When I quit Overwatch over four years ago, I began investing my time and energy in vastly better things. I’ve continued a technical writing career, attended my dying father, met a great love of my life, raised an infant, and in that time invented a new style of rodeo slackline exposure flow, a moving meditation I call ‘the gunslinger:’
We all have better things to do, than being systematically discriminated against and gaslit with algorithmic handicapping, a.k.a. Match Making Rating (MMR), and the associated systems of Performance Based Skill Rating Adjustment (PBSR) and “Skill Rating,” which I put in quotations because it is nominally false. The ranking system is a travesty. I quit cold turkey because of the corrupt institution of MMR/SR/PBSR. Sticking with Overwatch doesn’t make you a competitor, it makes you a sucker.
Imagine, what can you achieve when you quit Overwatch? How much have your skills been wasted?
What untold potential is this false, dishonorable and farcical “COMPETITION” stealing from you?
For more information about MMR/SR/PBSR, see my thread or my video on the subject:
That’s good news, learning to productively use your time is a good skill to build instead of sinking it all into something that won’t net you any real progress in life
If only the others could follow suit and start doing productive things instead of spamming the forums with novels about rigging and MMR
Thank you, but this issue remains important to me. I met my first wife in Team Fortress 2, Overwatch’s predecessor. This genre of games is mine, as are its people. I’m not leaving you, or anyone behind.
Oi, I barely knew this was a thing, and it looks pretty dope tbh. Gonna have to look into it a bit more
If people are looking at it this way I think it would be more beneficial of they found out why they can’t take personal responsibility. They are giving away their time (and possibly potential); OW isn’t stealing it from them.
You absolutely should! Slacklining is an amazing ‘alternative’ sport with a beautiful community of amateurs (and practically no professional [yet]). You can do it anywhere there is soft ground and trees, or with other…facilities.
I appreciate your philosophy of personal responsibility, but philosophy needs to be based in fact (i.e., science). The fact is that we are literally guaranteed to have only marginal control of our careers in Competitive Play. Our match results are all but completely decided by Match Making Rating. Holding players accountable to their match results, and meting out Skill Rating based on hidden, arbitrarily weighted performance stats in a framework of Bayesian skill scoring and algorithmically handicapped matchmaking is absurd.
The match result is what matters. It should not be tampered with by any means, let alone automated based on intimate personal data including the basis of measurable skill difference. When competition is based on lies, deception by omission, hidden terms of use, and the automatic contravention of skill, that competition’s results/ranks are invalid. So is the entire competitive ladder, from Bronze to the Top 500.
I’ll have you know, I ranked as high as Platinum. Before I quit.
I think we may have those in Sweden!
How did you stumble upon slacklining? Is there a small community where you live?
The thought of having to tense up/do micro movements to maintain balance is speaking to me (that’s atleast how I imagine it).
And regarding personal responsibility I was thinking more of how people use their time. They would (potentially) waste their time/potential if they played a game with the most amazing matchmaker aswell. I mean, waste their time as in “not putting it into another skill or occupation, such as slacklining or doing charity work”
Quite right my friend, quite right! I discovered slacklining at a rock climbing gym in Toronto. It is because slacklining was invented by rock climbers, and it is practiced as an alpine sport (see ‘highlining’). There is a small but wonderful community for this in Ontario, Canada.
Slacklining is intense and difficult when you start, but it quickly becomes more easy and relaxing. Also depends what you want to do on the line. I find my practice intense but also relaxing.
My thing is - weather if this complaint came from a GM or Bronze, if its proven or not, what’s the vote now? Do you want handicapping of your profile to be 50%? Do you think its wrong?
Well I think you are asking exactly the right questions, and I do think voting (i.e. Democracy) is important. That’s why I do polls in my threads. Players have voted over 85% in favor of removing MMR from Competitive Play…5 times, with hundreds of players by my count.
You’ve likely done it in Overwatch communities (especially the forums) and people come here to complain. Barely anybody comes here to say how much of a great time they’re having. And so if you tell them something is rigging their games (likely a reason they clicked your thread) I bet they’d vote yes.
This is like asking people in debt if debt should be abolished and your only sample of people is the homeless shelter.
And even then “hundreds” is not a representative sample. Your polls do not mean anything.
AND EVEN THEN, you are asking players who know nothing about game MMR and game development. If I make threads saying Symmetra can do 300dps and then others say the same. And people are convinced Sym’s ridiculous 300dps is holding them back, then they will of course vote to remove Symmetra.
But a developer who of course knows Symmetra is not overpowered and knows it’s a smarter business move and move for the playerbase that Symmetra remains in the game.
Without MMR the game would be quite frankly a crapshow and there would be newbies vs top 500 players. It is a terrible idea. But of course no matter what I say you will remain convinced the system is rigged against you.
They also never actually provide how these “polls” were done. Several of them appear to be the amount of “likes” a post they made gets. Almost like there’s no actual dislike or downvote function for it to be measured against, not to mention a “like ratio” is an incredibly weak statistical argument to make or base data collection on. It’s the equivalent of going to a Bengals bar and asking “who agrees with me that the Bengals are the best team right now?” Without taking data or percentage or disagreement just guessing that “yeah that looks like a high percentage”. Completely ignoring the inherent biases of the sample and method of collection.
Not that they ever seem to be interested in collecting non biased data (in spite of what they may claim).
Edit: look at that they fail to actually show the polls and admit o using likes on their post (which they unrelentingly spam linked to in the past as well as bump whenever possible) vs other people’s posts. An extremely weak form of data they only use because it backs them up.
It’s effectively the equivalent of me going to a first grade class and asking the kids if they prefer I replace all their soda machines that have PowerAid with machines that have Gatorade because PowerAid contains high fructose corn syrup.
Kids have no idea, nor do they really need to care.
For all the things I don’t appreciate about you and your nonsense, Cuthbert, I appreciate your honesty.
My apologies… I didnt answer the question myself… and its… tricky. Here is my attempt.
If I had to chose - have a filter, and open and adjustable settings. so I can choose skill or ping or… whatever…
second tier, if I cant choose thats where it gets tricky. Atleast be open, what variables ARE being used. For the life me, do I remember post match survey’s 6 years ago… I wish I remember what the question was and what I put…
Third tier… what we have now, unknown and selected for us…
Its like two ML systems, 1 is do we like the games? 2 are the games equal. Something is not meshing…
YES… here it comes. Cant beat the argument beat the person. Platnium being a less than 20% of the population (2017… maybe it is lower) … yikes - thank the devs for that… because who knows what it is now they STOPPED posting stats.
Not true, plat has been proven to be “above average”.
The first three polls on the old Battlenet forum featured polls. When Blizzard opened this forum with no polling feature, I ran polls myself by counting likes for the original post against likes for the most popular dissenting opinion.
