Noone I’m chilling
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.
Respectfully….
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
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.
So if MMR was completely removed, do you think you would be Top 500? 
Unless someone was genuinely boosted by someone logging in to their account or by playing in a stack, they kind of are the best 
Ok you’re clearly misunderstanding what’s being said to you which is amazing since it’s been re-stated so many different times and ways. So let’s start here: how are you using the word “rigged.” Define it.
Why are you qualifying your statement with “kind of are the best” why don’t you just say they’re the best if that’s what you believe?
At this point, it’s becoming clear to me that people arguing on the other side of this issue (it’s not rigged, the matchmaker is fair, blah blah) aren’t even listening to the points being made. This entire conversation as they’re hearing it is: “I don’t want to improve, or play well, but I want to rank up, and I can’t therefore the matchmaker is broken/rigged.” That’s not even remotely the argument.
I mean, I’m reading what’s being written by people, and then I’m reading the responses and in the vast majority of cases the two don’t even match up. The same concepts aren’t even being discussed. This entire debate, for the most part , comes down to a serious and sustained problem of basic reading comprehension. It’s like two groups of people having two completely different conversations.
It’s actually astounding.
I believe they are the best, I just said “kind of are the best” as a joke
I don’t think this is a good argument.
Are the best players all at the top? No. But the overlap between the best players and the players at the top is enormous, so much so that players who aren’t at the top but could be are either inactive or choose not to rank up.
I’m not sure how you’re defining “the top,” and I’m not sure why you’re arguing this line of reasoning, since players advancing to the top and algorithmic handicapping aren’t mutually exclusive.
You have to look at it this way: The high-level “non-manipulation” advocates here are very proud of their rank. They overcame the system/handicapping with an insane amount of grind, or perhaps by clever grouping with the right people. I also think they are good players, so I don’t want to devalue their accomplishment at all, but for many of them their status means SO much that they are either convinced that
a) the system actually works flawlessly
b) other players deserve to feel the same pain/struggle and that it wouldn’t be fair (to themselves) if the rules and settings were changed to a more tolerable version
c) we have always played this way and a change is not possible / necessary. (also point b)
d) or because they are afraid that their current status would be lost due to facilitations or a fairer competition
e) they would have to face the realization that they have wasted so much effort and life time with meaningless status and pseudo-forum-bragging-rights
Therefore, the resistance is of course just as great from their side as from the side of the impaired.
I’m not saying that a GM doesn’t deserve to be a GM and that a bronze player has the same skills. That is frankly illusory. But high rank players ALSO experience the crappy matchmaker. This is true not only for mid-rank or low-rank players, but also for high-rank players who can simply choose to manage their frustration by smurfing. And because they’ve already climbed that SR mountain, it’s hard to let go of all their beliefs and “validation” to that point. They try to convince themselves that everything is okay, just like the dog in the burning house meme.
It’s not about being “in the wrong” rank. It’s about a consistent gaming experience with people around the same skill range. Right now, the matchmaker can’t deliver this.
Yeah. Thats a possibility… OR some of those people who hold these views have just been once where you are now: Believing you have improved but the SR doesn’t reflect this in a satisfactory way… only to eventually realize (once they did rank up) that they hadn’t improved enough to rank up then, and are here to tell the story now.
Now, let me preface this that I am always open to discussing improvements, but they have to make sense obviously.
No one says that. It is argued that the system works well enough given a certain amount of games (which would be the grind you mentioned, I guess). I, myself, consider the grind to be a flaw too of the current system btw.
Maybe. Although the rank distribution would remain the same even if the matchmaker was changed. So reaching top x% is still gonna be the same accomplishment posing similar obstacles. But yeah, maybe the journey would be a little less frustrating… Who knows.
What I don’t like about these discussions on here is that both parties try to only highlight their side of the story. This always puts me in a weird position because I feel like I have to provide counter arguments for why specific design choices were made to be able to better evaluate their usefulness and engage in a more meaningful discussion, but at the same time this results in me arguing for one side more than I would necessarily like to.
Anyway, back to your point: evaluating something as a ‘necessary change’ would require us to first isolate the actual problem and the parameters that are put in place to combat/mitigate this. Only when this is successfully done can we talk about changes that would have to be made to make the overall outcome better than it currently is.
So far I haven’t seen a single proposal that would actually predict a better outcome. Quite the contrary actually. I have seen people proposing to remove MMR and PBSR in the hopes that this would magically solve all issues (like smurfing/ boosting/ comp integrity/ etc.)
I don’t think that anyone’s actual concern, though I obviously can’t speak for everyone. I would think that if you are high rank in a rigged environment, you would be high rank in a non rigged environment. Unless your definition of rigging is that high rank players are presented wins on a silver planter for free, I guess.
I am happy for anyone reaching their desired rank and it doesn’t devalue my own accomplishments. On a side note, you may wanna chill with the condescending tone. Tt adds quite the layer of unnecessary salt to your argument. If it’s so meaningless then why do you care so much about all of this?
100%.
Sh’tty games in a lowly populated game is one thing. Shifting the blame of not being able to rank up to those games and concocting a conspiracy theory that the matchmaker is specifically out to get you is another. You can very well be of the opinion that the matchmaker is trash and needs work AND be convinced that it works okay enough to determine your SR (+/-200) relative to the entire player base. Those are not mutual exclusives.
And except maybe Rigged, very few “low ranking” players here on the forum claim that they flatly DESERVE a better rank and are being cheated out of GM. Most have a pretty good sense of their competencies.
The biggest concern is that the EXPERIENCE of trying to get a better rank is abysmal and that the so called 50/50 chance of winning is just not there. It’s 80% stomps in either direction. Always.
It is totally unfair to accuse any critic of just looking for a scapegoat in the matchmaker.
In the same way, not every GM is a nerd without a real life, even though I put it so provocatively.
If at least both parties, high and low ranked players could agree that regardless of skill or ranking, matchmaking at the personal skill ceiling is just bad, much would be gained.
The matchmaker doesn’t “hold back” a very good player, but at the respective plateau the game just becomes unbearably incosistent, frustrating and unpredictable. And the grind is INSANELY long, because getting better can get countered in endless ways.
Let’s say you play Genji for 50+ hours and get a really good grip on him. Like getting quite confident on him. Chances are that you suddenly run into comps with an irritating amount of hard counters where you literally can’t do anything. So your Progress on Genji just simply gets canceled without any chance for counterplay. How do you want to win against stacked Winston, Zarya, Moira, Torbjörn, Symmetra, Tracer or McCree combs?
At this point your Genji carreer is more or less over. Try again with another hero? Only play meta heros? Fine, try McCree and you will suddenly get no shield tanks anymore. It’s absurd.
Alright. Worst case scenario, you can try to adapt to whatever your matchmaker/team gives you. Try to play the best synnergizing hero for each match. Unfortunately, very few people will be able to play 30+ heroes equally well. Or play hitscan like projectiles equally well. In theory, your “paper” beats the enemy “rock”, but in reality, your Paper is lacking any form of experience, training or effectiveness. Also if you do it midgame, you will lose Ult energy, waste your ressources and feed as hell.
It is the common experience of many players that if you play “above average” with a particular hero for a while, you inevitably end up in matches where you suddenly have much harder opponents and counterparts. Not 300 SR above you, not 200 SR above you, but already 50-100 SR above your original starting point.
And thanks to smurfing, especially the middle ranks are more inconsistent than ever and a torture to climb out of.
I agree with you on this one even if the numbers are a little too exaggerated to fit my experience. Though, I believe this to be a problem due to low popularity. The amount of good games were much higher when the game had a healthy player base. Since we had the MMR system back then as well, I would conclude that the matchmaker has nothing to do with this. Conclusively, removing MMR now would make it even worse than it is right now.
Because most of the arguments come across as such.
Personally, I agree with this too.
Yeah but again, I am not sure how much of this is really caused by the matchmaker. The player base is thinning, incentive isn’t really there anymore which is why some people don’t try their hardest (and just one person soft throwing can sway one game in the other direction), people are inconsistent by design, no ‘fresh blood’… there are just so many variables that aren’t even being considered.
On this forum, everything that is wrong with Overwatch is blamed on the matchmaker as if it were some God AI with malicious intent.
Again, the question is: matchmaker or nature of competition? We don’t have the necessary data to really determine this.
I mean this is an entirely different topic. This game is based on team work and countering. You either adapt or lose.
It’s not like you can’t swap ingame. Just play a different hero and play genji again when they swapped off the counters.
That’s not the requirement. My DPS hero pool is pretty small. I main Soldier. Soldier’s counter is Doom. Doom is countered by Tracer. Therefore, Tracer is my 2nd hero of choice. I play some Cree and Ashe. That’s it.
Playing a handful of heroes really well will get you further than being okay at all of them.
I think you give the matchmaker too much credit. By saying something like “inevitably end up in matches with harder opponents (at the same skill range) and hard counters”, you are essentially suggesting that the matchmaker looks at PhilDunphy’s past few games popping off on Genji and is like “yea, let’s give this nerd a cree main, a brig main… and a zarya main for good measure on the enemy team” who also popped off in their past few games on their respective heroes.
You do realize that this sounds borderline nuts, right? And I genuinely don’t mean this to front you. The matchmaker is not that advanced. Isn’t it much more likely that this is simply confirmation bias and our monkey brain playing a trick on us when we crave that dopamine but get kicked in the face by an equally skilled player who happens to play a hero that counters ours?
They are an issue. They make the grind longer. With enough games played, however, their impact is negligible on your climb.
Has Cuthbert not played Overwatch for 4 years?
checked his stats after I noticed his level has stayed the same for ages;
Cuthbert#11649
PLAYED ABOUT 4 YEARS AGO
CANNOT UPDATE STATS
PROFILE UP TO DATE
started laughing right here.
for starters, it looks like an attempted strawman or ad hominem.
but suppose it isn’t.
stats are near meaningless in a no-reset alt-infested no-reset same-season ladder ecosystem. not to mention a biased subsample of people choose to open and report. there is too much noise on e.g. OB to gleam much insight into what is distributed by “rank”. the data is noisy and non-respresentative.
ppl throwing stats around really need to stop.
you’re not helping the community with bad stats or a poor emphasis on them, you’re hurting it.
if you want to help the OW community
protest for a total ladder cleanup
starting with mmr removal.
if you want to help gaming, log-off the game, learn how to math, and then use that knowledge to help gamers and gaming. Megacorp analytics + fanbois that never leave the 1% ain’t it.
These conversations have been going on since season 1, and nothing has changed. People are intellectually dishonest and will not address the actual points as they take down their own constructed strawman arguments, and believe that in doing so they have proved their points. It’s laughable.
Ad hom and rank shaming is the biggest go to because they only know how to argue from that framework. If they can make the issue about rank then they don’t have to think about or address the actual topics. People are scared to address the points and keep seeking to troll to make the conversation about rank.
The more I look into Cuthbert and his points the more obvious it is that he has a more than reasonable position, and it is my belief that his detractors know this. Hence they can not really attack his points directly because they know very well they can provide no argument against it. They will just keep name calling and rank shaming.
Come back after like 3 months and this crap still going on. Its just sad at this point
The only stat I mentioned was his border level. It hasn’t changed since I first looked at it about a year ago (lvl 696) so it made me wonder why he has such strong opinions about a game he hasn’t played for 4 years.
That is clearly my fault i skimmed your post. In a rare instance of negligence i missed the context entirely.
I didn’t mean to lash out at you specifically but those who point to stats as some kind of meaningful justification. If they’re basing their whole argument on Overbuff, it’s usually a very weak one.