I’m trying to frame these in a way that does not have an agenda but is for information. Mmr is a hidden value that is used to attempt to make games fair between teams. SR is the visible rating for a given player.
Is it possible or even likely that two people with the same SR can have differing Mmr? Does QP effect MMR even after your initial placements in comp?
If MMR can vary between two different players of the same SR doesn’t that mean that one player is playing inherently more difficult games to maintain or gain ? The expectation is that two equally SR rated players would be equally skilled but this would suggest otherwise.
How is the higher MMR same SR player compensated for these more difficult games they are placed in? What methods are used to make sure that two players of the same SR are equal in actual game skill.
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The system is very poor in separating players based on skill. It is also very effective in handicapping a player that is better than his current rank to slow down climbing. I’m an established diamond player (for two seasons now) but on this new account my placements started with two losses because of leavers. I was placed to low plat. I played over 30 games to get past 2600 even though in most of those games I was quite probably the best player in my team. It is not enough to play at say 700-800SR higher level than your current SR for a steady climb. The handicapping system is able to even that out. It has taken me 140 games to reach 2944. I have over 50% win rate but man it required loads of grinding to compensate for all the unwinnable games you’re thrown into.
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“SR closely chases your MMR up and down and is a more “digestible” number. With the exception of top players who have decayed, MMR and SR are closely linked.” – Jeff Kaplan https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20758686566#post-6
QP never affects competitive, in any way.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20760837867#post-3
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/initial-competitive-skill-rating-decrypted/31877
The SR/MMR convergence is implemented by having each match pull SR in the direction of MMR. That is, if SR is lower than MMR, a player will win more SR than MMR on a win, and lose less SR than MMR on a loss. “When you do come back and actively play matches, you’ll also typically gain more SR from a win until your displayed skill rating and internal matchmaking have again reached ‘equilibrium’ “ – Scott Mercer
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753625906
Note that matchmaking is done by MMR alone. “If you do decay, it only affects your current displayed skill rating. This decay does not affect the internal matchmaking rating we use, so we can still place you in fair matches.” – Scott Mercer
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753625906
A more complete explainer is available at https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/how-competitive-skill-rating-works-season-9/14009
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1: Yes 2 people can have different MMR in the same bracket.
2: No. Once you do your first season placements. It’s ignored. No matter how long you stop playing comp.
3: You’re right. Two people at the extreme edge of skill will affect their game. To balance teams. If a person out skills all 5 people. The game has to find a person or people that get close to 50% balance. So say someone has something ridicules of 400SR higher MMR than their displayed SR (not really realistic example). 55SR has to be taken out of 5. Which depending on role is or isn’t possible.
4: With PBSR (plat and below) the persons are compensated by how well they do. If they do better than the average person. They lose less SR on a loss. Gain more SR on a win. Because the game assumed you hard carried them. Or while you lost. The game knows you don’t suck.
Handicapping is a myth. However, new accounts are often placed poorly through bad or good luck, and can take many, many games to get to where they belong.
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Your theory of how the match making works is a myth. It’s clearly false also as SR is definitely a factor in match making. Blizzard has recently changed the match making so that there would be smaller SR difference between players and teams. A gm playing bronze to gm when playing SR1600 games is not placed to games with other gms or even golds but other silver players close to 1600. Your SR effects who you are matched with. Maybe, just maybe it works differently for decayed players. Please stop presenting your theory like it’s an absolute truth because it’s not and linking to dev posts with zero info does not make it so.
I’ll leave now, unless DeadTom asks me questions. It is up to him whether he wants to believe those who present blue posts and data, or those who present blatant assertions.
Yes, they pretty much always will as far as we know.
No, it shouldn’t according to Blizzard.
Yes.
Below 3k rating that player will gain more SR because performance. Over 3k the extra/less SR you get from MMR isn’t that much of a big deal in my experience. The quality of games you get based on MMR is the important factor in my experience.
As long as the MMR is hidden we can’t know for sure. Blizzard has made a couple of vague statements on the forum, but nothing concrete. The system is possibly easy to abuse so they refrain from telling us how it works, is my guess.
My experience has been one of confusion. I’ve been playing on and off since season one. I most recently came back around season 6. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try comp. I did fairly awful in my placement but ended up high gold for some reason. I then plummeted down for low silver.
I deserved this I was truly terrible.
A good friend of mine has come back and we play a ton of qp and pug custom games. Grouped together in QP we are regularly seeing 3-4k players playing on their comp mains. I also see this a lot in the custom game pugs. People tend to try hard as they are kind of like on the spot organized scrims (thanks Nateson for letting me know these games exist). In the pug games I’m also playing 3k+ players and hanging pretty well in the tank and support roles.
Placements for season 9 went ok I won 5 lost 4 drew 1. I ended up Bronze, ouch. I’ve been playing here and there and climbing but slowly working through the inevitable unwinnable games. My stats on sites like overbuff are pretty decent with very high stats (top 10%) for elims and deaths. Other stats like damage and accuracy are low but killing blows are high. I do need to stay the hell away from tracer though my damage is awful even if my crit rate is high…
I think my main issue is that I just need to play more. Its difficult for a system to place you accurately without hundreds of games. I just need to grind things out and I wanted to make sure that the high MMR that I work with in QP isn’t effecting my comp matchups. I’m trying to catch up to my buddy who I play QP with but he keeps climbing and recently hit Diamond. I have a long road ahead.
Yes, if you have very low game time. The system will violently pull you up and down. The less you play comp, the more extreme sr gains and losses will occur. Just look at my comp profile. 197 games across 6 seasons (1-4, 6-7).
I went from high gold to silver within 14 games (s4). Back than I ran a way too high mouse sensitivity. Stayed pretty much in silver for the remainder of my comp time. As well as climbed out of bronze with originally on 35% win rate 7 times. I would lose the 5 games in a row. At the 6th game I immediately win 3-4, going right back to Silver. I’m probably one of the most extreme examples of weird comp stats with wins and loses.
Bang on. Thanks for sharing your story and I hope you’ll contribute to my own thread about Match Making Rating (handicapping)
I think you’re asking great questions. Blizzard owes us complete information about these systems, and they have not provided.
It is almost certain that two players with the same SR have different MMRs. At any given SR there is a HUGE range of actual skill. If SR = SR, we wouldn’t need MMR. This MMR trickery is why so many people complain about smurfs. When you have a really skilled player and a casual player at the same MMR, the skilled player looks like a smurf.
Played 5 more games tonight. Ended 3-2. My elims are according to overbuff top top 2% my deaths top 3%. I know this is vs silver players but with those types of stats I should be climbing hard and I do climb. I ended for the day 23 SR higher than I started.
The problem is the games are pure trash. I get better games in qp with my friends. Every game sees a player throwing or disconnecting. Sometimes its my team sometimes the other team. Assuming I’m not throwing I have less chance than the enemy team of this occurring and this bears out in the win/loss rate.
I had a symm that tilted and placed tele right outside our spawn as far from the point as they could. I had players that were deliberately de ranking taking a good match and turning it bad you can see they were plat but somehow now in silver and throwing themselves away 1v6. Disconnections of course as well. It happens to both teams for sure but the games are so awful to be part of down here. By my trending it will take roughly 100 games to reach low gold. I’m not willing to suffer through 100 games of this. Its just not worth my time.