The "Forced Loss" Theory FINALLY debunked

General Discussion
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So as pretty much everyone on this forum is aware, there is an ongoing debacle about whether or not there is a system put in place to prevent select players from progressing too high or too fast on the rankings… because apparently when you lack a reasonable and/or logical explanation for things you don’t understand, the “mastermind in the shadows” tends to a popular choice to fill in that gap. However. I will say that there has definitely been an increase of players crying out over the supposed existence of a forced loss system since ranks are hidden now and there is no team SR to compare to one another or who is the highest ranking player in the game. That is definitely a mistake on Blizzard’s part despite their best intentions, but that’s where we’re at.

And that’s what I’m here to (hopefully) put to rest for those that are willing to have their minds changed.

So as far as “evidence” goes every time I’ve asked for sources that supported their claim, these are the two main ones:

The individual players experience, and a patent from Activision and Blizzard that details how queuing up players for games work. I’m going to start with the former, but if you’d rather skip to me debunking the “smoking gun” that proves the system is real, then skip to the part highlighted in bold letters.

Just because there are a bunch of people claiming they’re being punished for winning does not mean that it’s some ominous systemic plot to keep you at your rank. That is not a statistic, they are just one of countless and seemingly unrelated win/loss streaks that everyone eventually goes through at all levels of ranks.

Not only is there zero statistical evidence that a forces loss system exists within a certain portion of the playerbase, but it’s also basically impossible to gather any hard data as well. After every ranked game, you would have to ask every player on both your team and the enemy team to give you their own statistics. This would include their wins/losses throughout a certain number of games, their stats and their overall performance- followed up with having to cross reference those statistics with multiple players you’ve played with/against over multiple games in order to see some form of patterns that might be linked to a forced loss being in effect. And this is all assuming that you can even get these players to cooperate or if they’re even giving you accurate statistics.

And now for the Smoking Gun: The patent.

This is the last piece of “evidence” that I’ve seen players refer to prove Forced Losses exist, which would be this one right here:

US20160001186A1

Copy and Paste this in your Google search, and you will see the patents that I’m talking about. There are multiple images, but the one I am focusing on is image 8. For some reason, players who read the boxes that say, “Identify and correlate match variables and coefficient with low/high quality,” and immediately assume that it references the winning/losing streaks of specific players are completely misinterpreting what terms “low/high quality” even means and do not understand how this system is supposed to work.

It is very obvious that the system prioritizes finding a level playing field where both teams have a 50/50 shot at winning based on hard numerical statistics; and sometimes when there isn’t enough players of the same level, then it will be forced to compromise by not only picking a slightly higher ranked player, but also a slightly lower ranked player and putting them on the same team to compensate.

Is the system perfect? No, of course not, but that’s an entirely separate issue. The point that I’m making here is that even the so-called “strongest evidence” for the “Forced Loss” system proves exactly the opposite of what the conspiracy theorists are proposing.

On a side note, there’s also this “Matchmaking based on who-bought-what” patent that is also in here on image 10. Apparently according to a news site that no longer exists, a spokesperson from Activision claims that this patent did not make it into the system. This would make sense, because they did, queue times would’ve been much worse than they are now. Unfortunately though, it’s impossible to find this article since the website no longer exists, but a YouTuber by the name of YongYea covered it briefly all way back in 2017. So check it out if you want to learn more about that.

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Good stuff.

I think you are tilting at a windmill, but damn I respect the fight you are willing to take. Godspeed.

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Well, someone has to put their foot in the door if we’re going to have any solid base to stand on.

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I don’t think there are forced losses at all, but it is undeniable that unwinnable matches exist in OW1 and OW2. The insane lack of transparency on Competitive right now regarding average team SR/Rank and seeing your team mate’s and enemy’s rank does not help either.

7/20 W/L system for rank updates needs to go.

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No argument from me, on any of those points.

But nothing there is conspiracy theory either. A sane well written matchmaker would get the same results.

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Oh, of course. And unfortunately, there will never be a fix to that because the matchmaker can only see numbers; not the person themselves behind the mouse and keyboard. It’s essentially an inevitability that literally all players have to put up with.

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I’m a bottle of wine in, and the matchmaker can’t know that, it has been years since I have drunk so much. Right there is why it can’t be as good as people expect.

The person isn’t the MMR rating.

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Yeah but my point is, if you are going to punch me (and everyone gets punched in competitive) at least do it in my face. Where I can see you.

If we were able to see the odds of the match, and the ranks of the players involved, we can prepare ourselves to “take the hit” and put more effort in certain areas or helping certain team mates … when they hide EVERYTHING, you start getting punched in the face and you dont know why.

Its insane how anyone on the Dev team thought that change was good.
Even worse that it was clearly made to help some people to cope with the SR number going up and down. Specially because people that had issues with that 99% shouldnt play Competitive.

PS: The more things you hide for the players, the more conspiracy theories prosper and grow.

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Yeah, out of all the changes they’ve made with Comp, this one annoyed me the most.

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I can see what they were trying for, but it was a bad idea.
The 7w/20l thing was… a bad change. One which I expect to be reversed.

I would LOVE to see what it thinks the changes of a game is, but, weirdly enough the matchmaker won’t know that, something else will have to calculate it.

I know, I know, the “aims for a 50% win rate” comment will be taken out of context by someone (not you) and they won’t understand how you can make a matchmaker which aims for that, without it knowing what the win rate would be if it doesn’t get a perfect match, but you know, that is how it is.

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To think I wrote this entire essay because someone “attempted” to try and prove the system was real…

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I think MOST people get it. But you will always get people where it feels off to.

And it WILL feel off to people. You can’t make a matchmaker which is both fair and FEELS fair. That is the real problem.

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Its not supposed to “prevent” people from ranking, it just simply makes some matches very one sided if you win too many games in a row / if your win ratio is too high to forcefully nudge you towards 50% winrate.

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Oh you absolutely can, but not without INSANE queues.
If you get into a match where literally everyone is lets say “Gold 3”, that is fair and will feel fair, unless someone is a smurf ofc.

But we are not talking about utopias. No MM on online games does that, because the queues would be stupidly high, even without RQ.

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That is essentially the same thing. It doesn’t exist.

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I would say its hard to say that it does not exist, together with hard to say that it exist.

If the matchmaker makes good matches that are 50/50, you should win half of the games. If you get in some 10/90 games, and then 80/20 its also still balanced. Everyone can prove and disprove the point of the other side in this case.

“See I won 25 games in a row” or “See I lost 25 games in a row” is very unlikely when you have a matchmaker. I have days where I win 2 out of 10 games and then days when I win 8 from 10 games. Does this prove or disprove the forced 50%? Because if you are on your right rank, to have around 50% WR should be normal.

But I can say that there are games that are impossible to win/lose and feel like a gift, especially when you lost/won a ton of games.

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I don’t think you can.

70% of drivers feel like they are above average. People playing an asymmetric feel like it is fair if they win 70% of the time.

That is what you are up against.

If you can’t give them 70% win rates, you can’t make it feel fair, and you can’t give them 70% win rates no matter how long you make the queues.

You can’t make it feel fair, without putting in bots to make it not fair.

It is a serious problem. A cursed one. There is no room to make it BOTH fair and feel fair.

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Okay, so this just proves right here the system is fixed. Why? Because if the system “compromises” then it’s almost pre-determining matches. I am not saying that it’s a “forced loss system” but if the system “compromises” to give lower skilled players to the same player over and over again then it’s a form of a forced loss don’t you think?

The proof is in the player base including myself getting mass losing streaks due to having bad players on your team over and over again. If the system worked like it should, don’t you think it would know that we are losing but it’s not our fault we’re losing? then try and make the matches fair? For me, and other people, it didn’t do this and I went on a 20 game losing streak because of it. Now let me be clear, I am not saying all 20 losses were not my fault but a a good 15-18 were from throwers, inexperienced players etc.

If this is the system that is in place right now then it’s fundamentally flawed big time and needs to be readjusted. The game shouldn’t “compromise” matches it should go based off your own experience and not try and “compromise” to giver you higher or lower skilled players.

Matter fact this system patient sounds way more harder to code than a system that would give you a match based on players around your own skills area. Why doesn’t it do this? My theory is sound as the game just races to get you a game regardless of the skill to combat queue times. Instead of making you wait 20 minutes for a fair and equal match the MM will race to match you with whoever in just 2 minutes and that’s why the games are horrible.

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EXACTLY. I should’ve added that into my OP. But the burden of proof lies on those who are making the claim that it exists in the first place, and I’m simply debunking the best “evidence” that they have for it.

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No its not, lol. It doesnt prevent people from ranking up. It just makes it very tedious by forcing losses sometimes.

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