Time played should be taken into consideration for matchmaking

My friend and I have almost 150 hours each in Overwatch and yet we get teammates that downloaded the game a week ago or Smurf opponents that just made their account and it completely skews the game. Even if at a minimum they wouldn’t allow people that haven’t prestiged once into games where everyone else is prestiged that would be good enough

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So, smurfs should go against genuine new players instead? That’s how you kill any potential of new players sticking around bud.

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Not really a clean and easy solution to be found. I doubt any legitimately new players enjoy starting comp off with a 30 game losing streak to bronze. But, obviously there are problems with starting everyone at bronze, it gives smurfs a much longer period to stomp.

Identifying smurfs before they can start smurfing would help a lot. There’s no reason HWID, phone verification, and similar can’t be silently used to make it a lot harder to smurf. Right now, you can just buy a new account and get going. If you have to change your HWID and phone number to avoid starting right at your old mmr, that’d do wonders.

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Agree on this especially if combined indeed with HW blueprint and/or watchdog in a single computer. If somebody wants to buy 2nd computer then so be it. However, I also agree on that that level should be part of matchmaking with some weight.

Yea, if they could adequately deal with smurfing then it would certainly be preferable to put new players with other new players at the very least(not sure the difference is as big between a lv300 and lv1000 of same sr).

But, without addressing smurfing, grouping by level means smurfs get put with new players and vice versa. That would make it that much more awful to be a new player.

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So a game that’s been out for 3 years should focus solely on new players and not those that have kept the game alive over all this time? I get wanting new players to enjoy it when Overwatch 2 comes out but we aren’t there yet

Putting different values on different customers because of when they became your customer for a company as large as Blizzard would be dumb. Everybody bought the same game, and barring discounts paid the same for it. Customer #32 is just as valuable as customer #53,205,638.

It’s better for the occasional match to be ruined for all players than for all matches to be ruined for a quarter of them.

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My argument was play time not when you made your account. And in a perfect world they keep smurfs out so all the new players can learn the game together. I’ve had a game where my rein didn’t know he had a hammer while the smurf on the other team was on fire the whole game. Game companies should be supporting their active players over potential new players, not over their active new players.

Supporting new players is how you harbor growth.

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So the game should cater towards new players who have never touched the game over the active players and longtime fans? The amount of downloads a game has means nothing if there are no active players

It’s not catering to new over anyone. It’s not actively making the game worse for any new players just to make some older players happy. 0 change is better than making the game actively worse for any particular group of players.

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Some older players? I love overwatch with a passion, but my friend who never gets to play is hard stuck silver and it’s impossible to play with him because his matches are always one sided because of the issues presented above. I get that you can’t just put all the smurfs with the new players, that’s never the ending I meant. I don’t think it’s fair to put new people against veterans either though. Why should a brand new player go up against silver and gold border individuals if they just started playing?

Here’s the thing you’re not realizing though. Time played has 0 bearing on how good a player is. There could be someone with 0 time played in OW but have plenty of experience in other shooters so they can hold their own in plat or even diamond. Meanwhile there can be someone with 10000 hours in game who just never took it seriously who struggles because they never bothered to try to improve.

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Then overwatch needs to fix their placements and put those people higher up to begin with. My main complaint is that Silver and Gold especially are just filled with Smurf’s and noobs alike and it makes climbing out impossible. Once I got up to plat I really enjoyed the game again, but trying to get my silver friend out of silver is impossible with the current matchmaking unless we grind all night which he can’t

I would certainly show all my try, if they matched me with/against the household’s most valued account, not the disposable burner, which can write off mistakes as learning or lolmemeing.

I used to think xp != skill, but now I’m realizing that there is a huge correlation in brain power, respect, hero pools, etc. Or I’ve been lied to. Because I can win diamond scrims and carry gold scrims, but I’m career peak <500. And in those scrims people have pride in their accounts, the hours show, and whether or not the skill != xp, you still feel like you’re amongst peers - people who’ve played a lot of overwatch.

you can win diamond scrims and carry gold scrims ? are you sure? cause that’s impossible if you are still only peak <500. Your account is only level 100, so it’s not your main account. But this one should have placed easily in gold since its where everyone starts. Also you are 1.4k on support right now.

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This is a forum-posting account. It sees no playtime outside of the odd placement. Getting flagged for something random on the forums can lead to in-game suspensions, which is why a separation of concerns is recommended if you visit/post regularly.

Well your peak is still not <500. It’s 1.5k. If you win diamond scrim and carry gold scrim you should play on this account and see where you and up.

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I play on the non-forum account, which is <500 as I said.
No one should have to play at a gold/plat level to split games in <500.
I should have chain of ez wins in the <500, if I’m even as good as say, 1400, right?

Ok hear me out. Don’t play on your non-forum account for like 6 month and play on this account. <500 is really a big mess and this is the only exception I’ll make saying that <500 is a pain. Play on this account for those 6 month you will get close to your rank. When you come back on your main it will be like a new account and you can just do placement get placed higher and get a big boost for every win you get after placement(100 sr ish) but you will lose like 50.

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