You have to carry on your role at every elo. Everyone on your team is going to make mistakes, including you.
The enemy team is in the same predicament as you.
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Completely UNLIKE yourself, my profile is open, and you can feel free to add me. 
I don’t hide my progress. I just don’t play Overwatch regularly enough to play on this account as I don’t wish to spoil games for myself or other players (my main account btw).
I mean… DPS players feel the same way that you do. I was a tank main when I climbed from Bronze to Gold. In Gold I realized that DPS would never push/aggress with me so I swapped to DPS and that’s how I climbed out of low/average elo. After I learned more about the game, I went and climbed my tank SR up to Diamond.
In Gold and lower, if you have a tank and a support who are working together, you can literally go on a 15 game winning spree simply because tank and support carry the most (assuming you don’t run into a thrower).
I mean… most Bronze/Silver/Gold players are playing on 60 FPS and other outdated hardware. They play overwatch a couple hours a day/week/etc. and dont have the time/don’t want to put in the effort to improving as a player.
To climb from Gold to Diamond, I literally would spend hours aim training because I knew that pretty much any player above 2600 SR who wanted to be Diamond+ was doing the same thing. Most Gold and lower DPS don’t have the interest or time to commit to self improvement the way I did (beginning of Quarantine).
So you can’t flame teammates (DPS and support) for playing badly if they’re casual players or you’re really just being toxic.
If you genuinely want to be a competitive Overwatch player and play with other competitive overwatch players, you need to put in the time to grind your way out of average ranks and into the zone where competitive players play.
And to stay competitive, doesn’t mean just being Diamond, it means constantly trying to figure out how to improve as a player so that you can give your team the best chances of winning.
I was watching some coach reviewing some bronze gameplay last week and two tank players ulted each other because they thought they where enemies… You can’t possibly expect me to take bronze players seriously when I see this kind of game sense.
As someone who has climbed multiple accounts from Silver/Gold/Plat to 3000+, I can tell you, there are much fewer smurfs than you think. Silver/Gold/Plat (again) is filled with casual players.
Some players are from other (Valorant) games and play overwatch with friends but are high ranked in other games so they have great game sense and mechanics but just don’t put in the effort to climb. Some players are just hard stuck silver/Gold/Plat players on new accounts trying to escape elo hell (this is usually the case).
Because I can tell you, I can take a Silver account to 2.6/2.7 with like a 75-80% win rate (when I’m actively playing Overwatch; aim training and focusing on death match). If it was infested with smurfs who are of equal skill to me, I wouldn’t be able to do this, right?
I’m just a 3650 peek player. I’m not special. My consistent level of play is 3200 to 3300. Only when I truly sit down and micromanage every bit of self-gameplay will I hit 3500+.
You’re never not going to have to carry dead weight. The dead weight just becomes a lighter load, or impossibly heavy because of the skill of your enemies.
In any rank below 2750, the dead weight is the lightest it will EVER be.
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Exactly. Which is why MMR will never be necessary. It’s a redundant metric that exists only to rig matches, handicap skill, arrest progression, and take away fair laddering. Fair laddering means non-adaptive matchmaking. OW MMR is something in between SBMM and EOMM. It’s not something you’ll find in legitimate contests.
You’re matched, you win or lose, and you win or lose SR proportional to how you did that match.
Exactly. Which is why fair competition system does not seek to rig match outcomes. It wouldn’t try to balance every single match “for fairness”. Fair competition on a fair ladder, doesn’t force match odds (in expectation). 50-50 is protecting bad players and hurting good ones.
SR-only system lets you compete without rigging. And if you suck, you suck. No reason for mmr.
People moving around on the ladder requires work and produces entropy. There is no net external energy added to the system that I know of. Entrants are roughly offset by leavers (conservation; even more entropy gains if this is imbalanced because more work will be required to correct mismatches and gaps).
There has been no corrective, restorative, or publically acknowledged maintenance actions that I know of. Therefore, no “external energy to the system” to dissipate things. Nothing since 2016 afaik.
Unless you have data to show they periodically pump energy into the system to fix it?
If not, I’ll wager it’s no longer a symmetric normal pdf. And this is a data-free, structural argument. It’s no longer a symmetric normal pdf, because alt accounts by their very nature do not disperse symmetrically, they are biased to be more numerous then main accounts and typically less higher rated. This leads to much more deranked bloat and inflation of the lower ranks more than the higher ranks, which few people can maintain.
And this “assumption” would be totally in line with basically every other multi-player contest that sees no reset or maintenances, and allows multiple accounts per player.
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Explain how it’s redundant.
You’re using “adaptive” to mean “pairs you with equally skilled players.” In no world is that “rigged.”
You don’t find mixed SBMM/EOMM models in “legitimate contests” because, outside of video games, there are few competitive team games which select individuals from a pool. Additionally, those competitions aren’t “paying the bills” by trying to sell products to the players. Most competitions have up-front entry fees.
What odds constitute a “fair game” in your mind? How about a “fair” pair of dice? How about a “fair” coin?
In the system you’re proposing, you would get stomped in more games than you do now. Those that share the “rigged” mentality would complain even more about their inability to climb.
The system becomes more ordered with input. The fact that it’s even “online” and functioning means there is a constant input and therefore has lower entropy. If the entropy of the system is increasing, the system becomes more disordered i.e.–the system isn’t falling apart.
I’m not sure what you think this argument was supposed to demonstrate.
It’s literally plugged in, working, and managing player fluctuations. Again, I have no idea what you think this should demonstrate.
By definition, it is normalized from 0-5000 with MMR representing the +/- SD from the mean player. You’re contending it’s lognormal/skewed. Show the data.
If the player density bloats at a certain rank, the mean MMR shifts and the SR rank follows.
Show the data. If there’s a general framework that describes this endpoint, I’m happy with academic peer-reviewed papers too.
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Funny how it is mainly toxic and hardstruck players complaining about “rigged matchmaker”, coincidence? I think not =]
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Definition of redundant. MMR serves no additional purpose beyond SR, except to artificially rig close matches.
That’s precisely the definition of rigged. You’re not rolling the dice at your rank, you’re being served up rigged matches where hidden analytics try and force 50-50 outcomes in expectation. In literally every sense that is rigged.
And there is no free lunch. If you force match “fairness” you remove ladder “fairness”. People will not progress naturally as they would in other elo systems, which are akin to SR only progression with no handicapping. SR ranges are all you ever need to ship a match, and the slight differences in team average SR can be compensated for with more/less SR rewards and pbsr.
You can 100% get people to their true SR rank without mmr. And at their true SR, mmr in theory becomes petty, and maximally redundant. There is no place for mmr in gaming except to rig fair contest into an artificial grind (pay the bills, engagement, retention).
Exactly. For a particular rank, imagine cherry-picking players into teams between matches, based on hidden performance criteria to force 50-50 outcomes, instead of randomly shuffling players onto teams and letting the best bubble up to the top of that bracket.
That is, as others have coined “anti-competitive”. And it makes no sense for a game mode that is labelled as such, and exists as a path to financial gain.
No forced odds. This isn’t a game of chance lol. It’s a game of skill against some average backdrop chances for your rank. Randomly ship matches around a narrow SR band, since everyone is either where they belong (SR), or moving to where they belong, which averages out. Stomps and streaks are part of laddering, ranking, and real competition.
It sucks to suck, but it sucks to be held back by rigged odds, or protected and sheltered by them as well.
Ladder integrity, as defined by normal pdf corresponding to skill by % players mapped to SR rank, deteriorates over time. Player skill is idealized as normal (symmetrical) pdf. As alts enter the ladder and there is no reset, they impart disruption that inflate the distribution and skew it below peak skill. More alts place lower than mains, and there are many more alts than mains, so you induce a lot of bloat and inflation in the lower ranks. This increases the correspondence error. Another effect happens in thin ranks, which should have a small population, but are bloated because of an individuals ability to repeat place several accounts in those ranks, increasing the amount of SR that must be absorbed and redistributed. Again, because every alt introduces around 7200sr worth of entropy that must be dissipated or rectified.
Please clarify. Do you mean accounts or players?
I have seen no data that suggests it “manages” player ranks or account fluctuations. It’s not even trying to preserve a normal pdf and map you to a place on it. We have evidence the ladder works with mmr and sr only. And no evidence that it tries to preserve a normal pdf and conform you to it. There is no mechanism for self-healing. The ladder isn’t zero-sum either, it’s constant-sum (especially since RQ). And the active population is always changing.
So to the best of my knowledge it does not self-heal or preserve it’s integrity. If you think self-healing is standard in the industry, I’m open to journals that suggest it. Otherwise, we have been no full resets, restorative actions, or total interventions on smurfing/etc. since 2016. Correct me if I’m wrong, but under those conditions the parameters of the pdf have almost surely deteriorated from the last dev rank distribution reveal (and we have no idea if that was cleaned data per player or per account).
Here is a source that seems convincing enough. So far, no one has offered any math to explain how the ladder corrects itself from alts:
I’m all over the ladder though, on many accounts. Within 2-3 matches I feel the sweat level come to meet me instead of giving me free SR. Maybe you don’t boost enough to notice it lul
And I notice it in CoD and other games. But I never noticed it in games before 2016 when this kind of rigging started going mainstream.
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I have improved from Low Gold ALL the way to GM, I only ranked up each time I improved something.
??
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So you deny mmr and current mm makes things toxic? Backpressure from rigging, 5 years of smurf accumulation, no resets between seasons isn’t toxic? I have friends that dont play for months show up and place higher than my smurf accounts who are stuck into a rank no matter how they do on placements (because placements dont matter either - that’s not toxic?)
If you had SR only matchmaking you would at least have peace of mind nothing is working to rig your matches for 50-50. No more close fair match 500sr off the mark. Rise and fall against random players at your rank is just better. No need for tinfoil hats then either. You know nothing is patented then. Nothing at work and it’s up to you to beat the random unrigged odds.
Everything you are talking about is anecdotal. You haven’t provided actual evidence to support your claim.
Climbing and winning in ranked takes skill and improvement, you can’t expect to be handed free wins.
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Have you actually climbed and do you actually have to go through a climb/boost like once a week like people in my discord? There is no more denying it lul. “Hardstucks” lol the people noticing the rigging the most are boosters and account sellers going up against other boosters. Their mobility is always backpressured and matches feel much harder for the rank they’re taking place at.
When I play on one of 8 smurf accounts I stomp 2-3 games and immediately go up against friends on their smurf accounts or known throwers, boosters, cheaters, etc. It’s like the game already knows within a few matches we would all peak and belong 3300 in mmr skill, but forces us to fight each other in bronze or silver or gold. That kind of ladder grind makes no sense if they’re not going to reset anything or fix smurfing haha.
Isn’t that kind of annecdotal btw?
Yeah this makes no sense. We’re talking about taking a smurf account and suddenly deciding to rank it up. Skill and improvement aren’t factors here. The SR label and the work involved climbing is. Ladder is a mess and it will absolutely find other smurfs and throwers to balance out “fair games”. It’s far from random for the rank because random for the rank would be much higher win %. Ez climb was possible before but not anymore, ladder got a lot more “rigged” or no one left is bad enough to farm over and over - mm sees to it they are sheltered.
Coincidence?! I THINK NOT!! 
Hehehe…. thank you for this Romulus!! 
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You agreed with my point in a round about way. Hundreds or thousands of games for mobility within 1000sr is a joke.
It is also mostly toxic and hardstuck players defending the matchmaker.
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Considering the greatest concentration of players is between <500 SR to 2999 SR, I’d say I have to agree with you actually.
Well played sir.
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So I played a few games with a proper “smurf” last night. He just joined our group and started playing, obviously on an alt account. It took us a couple of games to realise. He wasn’t one of these people who announce to everyone they’re a smurf when really they’re like low diamond and can’t function without a mercy pocket.
It was a low to mid gold game and this dude could 1v6 the enemy team as hog without breaking a sweat, and at one point used his alt to force them all back through the spawn door.
It’s kind of changed my perspective on the game a bit. When people think they should be in GM and they’re stuck in gold. There’s a bigger skill difference between the two than they probably think.
I still think the matchmaker is broken as the majority of my games are either roll loss or roll win which isn’t much fun at all. But having seen the skill of a high level player I don’t think I’m ever going to be at that level no matter how many hours I put into the game, and I suspect a lot of these “GM stuck in plat” players are in the same boat. I guess we can’t all be the best otherwise the best wouldn’t mean much at all?
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How did you guys come to the realization that he was playing out of his rank? Did he eventually admit it? Did you ask him (after doing some crazy play)?
- Just curious honestly.
Have you considered going back and re-watching his gameplay to try and grasp his decision making?
Dave, I’m glad you’ve had this experience.
The difference between Masters (3500) and GM (4000) is probably equivalent to the difference between 2000 and 3000 SR (I know it seems like an exaggeration but I assure you it is not).
And in GM, Every 150-200 SR is effectively a new rank if only because you’replaying against players at the very top of the ladder who are all exceptional at their roles/heroes.
I’m not interested in arguing with you on this topic because we’ve discussed it previously.
I do want to ask if I may…
As you mentioned, the player was a great Tank/Hog.
- Would you say the games were unfair for your enemies?
- Would you say that a game with a group of players equal in skill to him would be a balanced match?
The reason for the second question is, in my opinion, the higher you climb, the more balanced the matches feel and the more rewarding it is to win because everyone becomes more proficient at their roles and the probability of consistent performance becomes very apparent (as compared to casual performance).
And no… Stomps are not fun at all. Nobody enjoys them.
Actually I HYPER disagree with you (I could elaborate on this). Depending on what role you are, its always about knowing what to do in what situation. There is a great amount of skill required for Overwatch, but more than skill is the second to second decisions that you make, and this is something players like myself, Abdullah9000, Violence, and some of the other Comp Forum regulars are trying to preach.
But the beautiful part? ANYONE can do it!!
I can very much assure you that no GM player stays stuck in platinum. Yes… it may take them a little bit of time to climb out if they have some unlucky games, but overall, they will not remain in low elo because of the decisions they make having such drastic impact on the outcome of the game.
Correct… As more people climb, the average level of performance to maintain/increase in rank, increases as people (and the community) become better players.
Not everyone can be GM, Masters, Diamond… But… ANYONE CAN!! 
- Including you!!
POST-SCRIPT
Real DPS Smurfs don’t ask for Mercy pockets because we’re gonna get kills one way or another. But if you pocket us (against a pharah for example) you’re simply making everyone’s life easier… 
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How are you defining Handicapping here? Second, since you are now the one making the claim, I’ll ask you to provide accurate, fact-based evidence that there is zero “handicapping” in the matchmaker. This should be fascinating, since short of seeing the running code base itself and relaying/detailing the relevant portions here, there is no possible way for you to know/prove this.
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How would you know unless you worked as hard and as long as a GM? Wouldn’t you actually have to put yourself on the regimen of the average GM, and do that week in week out for as long as it took the average GM to gain that level of skill (barring some obvious debilitating mental or physiological limitation)? You don’t think there were a considerable portion of GM’s who thought they couldn’t possibly be that good when they first started out?
It’s only rigged in that if your stats are lower than they should be for your rank and role, you get forced losses. In a team game what other mechanic is there to keep people in the rank they belong? In a solo environment, you would either win or lose, but there kind of needs to be this mechanic in a team game otherwise you could just get boosted really easily.
The flipside that nobody ever wants to acknowledge after a loss streak is that if your stats are better than they should be for your rank, you get FORCED WINS. The system goes both ways.
I have a soloQ only account where I only play when I’m playing well, aim is on point, don’t play on weekends or late at night, etc and I have hovered in a 200 SR range for years. Never below, never above. But on my other accounts where I group, play when my aim is off or I’m tired, etc I’ll go on much bigger swings. If your aim is off, SIGN OFF or play QP. The system can tell that you’re putting up bad stats and will force losses.
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