Talk about the matchmaking before we talk about balance

title

7 Likes

TLDW. A basic summary would be great.

Anyway, the problem with pushing for any change on the matchmaking score is that first, Blizzard has to be willing to admit thereā€™s a problem. Maybe if weā€™re lucky, thatā€™s changed by now, but in the past, they were stubbornly convinced the matchmaker was infallible and any issues were all in our heads.

Itā€™s not like thereā€™s ever been any shortage of complaints, but well, they never got anywhere. Balance at least, Blizzard has been slightly more movable.

8 Likes

And even then, most of their balance decisions tend to be questionable (remember when they gave Genji three consecutive buffs, when he probably only needed two; or how they danced around Meiā€™s pierce-freeze post-GOATS).

3 Likes

They are not handicapping you, they are getting you to play against people of similar skill levels.

Handicapping would be making you characters slower the higher SR you had, so you could play against ANYONE in the matchmaking queue and get a fair game.

They donā€™t handicap you. They put you in games where they try to balance the SRā€™s of the players in those games.

They want the game to be unranked, so the higher ranks players can totally clown on the lower ranked ones.

Losing the lower ranked players, and then eating the game from the low ranks upwards, killing the game incredibly quickly.

All the games which used to do this are no longer around, because they had such awful retention issues.

13 Likes

Dilettanteā€™s complete misunderstanding of the information provided by the software engineers, stewing in a feverish, conspiracy addled brain, fueled by the Dunning Kruger effect.

3 Likes

as long there smurf there no balance here.

3 Likes

This is the other way of looking at it, yes.

To be fair, it has been pretty opaque, and could do with the devs actually talking about matchmakers in more detail. Butā€¦

The group which complains about them wouldnā€™t believe Blizzards devs, so what can you do?

Iā€™ve posted code showing how matchmakers work, and talked at length of the issues of creating some of them.

They are all tradeoffs.

There is a problem DEEP in the heart of PvP games, which is people feel things are fair if they win 70% of the time.

But in team PvP that isnā€™t achievable, which leads to people feeling ā€œobviously this is unfairā€ - and then they go look at what ā€œfeelsā€ unfair, and try to rationalise it.

3 Likes

Oh, uhhā€¦big yikes.

My assumptions were wildly off :sweat_smile:

1 Like

ā€œThey are not handicapping youā€

the video that nobody replying here has watched yet proves this wrong. itā€™s even in their ToS. (the video shows this, too. no Iā€™m not about to grammar check this reply. also why canā€™t I quote anybody) the fact that comments like these receive the highest upvotes is why the world makes no real progress in any avenue - be it video games, war, otherwise.

Iā€™ve read the posts, and Iā€™ve seen the arguments over and over again, I even read the Blizzard patents.

Iā€™ve also BUILT matchmakers.

I know how they work, I know the tradeoffs, I know how they feel when they are working, and what that is like.

Iā€™ve seen the SAME complaints about the matchmakers Iā€™ve written, and I know exactly what was in them.

Seriously, anyone who has been writing matchmakers and seen the complaints like this basically just sigh and shake their heads.

10 Likes

life, school, everything teaches you that complicated problems like these require complicated descriptions of those problems and lengthy videos to illustrate whatever is being presented. Everything worthwhile in the world has always required a lot of words. Everything.

1 Like

It doesnā€™t matter what they doā€¦.the matchmaking will always be questionableā€¦and people are going to blame itā€¦.

Matchmakers and blame go hand in hand going all the way back to dawn of online gamingā€¦.itā€™s what people always blame

Nor do we help itā€¦.you want it to improve? Ok hereā€™s a way it will actually improveā€¦.get people to not Smurfā€¦.good luckā€¦.problem with that is that outside of launching OW2 (which will help to a degree because people will mostly just play one account initially) there is no good way to actually do thatā€¦

But thatā€™s not going to change the fact that people think their teammates are never good enough (and opponents are always better)ā€¦.that theyā€™re being held back by intentional shacklingā€¦.even though youā€™re supposed to face harder competition as you climb and easier if you drop if a matchmaker is doing itā€™s job

Long story short - youā€™re going to hate matchmaking in OW2ā€¦why? Cause itā€™s not going to changeā€¦ā€¦and Cause itā€™s what people like to doā€¦.blame matchmakers

1 Like

nobody cares about your emotional response. prove that you have built matchmakers and then I can by defacto believe the rest of your comment. Stop fishing for likes.

2 Likes

Bits of it are older. I think it is an update grabbing parts of old videos.

This is like the Qanon of gaming

1 Like

Oh nvm it came around that time: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/algorithmic-handicapping-is-wrong-for-online-games

Edit: Oh, itā€™s actually from 2018 :open_mouth: Algorithmic Handicapping (MMR) is Wrong for Overwatch

Without Doxing myself?

I can do that by taking people step by step though how matchmakers work with code examplesā€¦

Which I have done in the pastā€¦ Iā€™ll go get the posts.

Iā€™ll find others, but that has code.

The fact I can bang out the code for a matchmaker off the top of my head should be more than enough proof that I have done them professionally in the past.

Sure as hell no one else is going to dedicate brain space to being able to do that. They are tricky things, and the ability to just throw up the code for one, means someone has done it a LOT, and worked away a lot of the complex edges of them.

It is. The opening appeal for transparency is the exact same thing one would see in Qanon and Vaccine microchip videos.

I could skim the guyā€™s script in a few minutes, but I donā€™t have the time or patience to listen to unnecessarily long winded droning for 30+ minutes. I think most people feel that way, if you want a proper discussion of the subject here, itā€™s on you to summarize.

Also, ijs, but genuinely good teachers can make even the most boring of subjects interesting and simple to understand.

1 Like

NPCs worry tank balance when the active population is nearly zero and the wonā€™t reset. Ranks donā€™t make sense at all, owing to years of no-reset, alts, and mmr-rigging. The matchmaker is just broken and bad and was never fit-for-purpose. Add to that the other issues like wait times and bribed roles for burner accounts and you donā€™t have a competitive ladder.

But letā€™s worry about brig damage because the ā€œpartnersā€ spent the afternoon debating it in a discord channel.

2 Likes