Different players have different “endurance”, if you want. In a way, it resembles classic gambling - some players cut their losses soon, others hope to win back what they lost and continue.
However, since matchmaking bases that calculation on previous data, it may under or overestimate, how far player is willing to go with losses.
Thanks for taking the time to point out that patent. I did read through majority of it a few months ago and came to the same conclusion, but I didn’t feel like stirring the pot on this asinine “Force loss” system. I guarantee you will still get dull minded individuals to debate over this.
Most just do not want to accept the fact that they are bad at the game just as much as the next player.
Bravo.
Sure, but back to my original comment - are patterns due to explicit rigging, or poor MM quality.
Additionally, we don’t really have much data on these patterns - everything on these forums is anecdotal, and people with big streaks are more likely to run to the forum. Streaks happen, we tend to notice the big ones. Few people seem to understand just how likely a big streak is if you play a lot - Bernoulli trials and all that.
So yeah, that’s basically where I am coming from. I don’t trust Blizzard, I just also don’t find these threads credible because “everyone is saying” isn’t very convincing.
Certainly, but across a wide playerbase the hypothetical matchmaker that people believe exists in OW2 would decrease overall player engagement, leading to lower revenue for the company. It’s not that I’m suggesting that everyone has the same threshold, but that what people are both experiencing and suggesting is the case is a matchmaker that decreases engagement.
No company would design and implement such a matchmaker. The far more likely explanation is that the matchmaker is designed not to maximize engagement but to match according to player skill as best as possible given the current playerbase and that people who lose in such a system are casting about for an explanation that is more palatable to them.
What people experience suggests matchmaking having other directives, that sometimes conflict with each other.
As there is also patent for matching players with premium items with freeloaders to stimulate purchases.
Don’t see, why not. It’s not like managers can grasp, that simply putting all possible directives into matchmaking results in conflicts, which aren’t always resolved in optimal manner.
Imagine, for instance, that matchmaking has 2 directives:
A. Match you with as many non-paying players, as possible, to use you as walking ad for items;
B. Provide you with engaging gameplay, according to your own measured metrics;
Sooner or later those directives will be in conflict. When, for instance, one directive involves putting you on losing team, as it has more “potential customers”, while another has putting you on winning team instead. Depending from what programmers chose as higher priority, EOMM can be pushed to the side.
If Blizzard states, that there is no problem, I lean towards first explanation.
And yet, not once have you brought forward any statistics or provided evidence that it somehow points to a biased/rigged system. If it’s that obvious then you should be able to show us either in writing or graphs, or both.
They definitely tend to do that. 
I remember the mid-season “Sojourn is fine, guys” patch.
Its not forced losses, its just trash matchmaking.
Absolutely. Every matchmaker has tradeoffs. The classic example is that prioritizing queue times leads to more variance in skill among the players in any given match.
They don’t even need to grasp that, though, they simply need to see the decreasing engagement in the playerbase. A matchmaker optimized for engagement would not result in what we see. It would not even result in these sorts of criticisms because players would be engaged. The reason people are complaining so vociferously is because they are the opposite of engaged. Attributing that to some hypothetical engagement based matchmaker is a terrible hypothesis. We are seeing precisely the opposite of what we would expect if Blizzard were skewing matches in order to promote engagement.
They need to grasp that, because ideal matchmaking does everything - it gives players engaging experience, while also maximising purchases.
But, since world isn’t ideal, one of those goals will be priority over others. And my guess is that purchase stimulating has priority over optimisation of engagement.
That actually isn’t as hard as one might suppose. You maximize purchases, primarily, by ensuring that your playerbase is as large as possible. Thus, maximizing engagement is the clear priority.
If the playerbase falls off, revenue declines, and the classic paper on engagement based matchmaking gave strong support that streaks and lopsided matches decrease the playerbase. No one would design a matchmaker that specifically skewed matches such that streaks and lopsided stomps were increased. That would simply decrease revenue.
The OW engagement based matchmaker theory relies on the assumption that Blizzard would specifically skew the matchmaker in ways that would decrease revenue. It just doesn’t make sense.
No, you do it by stimulating purchases at every opportunity.
People often complain, that they get absolute newbies as teammates, that have literally zero knowledge of game. Which does fit profile of purchase stimulation - newbies need to be shown all those shiny items ASAP.
What you described is long-term strategy of maximising purchases, which doesn’t produce all those spikes in profits shareholders love to see in reports.
Wait, where is the evidence?
If you stimulate purchases for a shrinking playerbase you lose revenue. That’s why ensuring that your players are engaged is the clear priority- you want as many people as possible to continue playing your game. And I should point out that even players who never make a single purchase are valuable- they are the content for all of the other players playing your game.
That’s too long-term goal.
There are speculations, that Kotick literally destroys OW2 on purpose, so that he gets away with lots of cash and Microsoft ends up purchasing, basically, worthless asset.
Or, in other words, he doesn’t have time for your correct, but long-term, strategies of maximising profits - he needs money here and now.
That doesn’t really make sense either, though. Kotick will have performance kickers baked into his contract and the sale of the company (from which he will personally benefit) will depend upon the valuation of the company. So Kotick will literally make more money, the larger the playerbase of a game like OW2.
This theory, too, requires people to act directly counter to their own self-interests. It’s a poor hypothesis.
He doesn’t have time for it. Sale is already done, paperwork is in process of being done, now he just needs to get as much, as he can, from what limited time he has in charge.
Doing things right way, as you described, takes time, and not a small time - literally years.
But he does that by making sure there are as many people as possible playing his games. Overwatch 2 is not a box sold game. It cannot sell a bunch of copies and then forget about the health of the game. It’s valuation is directly proportional to the number of active users. That’s why it’s such an important metric and why no one would design a matchmaker that undermines people continuing to play the game, which any matchmaker resulting in lopsided matches and streaks would do.
You do not do that intentionally. It is a resultant property of the fact that you are matchmaking for something other than engagement (player skill in this case).
Again, number of players is long-term goal, that doesn’t have immediate profit. No time to wait for that long-term goal to bring money.
They just need to make game addictive, and Blizzard has a lot of experience with making addictive games, if WoW is any proof. People keep coming back for more, even after experiencing multiple losses, which, according to your sources, should result in them not playing, but for some reason it doesn’t.
That’s just what Engagement based matchmaking is, though, the paper that all of the people who make videos suggesting that OW uses an engagement based matchmaker cite found that streaks and lopsided matches were detrimental to player engagement, resulting in players disengaging from the game, with loss streaks being about twice as detrimental as win streaks.
I’m just using the sources of the people proposing the theory.