Because people got fed up with the bad balancing, butchering of their favorite heroes, and lack of content. They left for better games. Not that hard to figure out.
If only they hadn’t gutted Mercy, Brig and Tanks. But nope, fun isn’t allowed in this game anymore.
I think it’s because there’s a whole lotta DPS and support sucks at lower ranks
Because it’s what people always blame in video games?…its not a now thing….people complained about it before the Smurfs existed too….
I think its because less than 500 ppl are in my rank now, and prbly less than 100 of those people are in my region.
I’ve been playing with metal ranks 24/7 in quickplay.
You’re not wrong. However, it is indisputable that many left due to the reasons I stated.
it is a whole bag of problems, but it really starts with how terrible of a job the programmers for this game company do at match design.
1 ) Blizzard took the feedback of loud, outspoken players that complained the most. That match priority should be FIRST given to people with FRIENDS that wanted to play with one another and not have to wait 5-10 minutes before the system would find a match.
Blizzard did this and Solo Q players were pushed onto the back burner.
The problem with this is. Is the fact that most often (if not always) Solo Q players are NEGLECTED by “stackers” / Buddy stacks. So people perceive this as a receiving bad team mates. When in reality they are NOT being supported or propped up.
2 ) The next issue is the balance team does not equally weight the match with SOME play-time hours being an allowance on priority. I rightly do NOT think everyone is the best at the game, the higher the hours are, that they have played on that account. But I do agree that there should be SOME merit to the account that once it breaks 100 hours played. The system only THEN should start to have somewhat of an idea on how people are going to play OVERWATCH.
Instead, the system takes just a few hours of play and decides that this is the person’s MMR (so be it). When this isn’t as much of an issue in Quickplay matches. In the world of Competitive it literally makes ZERO sense how a player with just 25 hours qualifies for a RANKED MATCH.
I grasp the concept, that matches are just NOT popping up all over the place. Especially since Latency plays a MAJOR factor and not everyone is playing at all times of the day, for all regions. But Blizzard needs to fall back on some of their changes to the system and realize that not every change they made was healthy for the game. Especially blending SOLO players and friends-groups TOGETHER.
Which leads to players abandoning matches, because they are being ganged up on, by others that have friends, and it leaves for in-game bullying, salty chat and accusations of whom is really playing the game or throwing it.
I can’t say that this match making team is GOOD at what they do. Especially when World of Warcraft’s battlegrounds and Arena rating system were just as filthy, cracked, busted and broken. Leaving people wondering if they really want to play the game anymore.
Me personally, after a steam-roll. IM done for the night. Match chat goes off. Out goes the can of suds, off goes the chat and I don’t give a 
← about the outcome of any more of the matches. I just want to Pew pew at that point. Which happens to most people after hard-losses. They tilt, no longer care and they go into Zombie mode for the night.
When Blizzard finally decides to tell the people in the match making department to collect their last paycheck and LEAVE. That will only THEN be the day that this game can be fixed. The current team in charge of it has demonstrated they have ZERO ambition to fix it.
Sorry. 
i also think its a lower population thing also how the matchmaker is confused with tons of alt accounts. still tho… i wonder if its still better than most games? i dont play other games enough to know or compare it to overwatch. my brother plays halo infinite a lot and he said the last update really screwed with their matchmaking too. higher skilled players getting put with lower skilled etc…
Other games aren’t much better either. I’ve been playing Valorant recently and their matchmaking isn’t all that different from Overwatch. Since occasionally, I also get games in Valorant where it’s only winnable if I’m 2 or more elos higher than my current rank.
The only difference I’m finding with Valorant is that unlike Overwatch, I don’t tilt as much or feel completely useless and unimpactful. Since there are always ways to make clutch plays as a single player and win at least a single round. Even if I can’t win every game, my skills directly translates to output, so there’s always something take away from the game. Unlike in Overwatch where if you’re a tank or support, your skill can somewhat be offset by the other member of your team not carrying their own weight and render you useless and unimpactful.
I actually think matchmaking in Overwatch is actually pretty decent. But the inherent complexity of the game as well as the game being significantly way more team-reliant makes the matchmaker look like it’s not doing a proper job. I also think the lack of players are contributing to some of the less than optimal matchmaking as well.
Anyways, I think the solution to a better competitive integrity is that the devs either need to improve the balancing and make every player be able to carry their team to victory OR spend enormous amount of money on further improving the matchmaker by integrating some kind of complex machine learning A.I. into the matchmaker to make sure that every single matches are fair.
I think the former (balancing heroes and giving every role higher solo carry potential) is a better way of fixing this issue and also will be the least expensive.
do you think 5v5 will help with that a little? kind of curious about that. we wont know till it happens i guess heh
still the game is team reliant like you said. also its a hero shooter where all heroes are VASTLY different from each other somewhat so its tough to balance
ALSO ults in the game can team wipe if used correctly and ult managment is a big thing with this game where other games dont even have that
I’m not sure, I just hope the devs will balance the game for 5v5 so that every role has a much higher solo carry potential than before. But the bigger player pool that will inevitably come with OW2 will make the matchmaker more balanced again for sure.
It’s just a matter of how long will we be able to keep these new players for OW2. Since as soon as we start losing players again, my bet is that the matchmaker will start feeling like it is now all over again. This game thrives on having suffient players for the matchmaker to make balanced matches imo.
It is exactly a hero like Brig that has caused Overwatch to die, so you are way, way off.
It has been discussed again and again why the Matchmaker is bad. It is for none of the reasons stated in this thread - although I can sympathize with Heinstar’s explanation (which is off as well though).
The MM tries to create “fair matches” that are roughly 50/50 for each team. The problem, however, is that each player is evaluated on MMR, which can differ from SR. A player playing above his SR level will thus be evened out with better opponents or worse team mates. If he beats those odds, the odds will be stacked even more against him next match, as his MMR will have increased.
This means, that instead of allowing him to comfortably climb due to being better than the SR level he is playing at, the MM might very well cause him to lose around half of his matches. He will have to constantly beat his own MMR to climb.
You essentially will be challenged at whatever level you are playing: Even if you are Diamond player in Gold, you will still have roughly “50/50” matches. Only if you are more than two ranks above where you are playing, will you be winning your matches comfortably.
To boil it down, you are really playing against yourself, instead of against the SR level you are at.
Kinda weird, I get master/gm when tank, ~diamond when support, and plat/gold when dps.
And I main dps.
I … what??? I could see arguments for gutting Mercy and tanks. I personally think both are in a pretty good spot right now though, but Brig? How exactly has Brigitte been gutted?
You left out role queue and it’s many disastrous consequences on the game
The real reason why matches in overwatch are G X R B X G E , is because Blizzard allows it to be T R X S H .
Look, I know they have quite a bit of things going on, such as cleaning up house after they fired a bunch of people for really bad things. But they need to show this game just a bit of care.
I do enjoy the Mercy EXC card they did. But the problem is them having to squeeze every person’s little FRIEND GROUP (aka a buddy stack) into a match and they prioritize these players FIRST.
This means we get T R X S H team mates that are refusing to peal off from their friend that they are healing and instead support the players around them.
My deal is, I don’t want to play in a match where people are pairing off with their buddies and acting like they are all that n a bag of chips. Because they act all big n tough in chat, by bullying others and acting like they are hot 
with so much skill they should be paid to play the game. (when in reality, they aren’t that great).
Heck, I am not even that great. But It would be nice to have a bit of civility here in Quickplay matches. Instead of caustic try-hards losing their minds over a petty VIDEO GAME that probably won’t be around in 25 years (sad). But likewise. The match maker has to take some player that has a few hundred hours of gameplay and decent experience, and then deal with their little group of friends that just started playing Overwatch and somehow SQUEEZE the group in and fill in the rest.
That is why Overwatch is C R X P right now. Because of COMMUNITY REQUESTS.
People begged blizzard to give GROUPED players better Q times, and this is means the match quality SUFFERS. Especially since it Bias’s bigger teams as priority and then goes down the ladder to Solo Players. The system can only do so much with averaging MMR because they are a group MMR, and as it splits apart. (people go to leave or eat) it has to quickly make a chance to the match.
At the end of the day. Match maker S X C K S because we requested it to be awful.
Seasons need to be longer, first and last week of a season are always a crap show. It is sucks that two weeks of our seasons are not worth playing if you are trying to gain sr.
Oh you’re right. Role queue and its positive impact on the game. Good point. Overall a good system and not one that should ever leave. Double shield is not the fault of 2/2/2, it was the fault of some poorly balanced tanks, especially Sigma. I do hope you’re not blaming 2/2/2 for that. The only consequence that has been disastrous is queue times. But the actual match quality skyrocketed with the absence of quradruple or quintuple DPS playing into a real team composition each match. Other than queue times and the double shield meta that really wasn’t 2/2/2’s fault; role queue has worked wonders. It’s one of my favorite things they’ve added to the game.
Thanks for reminding me to bring it up.
I included that in the ‘bad balancing’ aspect. Had the devs been able to balance the heroes properly, then role queue would have never been necessary.
That being said, it is also one of many reasons why people quit.
I think it is just low ranks suck at the game in general. Ppl don’t understand the concept of competing, therefore playing casually and demand more from this game than they should provide. Being a low rank is only good if you are smurfing there or dedicate yourself for improvement which is pretty same, considering you will climb in both cases.