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.
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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.
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I don’t know man, you tell me wether it is easier and faster to do the following:
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Everyone starts in Bronze, which means that a top player will take long to reach his intended rank.
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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
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They should introduce 2 new steps:
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New accounts must level to at least 50 before playing ranked for the first time (I considered saying 100)
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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.
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The real issue is that QP and Comp do not share MMR data. So when a fresh account starts placements they are put into Gold. This means genuinely new players are playing in a rank too high for them, while smurfs are playing in a rank too low for them. A reasonable solution is that Comp should use QP MMR to start their placements.
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Because the game already knows that the vast, vast majority of new accounts do not belong in Bronze.
So putting new accounts in Bronze would be a waste of time for actual Bronzies & for most new accounts.
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It does not matter, initial rank does not influence at all how fast you can adjust SR/MMR.
Only a tiny fraction of players are top players, you could even call the amount of players that are top player negligible. So if we would assume you could only adjust SR/MMR a set amount in fact placing anyone gold would on average lead to more ruined games, as the average new Overwatch player certainly is at maximum silver level.
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hahahahahahahahaha. You serious?
That doesn’t fix because someone can get to level 25 without even playing the 6v6 game. Account sellers just put 6 bots in arcade/player vs bot farming the whole day (which is a terrible thing by its own). Competitive should have a minimum quickplay/quickplay classic match restriction and put players on a starting rank based only on their QP MMR.
A long time ago when I was low Diamand, they did a discount week and I had in my team a ball that would just go in the enemy line 1v6 the entire game in Volskaya, a orisa that just ran backwards the entire game in Blizzard World until she quit and a Orisa in Havana that just stand in our backline using fortify. They were clearly not platinum/gold, yet the game thought it was a good idea for them to start there.
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Actually, I think it would be beneficial for bronze.
Because the pool of true bronze is small, it’s easy for anyone to slowly derank. Hence why there are Plat+ hanging around destroying the bronze players game after game.
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I agree with you, I really hope that the new partnership with IBM will help the devs make a better matchmaker, and classify better the new accounts. Usually games with players under lvl 100 are waaay to random, because either is an actually new account, or is a
“smurf” and in both cases the game is one sided.
What do you mean waste of time, anyway you look at it everyone in Competitive is always try to attain a higher rank. Not like anyone in Halo 2 ever complained about the system.
I can almost guarantee that some players even in the first online games complained that the game was against them and “forcing” them to lose. There will always be someone like that, even if the entire system is disclosed, they’ll just say the devs are lying with what they said. Idk how many did/would but I don’t think it’s fair or even realistic to say that it never happened at all that anyone complained about the matchmaker in a game like halo 2.
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Actual smurfs don’t start in gold though they start in plat or diamond. If the system can already figure out quickly they are better than gold it should be able to figure out just as quickly the players who are worse than gold.
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“Actual smurfs” won’t try during their placements and enough matches so they don’t actually climb/place where they should. They’ll just throw any games they need to stay at whatever rank they want, not exactly anything new there. If they were actually trying to win all their games they wouldn’t be smurfs.
Alt accounts for people who are diamond+ will place plat and above but that’s because they’re actually trying to place high/rank up and aren’t throwing any games.
I do wish they had a better way of placing people who were actually playing honestly faster but 
there could be something said for using QP or even arcade performance as some weight for placement but idk how I feel about using the mode meant for “casual” play as to have any weight for the competitive mode.
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By “actual smurfs” I am referring to new accounts who are better players than gold and trying to climb. Not derankers. The throwers and derankers should be able to place in bronze if they afk or jump off the map for 5 placement games. I have never heard of anyone placing in bronze even if they throw every game which is stupid. Yes it sucks for bronze players but that is the rank they belong in until they get banned. It’s better to just ruin bronze games than to also have to ruin gold and silver games on the way there.
I suppose. Though I’d figure the best way to tackle smurfing is to tackle deranking/bot accounts. Hard to do though without false positives.
Can’t really think of too many ways to revamp the initial placements without creating more boosted people or making smurfing easier.
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I think you might have the topics a bit confused. I’m saying nobody complained about the Halo 2 ranking progression system which started you at level one (the lowest level) and you had to make your way up.
This particular topic isn’t talking about the matchmaker being rigged it’s wondering why they start people off in the middle of gold, I’m in agreement that it should start everyone off at bronze (Like to Halo 2 system which I personally never heard complaints about having to start at level one, and I played that game a whole lot from release to Halo 3)
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Gotcha. Yeah that makes more sense.
Though one thing I would say is if they did that then there would have to be no “resets” (that way too many people beg for) and seasons would mean less than they already do. After all for Halo it was just that you start, go up as much as you can and keep playing on. If they did ever “reset” on the seasons they’d likely have to do it like hearthstone does right now for their ranking seasons where you have an mmr based on where you finished the previous season, which dictates who you’re matched against until you surpass that high. You also get bonuses to your rank (stars in hearthstone’s case) gains to get you back closer to your peak faster and make it less of a grind to get what you had before.
Though one major difference for the hearthstone ladder is they have “checkpoints” as you go up that you can’t drop below once you’ve passed for a season. They’re the mid points of each rank and the start of each rank, and you can’t drop stats in bronze. The big issue with that is it makes boosting easier and more appealing (maybe even as a “subscription” per season) since once you hit a rank you can’t lose it.
I admit I personally played halo the most during reach but the “ranks” for comp weren’t really ever showed since they didn’t have as much of a leaderboard for it.
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Well it’s not like they’re giving resets as it is. Actually I wouldn’t mind if they kept it the way it was if they did reset ranks every once or allow placements to matter a bit more. Because after your initial placements or placements afterwards are pretty much just regular matches.
I stopped playing Halo around Halo 3, I don’t know how Halo Reaches matchmaking was. It could have because I remember you could see your rank. Well, They never had a leaderboard like OverWatch does where you could check like the top 500. They only had 50 being the maximum rank you could achieve And there’s only so many people who could actually achieve that rank Since it’s not like call of duty where you just level up win or lose.
Checkpoint sounds like an interesting concept Especially with a game like OverWatch where randomly one of my roles suddenly start tanking for some reason , though I wonder if in the long run it would make much a difference.
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