Why does Blizzard program MMR to give losing streaks?

Competitive Discussion
102

you must be old like me then. i watch my 10 year old and he is all about stupid pixels. everytime he wastes time and finally gets the shiny thing he wanted so bad I ask him the same thing “ok, so … what does that do for you?”. answer is the same and he eventually gets the same deflated look on his face which i’m sure he hates me for but eventually he’ll realize I’m trying to liberate him.

shiny/colored pixels mean NOTHING. the morons who spend actual real world dollars in exchange for pixels are huge dumb dumbs.

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103

I have the same problem, almost to the word. That’s funny how similar the younger people are, your approach is definitely correct. It’s always better make sure they get a dose of reality.

He’ll grow up better for it even if now it annoys him but the sooner he realizes how much more money for actual life the sooner the pixels seem less important!

Old people trope…back in my day we had a wedge eating other colored wedges and we loved it!

104

Every day a thread on this topic pops up.
There is a lot of speculation about how secret matchmaking works and how players are rated according to secret criteria.

But one thing should be clear by now. The developers don’t want to talk about it in more detail than they already have.

And who even cares anymore?

105

Bro, I’m following up on your reference. Don’t actually mean the name, just really like the Big Leboski. I’m cool with agreeing to disagree here, but please stop implying that I’m “out of my element” just because I disagree with you.

106

I agree that if you are not in the top 10%, you will not climb like ML7. The point I was trying to get at was that teammates have a lot of influence on you in the short term, but very little influence in the long term. The reason I’m bringing this up in this thread is learned helplessness is a big motivation killer. If you feel like you have no control over a situation then you don’t have as much reason to try and clutch a game.

Playing in solo queue is a bit like writing code. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel like nothing you do matters anymore. When you do that you kill your momentum. Sometimes you just need to step back and focus on you.

107

based on the frequent posts you mention literally in your opening sentence … the players is my guess …

108

It has lost some of its importance, at least from my point of view. Of course there are still some forum users interested.

109

Hardly ever see it personally, and I’ve been on these forums for a fair bit. Apologies if I seem to have missed these “billions of posts”. And on the other hand, I see someone complaining about how the matchmaker is forcing loss streaks almost every other day, hence this thread, though that may just be my selective sight. If you’d like to point me towards a couple recent ones complaining about winstreaks, I’d be happy to be informed.

Though either way, you’re not disproving my original point. OP literally was making a point to say that win streaks are not a thing, whereas loss streaks are. I’m not denying the existence of either, in fact they are both very real (but not because the system is rigging games lmao). I’m just pointing out that one can not exist without the other.

110

B/c it’s the only way to keep people playing. Dangle that carrot and tell people comp is important and sheep will follow

111

Everything you said shows just how blissfully ignorant you are.

Starting at your last statement, while cute and “aww” like, you individually are 20% of a 6 character team. That means even if you do your best, you still need 80% of the team with you. With the MMR being programmed by Jeff Kaplan to strategically place 99% of players within his precious SR curve, that’s not likely. Jeff Kaplan will throw in random players, a bastion one trick, a DCer, other people also on losing streaks, meanwhile your opponents are former top-500/master/gm, on a 7 game winning streak, are in a 3-4-5 stack. This happens in every game. I am on a 3 day, 20 game losing streak, I’ve won only 2 of 22 games. I consistently - every game get multiple golds in eliminations and damage and yet I lose constantly. I can’t stand blind faithful Jeff Kaplan defenders like you who worship him like a god because he either pays you or you get special perks or something. You are trying so hard to convince people there isn’t a system in place that has the MMR intentionally give people losing streaks. Statistically it’s not possible to have so regular losing streaks.

I dropped from 3200 to now 2750 in 3 days.

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112

Depends on the role for me. Climbing on support is easy just enable your team. Tank is essentially the same way.

Dps on the other hand playing medium to long range hitscans is very rough on the carry potential right now no matter how good your aim, positioning and game sense is. you can be pretty easily neutralized by healing and shields.

As for the MMR system. It gives you teammates to carry. It’s part of the game. It’s a handicap. I am not particularly for it. Seeing as it intentionally makes climbing more difficult but it still doesn’t make it impossible. Sometimes the matchmaker will make you carry potatoes while creating a fair match. I have just learned to accept it. Regardless of my opinion of it.

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113

If your low silver for instance and you win 10 games in a row your MMR is boosted but you’re still in silver. So now you have a higher MMR than others at your SR level - to even out that match the MMR score of each player needs to be accounted for and to counter your really high MMR from that win streak you are placed with players who have a lower MMR. There’s no skill diff between low and mid silver but you will have inconsistently skilled teams based on this. That’s mine and about a million other overwatch players experience.

114

Some says, longer you do grind more you get SR at 50% than previous if you are better.

But SR bonus for better perfomance is weird. Once you give the best perfomance by far, you lose 19SR instead of 25SR, but next match it’s unbalanced that you have to stomp with less effort and got plus 19SR because there’s nothing much to do. It’s not uncommon.

Yesterday we did 5v6 and we made 3:4 on CP2 whole time (we made almost). Had a leaver after 2 min of begin. I lost 26SR with the same character without switching, why the hell I lost more and were 5-team?
Had 3-4 Gold Medals (although that said not all) as Soldier.

115

I have one account where 1700 games are HARDER than my 2100. Always throwers. Always the worst players you can find. I know it’s not much SR difference, but the handicapping is insanely strong. That is the reason for the streaks, which they’ve now whittled down to about 2 games, rather than the 5 it used to be. Nice try, but you can’t hide it.

Just turn that down, the game would feel much much better.

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116

Clearly your a FOS gremlin hybrid who’s arrogant opinions make humans queasy. You know you had nothing legitimate to contribute to this thread but you had to stick your beak in anyway. Reflect Xion REFLECT

g0ast i know your frustration. I refuse to give up though even when its clear after winning a few that i have been scheduled a loss. I still go hard because the competitive aspect is what i enjoy, especially the epic against the odds wins.

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117

Don’t mind me I’m just spreading this around :slight_smile:

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118

Xion’s a very good player. Played with him once. His opinion is valid based on his own experience. (more on that later)

I don’t think the system is as simple as “Force losing streaks” so i think he’s right in that way.

But, what i see, over and over, is some kind of handicapping. And for me, it might be stronger because i play in a duo about 95% of the time. So, if we BOTH win games, do very well, put up big stats, whatever the system is looking at… then we both count towards the matchmaking doing whatever it does next game.

I’ve come to realize that different accounts, different players, are doing a million different things. So, not everyone will experience the same thing with Overwatch. The reason why…

It creates games around YOUR play. It doesn’t just say “streaks all the time for everyone.” The system is trying to make even matches based around YOU.

So, that’s why i could switch to my least played hero all the sudden, the matchmaker doesn’t know, i lose some games, but then after a little while… it changes the matches for me to have a chance to win. I end up with even matches, around the same rank, based on my crappy least played hero stats.
(so why bother trying hard on my mains, right? same matches, same rank)

My conclusion is that it’s trying too hard to force even matches. A duo who’ve both won big will get overcompensated for. It feels like a forced losing streak.

Maybe this happens to very aggressive players who put up certain numbers? Maybe the system detects two people on the same IP and figures that some kind of unfair advantage that needs to be made up for to create an even match? I mean, it definitely does that with 6 mans.

Who knows what else the system is up to.

Imo, just turn all that off. I realize it’s there to try and counter smurfs, boosters, etc. But i think it makes playing the game in the long run feel very artificial and, well, rigged.

119

to everyone complaining about “forced losing streaks” let me ask you this:

Do you truly believe they are smart enough to program something like that into the game. No seriously think about it, all the other crap they can’t figure out you truly believe that they orchestrate an entire system to force you into losing ever?

Just saying guys actually stop and think about it :wink:

120

IF they were to, it’d be easy. Take someone who’s performing well, and stick them with someone who’s performing poorly. Unfortunately, that poor player is actually throwing most of the time, or just can’t be carried.

Then, when the formerly hot player loses enough, you try and help them out with teaming them with winning players. And since that formerly hot player (who’s now cold due to the horrid teammates) is NOT actually throwing… they win some games. All because they did not get teamed with losing players.

Then, when that player wins a few, once again, “challenge” him. Except it’s throwers, trolls and derankers all over the place and then… nothing but losses again.

Simply by looking at their current wins and losses.

BUT…

Overwatch keeps track of a LOT more than that, as part of your MMR. So… might be even easier yet.

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121

nobody with a basic understanding of economics would assume that overwatch consciously builds rigged matches for single players.

it would be too expensive and too sinister for a company to do that on purpose. they would have to create a much more complex AI than the current matchmaker for that.

BUT it‘s totally possible to build a bugged, broken and too forgiving matchmaker by accident, that overcompensates „balanced“ matches, unable to correctly guess the skill for 50% of the playerbase. the result are poorly assembled matches with teams of good players that have to carry potato players and trolls.

in the end, it feels the same