Why are brand new players put in gold games?

See the above post to understand.

4 Likes

Not very informative, We already know that blizzard believes that or else they wouldn’t have made their game that way. The logic behind would be actual useful information.

2 Likes

The first reason is uncertainty, as has been noted as “stats”. Under maximum uncertainty you should a priori around the expectation of the distribution (which is known to be idealized as normal pdf with mean around 2250, say. That way you’re minimizing the maximum amount of initialization error.

The second reason is absorption. Even if you’re the most wrong (and you will be for several entrants), the larger population of players near the mean/median can better absorb this entrant, with less disruption paid out to each of them. More of a base to spread out the mismatch, which every account imparts.

So the math for new accounts around gold checks out. And this comes up a lot when talking about resets. A reset-to-the-middle is a better kind of reset than a reset-to-bottom, which forces everyone to grind up and out. Again there are minimax reasons (c.f. Virial Thoerem) for this. A reset-to-middle would minimize the disruption for the maximum number of players. Of course some people would face maximum disruption, but overall the vector sum (or Hamiltonian if you prefer) of all trajectory mismatches (between starting in the middle and reaching end destination) would be minimized.

2 Likes

The global SR average/median is approximately 2300. On average, it ruins the least number of games by minimizing the “travel time” for players to reach their intended SR. It’s designed that way. Put it too low and bronze/silver becomes a stomping fest, and vice versa for if its too high. If they deserve to be bronze, you’ll never see those players again because they’ll be losing 100+ SR each match for a little while.

7 Likes

Average players converge to average as they learn. They don’t start as average.

10 Likes

New players qualify for high ranks easily because competitive play is algorithmically handicapped in their favor. More information:

5 Likes

Well if you start everyone new in Bronze, smurfs would have a longer and bigger impact on WAY more games.

But if you start everyone in the most Average rank in the game, you can easier place them in the correct rank

4 Likes

I see that as a preference of anything. Because if we all started at the bottom it would perhaps be more hectic in the beginning but I see it as a better long-term investment. There would be a lot of variety of skill in the low levels I would result in some pretty crazy stomps but this would be short lived.

The way it currently is now I get that it’s for absorption that we’re most average players will end up somewhere around there It’s generally more comfortable in the beginning I guess you could say. However this comes at the expense of you ruining people’s games who really are at that rank whereas if you’re at zero rank and you’re starting from there there’s nothing to ruin because it’s rank zero, farther away you get from rank 0 the more perfect size the system would be. It would operate the same way natural selection does really

1 Like

Yes but that’s assuming that the Smurf is just going to say oh well and let himself be ranked up. If a Smurf wants to stay at bronze then he’s only going to derank after every anyway So it’s not like he’s going to let himself get ranked up.

3 Likes

all the ranks are competitive

3 Likes

A brand new player is 99.9999% not going to be an average player off the bat.

7 Likes

They might be brand new to Overwatch, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any FPS experience or understanding of games.

1 Like

For how this is just a flawed opinion with no real evidence see here:

4 Likes

Yes, but the below average would have less impact.

The games for the majority of players is MORE volatile and inconsistent, because 70% of the playerbase can be matched with both a GM smurf and a bronze-level player in the same match.

4 Likes

I think that people should have to play 25 levels in Quickplay/Quickplay classic (no other modes counts exp) before being placed into comp.

Then it reads all the games they have played for the whole 25 levels before giving them a rank. It would mean that a new player smurf would have to throw 25 levels to be placed with a low SR. I think it would put people off. I even think people should have to get to level 50 to play comp. 50 levels is nothing in the grand scheme of it.

3 Likes

But it does not make sense to assume new players to be average in a 5 year old game, it rather makes sense to assume they are well below average.

7 Likes

It does make sense and it is way easier to place someone in Gold and see how they play than it is to place someone in the bottom or top ranks as that wouldn’t be as helpful.

1 Like

No it does not make any sense at all, and it is not “easier” or harder to place someone in any arbitrary rank, it is only “easier” to place them close to the rank they belong.

2 Likes

I don’t know man, you tell me wether it is easier and faster to do the following:

  1. Everyone starts in Bronze, which means that a top player will take long to reach his intended rank.

  2. Everyone starts in Gold, which means a top player will reach their intended rank WAY faster.

Tell me which of the options has the least impact on lower ranked matches and helps players reach their intended rank faster

1 Like

They should introduce 2 new steps:

  1. New accounts must level to at least 50 before playing ranked for the first time (I considered saying 100)

  2. When first selecting ranked players are given a choice of paths: New Player placing (player starts at 1500 and is given a one-off award of 3000 gold gun points), or Veteran placing (player plays placement matches like now). There is a warning by Veteran placing to say it is not recommended for new Overwatch players.

4 Likes