You would think that players who deserve a higher rank would achieve it by winning matches, and that players who deserve lower rank would get there by losing. Wouldn’t you? But algorithmic handicapping precludes those patterns of natural event. Instead, Activision/Blizzard attempts to compensate with PBSR, a completely artificial and arbitrary system, disjointed from the match’s objectives and result.
Thank you for the compliment, I do try. I also regard you as an elegant fellow.
Why do I care, and why do I give this subject so much thought? These answers are contained in my video, please watch. I’ve added it to the original post.
I love this argument, as if it’s about winning and climbing. No, its about fairness and consistency, both of which the current matchmaker severely lacks. I am content in my rank, but I would LOVE to play in a lobby with players of my caliber instead of being part of a team-average-pendulum where I am either the carry or the potato.
Actually, gaming as a whole is a fairly young form of entertainment. Especially e-sports.
And there’s not only a lot of passion involved, but also a lot of money.
Society and politics are still not really aware of this market yet. For most people, gaming is something that kids or teenagers do, and when you talk about gaming as an adult, you quickly get on the “uncomfortable” side of the conversation. The moment you get just a little “excited” or “enthusiastic” about more complex games, many people will look at you with irritation and view you as a “nerd” in a biased way (outside the safe Twitch-/Reddit-/Discord-Bubble). Sitcoms like TBBT highlighted this issue a bit more, but to the average viewer, Sheldon and co. were still socially awkward clowns. Also, games are always brought into play as triggers for school shootings and hyper-aggressive guys going out to kill people.
Average people can accept super easy games like Tetris, Mario, or Candy Crush. Games you can play for 5 minutes on the toilet. But games like CS:GO, LoL, WoW and so on are only accessible to “real” gamers, whatever that is.
But back to the topic at hand: because of the social unconsciousness, there are no real “rules” applied to the gaming market. No real controlling or only a few explicit laws. Each company can invent its own rules, just like in the wild west.
Gambling and similar entertainment industries have been monitored for a long time, because the addictive mechanisms are now well known. Similar factors play a role in gaming, because here, too, players are expected to spend as much time as possible in the game and spend a lot of money. Nowadays, a game is nothing more than a casino. Completely unmonitored casinos.
Anyone who looks over the gaming market has long seen that the big games only offer 08/15 gameplay and fill the content void with Lootboxes, Season Passes and cosmetic items (soon NFTs). Much of this is obtained through excessive gameplay and a lot of luck. The more you play, the greater the statistical chance of winning.
Would anyone seriously claim that the casino wouldn’t cheat if they won a jackpot? The same is true for lotto or scratch tickets.
Ergo, there are plenty of reasons to advocate maximum transparency and legal regulation in games. The market has become far too commercialized to exist as a shadow market outside the mainstream.
I think Cuthbert’s video illustrates the problem quite well and can be appreciated beyond Overwatch. Many aspects of it also concern ethical questions related to large tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Co.
Honestly, I think Blizzard is over-reliant on an overtuned mmr matchmaker that tries to implement this form of “equity” because of cheaters, paid boosters/win traders, and those who soft throw in streaks.
The game needs to have a much stronger anti-cheat before it can be successfully weaned off the current system.
Last time I commented here was in May, was about them needing to fix up their anti-cheat, and I still haven’t played OW since.
All current competive shooters use algorithmic handicapping and that isn’t his issue.
Game can be played in a algorithmic free way using custom games and discords. Him not even trying this or acknowledging it, is gaslighting the game for allowing you to do both.
What he’s asking for by asking to remove algorithmic handicapping is to delete qp and comp and leave custom games. It’s a bad idea.
As for MMR there maybe issues with it but it’s intent is to give better matches and fairer games. While anyone can see it’s not perfect asking for it to be removed without a detailed solution to how you’d deal with throwers and Smurfs when without it they be able to ruin 10 times as many games is basic and flawed.
The patents are a long running joke. They don’t and are not proof being used in ow. Also they prove as much as the fact they have programmers on staff. As they wouldn’t and don’t need patents to do what you claim.
All in all outside of opinion and flawed conclusions there’s nothing left to it as example of how flawed his conclusions are I will quote a lie.
It does, and claiming it doesn’t is just emotional and illogical and all the foundation of a flawed and pointless opinion.
He may have an issue with that fact but my point is he’s not objective and draws flawed conclusions which is proved by that.
How do you not understand that players rank up, and players rank down. What defines “deserve?” Apparently, your definition is different than blizzards. And that’s fine. Go play a different game.
Ah, the good ol’ strawman. If you can’t refute an argument, modify it into something stupid enough that you can actually take on.
If you can only weigh in after you’ve mischaracterized something to the point of absurdity, you either need to work on your critical thinking skills or you need to sit back and watch. This post is meaningless, irrelevant noise.
And you know what people who go over the top ad hominem have in common? They’re bitter and angry and wounded people, looking for opportunities to lash out and distribute some of their own pain and frustration, even while engaging in something like a harmless conversation about a video game. Who hurt you?
This thing you said here perfectly describes them though, they are so bitter and angry at the fact they are not good they had to come up with a conspiracy theory to cope.
It’s not a harmless conversation when Mr “I think I’m one of the best players ever while being in silver” trashes his teammates while being oblivious to the fact that he is the issue. These people have 0 self awareness and promote toxic behavior instead of self improvement.
did you even bother to take a look at the presented material?
you DO realize that by definition matchmaking is ‘rigged’? its the undisclosed parameters for matchmaking that is the issue here, especially since the design of blizzard’s proprietary algorithm shows abuse for player addiction. it’s hard for people to grasp when topics as such aren’t prevalent in pop culture. but much like the ‘big data’ awareness that exists today, your complete ignorance to the topic is similar to nay-sayers who were shouting ‘conspiracy theorists’ to people claiming big data was very real, and dangerous.
your poor attempts of virtue signaling ‘blizzard can do no evil, learn how to play the game’ is either intentionally disingenuous or ignorant.
how you then can proceed to attempt to gaslight by classifying any opposing argument into a generalized group and make a wild, unsupported accusation of ‘believe in lies and ignore evidence’ is bewildering to me and has no relevancy at all to any of the responses presented in this thread.
i honestly think you may be embarrassingly misdirecting some personal angst onto this topic, as nothing from your post holds any relevancy nor discusses any of the points presented, NOR do you actually make a counter claim of any sort.
the primary issue here is the lack of transparency from blizzard on a product they SELL, with the issue being that they make marketing claims of a ‘fair competitive environment’, which is COMPLETELY contradictory to the common player’s experience. ANY form of independent analysis looking at matchmaking lobbies, as a function of time is clearly indicative of a conclusion contrary to blizzard marketing claims. THIS is the issue here.
I watched your video all the way through like a year ago. I won’t be doing that again.
So if you’re unwilling to share some perspective then I’ll choose to default your issue as I understand it.
In a game such as Overwatch
unique hero types
unique hero abilities
diverse player base (in more ways than 1)
MMR allows players who are lacking mechanical skill but have good (relative to rank) game sense to be matched with players who are mechanically gifted but perhaps less interested in understanding the fundamentals besides shoot the red targets.
But you can’t just have one or the other. At some point you have to improve as a total player to achieve rank increases.
fun thing about the discussion is that the matchmaker COULD actually work as intended, giving „close“ matches in a not „too competitive“ way.
but thanks to alt accounts and smurfing, the matchmaker literally CAN‘T assign balanced teams, because the accessible data is biased and faulty.
also the core principle of overwatch leads to heavy snowballing. the team thats scores first has a big advantage in ult economy.
the big question here is whether the current SR system makes any sense at all, or whether we need a completely different approach to measuring individual skill / progression and motivating people through it.
on the other hand, chasing for a better SR with intransparent factors at play is highly addictive and probably more beneficial for blizzards bank account.
we see an explicit conflict between player interests and business interests.