Warning: this is gonna be a semi rant/ i’m formulating this as i type it so forgive me if things seem weird/ if i ramble.
I was thinking about this on the drive to the gym today and i still don’t truly understand how blizzard calculates it. From what i have seen blizzard takes into consideration everyone that played the char that you played at that rank and averages out the stats for it, and if you are higher you will get more sr for a win and lose less for a loss. If you are below that its reversed, lose more for loss gain less for a win.
In a game like overwatch though, i don’t like that (i don’t know what stats are more/less weighted than others so i both can’t hate it and hate it at the same time). This game isn’t like LoL or HOTS (cuz OW isn’t dead yet (it was a joke plz dont ban me) ) where you can’t swap, this game is designed to counter pick and adjust your team comp and strat to beat the enemy. having a hidden skill judgment is weird then because 1. you don’t know what it is truly judging and 2. shouldn’t it judge you based on the win? now yes there are times where i didn’t do anything, where i was the boat anchor and my team carried me, but there are also times where the game was clutched because of me, where i made that one move that lead us to win, stuff like that on both ends of the spectrum. i am wondering how blizzard can classify that into a pbsr system (again we don’t know what they look at so it’s hard to say that they do or don’t) .
now i know some of you are gonna say that if you fed in a game you don’t deserve to win as much sr as that dps that popped off and i don’t disagree with you on that at all, that much is true but how often does that really happen? about 10% of the time if you are at a rank where you belong. Now though how often is it you have a dps that is doing average, but gets that kill on the mercy that was gonna res a rein and because of that kill you guys win the game, or you get a rein (shield was broken) that gets a perfect charge onto a rein that was gonna ult and saved the team and got you the win, shouldnt thery get more sr than normal because of that? or you have a very aggro team and is killing the enemy constantly (enemy is trickling (happens in gold all the time)) but that poor dva is stuck babysitting the cart and rides it into victory for you, why should she get less sr?
i know there was at one point the devs said they didn’t want to tell us how it is calculated cuz then people will abuse the system but if it is supposed to be a judge of your skill then how can it be abused if it is correct? idk it all seems weird to me, it seems like it favors things that it shouldn’t if that is the case.
At the end of the day i don’t know how pbsr is calculated but i don’t think it is a fair judge of people because, from what i understand, the stats it reads and judges you on don’t seem fair. We will never know though until blizzard comes out and tells us this is how pbsr is calculated, these stats are good this is bad and stuff like that.
To keep things simple. I will explain just a few key points players should know about Performance-Based Skill Rating adjustments and how it applies in Overwatch:
Performance-Based Skill Rating is only calculated for players in the Platinum and lower tiers.
Performance-Based Skill Rating is only a MINOR influence in your overall skill rating calculation. The other factors of your strength of schedule (comparing your current SR in comparison to the opposing team average SR), the frequency of play (the more you play the more consistent your adjustments are), and most importantly whether you won the match or not, help determine your overall skill rating adjustment.
Performance-Based Skill Rating will take any amount of play time you have had on each hero and derive stats to average out in comparison to similar players of the same skill rating who played the same heroes you did in their own matches.
The user Kaawumba has a far more detailed guide to this and other factors to how your skill rating is calculated in Competitive:
+1
Good points. Unfortunately, i am not in a position to enlighten you but perhaps this thread may help and of course, i believe that some of the more experienced forumers / players will come in and enlighten.
However, in a very general manner, i can understand where the Developers are coming from on this.
If the player base knows exactly by what metric(s) PBSR is judged, suppose that a team appears to be losing and i emphasize on the “appears”. Then some players may just focus on achieving the “Key Performance Indicators/Index (KPI)” instead of trying to do the little extras which you had mentioned (Rein hitting a timely Charge to save versus Red Team Reinhardt Earthshatter etc) which could have won the game for seemingly losing team.
Having knowledge of the PBSR KPIs could just make already self-centered players even more so especially in the face of a loss. Even in Wins, we see people just doing what they want to while the other 4-5 players go full “TryHard” mode to win (yes, sorry, i am a little bitter, i had a QP game whereby my Ana player was happily going for kills instead of healing. Despite that, still won the game and i achieved Gold Elimins and Gold Damage … something was quite wrong, imho because i was Reinhardt).
but then in the case of that ana, if it was comp she shouldn’t gain as much sr as you would have because she wasn’t healing. the downside of all of that is for you though, if it was comp and lets say they judged on how much damage you blocked, you’d gain less sr also… it’s a double edged sword and i think, as cool as a double edged sword is, it’s done more harm than good for a lot of players.
Thing is, i do believe that one of the metrics is Eliminations : Death.
So definitely, in that case, my E:D could have be better if Ana healed but than again, thinking back about that game, if i achieved Gold Elimin and Gold Damage; + Win, it could only mean that my team’s DPS were not doing their job and so, Ana had help out. Because prior for the 1st 2 Check Points (Escort on Rialto), i was died only twice with Gold Kills already. So the player probably could tell that i knew what i was doing.
Well, regardless and totally notwithstanding my little example, the general big picture view is that, that is how full knowledge of PBSR could be “abused” although a more appropriate word would probably be “exploited”, especially by the more self-centered players, particularly in a Losing situation. Thus spoiling it for those who still want to win. =)
i understand where you are coming from but i feel like a true pbsr system should not have the ability to be abused if it is checking for the correct stuff. i think my ideal system may be to hard for blizzard to put into the game but i know that mine couldn’t be abused, but it also has about 300 checks lol.
Who knows, right?
The game is still evolving and Blizzard obviously has staked a lot to ensure its longevity so much so as to not have it fail, in the near future, at least.
We could just see your 300 checks system surface yet! =D
“Abuse” what people might actually know what they should be doing and get better at the game? Oh no can’t have that! That is why they banned pursuit because it told you what performance stats good players get and what you should aim for, blizzard can’t have things like that improving the players.
pursuit also tracked enemy ults in game which gave those that used in an unfair advantage, don’t get me wrong i think the idea of it was good, but having it tell you stuff like that in game technically was cheating.
No that was visor. Pursuit was just like overbuff but more detailed post game stats. Also you can see enemys ult status in kill cam so I find that ‘reason’ weak
i mean if you get killed by them sure but it tracked no matter what. that was the big issue blizzard had with visor. idk about pursuit i never touched it, just read about it.
I think the Mercy rez issue in the past shows the lengths people would go to if they thought it would help them +1 up in stats and SR. In this case it was a very tiny part of the hidden code of P-SR that got cracked and it train wrecked a lot of games as some Mercy players start to res in stat, not game friendly sort of way.
It really showed how untrustworthy the player base is when it comes to stuff of this nature.
and pursuit clearly got into trouble for reselling the stat info
all of my experience says that death doesn’t matter, eliminations and killing blows do, but die as you like…just realize that a dead man can’t be getting more kills, and if you are better than the opponent you should be putting out good stats in a game.
However, I’m also pretty sure that it doesn’t just ruin your MMR based on one game. I think instead it increases the uncertainty and changes the upper and lower bound on its prediction of your MMR. if it thinks you belong higher from performing with double the stats appropriate for your rank, then on a win you can move up to a higher MMR game to allow you to climb faster. while if you lose while putting out trash stats when your teammates do well, it knows that you belong at a lower rank and puts you in a lower rank game, which if you also lose, will cause your SR to drop far more
If i’m not mistaken mmr is less volatile than sr is. Its to prevent you from getting screwed if you have an off game. I think it takes like 10+ games for it to move around much.
yeah, that’s definitely not true. You can get your MMR to move massively in just a few games by outperforming. Go make a smurf and try playing at 1000 points below your real rank. you’ll quickly see how the ranked system works
![:smiley:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
(it was a joke plz dont ban me) ) where you can’t swap, this game is designed to counter pick and adjust your team comp and strat to beat the enemy. having a hidden skill judgment is weird then because 1. you don’t know what it is truly judging and 2. shouldn’t it judge you based on the win? now yes there are times where i didn’t do anything, where i was the boat anchor and my team carried me, but there are also times where the game was clutched because of me, where i made that one move that lead us to win, stuff like that on both ends of the spectrum. i am wondering how blizzard can classify that into a pbsr system (again we don’t know what they look at so it’s hard to say that they do or don’t) .![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
