Rigged games, handiccaping, matchmaker

Competitive Discussion
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It is interesting how some players think that matchmaker is their enemy and how it is giving them rigged games and how is matchmaker handicapping you on purpose. I will use two examples to explain some things.

1. Theory/Myth
I am important and matchmaker is creating games for me to force my winrate closer to 50%. Matchmaker is handicapping me because I am good so its giving me bad team mates if I win games.

2. Reality
I am random person amongst thousands of others and I am just number for matchmaker to fill me in team with same average MMR as enemy team.

So why some players think that 2. Is the case? I think it has two main reasons. Players do want to feel special. They dont want to accept that they are just random number for the system. They want to be something more, they think they are more than random number and matchmaker is acting in certain way because they are important/special. Second main reason is pride, feel of flawlessness, perfection. They do not believe they are the reason why they dont climb. Finding true reasons why you are not climbing might be time consuming and way to improvement is hard. You have to be open to criticism, invest a lot of time to improve. It is the hard way. Matchmaker is rigging my games, wow how easy that was it right? Yes it is easy way to avoid the hard way and blame the system. It is system, not me because I am good. Easy path, but not path leading to truth and selfimprovement.

Matchmaker is handicapping me!

Why would matchmaker do that? To keep you lower than you belong? Why? You may be highest player in match with skill just like you can be the lowest. Some think that matchmaker will give you potato team mates when you are playing too good. But what does that mean? Matchmaker is trying to make games 50/50 so both team have same average MMR if it is possible with current live player base in your elo. So if you are the best and rest of the team is potatoes, enemy team has the same. Enemy team have same average MMR as your team. If matchmaker is trying to handicap you, your potato team mates were place into your games why? So they have better chance to win with you? In that case, match is in reality fair as matchmaker dont want them to lose. If they were placed to your team so they can lose as they are intentified as players to drop, why place you on the team if you play good for your elo? Rigging games doesnt make sense either way. Competitive is not just you, its 12 players, two teams, you cant just say system is doing something to just you as there is another 11 players involved in the match.

Now, do you sometimes feel handicapped by your team mates? I think everyone do feel that sometimes. I do too, some players are just bad and will make your chance to win harder. Thats the reality. Not every 2300 players in pool will play the same. Several players with same MMR might provide different performance considering huge number of factors. Same skill for matchmaker, different skill in match. Your team mates will be inconsistent so in order to climb, it has to be you who will be consistent and trying to provide more value than you are expected if you want to climb. Its not enough to beat players at you elo, you have to beat players better than your elo to take their place.

Final words
Dont lie to yourself, stop blaming matchmaker for your fate and rank. Only you can change it. Its ok to blame the matchmaker or team mates from time to time in individual games to let off some steam, but in the end you have to realize that it is you in bigger picture. Your place in the system is reflection of how you play. You are not special case, victim of the system. You are just gold ranked(or any other rank) fish in the pond amongst thousands of others with same MMR randomly picked by the matchmaker to create balanced teams.

You are not expected to carry bad players, you are expected to do more than you should be doing at your elo. If you are plat and matchmaker will give you silver team mate, you are not supposed to carry him. You are supposed to carry yourself. Provide value as plat player or more if you want to climb. Just like silver player is expected to provide more value than silver player if he wants to climb provided value from all 6 players will make the outcome, some games cannot be carried, and some cannot ve lost as the value provided from players migh differ. Thats why it is important to be consistent. And dont expect plat play from silver player. He is not expecting masters play from you either. I know its hard as I sometime do same mistake.

Thats all I wanted to share this morning :slight_smile:

Good luck with changing the mindset and maybe climb something :slight_smile:

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I don’t need to climb anymore, I have way more hours than you in ranked and I can confidently say that you’re wrong.

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Just because you have more in game time doesnt it mean that you are right and I am wrong. This is not my only account. I am pretty sure my levels combine on my accounts are higher than yours anyway :slight_smile:

You said I am wrong. About what then? Share your counter arguments if your opinion is different.

I see you are masters, would you be stuck in gold or silver as masters player by system handicapping you?

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About the time, I have 3 smurfs. Anyway, I’m not here to compare weenies with you.

Counterarguments you say?

Here’s plenty. Add that to my own experience through thousand of hours on this game. You are not just wrong. This thread is unnecessary.

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If players are actually starting to talk about Match Making Rating this way, I am glad to hear it. Before I started my thread, there was very little awareness of MMR among players, and seemingly no understanding that it is a handicapping system.

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I am not saying matchmaker is handicapping tho. What I ment by this is that some games might feel that way because players with same MMR might provide different value for the team.

You can have two players who are practialy identical for matchmaker, both at 2500 MMR, but one will stomp the other one. You might think that you have worse team mate than enemy team but reality is that your 2500 is junk main and enemy 2500 is pharha main who will counter your junkrat. Matchmaker doesnt care what do you main, for him you are just 2500.

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But why? What is the point in handicapping? What does Blizzard get from keeping you in a specific rank?

I can understand if people were to say that there is some kind of rigging when it comes to streamers, since they are “OW celebs”, content creators, are featured on the Battlenet app etc. I rem remember someone posting on this forum, I have no idea if that is actually true or not, that Stevoo had to be whitelisted since he got banned way too many times due to false reports since people did not like him playing Sym. If that were true, that is something that I could believe. I also watched Kabaji the other night losing every single game he played and maybe winning like 2 and we has streaming for about 4 hrs.

Or if maybe streamers getting favored to get better games? Even that is more believable than Blizzard keeping regular forum members (those regulars who are always first ones to jump to a topic about rigging, or if there is no new, current topic about rigging they will necro a thread) in their respective elos.

I’ve seen people with Diamond borders (definitely not my intention to border shame here), who have been playing this game longer than I have and have more hours in this game than I ever will still thinking how their team is keeping them down, and I have surpassed them in ranks. I just cannot understand the ability to play this game that long, even longer than some streamers and still not being able to learn absolutely anything. They still do the same thing over and over again since the first day they bought this game.

Back when I was in Bronze, when I first started playing this game, I had this XQC border guy with whom I played regularly who would flame and complain every single match about every single thing. He is still Bronze, to this day, and I am not.

Low ranks are so chaotic, so chaotic in every possible way that I had to take several breaks in the course of my gaming just to keep my sanity. The only thing consistent in low ranks is that they are inconsistent.

That was the truth the moment this game came out, and it is still the truth. Nothing has changed essentially. Skill lvl has changed throughout the years. Bronze is not the same as it was in 2017 for example, but the essentials remain.

People are going to be walking in a straight line until the end of time and blame Blizzard for it.

It is like me blaming Instagram food videos from preventing me to lose weight, saying “yup they made me eat this whole pizza” and then I would go on and post topics about how Instagram is purposefully making people fatter and preventing them from losing weight.

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I know you’re not saying it is handicapping, but I am saying that it is. If you read the quote from Scott Mercer in my thread, you’ll see that Blizzard confirms it

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Nothing :slight_smile:

In perfect world all players would solo Q and every elo would have milions of players, with that every match would be for example 6x 3100 vs 6x3100 players, perfectly balanced match.

But we do not live in perfect world, we live in a world where players from different ranks can group up and where ranks do not have so many players to make perfectly balanced teams. Majority of games will be pretty close to your MMR. For example I currently play in mid gold and majority of my games is around that, with gold players. Sometimes I see plat, sometimes I see silver, very rarely I see bronze, but only because bronze player is usualy grouped up with high gold or low plat.

So I think I understand what is your issue with the system Cuthbert, because in some games you simply will be the highest person together with player with 1-2 ranks below. You see it as handicapping. I dont, because teams still have same average MMR. So Yeah I get it dude, but you cant have better system unless you inject thousands of player into every elo and region and lock player from grouping up. Removing MMR would not solve anything. Using SR instead of MMR would cause even bigger swings in quality of games and it would be still handicapping in your eyes. What then then? random matchmaker just randomly picking players from all elos? Do you want total chaos in every match? People would leave this game fast by having system like that.

But I dont think Scot Mercer said anything exactly about handicapping. That is your interpretation how you see it. Cuthbert, I dont know your MMR, I believe you are Diamond? Lets say you are 3000, so YOU=3000.

YOU vs 3100
2700 vs 2600
2700 vs 2700
2600 vs 2600
2800 vs 2800
2800 vs 2800

Do you feel like are handicapped in match like this? If not, can you give me example of match with number like this so explain what is handicapped match for you?

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I think the reason why you see 1k difference between being able to group up is mainly because there are simply not enough players, so Blizzard had to do something about it. I think that even they know how bad it is to allow 1k SR difference to be able to group in comp. I think it is bad, you think it is bad and I am fairly certain everyone thinks it is bad. I do not want Bronze people in my Gold games nor do I want Diamond people in my games.

It reminds me of what my company did recently, due to to Covid situation. Fired some people to save some costs then dumped their work on you for the same wage. They all thought it was “efficient”, hence why I am currently looking for a new job. F your vision of efficiency.

Same thing with OW. People leave all the time. For different reasons. RL getting too much, not having enough time to grind comp or even play casually. Other games getting their attention, people actually getting fed up with the quality of their games etc. All valid reasons.

Also, I am certain that many people confuse the terms “quality of matches” and
“rigging” and have actually made it to be synonyms. I have read so many topics about complaining and rigging that it basically comes down to quality nothing more nothing less.

“I was on a 10 games losing streak, we had a Torb emoting in spawn, he said he was going to throw because his gf was on her period so it made him cranky as well”, “I had this idiot Soldier who could not hit a broad side of a barn and he did not want to switch and we lost”, “had this Junk and Sym on my team and the enemy had Pharah and Widow and we lost, awful DPS” etc. etc. Million examples. In the end you end up with Blizzard is punishing me because I won the previous game so put me with a Sym OTP in this one ON PURPOSE.

Those are bad quality matches. 90% of low elo matches are bad quality matches rather than rigging. This is excluding smurfs. Why? Because all those people that you complain about are the same people who throw deliberately because they also think that their teammates are keeping them down and the cycle continues.

If you even dare to tell them, in game or otherwise, that going 10 times in a row through the same route that got them killed 10 times before is going to kill them again for the 11th of the time, they will whine, suck their thumb, will sulk, and will throw and will make you come here and post a topic about how Blizzard is against them.

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Zax, since Overwatch was released, how many total bugs do you think they’ve patched? Take a guess.

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I dont know, how is that related to my topic?

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Well, the fact of the matter is, none of us knows how well the matchmaker is working, or whether it’s working as intended, or how often. It could be completely fouled up, and that seems to be the observation of many, particularly recently. None of us really knows.

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There is no other valid interpretation of Scott Mercer’s description of MMR. He is describing a handicapping system, and only being coy about some of the details. The fact that he doesn’t say the word handicapping doesn’t change the nature of reality.

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Can you answer this please?

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Lots of valid points everyone would be ignorant to not agree with 100%. But I am going on a Whim here. Totally fly by the seat of my pants type guess. You aren’t a tank player that only plays tank in masters or diamond are you? Gotta love runnin it down mid day on any day of the week prime time lots of people playing & boutta rock that 3900 ish game and ayyyyyy 3300 elo game lets go. Enemy teams stacked and has pretty OK percentiles. Your team? Better stretch your back before the game starts and have the chiropractor on speed dial on half time you’re now meant to be the carry factor.

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I understand, but i dont think matchmaker is the issue, smaller player base together with less tank players above 3000 is the reason and that is probably unfixable.

Unless blizzard make tank role somehow more enjoyable. But how that I dont know. Its the issue with the role itself i think, not about how strong it is to carry games.

DPS - i kill stuff
SUPPORT - I heal people, keep them alive
Tank - i defend?take space? Feed damage?

Tank role is probably less fun role because of how that role works.

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I would love 2 options:

  1. The option to select “Id rather wait longer to get my home server (west or east etc)”
  2. The option to select "Id rather wait longer to get a game with +/- 100 sr MAX vs insta queing into 500-1000 sr lower games 247 as tank .

Lots of players dont care. Lots of players do care; games wont be any longer to find.

Edit: and they can do it. Tier 2 competing , even go see for yourself. If you run a custom game- when you are the host - you can set which server. In open div if you have a higher seed- you choose first. This means if it goes to map 5, the final maps in your favor and that is usually the comeback for most teams.

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This has happened so many times to me as a Masters tank in EU, so much that I get anxiety just from Q’ing up at this point and am constantly contemplating whether I should just drop the role or not, its just absolutely infuriating and triggers the toxicity aspects…

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People often provide zero value. The whole MMR SR thing is garbage. I frequently see plays play worse than golds.