The real reason matchmaking is bad and how to fix

General Discussion
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Plays 7-ish games of comp - “My rank isn’t accurate, his rank isn’t accurate, this widows rank can’t be accurate”

How about everyone plays 50+ games on the same account. Maybe then the mm won’t suck.

Basically the solution to mm is to increase the number of games required to enter competitive. Heroes are gained too fast, I literally farmed every single hero in a spawn of 1-2 months on anew acc, so if you’re gonna one trick or play one role it’s even less of a problem.
Increase the number of placement matches (This is kind of happening already in season 9 I think)
Increase the number of games required to gain rewards (gold weapons, titles etc.) to 50 minimum per role.

And finally - divide the matchmaker into placements and placed only. Once you’ve done your placements, the mm will no longer put “new players with dubious skill” in your games.

Thoughts?

P.S. I am aware of the partying announcement/changes for season 9, I’m not suggesting they throw the idea out the window, but stil implement a divide between placements and placed - once placed, the low elo teammate can still group with high in their special queue (but - once placed)

3 Likes
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Terrible idea, placements that does nothing sucks. Why u are salty about golden guns and title rewards lol.

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What? idk what you’re talking about.

I’m not salty about them… Did you read my post?
The point making them harder to get is to get rid of people who only play 5 games of comp each season just to place and mess up the mm. It’s literally zero effort for a competitive award + it’s messing up the mm

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4

Why u care so much about people getting titles in easier way? Not every is 15 yo and have 40h per week to play video game… Less pointless grind is better.
We already had placement in ow1 that was doing nothing beside getting u rank on ur profile. If you were gold u would stay gold even if u performed like crazy. So it was just waste of time…

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If you support a game model where playing a few comp games each season rewards you the same as playing many - don’t you dare complain about the state of the mm and balance.

There you go. You can’t have it both ways I’m afraid.

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You taking this game way too seriously holy… mmr isnt broken, your just bad… And im not complaining about gameplay mechanics, you are XD Touch some grass, go to gym, watch some youtube i dunno.

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i see what you’re getting at, and to some extent, for placement matches, i agree. the problem with low elo is that, as far as im aware, all of the placement matches start out down there, then over the course of their 5/20 games, they move around to get placed where they belong, then, their rank is further refined as they play more games. Basically, the more you play, you’ll eventually get placed in the correct rank, or that’s the theory.

The problem with increasing the number of games it takes to get placed is that, for some of us, we dont have hours upon hours each day to play. There are some people who only get to play a few hours a week. If you made them play…20 matches to get placed, it would take them a long time.

There just isnt an easy answer. But I do have one idea…when you enter comp for the first time in a season, your first 3 games are “feeler” games, in other words they dont count, but the MMR is already measuring you up to get an idea of where you belong, then, after that, your next 5 wins in 20 games are your true placement matches. This increase wouldnt make it very much a burden for time constrained people and maybe it will help get the placement matches sorted out, so that you are not having GM players in your placement matches, youll start out with people more of your skill level.

Something like that.

well, if they only play 5 games of comp per season…how is that messing up the matchmaker? if they aren’t playing, then they arent being placed in matches to skew anything. The match maker only gets used if you enter a game with other people. Also, gold weapons are unlocked through competitive coins, which can only be gained by playing comp. If they are only playing their 5 placement matches each season, it’s going to take them a very long time to unlock a golden gun. Besides, it’s just cosmetic anyway.

or am i misunderstanding what you are saying?

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8

Yes, and?

Btw I’m not talking “20 matches to get placed”. I’m talking “50 matches - per role” to reap the rewards of that rank such as - comp coins, titles, etc.
This is already in place for top 500. But other games do it for every rank (Valorant does this for example)

Not the matchmaker per-say but player experience. The matchmaker cannot determine a players skill based on 5 games. If lucky, plat players get placed in masters, or unlucky masters players get placed in plat.

90% of the posts on forums and reddit is players complaining about “matchmaking” and quality of matches. And the quality is heavily influenced by the mm having a huge amount of ? skill-players without enough games played for the mm to sort them correctly.
This is not about climbing, everyone can climb their elo in spite of this. This is about competitive quality, meaning there would be less leavers, less throwers, less nonsense because of “competitive tourists”.

Believe me, there is 50x more of these players overall than players who actually play competitive.

Eh, not totally true, because you get a large sum of these coins only from placing - and that’s what incentivizes non experienced players to play comp for a lil bit.
Now I’m not saying - throw them out of comp. I’m just saying - incentivize them to play more than they did before.

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9

Bro they want more people to play. Not less.

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And they will play more without incentives to play more?

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Want the real reason MM feels bad? Because it promotes equality of circumstance rather than equality of opportunity.

This is a team based game right? Then why does it favor solo/duo over full premades? Why is it easier and more efficient to climb as a solo/duo then it is to make a pre-made?

Playing in a premade is the BEST experience for Overwatch. Win or lose. Because you and your team are far more willing to collaborate and far more trusting of each others choices. Which leads to more wholesome and elaborate gameplay.

BUT

It is far less efficient to climb ladder as a premade. Because being in a premade not only means your games are going to be more challenging but you have tonwait longer between each match.

Meanwhile, Solo/duo’s get faster queue times and far more chaotic and less organized play that is less challenging to fight through. But playing solo/duo is a worse experience. Because people don’t trust each other and are less willing to collaborate.

If we want MM to feel right we need to give advantage to premades for climbing.Give advantage to the experience that is more desirable. We need to stop shielding solo’s from premades. We need to let everyone of equal rank fight each other regardless of how many are grouped together.

It will destabilize the experience for a bit but the longterm it will feel much better.

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No they won’t. What makes you think people want to play comp when the 50 wins/games played wall stands in front of people. Keep in mind we’re talking comp games. So if you mostly play quickplay that’s feeling like 100 games not 50.

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MMR is an unknown system, we don’t really know how it works
This rule already exists and is stricter, as it requires 50 victories

Players must win 50 Quick Play matches to play competitive, or have owned Overwatch since before June of 2021

If the player has never participated in a Competitive Play match before, their performance from Quick Play and Arcade modes will be used to initialize their MMR.

they use the performance of QP and Arcade, we don’t know the specific data, Arcade is not the best place to get the data, but as we don’t know the data they use there is no way to understand

I don’t know, even 50 I don’t think it’s enough, but if you increase the number people won’t like it, nobody likes limitations

The truth is that to have a decent MMR you need a lot of game time, and that’s why they refuse to reset it because it’s valuable information, so MMR in the beginning won’t be precise, but forcing people to play more games to get data is not fun for them

So there is no way that pleases people, more data will restrict people, less data will make less accurate matches

Placements are useless (they intend to create boost(s9), but for now it’s useless), currently it’s just a way of saying your rank (before it was every game, now it’s after 7 games) . increasing the number of games to know where you are leads to a lot of frustration, when you know you are going to drop or stay in the same rank

I don’t understand how this influences improving MMR, it would just make people spend more time playing

and perhaps the number of active people, since to obtain the Rank it would take longer as well as the “rewards”, but forcing someone is not the most fun, people don’t play more than they need, because they think the game is not It’s “fun” (I think it’s fun), increasing the time won’t improve it, it will only frustrate they more.

I don’t think it’s necessary, this will just increase the queuing time.

These isolated matches do not affect the MMR immediately, dividing the MMR would not be effective, since there are few placement matches and if you do what you mentioned (you would need to increase the number of placement matches (a lot)) and it would increase frustration and would increase the queuing time.

this mechanics are very complicated and we have little information, even with all the information they have they cannot improve it

honestly it seems like you want to force greater engagement from people, which I support, but the method…I think will push people away and if the idea is to keep those who aren’t engaged with this idea away, I don’t think it’s healthy for the game

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The matchmaking is bad by design. Instead of matching you with ppl of similar skill, it takes the average rank of both teams. So you may be plat and fighting a team that has a GM and a bronze in them (whit the low rank player usually being a smurf)

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ok, i guess im just not seeing the issue here, are you talking about rewards? those dont have anything to do with the match maker. Also, golden guns are from comp only and the currency is only issued if you win…so those who play their 5 placement matches per season are not likely to have them…at least not very easily.

I guess i just dont see why this matters is all.

yeah, but you suggested that these people are only playing their 5 placement matches, and thats it for the season…or is that not what you were saying? if it is, then let them play their placement matches…and if they never play comp again for the rest of the season…no harm.

ok, you seem to have 2 issues here, one being the rewards…the other being the match making. Now, as far as the rewards go…i say dont worry about it…it’s just a cosmetic, it makes no difference in how the game plays…

as far as the matchmaker, i can somewhat agree with your about having the matchmaker analyze your games over a longer period of time, but i cant agree that having to have people play 50 games to place is a good idea. People with limited time would just not even bother, hell, there are a lot of people who gave up on comp already because it’s just not worth it unless you can place really high. I know i dont care about comp anymore…i could never place higher than mid-upper bronze…and at that level, there’s just no point, its the same as unranked, might as well just play unranked. If they tell me I have to play 50 matches, per role, just to place? no thanks…ill just stick totally to unranked. I just dont have the time to play through 50 placement matches to get to the low bronze ranks…that would just be a waste of my time.

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That would be hilarious, lol. Imagine having to play 50 games to “place.”

Or what if like, something magical happened and when you lose a game, you move down in rank, and when you win, you move up in rank, even if you haven’t “placed.” Like a ranking system? That might be too much for OP to understand though.

Basically OP is suggesting you don’t “place” until the ranking system has ranked you up and down for 50 games, aka, just hiding your placement for 50 games, lol.

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17

Nah, they just need to start people out in b5. Got rid of all the hero grinding. I don’t want new players to quit.

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The real reason matchmaking is so oppressively bad is so that even that throwing Sombra that needs finger math to figure out 2 plus 2 can win games occasionally and feel the desire to buy a skin. It’s not a secret.

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Least delusional forum user

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slowly but surely you’re becoming the AKJ of Sombra :rofl:

1 Like