Ranks are in no way okay

General Discussion
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Figured Id say this after reading the post of some dude complaining about a D4 to M4 rank distribution match.

Yes, matches being made within 5 divisions is okay, but that assumes that ranks are distributed properly.

From the beginning to maybe a little over mid season, top 500 starts in Masters 3 to Master 2, and only come the last few weeks does it move up to Masters 1.

Just think to yourself how for about 60% of any ranked season a D4 to M4 match means being 2 divisions out of plat, and 1 or 2 divisions below top 500 gameplay.

We have two entire ranks of GM and Champion that are largely completely unused, even right now with 2 weeks left in the season GM doesnt begin until top 400 for most roles and most regions, sometimes even worse.

We have SO MUCH ROOM to better categorize and spread out ranks, but ever since Season 9 theres been such an artificial rank squish that keeps people out of GM, and it makes no sense. Blizzard got upset that GM1 was insanely free to get and come S9 decided to fix the issue by (for some reason) double tapping, raising the ceiling by an entire rank AND squishing everyone down at the same time.

They said either this season or last that they “addressed” this by making higher ranks like GM more reachable, but there hasnt been any change in how Top 500 looks, there are no more or less top 500 players in GM than there were before these “changes” and top 500 STILL ends every season with about 100 players in masters.

Anyone who wants to think that ranks are in a good spot right now, at least high elo ranks, is completely and utterly delusional, its not a debate.

At no point in the season should the top 500 leaderboards have Masters players in them. Never. There are 2 full weeks that allows people to place and climb before leaderboards open, anyone in top 500 who places in masters should have plenty of time to rise up to GM before the leaderboards open.

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If they are in your lobby, they are the same skill as you. The matchmaking is perfect. Shut up!

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Thats really all these losers who think otherwise say. They pretend that the matchmaking system is perfect and anyone who dares question it is just some silver turbo stucker who thinks they deserve a higher rank.

Its the perfect example of the toxic side of the “self improvement” people who ignore reality.

Had some dude in that post I mentioned just say “MMR didnt change, only the ranked icon”

Love it when losers talk out of their colon, when I show them the direct words from Blizzard employees directly responsible for the S9 ranked changes saying in no uncertain terms “Ranks on the higher end will have their MMR reduced, the higher the rank the larger the change”

X(dot)com/SrslyPaladin/status/1755775249478824431

So no, the icon isnt what changed, they directly adjusted MMR to force everyone down, and have obviously made changes to how MMR is calculated at the higher end, otherwise we’d have gone right back to having everyone and their mother back in GM1 a long time ago.

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Is this why im gold when i should be master!?

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I never thought of it that way and it describes the issue very nicely.

This aswell :eyes:

So ranks are supposed to be relative, but at the same time the top 1 player does not have the hightest rank. Idk what my brain needs here.

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Nqh i think what calcifer is saying is that the distribution of ranks doesnt follow a binomial distribution centred on plat5 which is supposed to be the average rank nowadays (iirc). Instead the frequency of players being at a rank decays rapidly at some point above plat 5 (maybe diamond or master), so that master5 and upwards migt actually represent the top2% of the playerbase. So either diamond represents the top20% as it always used to, in which case you have top20% skill players with even better than top2% of players (which is an ENORMOUS skill disparity), or, diamond5 and up is much less than top20%. Either way, high skill players who in OW1 terms we might understand to be masters level, are being artificially compressed into diamond ranks (maybe even lower) causing big skill gaps in games. Its hard for these players to climb, because MMR is kept artificially low (or so is alleged).

Another problem is that the real skill dofference bwttween higher elo players is huge. Its known and said by many that the difference between a bronze and a gm at the end of ow1 was the same as the difference between a 4200 and a 4600+ player at the end of ow1. Each 100 sr difference above 4k was said to be equal in skill gap to an entire skill tier lower down the ladder. The people in the top0.1% smurf and eat the top1% for breakfast. This is why we see so few people in champion (it shows clearly just how much better one player in top10 is than one in top50), but also means that the skill difference between someone who is GM5 currently (top400 or better) and someone who is, say, master 3, is gigantic. Easily a whole skill division, but what calcifer is saying is post s9 comp changes, it’s maybe even more of a gap than we give it credit for.

All this is to say that with how the real skill difference between the 1st and 2nd percentile of players is like the difference in skill between the 70th and 100th percentile (numbers chosen arbitrarily to illustrate the point), and top percentile player’s MMR is throttled, you could have (in a diamond4 - master 4 game) a very, very big gap in skill.

If i had trust level 3 id post images of a binomial expansion woth a drawing of a curve on top of what the current rank distribution is alleged to be

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The problem is that there is such a wide range of skill levels in overwatch that are spread so far apart with too small a playerbase to populate the ranked system the current way its represented so things end up very skewed. Its made worse by things like 5v5 vs 6v6 and stadium all being competing modes. This drives the queue times for top 2% players up drastically, so they need to be matched with top20% players, despite that huge skill gap. The reazon why this is necessary is because the people who are that good at the game are people who represent it online, CCs, pros, people who spend hours a day playing, so they’re (adjusted for the number of players at the relative rank) just as valuable to blizz as the players in plat who play for maybe 2 hours a week

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