I will say this… a few days ago I climbed to 2200 on my support account playing ana after quite a few glasses of wine and doing just fine and climbing (no I wasnt getting carried.)
Fast forward 2 days later I cant buy a win in high silver sober on another account cause of some of the dead weight I get stuck with.
I am not saying there is some vast conspiracy but it sure seems strange to do fine one one account at about a tier higher but then on a lower account get my face kicked into the dirt.
isnt it just a little strange ? … that not one of us … but the majority of us seem to experience this VERY odd PHENOMENON? where one day you win win win win win win win then the next day you seem to be matched with multiple teams of COMPLETE morons that look to be literally throwing and or the enemy team members all seem to be much much better than your current teams ? oh and isnt it also kind of funny that que times on the loss days seem to be much longer ? … ever pay attention to that ? nahhhhhhh im just a crazy person that needs to git gud
I’m not sure if I agree with forced losses. But I do agree with the odds stacked against you for climbing.
From my experience, I’ve noticed if I play insanely well, and lose; I lose 0 SR. My guess would be that my mmr is higher than my SR and with in game stats boosting sr gains/losses it keeps me elevated. If I play really well and win, my rank goes up a ton.
The inverse is true too. If I play badly and win, my SR just goes up a little. If I lose, it tanks.
Where it gets wonky is with matchmaking. I’m climbing up from silver. I started in gold season 1, and never played well or much. Recently I decided to try and climb. I’m finding that there are better players in high silver than in low and mid gold. I can’t be sure if the system is rigged since the player skills are so drastically different game to game.
To be honest, I don’t like the system. I would like it to be more elo based with no hidden mmr. As it stands now, if you don’t over perform you don’t rise quickly. That means if you’re a flex player, you’ll be stuck in whatever rank you’re in for a long time. You need gold’s and silvers to rank up fast, anything else the system rates you as subpar.
Example, a player switches to zen from dps halfway through the game to help counter the opposing team’s comp. That change wins the game. However, the players stats in game doesn’t look good. The SR gain will be minimal, even though the game sense of that player is great.
The system seems to only care about outliers, everything else is overlooked.
That makes it so if a player finally climbs to a new SR where games are more tough, instead of being able to adapt, they can lose a few games and be brought back to where they were more than a few games ago.
As I’m finishing writing this, I’m pretty sure I’m off topic, sorry.
Maybe, but I appreciate your perspective. I’d like to ask you more about it. Please take the following questions as someone seriously asking you. You seem to have a decent understanding of how it works, or should work at least, but at the same time you have frustrations that are based on common expecations. I’d like to know what you would think is better or if you understand “why” it’s the way it is.
Well, yeah. “Climbing” really shouldn’t happen. Common misconception. There are games where the SR system forces a progression, WoW being one of them, but it’s pretty clear that in OW even the initial placement is meant to be as accurate as technically possible. Any movement would then be a “failure” (of course no one really expects the MM to be that accurate that quickly, it’s just a goal). What expectations regarding progression did you have going into competitive?
This is the first I’ve heard this. Now, there is a known bug where if you leave a match after you are “safe” it will give you very little SR if you win the next round, but you also say it’s true on a loss, which I haven’t heard before.
If you could provide some evidence, even a tracking spreadsheet or something, it would be very much appreciated.
Honestly, one of my complaints with the system is that it should be this way. I’m pro-SR, but for decay, punishment, and simplicity. Not for “feel-good” mechanics like always gaining on a win even if you should have won easily. Same with early-season depression (which they’ve stopped).
Again, why would it not be this way? Why do you think you should rise quickly if you don’t overperform? I really don’t understand this idea and you’re definitely not the first to say it. Please help me understand where you’re coming from.
I kinda agree. The goal of the system is to properly rank people. The people properly ranked aren’t the concern. It’s literally the outliers that we are concerned with here. Those people need to be properly ranked asap. What would you have the system do with those who weren’t outliers?
MMR is Elo based, whether hidden or not. You’re talking about the performance modifiers which we call PBSR (Performance Based SR). It’s a good discussion to have. It doesn’t exist above Plat though. If you don’t already know just ask I’ll break it down for you. No question, really.
The idea is that a person improving (adapting) will cycle up and down hitting new highs each time. I understand your point here, I think, but you also need to think if the other 11 people who now have in the group someone who still needs to “adapt”. It’s justifiable as a product of natural variation, but imagine putting struggling players on your team as a matter of policy. We get lots of complaints with the natural variations in skill. I’d hate to see what we got if people were given a few chances to suck at any particular rank! Would you want someone on your team that has shown over the last few games that they struggle to maintain that rank?
MMR. If an average gold X hero is on fire 10% of the time, an average plat of the same hero is on fire 12% of the time, diamond 14% of the time, etc… if someone is “throwing” (intentionally or not) they might only be on fire 8% of the time. It only takes a few games for the matchmaker to realize “hey, this person is X rank but belongs in Y rank” and gives you opponents with higher MMR than you.
This is entirely wrong.
“On fire” has nothing to do with the ranking system, at all.
The matchmaker always trys to find people with as close MMR as possible. There’s no “give this player higher MMR opponents”.
The matchmaker isn’t some general artificial intelligence, capable of reasoning. It’s an MMR system. Your estimated “skill” is your MMR. If the matchmaker thinks you’ve improved, that means your MMR has gone up. Those are equivalent statements. Everything the matchmaker gleans about how good you are is wrapped up in your MMR, one number that goes up when you win and down when you lose.
Stopped spreading these ridiculous myths. Once again, Kawumba has taken a lot of time to detail how the matchmaker works, including ample citations to actual posts/comments/etc from official blizzard employees. Read it instead of falling for “fake news”.
I’ve gathered a ton of useful info from the many of you who believe the matchmaker does try to force losses and I have two follow-up questions from all your replies.
I’m do not in any way think I am some epic player.
At best low platinum. (I used to play high gold, but quit for a year due to this very issue, now I can’t get out of low silver…)
But I agree with the forced loss thing. I play a tank 90%, sometimes healer. I consistently get most if not all of the gold medals in matches… but I cannot carry a steaming bag of dog nuggets.
It’s just not possible for me to 1v6. I’m not that good.
Any time I start making progress, I suddenly get a (nearly) unbroken string of losses. And not just, wow, gg, close match, losses. I’m talking about flat out, red team wiping their butts with our faces matches.
Sometimes I see blatant cheaters and they get reported, but for the most part it’s just a complete lack of skill and cohersion vs a team whos healers heal and dps does damage.
You can’t tell me, in any way that I would believe, that blizzard doesn’t have some magic on their end.
Sure, there are people that can break past that and into higher ranks, but not everybody.
So you have a lot of disgruntled people, like me, who can see the forced losses. Whether they exist or not.
Sorry to beat the proverbial dead horse…
I wanted to offer some constructive suggestions.
If the Overwatch team reads this.
A better (and feasible) way to rank players would be to not just focus on their wins/losses, but their personal contribution to the match.
Did the healers heal? Or just pick ana and snipe away at the enemy?
Is Genji hitting people? Or just jumping in and dying.
How much damage is the DPS player doing compared to their teammates.
It’s really sad when someone plays a healer (for the sake of team balance) and out-damages Soldier76…
It would be trivial to check game statistics and rate players based on their personal value (as well as team value, win/loss. This is a TEAM game after all, though sometimes I wonder…) rather than just deduct points because they lost.
Nearly textbook case of Conspiracy Version 3. Awesome.
Clear example of Conspiracy Version X.
I’m curious what type of magic you think they have and what the purpose is to use it on some people but not everyone?
The overall theory goes that if you are doing the things that win you matches at that level you are having a good personal contribution. I tell people all the time that there are many more skills in Overwatch than just mechanical ones, to include resilience, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Those can’t be measured by any program (yet).
I had a 75-79% WR these season with zarya and climbed around 650SR I dropped back with a 13 loosing streak I still don’t think forced looses are a thing but one thing I noticed pretty well, team mates got more toxic and the games got far worse the higher my WR goes and after dropping to 60% WR my games got a lot better and people less toxic.
These 13 looses was really bad i had a battle mercy, a 5 dps team, 2 leavers, 1 torb in spawn. Only 2 if the other losses were close were we could have won the rest were stomps, really really bad stomps
I guess the MMR just puts you with people to even out the win chance not to force you to a loss and since my WR was that high I paired up with people who needed a win, but hard carry isn’t a thing in this game so it doesn’t work out and I guess these toxic people were toxic because they lost many games before and were tilted, so I don’t blame them
Ah, you misunderstood me.
The ‘magic’ I was talking about was just a reference to their existing algorithm.
As for the difference in players: I mean that some people really are good enough to break past this limitation. Most do not possess enough skill difference to make up for the difference in teams.
As for the theory… that’s all it is. At least in bronze/silver.
My personal contribution doesn’t matter. Usually. Whenever I hit the losing streaks, it has nothing to do with my skill. There is an impossible gap in performance between the teams.
What Beshi says amounts to the same thing. Blizzard puts people that win (or are good) in groups of people that ‘need a win’ i.e. are not so good.
Puts us in the position to continue losing.
And MAYBE squeeze in a win occasionally.
This is tricky. At first I thought it was Version 1 but with “toxic” teammates rather than lower MMR or mismatched roles.
But I think really it’s Version 2. Maybe modified away from “streak” towards “high or very high win rate”, but the end result is that the High WR person gets paired with the Low WR person to even it out…I’ll have to change it tomorrow, thanks for your input!
Would you mind reading through post 4 in this thread? Maybe it’ll help you figure out your thoughts on the matter. I’m trying to figure out what people believe.
Hm, good question. I think the main expectation was that competitive would work like a ladder system. Where the SR is our score and we either lose or gain SR depending on our win/loss based on that score alone (well, the teams). Over time, we would end up where we are meant to be, until we learn the mechanics, learn teamwork, and start winning to gain more points.
I might bring this up again later, but teamwork I thought would always be the main goal. A good team synergy would get wins. Wins would give SR. More SR you rank up. However, with what i’m noticing it’s less about teamwork and more about out performing your team.
I’ll start keeping track starting tomorrow. It’s possible it was a minute amount, but i’ve seen it several times that i’m fairly certain it wasn’t.
But to clarify. I would lose 0 SR on a carried loss (and i mean 4+ golds, not bad golds either, but like 13k healing, 32 elims, 5:00+ objective time, etc). But on a “I got carried win” (1-2 medals max silver or lower) it wouldn’t be 0, it would be low like 5-10.
Ah, ok I can see where it comes off weird. As it stands now, You can win many games and still not gain SR at a decent pace. The issue seems to be in what the PBSR (am I using this right?) deems as good performance. If you’re a healer and you don’t have exceptionally high heals, too bad you get less SR. Even if as that healer, you were able to make big plays that ended up changing the tide of battle in your teams favor( An Ana with great sleep darts, Moira’s who can last hit sneaky enemies who are about to get away, Lucio’s who contest point while dancing away from attacks).
Instead, the carries get ALL the glory. Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying they don’t deserve it. It just feels like the rest of the team gets shafted, especially in games where the carries are only carrying because the team is doing it’s job. It is a team game after all.
Break it down for me, good sir.
Sure. They got to that rank at one point ( I hope. Initial placements tend to rank a tad high) but we have that problem anyway. As you said, an improving player would cycle up and down ( that would happen in most systems). What I meant to relay was that I would rather have a consistent SR change for all players per game. If it took me 6 straight wins to get to 2000 from 1900, I would expect a similar amount of losses to get knocked back down to 1900.
Compared to now, where a player could fight hard to get to gold, but lose 2 games (while not over performing) and lose 3-4 wins worth of SR.
Not give them bad SR gains/terrible SR loss just because they weren’t the best on the team.
Punishing the bad and rewarding the good might seem like a good system on the surface. But it’s a team game. The system can’t tell who’s calling shots, who’s keeping the team from yelling at each other, who’s baiting the enemy so the team can attack from another angle.
It’s just not there yet.
Yeah, bad players will slip through the cracks. But that would happen regardless. I would rather bad players get carried to higher ranks than have promising players give up because there seems to be no reason why they’re stuck in “elo hell”. ( I always found it funny that every tier calls their tier “elo hell”)
i’m falling asleep, sorry if i missed anything, or made some things seem even more confusing!
They used to intentionally drop you 200 SR so you could “work for it back”. This was admitted by Blizzard, wasn’t a rumor. They have artificially manipulated the SR system in the past to get people to play more.
I see.
Well, I guess I don’t really fit into any of your categories. 1b is the closest I get.
I have no knowledge of the invisible MMR rating and don’t pretend to.
All I can say is that, from my experience, any time my WR gets higher, I start losing. And it’s not because I hit a skill limit.
I’m not so vain as to think I’m some epic player. I’m not.
But when my team fills up with 5 dps (me the only tank and no healers) despite me pinging chat REPEATEDLY with ‘somebody heal/tank’ etc., we end up against a team that’s balanced. My dps guys may be good, but not against players of a similar level that are being healed. No chance.
If this happened sometimes or even every other game… sure, chance.
But when I hit a streak of 10 games in a row where my team members always act like that… there has to be something to it.
Thanks. I’ll say more tomorrow but I appreciate your input! Part of why I’m so into disputing the “conspiracy theories” is the same as you say in your quote. I hate to think that players are giving up due to elo hell or rigged matches or anything. I’ve found that I’m not going to dispel the myths by telling people facts.
I’ve seen people climb to Masters from Bronze. Personally seen their growth, not some Masters player smurfing, but legit Bronzer improving. I’ve seen even more than that get out of silver or bronze. A good attitude is esssential.
I’ve done a lot of testing that backs up my theory.
If I only play my mains, I stay in a tight 200 SR range. If I flex for what the team “needs”, even if I win that game, I lose future games because my APM on those hero’s isn’t as high. For example, I might win, but a one trick of that hero is going to win by a larger margin, do more damage, etc.
Example—anyone can play torb and keep a turret up but a torb main is going to land more left clicks, an even better torb main is going to land more left clicks as headshots.
Keep playing off my mains and I’ll keep getting unwinnable games. Then a few games of playing my mains and struggling to win, then the games get suddenly really easy and I skyrocket in SR because the matchmaker gives me easier games designed to make my SR climb. How else do you explain those games where you get rolled and the enemy team has 7 mins to spare and on your attack you can’t even touch the point once? Is the matchmaker THAT bad? No, it’s giving you a game designed to make you lose because your SR is higher than your MMR (I.e. you are over ranked).
There are a lot of explanations that have nothing to do with the matchmaker. Other team could have a smurf that creates imbalance. Other team could have a better team composition that counters yours. Other team could have better synergy with people on their mains. Other team could have people playing really well that day. Your team could have a lot of people flexing. Your team could have people learning heroes that aren’t their best. Your team could have people that were boosted. Your team could have people who are tilted from previous games. Or tired or intoxicated.
Have you never played a game where 1 round you get rolled. And then the next round you do the rolling? With the exact same players involved? There are so many variables involved in what goes on in a win or loss that have nothing to do with the matchmaker at all.