tl;dr: I’ve been watching a few top-500 players do bronze-GM streams, and it proves that smurfing can be a problem.
So, here’s the famous post where Jeff said that smurfing isn’t really a problem: Overwatch Forums
Smurfing – and I know this isn’t what you want to hear – isn’t really that big of an issue. For example, a few weeks ago one of the Pro Overwatch players created a smurf account and was streaming from it. We were able to watch his MMR internally and compare it against his “main” account. Within 15 games, the MMR’s were equal. I know there is a very bad perception of Smurfing. But the reality is, skilled players are moved rapidly out of lower skill situations.
Just today I was watching a top-500 Widow player who has been going from bronze to GM. He’s gone through about 90 matches and is currently at diamond. Now if what Jeff said was true, then pretty quickly that person should have started getting matched with people in his skill range and the matches should have gotten tough. But that’s absolutely not the case: he’s still hard carrying, and outclassing everyone on enemy teams. In a well-designed matchmaking system (which takes MMR into account properly), that should not happen for an extended period of time.
My assumption of the thing that makes this a hard problem to solve: there’s no one in his skill range that is in that rank.
But with a well-designed MMR system, that shouldn’t be a problem. It should be grouping him with people that have extremely low MMRs for diamond (so people that really belong in plat or even lower), and putting him up against enemy teams that have very high MMRs for diamond. But watching the games, it’s clear that’s not the case. Everyone (else) on both sides seem to be pretty average diamonds. Maybe it would take an hour to find a decently balanced match for him, but I’ve seen top players with hour-long queue times in GM.
Regardless, I’ve been watching proof that it’s flat out not true that “skilled players are moved rapidly out of lower skill situations.”
If people were properly placed, or moved to their designated skill zone, they feel many players would be disappointed with their rank and quit or be content with their rank and play less.
The system is designed to be a grind regardless of skill level because they want to maintain their playerbase. Not the most honorable way to implement player retention strategies, but effective.
Edit: Becoming less effective as people are becoming aware to it, however.
I mean who even cares, Blizzard has been trolling since season 9 and is not coming back from it. It’s only going to get worse so it’s better to just abandon the game now and never play it again until they decide that having a brain and actually using it might be beneficial for the game they are trying to keep alive.
To be clear, I’m not talking about their SR. This is more a discussion about MMR. So my point is: if the MMR and matchmaking systems worked as they should, a high-skill player in low-SR matches should still have tough matches. Jeff has outright stated that it is true that this happens. Yet I’m watching right now with my own eyes seeing that it doesn’t.
On average I usually have like 4 complete potatoes, 6 average players, and 2 carries in every match. And it’s not always evenly split, leading to many stomps. There was a team I was playing against getting crushed so badly that I literally stopped playing just to observe and my team proceeded to win, without issue, 5v6 with like 4 minutes left on the clock.
The SR formulas should be changed to MMR and individual performance over team performance. If your SR is silver/gold, but your mmr its from Master/GM you should get SR regardless winning or losing the match (only if you had an extraordinary match).
Ex. If you are Tank, You blocked 40k dmg, blocked/cancelled a lot of enemy ults, Did so much more damage than everyone, etc. and you are in silver with an MMR so much higher, you should win more SR than everyone, even if you lose that match.
Same with support, If you did a ton of heals, a lot of assists, cancelling ults or abiliting team ults. You should win more SR even if you lost because DPS were trash and reach faster your true SR based on your MMR.
That post of Jeff’s is very out of date. Now that streak bonuses have been toned down, it takes a lot longer for people to climb through multiple tiers. Unranked to GM is typically 100+ games. It also takes longer if the account is not new, or from bronze.
Here is Jeff’s latest comment:
This is still a bit too optimistic, at least for top players.
Really?? If you know a player is not a diamond, just push him up to master or ban him. Don’t hold him down through artificial means and screw up match quality.
Thanks for the updated info, I hadn’t found that one yet.
Really?? If you know a player is not a diamond, just push him up to master or ban him. Don’t hold him down through artificial means and screw up match quality.
I agree, pushing them up to master fast would be the ideal situation. I’d like to see quicker SR changes in general, though in masters and lower rank that would mean a lot of pretty big swings in SR (people in sub-GM tend to have pretty strong hot and cold phases). And I’m ok with that.
It’s good publicity for Blizz tho. There are countless streams on google all doing the ‘bronze to gm X hero only’ is Blizzard actually going to ban Kabajii, who hit rank 1?
Jeff, you know this the best. Smurf accounts move out if they want to. Their MMR can stabilize, but they decide the outcome of the matches. Its not about how unskilled bronze-gold are, its about how players from above ruin the gameplay experience for them. 15+ match/account is too much.
You’ve made the MMR system to keep every player in their ranks, yet they out right ruin every other rank ingame and you do nothing.
I know, that theres minimal to zero chance that any dev or Jeff sees it, but i really needed to react to this.
The Kabaji streams I’ve seen are unranked to GM, which are allowed. It is Bronze to GM that are not allowed. A GM in bronze to plat is just cyber bullying, which is not good publicity for the company.
How is that any different? What’s the point of watching the number one player take a new account and put it through the ranking system. They would place in top 500 again, would they not? So how does it end up in anything lower than top 500, or at least master, unless they deliberately didn’t play to the best of their ability? (which is throwing)
That’s up for streamers and their viewers to answer.
Top 500 players on new accounts place somewhere between Plat and Master (Season 17 and earlier). They don’t place higher because quick play is not taken into account, and 10 games is not enough to determine that someone belongs in top 500. The range is probably smaller now, because only 5 games are required to place.
I think quick play should be taken into account when placing new accounts. This means quick play would be required, pre-competitive, rather than optional as it is now.
I think personal performance really should be weighed heavier because it’s clearly barely taken into account. Don’t change the current adjustment for poor performance but increase the benefit of good performance. This would help push smurfs out of lower SR faster and help with those whose skill level is above their SR but keep getting dragged down by bad or toxic teammates and leavers.
the mmr system is messed up tho, i have two accounts one in masters and one in gold, when i went back to my gold one after like a year and half of not playing it i have easily played 50 games getting 50 plus elims and i’m still low plat. It’s just too slow, i don’t want to ruin these games but i want my account where it should be. It’s kind of stupid
and on the note of the mmr system not working, for the last 5 games i have gotten 40 plus elims with over 15k damage in all 5 and i’m down 100 sr on my normal. the mmr system is still negative for me. i’m still getting 20 for a win and losing 22 for a loss, it makes no sense?
Yeah it definitely feels too slow to move people
I mean, there have been games where I’ve went up against obvious smurfs tryharding the hell out of the game, two games in a row!
I mean, if they moved up and I moved down from our last match, doesn’t that mean that there should be next to no chance of being against them again, if we are to believe that they move up “quickly”?