Why can't the devs fix the matchmaker

Is it so hard not to have people with incredible skill differences be put against each other? This is a complaint the community has pointed out for YEARS. And we get NOTHING. Every match is a stomp, every match is idiotically skewed. We point out daily what is wrong and we get nothing in return. We can barely criticize this absolute disaster, because the ones responsible take it as some sort of insult? Well that certainly doesn’t fix the matchmaker by just ignoring and censoring the critics.
Instead of fixing the matchmaker, they punish the people who leave the utterly garbage match ups, which makes the matches even WORSE.

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They want fast games, not good ones.

Now please update your shop and buy whatever garbage they throw at you.

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"The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.

The Elo system was invented as an improved chess-rating system over the previously used Harkness system, but is also used as a rating system in association football, American football, baseball, basketball, pool, various board games and esports, and more recently large language models.

The difference in the ratings between two players serves as a predictor of the outcome of a match. Two players with equal ratings who play against each other are expected to score an equal number of wins. A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent’s is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%.

A player’s Elo rating is a number which may change depending on the outcome of rated games played. After every game, the winning player takes points from the losing one. The difference between the ratings of the winner and loser determines the total number of points gained or lost after a game. If the higher-rated player wins, then only a few rating points will be taken from the lower-rated player. However, if the lower-rated player scores an upset win, many rating points will be transferred. The lower-rated player will also gain a few points from the higher rated player in the event of a draw. This means that this rating system is self-correcting. Players whose ratings are too low or too high should, in the long run, do better or worse correspondingly than the rating system predicts and thus gain or lose rating points until the ratings reflect their true playing strength.

Elo ratings are comparative only, and are valid only within the rating pool in which they were calculated, rather than being an absolute measure of a player’s strength.

While Elo-like systems are widely used in two-player settings, variations have also been applied to multiplayer competitions."

Overwatch uses the same system. You believing you’re getting mismatched games is you being narcissistic.

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Simple answer: Skill isnt something that is easily measured, and its not something thats fixed its fluctuates frequently for countless reason.

Our system does need some improvements, but that wont stop stomps and unfun matches from happening

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Even if it could somehow predict how good everybody is (hint: it can’t)… there are a lot of things that happen after the match starts (that have major impact on match quality) that no matchmaker can account for

Edit - forgot to mention that you also have the fact that people manipulate the mm…and some decision that people praise also make it harder to properly assess people (like for ex, performance no longer factoring into the mmr calculation)

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had few games today where our team cannot do anything , even if we swapped
people complaining in chat , i replied that sry I’m just mad and cant help you cause i already have 6 stomps in a row - i tried 3 different approaches and they didn’t help
so 4/5 players just stood near spawn understanding the situation of helplesness
yeah these games are now became more often(

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it is silly sometimes how vastly the skill difference is. also tank difference means so much now since raid bosses (5v5 format)

its a mess

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Yes, actually, because skill is not actually just a numerical value. Two people can be “equally skilled” in totally different aspects of the game. One player might be in GM because they just have ridiculously good mechanical skill, and another because of their fantastic positioning and game sense. The genji one trick might play, on average, better than most players, but be held back by the enemies that pick winston and counter him.

OW is a game that snowballs very easily, so there will be many times when you look at teammates and just think “wow they are so bad” because they’re having a game that simply isn’t playing to their strengths, but they could be the one who carries the next game they play. Some people also tilt super hard and just give up immediately and throw the game, even though skill-wise they’re capable of winning.

Then of course there are factors completely outside the control of the matchmaker. Did that player have a bad day? Maybe they got fired from their job. Maybe they’re tilted from a losing spree (or the enemy is feeling confident on a winning streak!). Maybe their internet is acting up tonight and they have lotss of lag spikes or ping issues. The matchmaker has no way to know these kinds of factors.

And then of course theres grouping. There are no skill restrictions outside of comp. How do you balance a match with a GM player who’s playing with their bronze friend who plays one a month? Such matches will pretty much never be well balanced.

Can the MM be improved? Almost certainly. Is it really as bad as people think? Nah. People just dont understand the nuances of the game and the player population and jump to the conclusion that anything that goes wrong means that the matchmaker obviously just made a horribly unbalanced match.

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The matches being fair doesn’t net them more money, so they won’t do it.
Having unbalanced, unfair matches that are very fast and have very low queue times makes them money.

Mm does what it designed to do-- 50/50 win/loose rate

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When I read Elo I think of this graph https://youtu.be/-pglxege-gU?t=488

Yeah cause bronze 5 and silver 3 are great balanced matches.

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Your rank and your mmr are separate.

Can you prove that?? The dev’s can’t.

It’s wild that people have and continue to defend the matchmaking system in Overwatch like it’s actually well designed. The Elo filibuster in this thread was classic, for sure!

It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about match quality. Most people I know don’t enjoy a blowout on either side. I can’t speak for comp anymore, but QP is 6-8 blowouts to find one good match in my experience.

I would never have cared about the terrible matchmaking in the first place, if they actually provided lobbies, group finder, clan, ect. to allow us to find our own games. If you’re going to make a game that’s dependent on group dynamics, maybe you should add social features?

“Your ranked games are formed based on your internal matchmaking rating (MMR), regardless of your displayed skill tier. MMR changes based on the result of each match, with the amount of MMR you gain or lose depending on several factors like how highly rated your opponents were or how recently you last played.”

Since you’re both too lazy to look it up yourself and so eager to crap on the devs, here’s a dev blog for you.

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Thanks for posting rubbish, clogging up the internet with no real information. Heck chat gpt could give better responses.

That’s the response I expected, dismissing the proof you asked for just because you don’t want to admit you’re wrong.

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So I can be a developer??? Never admit when I’m wrong??

Yes, I Imagine it is.

Does the matchmaker know what hero you are going to pick when it makes the game? How is supposed to know that you are going to play Widow when that’s your worst hero, and not Venture when that’s your best?

What if your team’s hero choices don’t sync? How was the matchmaker supposed to predict that?

Maybe you get two aggressive dps, but a more passive tank and their styles clash and work at odds. Sure, maybe the matchmaker could have worked that out, but how is it to know if you mesh well or not?

And that’s before we even get to the micro choices that lead to stomps even in evenly matched games. OW is super swingy and snowbally and it absolutely happens.

So, yeah. I imagine it’s quite difficult actually.

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