Or Engagement Optimized Matchmaking. Here is a video done about 4 months ago by the Youtuber Upper Echelon talking about Activision’s semi-recent study about matchmaking- video length 12:59- Upper Echelon’s video
Here is a video made around a year ago by the Youtuber Mint Blitz focusing on Halo Infinite’s matchmaking, how it works and its effect on the game- video length- 5:10- Mint Blitz’s video
In my own experience playing Halo Infinite specifically, the matchmaking is pretty noticeable and definitely feels skewed a lot of the time. It at times will absolutely give you matches that one side is basically guaranteed to win/lose or it expects you to super hard carry most of your team, or vice versa. It blatantly gives you teammates far below your skill level or pits you against enemies far above yours.
When I did my first Ranked placement matches, I lost all 4-5 with clearly no real chance of beating the enemy team. Along with my teammates, we were all clearly outmatched and had an extremely low chance of winning. All matches were a complete wash. The very next match after I got my placement, my team won with I think a 2-kill difference. Me partially carrying the win. It was a decent game and completely different from the 4-5 I had just played.
When it comes to OW, it’s not nearly as bad, but EOMM does seem to be in effect, simply toned down. Fortunately, when it comes to Competitive it seems to function like a true SBMM system should and doesn’t go by your hidden MMR and does work off of your visible rank/placement and sticks to it. Although your presumably hidden Quickplay MMR may have an effect on your placement matches.
Most live-service matchmade games today seem to heavily use EOMM systems and variations like it. Remember, the goal is to keep you engaged with your playtime, your psychology, and your wallet and is not based around giving you fair, balanced as reasonably possible, consistent matches.
EOMM is a real thing. I’ve heard that World Of Tanks does stuff like give you lower skill games after you buy stuff so you feel good. You’d need proof that this exists in Overwatch.
“forced 50/50” doesnt exist. When you’re at your correct SR, you’re gonna win as much as you lose, right? 50/50? A completely fair SR matchmaker will naturally trend towards 50/50 without “force”.
(In my defence: I missed all my shots due to ‘adrenaline aim’)
As for the matchmaker: I don’t know if anything like forced 50/50 is in place. It certainly does not feel that way when I play.
As always the question falls down to “Why do people play a game they think is rigged?” If I had serious cause to believe a game was rigged against me I’d drop it like a hot brick.
Year in/ Year out I see the same talking points about how the game is ‘rigged’ **and yet people who believe that are still playing it.**They should put the game down and walk away if they feel that way, no one is making them give Blizz their time or money.
If someone has the motivation to go digging for reasons they might be losing: then they have the self-control to leave a game they think is rigged.
Complaining alone does not instigate change in large corporations: actions do. And the first step is to stop using their products.
The same reason people keep coming back to slot machines…everyone knows slot machines are a losing venture, but those random dopamine hits feel so good that people will keep chasing them. Which ties into Eomm and its main goal of making you as addicted as possible to induce you to spend more money.
Or they could stick around, make burners, spend $0, boycott the rigging, and make the game worse until the devs come clean about it.
The solution to not having fun isn’t always to quit. Sometimes you should double down, make meme content, run up the server costs, and drive the lobby mad.
There was an interview recently (I think it was spilo) talking about matchmaking where the dev (I forgot his name) basically said that your MMR is your SR in comp….basically you can see your MMR there
their image + trust score with gamers is skibidi so
if they can’t provide the base game conditions for fairplay, the user has no obligation to provide real data. the best meta-game response equilibrium is to spoof boycott and flood them with garbage data so they have a more expensive time managing it. make their classification expensive.
The youtuber Greed-EU has some good videos he uploaded a couple months back showing his EOMM experiences.
He has several accounts most in top 500, tank. A couple of his older accounts, he has teammates who play like theyre 2 ranks below put on his team in every single game. He is or was hardstuck in masters because of it with a below 50% winrate. Even and especially when he duo’d with his top 500 dps friend, the other teammates would be even worse.
He started a new account and one tricked i believe it was reinhardt… every team he was put on had competent teammates with the enemy team getting the guys playing like theyre 2 ranks lower. He had I think it was a 95% winrate all the way into high GM. He said it was effortless, he didnt need to do half as much as he needs to do on his other accounts. His teammates carried him most games.
Many players have mirrored this experience, saying an account gets ‘cursed’ to forever get teammates that go negative and play multiple ranks below the mmr bracket theyre in.
If youre the upper echelon of players, you can carry those deadweights over time and still climb on a 'cursed account.
And this mignt not be global either. It might just be certain regions they do this at a time, they might switch it on and off. So both sides of this debate could be true. Players who call conspiracy and say its not in the game because they dont experience it… might not actually be experiencing it. And players that do experience it… might actually be experiencing it.
Activision literally has conducted studies of this im CoD so they can optimize it. In good studies, there is always a control group that is unaffected. And whats a good way to further optimize the study? Get way more data. Whats the best way to get way more data? Do it in every game you possibly can. And every game they do it in, will have control groups of people who arent affected by it.
My thing is its so blasted obvious when they use EOMM that I am completely turned away to want to spend money on the game.
If things were fairly even and the teams a person was fighting weren’t just brick walls all the time. I’d be like “Hey this is a really fun game, here have my money”. But instead its like “i dont take the hook when a company is too lazy to spend money on their systems and gather data”.
Live service games this day in age are a complete and total failure and it is clear the people that fall into that trap as operators are pretty much just ruining their reputation as a person being “competent” and “educated”. other than trying to scam someone.
Only reason they had an uptick for leavers so bad and did something about it is because it was server over-head reduction. Everyone knows the game’s current match maker system is so goated that people are put-off by EOMM and just want to find the match they appropriately like.
