Overwatch 2 developer blog: Matchmaker and competitive deep dive, part 1

Overwatch 2 developer blog: Matchmaker and competitive deep dive, part 1

We’d like to talk about something where we’ve seen a lot of feedback and concerns: matchmaking in Overwatch 2.

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Well, interesting to see the thoughts behind the system. Looks like match maker still has some changes coming.

Interesting to hear that new players have been struggling to win. Adjusting their initial rating will help, I suppose. But the real way to help would have been to put training tools in the game. At least something to explain they aren’t playing CoD.

The lack of new players winning games might explain the drop in population recently. Who wants to stick around in a game you can’t win regularly?

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You know, despite today marking a day where matchmaking is going to get really bad in Comp, and probably stay bad for the next month. At least this is good communication that it’s a top priority issue that will get fixed. Very good effort for community relations.

That said it’s Interesting how they didn’t cover how a lack of Support players is causing Matchmaker issues. Or very indirectly.

For example, we might match a highly rated tank against a comparably lower rated tank, so even if the overall match is balanced, the competition between tanks feels very one-sided.

We’ve got changes coming to the game over the next few months which will dramatically reduce these disparities. We’ll try to find pairs of similarly rated players in each role when making a match. For support and damage roles, which have two slots, each player will be paired with one player on the opposite team. There will still sometimes be matches with a large range of differently skilled players, but in these cases, the two teams will be more like mirror images of each other.

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changes, while welcome, wont actually change anything…people are still going to blame it regardless…been that way with shooters for over 20 years…

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And they called me a fool.

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Have you considered that part of the problem with matches feeling unfair is that MMR completely ignores SR, which is the only thing players can see? That’s a huge factor in how players perceive match fairness

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It had better. And a lot of them.

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We’ve got changes coming to the game over the next few months which will dramatically reduce these disparities. We’ll try to find pairs of similarly rated players in each role when making a match. For support and damage roles, which have two slots, each player will be paired with one player on the opposite team. There will still sometimes be matches with a large range of differently skilled players, but in these cases, the two teams will be more like mirror images of each other.

I’ve been thinking for a while that these matches have been matched where a high MMR Mercy player is being used to “balance” matches with a high MMR Tank or Damage player. As a result, the match just falls apart. Making sure each player is matched to the opposing team player of the same role could definitely help improve the disparity if I am understanding it correctly.

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i love the “we have a mmr based system” but it goes out the window when you run into a premade so every other game is pretty much unbalanced matchmaking.

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Well, the big one is match tank ranks better. No more master tank versus gold tank.

Apparently damage and support are getting a lesser version with one of each getting ranks matched. Matching all five slots would apparently make queues too long.

Edit: misread. They will be matching each slot against someone on the other team, but ranks won’t necessarily match across the entire team. So each team could end up with: master tank, one diamond damage, one plat damage, one gold support, and one diamond support.

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dps/tank/support diff was real all along.

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Oh, interesting. Thanks for telling me. I just started skipping these because there is never any actual news… But this one could genuinely resolve a lot of the lobby discrepancies in game.

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Thank you !! Finally some explanations !

So I feel the most confusing thing is that Rank and MMR aren’t tied.

When you look up at people complains, a lot of them are just looking at ranks.

I wonder also how “many” MMRs people have ? Like, if I lose in QP, does it change the matchmaking for Competitive ?
Also we still don’t know how the MMR would consider the case you mention : a high MMR tank against a low MMR tank : what happen if the highest MMR tank loses cause the game is somehow balanced ? The MMR would drop ? Even if it means that, as the game is balanced, the Tank would lose “because” of DPS/Supports ?

Glad you devs, are acknowledging the problem and trying to fix it.

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No we need more tank diff not less :cry:

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So I just realized this title says “Part 1”

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Part 2: “we were wrong, tank diff is what makes matches fun”

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I’m a platinum support player. I just do not want to lose against anymore master 1-3 players. In OW1 it was rare to even see diamond players in plat games. I counter masters hogs so I go Ana and gold dps is still on Widow while our plat tank refuses to go Orisa even with the new buffs. Like what do I even do about that………

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The way I see it “Fun” is right in that zone of “Not too easy, not too difficult”

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"The faster we can calibrate a new player’s MMR, the fewer unfair matches we’ll create not just for that player, but for the other 9 players in the match."

Finally they admit that new players are a problem and they’ve been getting put into all sorts of places they don’t belong.

New player bracket should have been a thing; like, if you’re a new player, you get stuck in the new player bracket for a minimum of six months before being allowed to play with anyone else.

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Everyone is being matched with their counterpart- so each dps player gets matched with one dps player on the other team. Same for supports. So it’s not a lesser version for dps and supports. It’s just that not all dps will be the same MMR, but both teams will have the same mix of dps MMRs. They do point out that this will increase queue times though.

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