Streaks in Overwatch, Simulation and Analysis and Data

[Kaawumba-1133]

@MrSandvich-21925

Extremely interesting stuff. Really sad this didn’t get the attention it deserved when it was posted

The original version of this post was on the old forums. It had a fair amount of discussion, but unfortunately Blizzard nuked it along with the old forums.

@Thorny-11952

This post is centered too heavily on averages. The reality is that it illustrates a possibility for a fair system to create these results, and nothing more. Wins/losses are not a coin flip system, if you assume skill to be accurately represented then each loss should increase your chance of winning the next game by a small amount(as it’s moving you into a lower bracket where your personal influence is inherently higher).

Try rereading the original post. It looks like you got tired and stopped in the middle somewhere.

@Thorny-11952

The ‘data’ used in the post seems to be sloppily self recorded, parts of it are missing and it has comments like ‘undocumented loss streak’ and notes that are generally indicative of the person recording it not being very clever. I am sure it’s not Kaawumba’s own data.

As said, the data came from Des and Porkypine, not me, though I appear to have made a mistake and only linked to one of the datasets. Yes, there is some missing data, but “generally indicative of the person recording it not being very clever” is unnecessary.

@Thorny-11952

As ANTCRSTM continues to mention, Blizzard is a company with their greatest interest in profit. Promoting engagement at the expense of fairness is a logical decision for them to make, and they’ve been very tight-lipped about every aspect of matchmaking. Let’s not forget that they banned pursuit, added private profiles(with a default to on), and things of this nature.

And here is where you follow him into conspiracy theory. Really, if you believe that game companies in general and Blizzard in particular are lead to evil by the profit motive, then it is up to you to not play games.

@Thorny-11952

When you get grouped with someone who has a 0% winrate over 20 games(has happened to me), it’s pretty obvious that person is doing something to force their team’s chance of success far below 40%. How can matchmaker be confident a game is in the 40-60% range while placing that person on a team? Surely the best they can do is give them 5 teammates that are seemingly excelling, and even then the match is likely not going to reach 40% win chance. Fortunately, in most cases you have absolutely no way to observe things like this, because profiles default to private and most people don’t even notice it’s a setting to begin with.

The game makes its best effort to put players together fairly. It does not do a great job with new or toxic accounts. See https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/aatezy/why_match_quality_is_frequently_poor/ for more.