I’m not sure why I still visit these forums from time to time because half the posts seem to have pseudo-conspiracy theorists throwing around buzzwords like “handicapping” and “forced 50% winrates” as if it’s some elaborate scheme to keep YOU in particular from ranking up on ladder.
No dude, playing against harder opponents because you’re winning more games isn’t a handicap. Having the highest SR on your team every now and then while playing against a team of similar combined SR isn’t a handicap. A handicap would be your Tracer gun having less max ammo because you popped off for a few games, or getting +400 hp on your Rein shield because you’re on a loss streak.
Seriously, poke your head out of the ground and get some oxygen sometimes. Outside of the whole smurfing issue, MMR is designed to make matches fair with teams of close to equal combined skill. If you don’t like having a 50% winrate then literally “get gud”. Get a VOD review, grind ffa or aim arena, watch pros/streamers, whatever. Complaining on the forums that you can’t climb ladder because Blizzard has it in for you does NOTHING but add to the dozens of similar non-sense threads that make me want to avoid these forums completely once again and return to le reddit where at least this non-sense is mostly downvoted into oblivion.
Okay if you don’t think handicapping and regulated winrates are a thing in Overwatch, then how do you explain Performance Based Skill Rating Adjustment? What parameters do YOU think PBSR is based on? And what do you think MMR is? Why don’t you get the same amount of SR for winning/losing every match?
it literally only does anything for smurfs. you, an actual player who belongs in the pbsr range, are not good or bad enough to warrant anything more than maybe +/- 3sr.
MMR is used for handicapping. If they removed it and matched by SR there wouldn’t be any handicapping. If two players are equal SR, the one with higher MMR will always go on the worse team.
Matching people based on MMR actually creates more even games. For example me, I belong in about 3.2k. Next question is, when am I actually exactly 3.2k? Well about half the time I’m close to that, other times I’m borderline plat or punching into high diamond. The game still matches me with the MMR I deserve and therefore you don’t have ~6 people whose ranks are off being matched at random against each other.
I believe there was a dev post a while back explaining matchmaking. Basically it takes people’s MMR and makes matches where one team’s win chance is as close to 50% as possible. In addition, it is unable to create unwinnable match (win chance of <40%).
It doesn’t punish you for being good, it simply starts expecting you to be good. If you take away cheaters in high rank games, they tend to be quite even. This isn’t the case for lower ranks where inconsistency becomes a huge factor. Also people like frequent leavers and toxic people tend to be in those ranks, these add even more inconsistency.
I don’t really know though, no-one does. I just don’t see any reason to believe in any of the conspiracies. My rank has never changed all too drastically. One time I did have a support losing streak and ended up about 400 SR down and stayed there for 2 seasons. Figured my playstyle wasn’t as good in gold and changed it. Immediately after, I started climbing and ended up climbing to my career high that season. Every single other time I’ve deranked significantly I have climbed back within a week.
as a genji main, if i only get 5 blade elims in an entire match, im clearly underperforming thus the PBSR effect will not kick in because i havent met the threshold, now on the the flip side, if i get 15 blade elims that gets noticed and the PBSR will kick in, how much it will depends on the other factors mentioned above.
and im using genji as an example- it can be applied to any char in the game.
You’re kind of describing the problem though. If I have the highest SR on the team, it shouldn’t place the lowest other 5 just cuz I’m the highest. I should have the chance to be placed with the 2nd and 3rd highest SR in the game. Here’s an example of how the matchmaker currently works:
I’ll label players from 1st - 12th in regards to SR, with 1st being the highest SR in the game. In any normal competitive game, it will take the 12 players and shuffle them randomly. So you can have a game that has:
Team 1
1st
2nd
3rd
5th
7th
12th
vs
Team 2
4th
6th
8th
9th
10th
11th
Now this may seem unbalanced, but if the players are on team 2 are that high up, we want them to go higher. Not be held down by the lower 6 players in this game. This is how “non-handicapped” competitive play happens in other games.
However the way OW1’s system works, it will move players:
Team 1
1st
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
Team 2
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
10th
11th
Obviously Team 2 is stacked here but the game thinks that the 1st ranked player is good enough to carry the stragglers. What if the 1st ranked in a support? Suddenly that ability to impact the game drops a bit if it were say a tank.
Additionally a major issue is the game does not have a misconception of equivalency. Since there’s a 1000 SR difference possibility in the lower metal ranks, you can have a Plat and Silver in the same game. Now what happens when you have a Plat support on one side but a Plat DPS or Tank on the other Well the matchmaker thinks that’s fine because its a Plat player on each team, but in reality a Plat support =/= a Plat DPS/Tank.
You’re coming into a conversation ill equipped. First off nobody thinks it’s out to get them specifically, that’s a straw man argument. Second, at this point the evidence is completely overwhelming and non-disputable that matchmaking has something wrong with it.
Remember when you post about a win streak with no context of rank or sr gains and a private profile so for all we know you could be smurfing in bronze. Then mock people saying you will get a lose streak soon and then post about a lose streak a week later? Clown shoes should fit you well sir.
i never blame people for loss streaks, but if someone drops from masters to gold thats on them mate…remember when i also posted replay codes going 6-1 remember when i posted replay codes of losses…remember when i…see i dont hide unlike you filth…i dont blame the system when i lose a game because im not pathetic and weak.
did i blame the system for losing? no i accepted the blame for my poor performance.
you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
The handicap comes from the 40-60% team matchup. If you’re playing well for a few games you’re given worse team mates than the enemy and put into games where it thinks you have a lower chance to win to “test” you.
I think this kind of worked ok back before role queue. You could counter and switch to heroes that could beat the odds. But since role queue, if you’re support or rank these games can be incredibly hard and almost not even worth putting the effort in.
I think the issue is worse now than it used to be as well. The game might be attempting to give you a 40% chance to win game, but because of the lower player base and the higher amount of alt accounts you end up with a 20 or 30% chance of winning. The equivalent of a 5v6 game. People then get fed up, soft throw or rage against their team and the 30% is now 0%.
This is where the forced loss feeling comes from. It’s not deliberate. It’s just the system they’ve put in place doesn’t work very well with restricted hero selection and low player base.
It works the other way around too. After you’ve dropped enough SR you’re put on the ‘other’ team and it’s next to impossible to lose. This is why you get so many players flip flopping between ranks while basically playing the same. This is why games in plat can be easier than games in silver.
It’s a stupid system. It tries to be too clever and while I think it was designed to give a better game experience, the result is a worse one . I’d hope they would be reworking it with OW2 but I wouldn’t bet on it.
on paper the system works. in practice it is a garbage mess because:
pressure to keep queue times down = loose matchmaking.
allowing and incentivising smurfing.
slow balancing that allows low skill metas and heros to be abused.
hopefully all this will be addressed in ow2, unfortunatly have to wait till october for it.
What you’re saying here is thought out, but there’s a couple of mistakes in your thinking. One, is thinking that “we want” someone to go higher or lower. That’s just not a function of an MMR. “We want” people to be accurately ranked. There’s a whole lot of barriers to this in practice, but the system design is largely about as good as it’s gonna get given that we’re measuring the skill of people, which varies (sometimes maliciously).
If you want to know more about how it’s meant to work, and why you don’t actually want to have all the best players on one team, I’ll refer you to other posts about the topic.
Edit: 404 errors, but a refresh will take you to the link.
