If you trust in what a company tells you, then you don’t need transparent matchmaking.
It is not a conspiracy theory, the rules by which the games are built and the players are rated are secret. That is a fact.
For what reason, if not for money, should someone do such a thing? This is not just about Overwatch, almost every company does that.
This mechanism is the whole secret, so they didn’t say anything at all.
I never said it was fixed. It is overly controlled and not transparent.
I suspect that in matchmaking more attention was paid to keeping as many players in the game as possible instead of evaluating them correctly and honestly.
This does not mean that you can’t climb, but it is intentionally slowed down if you are not a world class player.
The matchmaker does much more than putting teams together. Players and game behavior are profiled, game sessions are analyzed and players are put into a flow state. (this can have similar effects to an addiction, an addiction can develop from this)
Streaks serve an important purpose in this context. This has nothing to do with luck at all.
It is definitely an advantage if you know how many players will play, with which probability, and at what time of the day.
( => e.g. scalable server costs )
If you know how the distribution of players to the different ranks will change within the next 7 days, matchmaking can be optimized accordingly.
( => reduce computing power, shorter queuing times for players)
Most likely there are other factors that play a role in matchmaking. For example, how likely Blizzard considers it is that you will not follow the agreed rules.
Such players could be subdivided so that they do not disturb “good” players too often in the course of the game, so that they can stay in the flow state.
( => similiar to Valves rainbow of trust
https://www.gs4u.net/en/news/1070-valve-fights-against-counter-strike-cheats-with-artificial-intelligence.html
)
Allegedly, the developers have worked on the matchmaker component for 2 years. So we should assume that just about everything that can be considered useful has been implemented.