Hello, I am a new player who has been playing Overwatch for about one month.
While I enjoy the game, I have noticed several issues with the matchmaking system.
Problem:
Currently, matchmaking and internal rating (HSR) rely heavily on match outcomes.
Especially in the Bronze and Silver tiers, matches often feature smurfs or highly unbalanced teams, making frustration accumulate easily. Players’ actions often have little impact on the outcome, preventing them from fully enjoying the game.
Impact on all roles:
Support: Even if you heal and assist your team effectively, your SR drops if the team loses
DPS: High kills or damage won’t prevent SR loss if the team collapses
Tank: Creating space properly is not enough if the team fails to coordinate
Many players feel that their individual efforts are not recognized.
Suggestion:
If individual contributions—such as healing done, damage dealt, deaths, and objective contribution time—were considered along with match outcomes, matchmaking accuracy would improve, extreme one-sided matches would decrease, and new players would find it easier to join the game.
I hope Blizzard will consider these points to prevent new players from leaving the game too quickly.
Thank you for all the feedback. I wasn’t aware that similar measures had failed in the past. As you pointed out, I can easily imagine that it could lead to an increase in stat-farming trolls. I really appreciate the explanation.
I’ve only been playing for about a month, but I really enjoy this game, so I’d like to offer a proposal from a different perspective. Currently, ranked mode is unlocked after 20 wins, which makes it easy for smurfs and alternate accounts to be created. Experienced players can probably reach 20 wins in 1–2 days. However, new players often face smurfs, which prevents them from properly experiencing the intended learning curve and gameplay, and they are very likely to quit early.
To address this, I think it would be good to make ranked matches available only to Battle Pass owners, while leaving unranked play unchanged. This would increase the cost of smurfing and let new players safely challenge ranked matches. Also, strengthening phone number verification, such as preventing reuse for multiple accounts, could help as well.
With these measures, smurfs and alternate accounts would decrease, allowing new players to play against opponents of similar skill and hopefully enjoy the game as intended. This is a hopeful expectation, of course, but it seems possible.
It’s really a delicate and difficult issue, but I hope Blizzard will take some action to address this problem.