not my fault that you assume some broken scenario will unfold that could and would easily be accounted for.
I’m not a dev, a statistician or anything related to this, but even I can imagine how it could be done.

It’s done in other games. Like LOL and Paladins.
LoL puts you in IRON atleast in Teamfight Tactics. then you climb. GM or not.

As of how this is better than now:
While Bronze ot Iron will be shifty and have possibly WORSE matchmaking than now, they represent a very small percentage of the player base.
As time passes and people start ranking up you’ll start getting better and better matches in the whole stack as new players wont be simply dumped into the most populous ranks and potentially ruin all matches on their way down to bronze.
At worst you’ll have is a better player on your team on his way UP - Wich IMO is better.

There probably will be problems with smurfs still but atleast you know it’ll get better as you rank up and not stay the same for 2500SR…

The result for the t500 player is the same, but they just get PUT in a higher rank rather than having tp play games in lower ranks

What’s stopping stompers? You detect and BAN them. And hard boost climbers right out of ranks they dont belong in. You can even have a report flag for this very thing “nominating” people who don’t belong. I’m amazed blizzard haven’t done anything about out of place people allready. The whole rank coloumn needs to be cleaned up…

EDIT: It occurs to me that your whole objection is “there would still be problems”. Wich is true. But this is like saying “What is the point of a justice system? There will allways be criminals…”

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79

I’m just saying it would make things worse than they are now no matter what. A bad design isn’t necessarily broken.

That much is obvious.

I know for myself that back when I used to play a lot of League and was actually somewhat decent at it, I could easily place in high gold after 10 games and be plat in no time. (plat in League is something like low masters in OW)

I don’t know about TFT personally but after asking a friend who used to play, it actually might look like you got placed really low, but in reality you can climb to gold withing a couple games, and you can’t compare a 1v1 strategy game to a 6v6 FPS MOBA shooter. OW can’t do what TFT does.

Your claim about Paladins is wrong too. The same guy I asked about TFT played Paladins as well, peaked in master and his highest rank after placements was plat 1.

So you get what the problem is. New players get dumped in the middle of the ladder by default with placement matches having minimal impact on it. The problem with placement matches is that there’s only 5 of them and they’re too lenient to put the bad players as low as they should, and on top of it, the MMR settles too fast and as a result these players stay where they are due to the matchmaker trying to maintain a 50% win rate for them. That is why we see such drastic skill differences between individual players in gold and plat, as I’ve said a million times at this point. What needs to happen is placements need to be much more strinct and decisive with a bigger sample than just 5 games and a higher possible SR span to be placed in. And while 2500 being the default starting point is not good, 0SR being the starting point is even worse.

As time passes, there will be fewer new players and more alt accounts and smurfs. We see that in effect right now after almost 5 years of Overwatch. While I agree that going from low SR to high SR is better compared to starting in the middle, the low SR shouldn’t be a default starting point for everyone. That’s where placements come into play and OW placements are a complete joke. That’s why they need to be reworked for fresh accounts.

You just had several posts, including this one, talking about putting everyone in bronze by default, but now you’re talking about putting players of T500 skill in a higher rank, how exactly?

How would you do that if they play heroes that aren’t obvious at stomping? Let’s just not count heroes with a steep learning curve like Genji, Tracer or Doom where experience is obvious. Let’s say they just have good game sense and carry by smart ability usage instead. There’s plenty of high SR players who don’t have insane mechanical skill, yet they are some of the best players. Do you only ban mechanically skilled players who stomp by raw aim or playing mechanically demanding heroes a little too well? Do these players not get to climb fast because they don’t do anything measurable?

Can you imagine the number of false flags coming their way? People would abuse the crap out of that the moment they see player do something crazy by accident.

It occurs wrong. There are problems now and you’re coming up with a solution that wouldn’t solve any of the existing problems and introduce more problems on top of it.

You’re basically saying “let’s put all criminals regardless of the offense in a maximum security prison and only move them to better places if they behave”. Instead of misplacing people with a bad placement system, you want to remove the system entirely and misplace everybody rather than fixing the placement system.

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80

You’re right Clarence, solving this is impossible. Simply impossible.

Your ansewer to anything is just pointing out one problem you find and then stopping there. Imagine you being a mechanic. “No mam, your car has a flat tyre and I cant create air so you have too keep driving it like it is”

One problem or 100 isn’t a problem when there are smart people there to think of them and fix them before the product ships. In OW there’s even a beta client to test stuff in order for people to fine tune/throw out.

I’ve given you the solution to the high skill problem already, you dont read my posts apparently so I’ll repeat: You identify people that overperform and dont throw and just GIVE THEM SR.

That said, I agree with you somewhat. Placements are useless when you have QP MMR to draw from - with this Blizzard could easily start people in bronze that need to be there or are obviously new.
However mechanical skill is one thing, game sense is another. With the strt in bronze system people with no game sense and some skill would end up where they belong too.

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