For the people who believe this is a thing, how does the matchmaker single out throwers,smurfs and leavers? Is there a stat that tracks if someone is a thrower? How would the matchmaker know? Same with smurfs and leavers? And does it work the other way around. When you lose too much does the matchmaker specifically put those players on the other team to give you free wins? And who does the matchmaker determine gets these “unwinable” games. If it’s based on skill then why are there so many bronze to gm streams and smurfs who easily climb back up despite the matchmaker being against them.
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The issue tbh is anti smurf protection in hidden mmr. Because matches are balanced on hidden mmr. The algorithim tends to move people up too quickly who arent smurfs in hidden mmr when they do well. This puts them in a position to be a “carry” where they cant actually perform.
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What IceQueen said. And on top of that: people don’t understand general statistics. There are multiple factors (as you yourself have stated) that puts your team on a disadvantage but is relativly hard for the MM to understand or outright impossible to matchmake.
So it’s possible to get 3 “forced” losses due to such random factors in a row and people automaticly think it’s a system thats behind it instead of pure chance.
I would love it so much when the Game would tell me if it placed me in the carry position of my team, so I would know when not to fill.
Edited for clarity and content. For the moment I intend to repeatedly edit as more information comes in or I self-edit for clarity.
As with a lot of ideas that stray from logic and facts, not all the “forced losses” people think the same thing. They are all conspiracy theories in the sense that they take overwhelming natural randomness and attempt to make sense out of it by simplifying it to the point where it only makes sense if there is an entity that is corrupt or incompetent.
Version 1a:
Some think that they give you a MMR disadvantage when your winrate strays too far from 50%. To the best of my abilities to comprehend, they truly think that the MM “knows” how good they are and keeps trying to put them in even matchups. However, when they win “too much” (or too little) the MM starts creating uneven matchups through MMR imbalances in an effort to knock their win rate back down to 50%. These people generally do think that forced wins are a thing as it happens when you lose too much as well.
Version 1b:
Same as 1a except in this case it’s not an MMR disadvantage but rather a composition disadvantage, i.e. you’re given 5 Mercy mains on your team instead of a bunch of low MMR players.
Version 2:
These people don’t think that the MM is omniscient like in Version 1 but rather have a overly complex view of what the MM does and think it pairs people on streaky wins with people on streaky losses to get the system to even out. If you’re on that streaky win then being paired up with a known loser is what they call a “forced loss”. There are no “forced wins” required in this paradigm. Essential to this version is the Gambler’s fallacy (they literally think they’re on a “hot streak”) and failure to understand that a series of wins will garner tougher opponents.
Version 3:
A more complex idea of Version 2 where they believe that the MM uses an enhanced but short term history of performance, beyond the explained MMR system, to estimate where your SR will be and place you with other “losers” if it “believes” you are overranked. Here the system isn’t omniscient as in Version 1 but neither is it as “dumb” as Version 2. Simultaneously the “forced win” comes from the other team who, of course, have ALL been playing well and grouped against you to “force a loss”.
Version 4:
Those who repeat this version seem to understand how it works but fail to recognize the implication in that if you go on a win streak you get put up with harder and harder opponents until you can’t handle it and this is what they call “forced loss”. This is typically a misunderstanding of the capabilities of the system to estimate skill and make matches, an overestimation of their own consistency, and a simple misunderstanding of what would be a normal streak in a truly random system.
Version 5:
I’ve heard several people say that “forced loss” refers to being forced by the thrower or leaver to lose…which is fair, but not really the agreed upon meaning of the term. I gently remind them that “forced loss” generally refers to the MM forcing you into a situation where you are highly expected to lose, not a system where the MM would be fine if it weren’t for a bad actor or bad WiFi.
Version HC:
Not a “forced loss” theory technically, but people who advocate this system think that the system somehow “knows” your skill and give you “matching” opponents to ensure you aren’t “guaranteed” to win. That’s not quite forced losses but rather more of a “forced non-win". Different than Version 1 in that rather than being forced into a 50% winrate through mis-matching of MMR proponents believe that a perfectly matched MMR naturally gives you a 50% win ratio which keeps your SR at a particular level regardless of actual skill level.
Version X:
Some people don’t really think about how they know, just that they somehow do because of Clark’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Often you’ll just say something like “You play well, you get worse teammates” without any more explanation of how or why. It’s kinda hard to determine which Version they would find most matching their beliefs.
2022 Update:
Version R: Apparently, some people actually believe that the game changes it’s physics and settings to cause you to lose. Why it would cause a person to lose isn’t clear. Why it wouldn’t be noticed by a very large group of people is also unclear. Whether this is a troll theory is furthermore unclear.
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I think its fairly simplistic in its problem, just they dont want to change it or dont know what the problem is.
The concept of “forced losses” is laughable. I had an account I used to play with friends that ended s10 at around 2.8 and was at 50% wr in that elo because tbh they were pretty bad… They stopped playing and I solo’d on that account to masters with around 67% winrate on zen, at no point I felt stuck or like the system was trying to keep me artificially at 50% wr.
The funny thing is I started 1 tricking ana before the mercy nerf when she was considered a throw pick and deranked around 600 sr on that account and they were like “see those were forced losses cause you climbed to much”… Obviously that wasn’t the reason and after the ana buff/mercy nerf I got that account back to masters playing mostly ana.
I’ve done the same climb on other alts and never experienced any “forced losses”. Getting 5 support mains doesn’t count as a forced loss, that’s just an unlucky game
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I dont believe that forced losses are a thing at least not enough of a thing to make any real difference to your rank.
However I do think there is some kind of Smurf detection system, specifically if I have a really good game I usually find there is one really good player on the other to team next match.
Edit: Content added to post 4 of this thread.
It’s as if people think blizzard cares if they win or lose. Assuming they could rig matches to force a loss on you, what would be their incentive to do it?
If you choose a hero and don’t play as well as other people using that hero, on that map, at that rank, and do it for 4-5 matches in a row then the matchmaker will believe you deserve a lower rank, and you will be placed with 5 other people who it also believes deserve a lower rank. There is a delay, it doesn’t look at the game you just played, it looks at the past several matches you have played. I’ve seen multiple people talk about this similar concept.
So who is on the other team? 6 people who have performed generally better than people at their tier, with the hero’s they chose, on the maps they played.
If you want to stop streaks then choose one hero and never change no matter what unless you are absolutely sure you can perform as well or better than people at your rank with that hero. Keep in mind blizz’s idea of what is “good play” is completely off base, it’s looking at metrics that don’t tell even half the story.
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what youre saying would be true… IF … it were a 1 on 1 game… but its not you still play against" a vastly superior team with a team of what feels like complete morons all the time after a win
It’s Blizz’s idea of a ranking system. When you have poor individual performance over a course of several games as compared to other people in your tier, they designed the matchmaker to downrank you to a more appropriate rank where it feels like you belong.
It actually makes a lot of sense when you write it down on paper but it is a nightmare in reality.
I’m cataloging the variety of conflicting ideas on the matter. What’s actually the case is completely irrelevant. “Forced loss” means different, contradictory things to different people. They can’t all be right even if you think one version is correct.
This makes no sense. Let’s say you are right that people have their hidden MMR moved up to fast (I don’t think so, but for the sake of an argument). As we know, you are exclusively matched based on your current MMR. With and against people who have as close MMR as the game can find. You’re never, at least intentionally, but in a position to have to “carry”.
Worst case is the game thinks you’re too good, and puts you into higher games where you can’t keep up, but then you’ll simply lose some and move down to where you belong. It’s not a big deal.
Honestly, this sounds close to what Ozone said:
You can’t win forever. Even the best players in the world lose games regularly. The more you win, the more difficult your games will be. This is not “forced losses”, this is how a ranking system is supposed to work.
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matchmaker doesn’t know 100%. it can probably predict a good 70% but cant take into account throwers, leavers etc.
All that happens is if the team that was supposed to win loses, they end up winning the next 2 or so until they go back to “where they belong”
When I go 11-5 and get to diamond at 3091, then play the next day and go 2-10 with teams that are massively better than mine, it’s pretty difficult to believe the game isn’t working against me.
- They play carry heroes usually
- They vastly outskill their rank, so obviously they’ll carry most of the time
- While their SR is not stabilized the system gives them a ton of extra SR to speed up climbing
That’s not a forced loss. That’s you playing bad and being deranked because of your bad play.
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So you went 13-15 over a couple days, nearly 50% win-rate, but somehow the game is working against you because you had one good day and one bad day?
I mean, what do you want, the game to force you to alternate wins/losses? You realize if the games aren’t forced, you’re going to naturally get good and bad streaks right?
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Version 3.
Inverted Version 2, I think? Maybe Version 4? Hard to tell.
Definitely Version 4. Clear as can be here. Textbook case.
Hopefully someone will chime in with one I haven’t heard before!