Overwatch's Competitive Problem

Competitive Discussion
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The Overwatch competitive scene/gamemode does some things well, and does others not so well, but there’s one big, underlying issue with it that is universal between every single player, once the honeymoon is over. This flaw rears its ugly head with hardcore gamers, casuals, pros, streamers, and I’m willing to bet, even Blizzard devs themselves. The issue is a fundamental flaw in Blizzard’s game design, and is this: Overwatch Competitive inherently pisses everyone off, to a point of near-hatred of the game as a whole. It’s an absolute universal feeling that grows on every single player, and that feeling overpowers all the goodwill the rest of the game brings to the table.

How does this happen? There are many reasons, and the nitpicky ones are different for everyone, but the biggest, most common, and universal truth has everything to do with Overwatch not acknowledging or allowing personal progression. Whether it’s real or perceived is based on individual players themselves, but both are damning for the future of this game. It frankly doesn’t matter which one is true, because perception is reality, and that perception makes everyone begin to loathe the game they once loved.

In my own experience, I have hardcore gamer friends, and I have very casual gamer friends. The hardcore gamers are as you’d expect, being hyper competitive. The casuals are as you’d expect too, usually not taking it as seriously and seeing the journey (playing with friends) being just as fun as the destination (victory). Both groups are different, but every single one agrees on their love/hate relationship with overwatch. They didn’t all start at the same competitive mindset, and some took longer to grow a hatred for competitive, but all ended up in the same place. Hardcore gamers view wins as being most important, so every loss is unfun, and that’s half the game due to the way Overwatch balances teams. Casual gamers don’t care as much about the victory or the loss, but they all care about personal growth. They all want to get better at the game, and they want the game to acknowledge when they have. Both groups view it that way. Both groups are failed by Overwatch.

When Overwatch does not show natural progression with how competitive works, it eventually upsets people. Working hard to get good at something can be a difficult process, but it’s endured when there is a reward at the end. Overwatch doesn’t give that reward. Small progression changes mean nothing in the games feedback loop. You win, win, lose, lose, win, lose, etc and it keeps the same feedback no matter what. There are no officially supported statistics, no scoreboard to show that you’ve performed better than previously. There’s no drastic change in your win rate either, because an MMR raise is hidden, and it just means your teammates will have worse MMR than teammates previously, due to forcing a ‘balanced match.’ This means that as a player personally gets better and grows as a player, the game usually rewards them by giving them worse teammates and putting them against better enemies, which balances the total MMR of both sides. This means progression turns into frustration, because a player is essentially given a harder task to advance in rank than they would have otherwise, which works like a gatekeeper of sorts, albiet a competitively unfair and unfun one.

In other words, as an example, to make it to platinum, a gold player is forced to beat platinum teams by carrying gold players. It’s a bit like saying Michael Jordan is a bad basketball player if he can’t carry the worst team in the league to the playoffs, while everyone who made it is better than him individually. It’s putting all the blame and pressure on a single player who rightfully was far better individually than his scrub teammates, but using that blame to claim he was a scrub too. It’s competitively unfair and unfun, and there’s a reason this doesnt happen in real sports. Individual players are still recognized and rewarded for their efforts, even if their teams are bad. Overwatch does not do this.

Whether fundamentally right or wrong, whether its all true or just partially, this is how nearly everyone perceives the game, and its a reason everyone gets toxic and blames their teammates. A scoreboard would ironically help lower toxicity at this point, but that’s not the real problem here. The problem is that overwatch simply does not reward progression for 99% of players, and that’s inherently unfun.

Why do I care, and how does blizzard fix this, if they wanted to? I care, because when I see even the most casual, happy, non-toxic personality players admit they hate the game now due to never feeling like the game rewards them for getting better, I know the game will not last. When I see that people have been complaining about the same things over and over again since the beginning, with no real significant changes being made, I see that the game will not last. When I see this game has become more toxic than almost any other mainstream multiplayer game, I see that the game will not last. I want the game to last, because the game as a whole shows so much promise. It’s just dragged down by this one (albiet deeply significant) thing.

The game needs it’s competitive presentation reworked, plain and simple. It may not need a total rework of how his rank are processed, but it absolutely needs a new way of being presented to the player. This cannot be dumbed down or even less info than it currently gives. It needs to be a significant feedback change. Ranks need to be split up and separated far more than they are, even if just cosmetically. There needs to be sub division ranks of sub division ranks, among other things.

What this does is show Johnny Gamerboy and Susie Gamergirl that the game aconowleges they’ve gotten better, so here’s a small reward. They go from Bronze 5 to Bronze 4. They’ve gained a rank, and that’s a reward for their hard work at getting better. Compare this with its current iteration. Johnny and Susie gain some small SR, but they’ve been in bronze for 10 seasons now. They want a total reset, but blizzard won’t do it. They’ve made alts that rank higher, but they cannot rank up on their mains. They see boosters and Smurfs play against them now too, destroying their games consistently. They can’t see any way of getting out, and they’ve never gained a single rank in their entire overwatch career.

Do we really expect that to be fun for them, and how long will they continue to put up with a game that actively treats them like bottom-tier garbage? They might have gotten significantly better to where they were once the very worst players in overwatch, but now they’re better than 100,000 other players worldwide. Guess what? The game doesn’t tell them, so they don’t know. They also feel like they haven’t and never will accomplish anything, because the gap from bronze to silver is significantly higher than their current abilities. Still, they’ve made progress, and youd think the game would acknowledge that for ita own longevity benefit, but the game commits suicide instead.

Gamers play to get rewarded, so a lack of percieved rewards for their hard work and dedication makes the game simply unfun and toxic. Players know theyve gotten better, so they see each loss as a teammate’s fault instead. Whether that’s true or not is another topic, but toxicity in overwatch is absolutely the fault of the game’s inaction regarding progression presentation. That’s the dev’s fault, especially since it’s an easy fix. If this ever will happen remains to be seen, and maybe it will be too little too late. Still, it’s a huge issue that has affected this entire game from casuals all the way up to OWL and pro streamers. It’s such an obvious issue that I question the competency of the game designers in understanding their own gaming community. It doesn’t take a psychologist to see the way the wind has been blowing. Simply talking to people would’ve worked.

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So, I guess I’m the only person in the world who plays for the joy of the challenge and the thrill of victory? Why do we need the game to tell us if we’re better or not? Can’t we look at our own performance and make that judgement?

Let’s face it, one big reason people want global scoreboards and comparisons is so they can brag about it or lord those achievements over those who haven’t gotten them. Not everyone, but the e-ego plays a big part in why these “rewards” are so popular. Status and power give the brain that dopamine hit.

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I think youre in the minority, yes. Whether a person grows in very small increments, or they grow in large ones, most players want to be told this. They want to know theyve accomplished something for all their hard work. It’s rare for players to never grow as players in any way, even if that growth is small. Those players still inherently need some reward for it, which shows they have achieved something of value. Thats just human psychology in play.

Think of it in terms of your professional career. Let’s say you go to school to be an engineer. Let’s say you learn everything involved, gain the knowledge and the skill set to perform that job, but the university does not reward you with a diploma. Without that diploma, you cannot find a job to become an engineer. Would you feel accomplished knowing that you’ve put in the effort, but gained nothing for it outside of expanded personal knowledge? Perhaps, but not nearly as much as hoped for. Most people would become resentful of the university and the industry at large. They’d be frustrated, and rightfully so. Take it down to smaller increments, and the same things apply. Let’s say it’s just one class. You do everything you were asked, but the professor doesn’t give you a grade at the end. You dont officially pass the course. Are you happy with that outcome? Maybe, but doubtful, and the majority would not be.

Overwatch needs to take a look at how it presents itself in modes like competitive, and find some way, be it purely cosmetic or actually significant, and give the player a positive feedback loop when they’ve achieved something. It doesn’t do that for the majority of players, hence the thousands of ‘competitive is rigged’ and ‘my teammates hold me back’ threads. Hundreds pop up every single day on here and Reddit. That could easily be alleviated with some minor presentation tweaks here and there.

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Here’s one thing I’d like them to do with comp. Get rid of the tiers. You can keep the SR number. You’d also have a percentile rank that shows where you are compared to everyone else. At top 500 they could sill have the number like they do now.

It would be nice if the percentile rank was your MMR so that it gives you an idea of how you perform.

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Im a very competitive person and I can’t stand losing but I also understand that it’s not realistic to win all the time. My issue is that when you do well and carry, whether a hard or soft carry, you gain some rank. Then when your teammates get worse it is basically impossible to perform at the level you previously were. You can’t really do anything when 3 or 4 of the enemy team constantly focus you and you get no help from your team. I CAN’T FN WIN A 3 OR 4V1 EVERY TIME. Just yesterday our rein pushed in and I followed. No one else did. I saw our dva get back in mech and proceed to stand there and watch the rein die.

That’s what it means to get held back by mmr and your teammates. Those 2 things combined take away your ability to play the game and they take away the competitive aspect of the game. The better you play, the more the game hands you losses. Realistically blizz is just as bad as ea if not worse. While they may not have lootboxes like ea they incorporate gambling mechanics into their matchmaker. Look up the psychology of gambling and losing. Winning alone gives less joy than losing a bunch before winning.

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I agree with a lot of what you said.
Toxicity is really hurting this game right now. I think one of the main issues that should be solved with the new patch is that, you can get toxic/triggered before the game even begins and it sets the mood and attitude for the rest of the game. The simplest part of this game, hero selection, creates the majority of this games problems. That and getting in a lobby and you are the ONLY person in team chat? Or there is 3-4 stack that is not in chat, and the other 2-3 people are, you might as well have 2 different teams!! I can’t believe that is still allowed. If you stack up, you should be forced into team chat. Period.
I won’t lie, this game makes me toxic, and I hate placing the blame on anyone but me, but certain aspects of the game and matchmaking create a level of toxicity and resentment before the game even begins!!

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I agree, and I think this is a common mindset for nearly everyone. It doesn’t matter what skill level they’re at, because we’ve seen it in every competitive rank. It only gets worse as the skill level rises, hence even pro streamers have complained about off-meta picks, one-tricks, etc.

I don’t think the hero selection is the main issue though, but more of a consequence of the current system’s flaws. The game simply doesn’t reward individual growth, because it’s nearly impossible for most to carry a bad team by themselves in any consistent manner, at least without being drastically under-ranked due to throwing. Bronze to GM runs happen, but it’s always pros doing it, and they absolutely must throw their games to get downranked at the start. I’ve never heard of any cases where a legitimately low-bronze player has improved so drastically as to rank up to GM, and even if there are cases where that skill-progression happens, the way ranking works means it’s both prohibitively time-consuming (taking hundreds or thousands of games to rank up through normal progression), or its simply unable to happen due to the way every game is ‘balanced.’ A balanced game means a high-MMR bronze player still has to play bronze games to rank up, but now they have worse teammates around them to balance total team MMR with the enemy. They’re essentially being forced to carry to rank up, except the game was made so that a single player cannot carry consistently. The rewards of victory remains the same whether they grow or not, as do the losses. It actively frustrates everyone, because there’s no reward for individual growth, especially not if that growth is in small increments.

It’s an absolute conundrum that created all this toxicity, and it won’t stop until its changed in some way. Its likely for all players to grow individually in some aspect, but unlikely for each of their teammates to have grown proportionally. A player can only grow individual skill, not their teammate’s, so each SoloQ game slowly hurts their perception of the entire game. Add in all the toxic by-products the system has created, and every player’s enjoyment of the game progressively gets worse.

My solution isn’t even involving scrapping the entire system, which is too much work to ever be expected. I see it as a feedback issue, since I accept all the fundamental problems with the ELO/MMR system are likely unfixable at this point. It would take too much time and cost too much, and it doesn’t add revenue in ways new hero cosmetics do. My solution is almost entirely a cosmetic one, but even that can help solve plenty of issues.

Simply put, gamers need rewards for their efforts. It’s a human psychological fact of nature for anything we do in life. When we don’t feel there is progression or a reward for our efforts, we become frustrated and disillusioned. In gaming terms, it means we stop playing it entirely. For business terms, it means Blizzard loses future revenue from a heavily-invested product. It seems to make sense that something needs to change. The easiest, most cost-effective change involves the feedback loop. Make more ranks, show stat progression, give rewards for individual performance growth even in losing streaks/bad teams, etc. Give players more knowledge about what they’re doing well, what they arent, and how to progress further as players. Stop letting third-party sites do all the (very incomplete) work, and do it yourselves in-game. There’s no reason to not have a scoreboard in-game either, because toxicity is already one of the biggest problems. It can hardly get worse, and most of the toxicity is a consequence of Blizzards game design.

I don’t think they can change every problem with the game by any means, but I think the way competitive is presented to players can. Behind-the-scene numbers don’t all need to be released, but some numbers should. Telling a player that theyve raised their k:d ratio with x hero, or saying they’ve grown as players in some other statistical measure can’t hurt. Adding more competitive ranks, even if just superficial and cosmetic, allow achievable goals for players to reach, which is not currently applicable through the current system. Allowing in-game leagues or tournaments for every rank is another idea I see as being a good one. Imagine a bronze-player league/tournament that lets the winner feel good about themselves, even if theyre just bronze. Do it for every rank, and barring smurfs ruining it (which is an inherent flaw in the matchmaking system and not a reason to hold back on good ideas), you’d give everyone something to strive for at any level. OWL should not be the only supported format, one that allows only the 0.000001 % of players to enjoy. Even real sports have little league, minor leagues, beer leagues, local clubs, etc. A minor league baseball team can still win a world series trophy, even if they aren’t in the Big leagues. Why not overwatch, if the goal is to make it as real a sport as esports get?

My point is that this game needs something, and soon, but blizzard has been too content with releasing cosmetics rather than significant gameplay tweaks. If cosmetic changes are all they’re willing to do, at least make them where it counts, such as in competitive. Competitive is the defining area that creates such negativity and overall feelings of frustration with this game, so doing something, anything, is better than leaving it as is.

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Possible solution:

Lose the mmr, everyone gets reset and starts in the middle, no placements but no “rank” until you play 25 games, 1000000sr Max and rank is determined by a bell curve of everyone’s Sr so ranks are not static. Match making would be with closest Sr with a lean to have at least one tank, healer and dps main on each team. The beginning of the season would be a gong show, so seasons would be 4 months. Also higher swing for losing/winning sprees.

What do you think?

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This is basically how the system already works. A bell curve does exist, Gold and Platinum holds the majority of players, silver and diamond slightly less, and bronze and masters even less than that. The only caveat to that is the grandmaster top 500 players, which could be described as the final tail of the curve on the high side, without a comparable tail on the low side. For 500 people I don’t really know how significant that really is in the overall curve anyways.

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It should be a bell curve. Otherwise rank would be meaningless. But the hidden factor that keep people stuck is maddening. This system would be transparent, and people could see progress even if they are stuck.

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Wake up, there is no hidden MMR. Only SR is used in matchmaking. Hidden mmr is what one dev used to describe SR without decay as compared to decayed SR that is displayed. Its the same thing. Below diamond you just get a modifier at the end of each game that adjusts your SR gain or loss based on how you performed on your hero on that map compared to statistics of all players in your rank that played same hero on the same map.

Its quite hilarious that this hidden MMR myth is still alive and low skill players are now using that to explain not being able to climb.

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None of what youve said, be it true or not (and completely unverifiable either way) matters in the grand scheme of things. Perception is reality. The point of it all is that 99% of players feel stuck at whichever rank they average out at, and that feeling means they don’t see any progression. Even when they do progress as players, its usually not acknowledged by the game, and it’s an uphill battle that’s both prohibitively time-consuming and unrewarding. Absolutely every single OW player wants to get better at the game, but the game does not show that theyve done so. They know when they’ve improved, even if it’s a small improvement, but the game doesn’t tell them. Without percieved progression, absolutely everyone gets frustrated. Frustration creates toxicity. Toxicity creates all the problems you see in this game. Your attitude is among them, a product of the toxicity the current system created. It’s a toxic attitude that is both unhelpful and unfounded. Even if you were the top 0.00001% in terms of skill, it’s meaningless without a playerbase, so ignoring or even attacking players below your rank is hurting your own cause.

Regardless of how the system works behind the scenes (and none of us know, because blizzard isn’t transparent about it), the original point remains. The game feels unrewarding to nearly everyone. Being stuck at a rank with no progression comparative to time-spent and effort is a death sentence for the game’s longevity. Even the worst players in overwatch want to feel they’ve achieved something of value, and the current system doesn’t allow that. At some point, every single player realizes they hate competitive, and in turn, hate overwatch due to that. What they don’t always realize is they hate the lack of reward and individual acknowledgement, not the game itself. Even pros hate the game after a while, and they’re at the very top echelon of skill levels. Playing in OWL may be rewarding, but that’s less than a hundred total players between OWL and Contenders who enjoy it. The rest of us have nothing to look forward to, and we are the ones who allow OWL to exist in the first place. Overwatch won’t last as an esport when it’s only fun to watch, but not play.

I maintain the stance that at the very least, the feedback loop given to players needs to change. There simply needs to be a way to show progression in a meaningful manner outside of full medal ranks and small SR changes. In a game that requires a total team effort to win, players being stuck on bad ones (which will always happen in SoloQ) need to have some way to not feel resentful of their teammates. SR gains need to not be strictly tied to wins/losses in some responsible manner, and failing that, performing well even in bad situations should be rewarded in some way. Players should have a chance to salvage unwinnable games due to bad teammates, be it with performance SR that actually allows positive growth in a loss, or at the very least, some sort of statistical analysis that shows a player is progressing as a player even in losses. When wins are largely happening only half the time, the game needs some way to balance half the game so that it isnt a dice roll as to whether it’s fun or not. Games should still be fun and have reasons to play even in a loss, but that’s not currently the case.

I don’t have all the solutions, but feedback loop changes are a good place to start. Splitting ranks up further than they are now would allow ‘stuck’ players to reach a goal even if a full medal rank is out of reach. A gold player that has never gotten platinum (or only very briefly before dropping) will feel permently stuck, and that’s inherently unfun in a competitive system. If there were closer milestones, maybe theyd feel they’ve done something of value by ranking up from gold 5 to gold 4. Maybe they hit a point where the game says ‘your statistically better than 99% of golds, so we will put you in Gold 1 instead of Gold 4’ and allow faster progression that way. Maybe the game simply gives statistical feedback and advice on where a player can improve, and this give them some direction as to how they can get better, rather than running in circles.

There’s plenty of ways to do it, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone that pays attention that the game needs some type of new direction. Far too many players are frustrated at the game. You dont look more intelligent than everyone else by plugging your ears and mocking player concerns. I’m sure even you recognize that there’s a fundamental problem with competitive that is actively hurting the game and causing all the toxicity. Refusing to admit it or changing the topic to meaningless points of contention are just weak attempts at shoving the problems under the rug and blaming players for the dev’s currently failing game design.

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