that no one mentions: Bell curve.
In school, a bell curve basically means B students get dragged down to C so D students can get C’s and pass the class. Sound similar to how Overwatch matches go?
If you are slightly better than average, you are forced to carry the D students in this game to even out the odds. This is why the closer to the middle of the bell curve you go, it is more toxic, one-sided, and outright rage-inducing to play. Gold-plat is basically 80 percent of the population oscillating back and forth between these ranks because that’s where blizz wants most of it’s population to be.
If you are not definitely above average, (mid diamond and above) you are basically just on this giant hamster wheel where you can be a B or D student and still end up at a C every semester. All because the smart kids get to group together and have their own little section to themselves while those who are trying their best but just not smart enough (B students) are forced by the teacher (blizzard) to do group projects and study groups with D students who are either truly not meant to go the academic route or are just lazy… just so they can pass the class. To keep “most people happy” and so the graph can look like a nice pretty bell curve.
What makes matters worse is smurfs and new accounts all being put exactly in this middle range of the bell curve. Smurfs are basically the spoiled rich kids who have been given all the tools to succeed and yet want to hang around and bully the disabled/special needs/unfortunate kids so they can feel like a giant amongst midgets. Noobs are basically new transfer students that got put on your group project right before the presentation.
I mean I can kinda see how this works in the big picture but for a certain number of the population (the B students) this matchmaking is just beyond unfair. It just is.
Just look at all the complaints about comp. The vast majority having unpleasant experiences come from somewhere in the middle. Mostly gold-plat, sometimes diamond and silver. Bronze deals with smurfs but even average gold players can smurf in bronze probably.
I guess most people in high ranks can smurf their way back on a new account but in the rare instances people do get stuck, it seems to be near platinum as well.
TL;DR: Gold-plat is a giant hamster wheel because of this bell curve distribution of ranks. Slightly above average players will forever be forced to play with slightly below average players to create “even matches.”
17 Likes
eh no
that’s not how it works. you naturally get a bellcurve when sorting people by one criterion
like hight or weight, there are very few people who are extremely small or heavy a huge amount who are about average
same with skill level in overwatch
you mixed up cause and effect here buddy
13 Likes
It’s a good thing that they have ranks and the B students go on to a higher rank than the D students…
1 Like
Uh no, using your examples of height/weight, 5’8"-6’ could be considered average but if you’re playing basketball, you don’t just say 5’8" an 6’ guy are about the same you take the 6’ guy most of the time just because he will at least rebound and defend better probably. Same with boxing. The taller guy probably has longer reach. There’s also a reason why there’s like a dozen different weight classes in MMA/boxing etc. 10 pounds or even 1 inch can and will make a difference.
I’m not going to get into society or politics too much but even there just forcing everyone into the middle class is basically communism. Which idealistically doesn’t sound too terrible to me at first glance but this is unfair to the people who are giving their all with the hand they’re dealt. If 2 people have similar jobs and income but 1 of them decides to get a 2nd job or work overtime and does this for an extended period of time, that person should be rewarded instead of having to split anything extra they made with the other guy.
1 Like
Not really. The performance based matchmaking system would force the worse performing players down, and better performing players up. If it were strictly win/loss based as it is in diamond+, you may have had a point, but the matchmaker as it is will separate players.
It is not a joke or exaggeration when players say that all you need to climb is to play the game. If you’re better than a platinum or gold player, you will get there eventually.
Because that’s where the vast majority of players are. I can definitely confirm that matches in masters / low GM can get plenty infuriating in their own rights and are definitely not far off from lower ranked matches. The biggest difference that I see ultimately is that there are significantly less leavers in masters+, but there are still plenty of smurfs, throwers, and my new favorite term, widow abusers.
If a ‘smurf’ gets stuck in platinum, they’re a low diamond player at best. I don’t know a single masters player who got their account stuck in platinum, even for a season, and I know a couple dozen of them at this point.
1 Like
so does 200 SR, even in plat a 2700 average player is noticeable better than a 2500 SR player, and especially in the middle rank where tons of people are, the SR variance between people in the game is actually quite low, often less than ± 50SR from the team rating
exception is people grouping up with others
2 Likes
Good thing I’m a B+ student and in Diamond lol
Exactly you said so yourself that that’s where the vast majority of players are and that’s my problem with the system. To masters and GM players we all suck, I get it but to us a diamond who deranked and a silver who is peaking is not the same level player. Yet and still we get grouped up with them regardless.
It’s not about ranking up. Seriously. It’s about consistency in matches of actually playing with people of your skill level game in game out. You can’t take 80%of the population and just say they’re all about the same because they’re in the average range in anything is my point. The more tiers the better for fairer matches.
Take any sport, any discipline, anything in anything: the more ranks there are the fairer the competition gets. Just like in a job, if basically 80 percent of the population can qualify, you will never find the best workers because you can’t discern properly when there’s millions of applicants and you will surely overlook some of the minute but crucial details in their resumes.
Just like GMs can play within their 1%, I want to at least play within my 10% game in and game out. The skill variance in gold-plat is non-discernable for higher ranked players cuz we all suck to you guys but for us we see a wide discrepancy literally from match to match. From widows who can headshot every shot to Reins who never shield and rage quit after realizing it’s not so easy to just charge in and bash people for free kills.
It’s frustrating.
1 Like
This. So much of this. I honestly dont care about ranking up, but I would like to have some consistency to my games and teammates, and would really like the who rainbow que GONE. Having anything from silvers to diamonds in your games is not fun.
Mid ranks are a complete mess right now, and they have been for a while now.
Literally everyone and their mother will end up in your games, from smurfs, alts, boosters, newbies, boosters, derankers, natural derankers, basically almost every game is a massive coin flip of what youre gonna get this time.
Dont you think its even a little bit weird that 99% of GMs and top 500s doing unranked to GM challenges get placed in high gold/plat?
3 Likes
Dafran placed in Masters… so I take it Dafran is the one percent and no one else could name another above this? Or maybe your statistic is… I dunno… made up and hyperbolic?
Hyperbolic or not let’s be real no non-boosted Top 500 player would place below diamond on a new account without soft/hard throwing their qp games from level 1-25. Especially when most of the people who do unranked to GM are DPS mains.
People keep bring this defran ranking high up like its a surprize to see a pro type player place high in his/her game/field of exertice i mean really if he place silver/gold/plat/diamond people would call him a thrower…of course he is foing to place high he proved nothing but that he can place high that changes nothing for those that are not high on adderall or what ever overwatch god gene he might have…
after playing this game since beta i have notice this bell curve op is talking about. Really some small fixs would be to remove the mmr system just base all matchs on teams with similar sr ONLY not stats or anything unseen pure win loss like any competative sport has ever been…the mmr system interferes with fair match making. And secound bliz needs to fix the range on teaming with diffrent players …last 4 games ive played there was a 3-4 stack in them with a plat player…gold…and silver…all in one team (diffeent players each time too) the plat player played well had great aim like i would expect a plat to have…the gold likewise played like a gold…and the silver didnt seem to belong in the game. Because a true silver dos not play anywere close to that of a true gold or plat player…same gos with gold and plat… now if they were limited more about 400-500 sr difrence this would make a lot more sense as everyone seems to bouce back and forth about thia much during a season…most times…and they would be closer in skill. So like i said bliz could fix it…but they probly wont do either of these as the current mmr all the diamond+ players think is a perfect system that makes no mistakes and always puts everyone were they belong(sarcasm implied)…that, and bliz makes more money the more players they have …so they have im sure a few million reasons that go strate to there bank account to not change it. I would give my last few games as an example but i didnt record them and even examples are never enough proof cuz the higher ups try to help by saying to me improve ur aim or u dhould dos x instead of y here or there instead of veiwing how the other players played on my team each match …sometimes i feel like im being carryed ina match other times my back is hurting after the match…the obvious true is hard to swallow and once somone had make there mind up good luck changing it even with vulcan logic u cant persuade that person. But that is my 2 cents take it or leave it. 
1 Like
Carrying your analogy to Overwatch, you are only forced to carry the D players if you yourself are a D player.
Taking your example further.
As a gold player, you can’t honestly tell me you’d have any difficulty in a silver game?
In fact, I’d be pretty confident in saying you’d win more than 50% of your matches if you were playing vs a silver team assuming your team-mates were at least silver or higher.
It is because of that reason above the premise for your entire post falls over.
As a gold you are somewhere around a C, but you really are better than those D silvers.
The fact that a C+ is better than a C- doesn’t really matter too much, because over time you will end up ahead of them. Those C- players will fluctuate between 1900 SR and maybe 2100 Max, while you sit confidently at 2250ish.
1: The Dafran example shows that IF you deserve X rank then you’ll get it even if it’s top 500.
2: The tightening SR gap is a catch-22. One of the main reasons folks smurf is to play with friends lower than them. Is it better they play with their real stats in mixed games or cheat the system? I lean towards the former. And they’re going to play with their friends in comp either way.
Maybe on paper but I find it’s often at leasst 100 sr difference but more than often it’s higher.
Are you a mid-rank player? If not it’d be hard to feel the effects of the bell curve for you.
I’ve been in gold-plat for like 6k games in 3 years from 2000-2900 and I’ve “earned” platinum probably close to 200 times during that span. The competition or matchmaker doesn’t ever change. It’s the same mid-rank group of players and where they are on the ladder at any given moment is 100% luck. Upswings and downswings forever.
When you perform well you get punished. You’re forced to carry and face smurfs and everything else that numerous people have been saying for ages.
If you can’t see that having most of your population squeezed so tightly in the middle will create mismatches I don’t know what to tell you. The people who are actually trying get the worst experience. I’m certain at least half the people in mid-ranks will agree with this assessment. The half that are trying.
Literally only about half the mid-ranks are the ones making big plays and have some understanding of what their role is. The other half are just there because blizzard put them there.
I think part of the problem is allowing players to play comp together with a 1k SR difference, with the matchmaker allowing to average the SR between teams to compensate. This means 3500 rank Widow main can group with a 2500 ranked Mercy main and basically just poop on the average of 3k +/- teams. In terms of SR averages, the matchmaker believes it’s fair. In terms of actual skill, with 1-hit kills, it’s absolutely not fair, in any circumstance.
I see this all the time in gold. Plats grouped with Silvers, and in most cases the Plats have deranked down to plat in order to group with the silver, OR the silver is the carry and deranked down to EASILY boost the plat who’s hard stuck. In this case, the plat gains less SR due to the SR difference, but the matches are much easier due to how hard the silver can carry when they’re not even close to the rank they should be in.
1 Like
Definitely a huge part of the problem.
1: yes he proved that if ur a pro player u will be put with pros…something we all already knew…but still dosnt prove that the mmr system isnt broke AF. Mmr is a good system in the first 10 matchs for the first time as it figures ur true skill to other players. But for the system to continue matching u in games after that is absurd…its like oh ur x rank but instead of puting u there and letting the normal competative nature take place it trys to test how well u can carry randomly…some people just cant carry …ie a mercy cant carry a team of people shooting at walls…it dosnt do this vidictively or because bliz wants u in x rank…it dos this by a flaw in its programimg that is a mechine trying to make “fair” matchs 50/50 so it interferes in something it shouldnt.
- Yes they would play with friends either way they would throw ext…but it would be harder for them to stay within that elo because they would have to throw more often to stay there hence get reported and baned …sorry but if ur buddy is true silver…and ur t500 u should not be in game regardless uf how much u like said buddy. Thats what qp/arcade is for not comp…as i said before a plat plays much difrently then a ailver or even gold…even if its suddle difrences those are what make them better worse most times. So tightening the range would help the game more then hurt imo.
If you can’t carry why should you climb? If you’re playing par then you’re right where you belong.