Algorithmic Handicapping (MMR) is Wrong for Overwatch

Dude you F^$#in killing me to say that your team mates don’t hold you back. You must be playing something else lol.

People throw all the time especially in the Lower 2 tiers. What about those who do the Bronze to GM BS ? How about those who derank ? Combine all of that in the lowers tiers with the losers who just want to ruin your game and you have a game that isnt enjoyable anymore. Blizzard focuses their attention on the toxic players and not the trolls. FK it though let this game die its their fault.

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100 or 10 difference would NOT constitute a kind of variance that requires handicapping. 100 is like 4 games difference on average. Think SR1500 and SR1600, SR2350 and SR2450, SR2950 and SR3050, and SR3700 and SR3800. SR4000 and SR4100 is where it starts to get iffy, according to streamers and pros that play there. You’d need someone like a SR2300 that has MMR2900 to require “handicapping”. (I still maintain that MMR doesn’t even look like a number that resembles SR, all according to Blizzard posts and Stylosa, btw)

Keep in mind, Cuthbert’s main point appears to be that players are matched by SR and then balanced by MMR.

QP MMR and Competitive MMR have always been and will always be separate. This includes your very first placement matches, where you start at approximately a Comp MMR-equivalent of SR2350-2400ish

You sound like the kind of players that post on here that want to have a competitive 85% or higher win rate and climb from Silver to Master while playing with and against the same Silver players the entire time.

You keep talking a lot of crap about manipulating MMR and beating higher-SR players without even actually playing comp. Maybe you should hit that Comp button then because you don’t sound believable at all.

Throwers, boosters, and trolls make games unpleasant, but they don’t hold you down in the rank you are in. To rank up, you need to be better than the average player at your rank, and you need to play enough games to overcome random factors. The average player in bronze and silver is quite poor and those are the players you should be aiming to be better than to rank up.

A loss done on purpose is a loss that shouldn’t happen your making excuses for a good game that isn’t good anymore. A hidden MMR is hidden because they don’t want you to see how flawed it is. Don’t be a sucker and drink the kool aid .

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Yet when people on other threads complain “I won 5 games in a row and then I got dumped 6 games” the response, almost overwhelmingly, is “You were not good enough and got put in your place”

Which is it? 4-5 games “close enough” or “Worthy of a losing streak?”

Its still a sliding scale from lowest possible figure to the highest possible figure and can be compared to 0 through 5000 SR.

As Celsius and Fahrenheit.

GradeA’s weird juxtaposing of winrate and win prediction. (One is a ratio of all matches one is a direct prediction of the immediate match)

Technically better then the average player compared to your perceived MMR. As you are paired based on that with a SR range limit.

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My goal here is not to give a complete description of the system. That is at How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 11). My goal here is to boil it down to the easy to understand essentials, and only answer the questions at hand.

That is quite understandable. I have myself referenced your post a few times.

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I want to play heroes I can’t play in competitive. Because this is the only environment where you can test. So if I derank and people think I am trolling because I don’t play my mains, is this accurate? We are in season 11 and I made diamond like a 1000 times, just because I play a hero I can’t play for a few hours, I go on to a lose streak and then I get the hang of the hero and win again and try to get diamond again. Or I get bored with that hero because imo not every hero is fun to play. For example tanks, if I play tanks, its just trolling, because I never play tanks. I don’t like playing tanks so if I would start to pick tanks I would just be a troll. There will always be trolls without role based queue. And when someone insults me in my team, I don’t try to win neither. You could call that troll, but I am the last guy who would insult in a competitive game. For me the coms are for constructive feedback and making strats/synergies nothing else.

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Your goal is to pose as an expert on these systems, which you are not. None of us have complete knowledge of Blizzard’s Match Making Rating or SR systems. Not so much as a mention of MMR is Overwatch’s user interface or terms of use. Only the glib statements that Blizzard has leaked out on these forums.

Blizzard’s use of big data, and their handicapping policy remain largely a mystery. When players demand an explanation, they’re not asking for yours Kaawumba, they’re asking for Blizzard’s. And from Blizzard we get no comment for a full year!

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It might not be fun to play, but that still doesn’t hold your rank down. You’re slightly more likely to have a thrower on the other team, not your own.

Saying “my teammates hold me back” is like saying you lose at poker because “you get unlucky cards”. You might get unlucky for individual games/hands, but that all averages out quickly as you play more.

They have answered, though. That’s the thing. Kaawumba’s post links to multiple long threads explaining things in detail.

You are just ignoring that because they say what you don’t want to hear. That Blizzard just uses a normal MMR system, which everyone who understands how MMR works knows that it doesn’t “handicap” players.

Shockingly, Kaplan has better things to do than repeatedly tell you the same thing over and over while you ignore the truth to protect your video game ego.

The analogy is closer to a relay race team than poker. If one person on the team doesn’t want to win, or is weak, others have to make up that gap in performance.

Kaawumba’s post, detailed and referenced, points out that they have kept MMR hidden.

The formulae for both gains and losses (SR and MMR) are hidden.

The formula and limits for “Acceptable MMR distribution between sides” is hidden.

They have the right to keep them hidden. Just as consumers have the right to ask for them.

Blizzard has given a venue (The forums) to ask for change or information, semi publicly. Cuthbert has the means to ask the questions and request for changes.

It doesn’t mean Blizzard will answer the questions or address the requests. What is the harm to do so in your eyes?

Then why have it hidden? It is proprietary and they don’t want people “gaming” the system. Don’t need to get mad if people do want to see it though.

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That and all the flaws it has maybe they should unhide and let the community guide them . The community has a better track record when it comes to things like this IMO.

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Hidden MMR is just SR without decay. Nothing else. At diamond+ you lose and gain same amount of sr every time and matchmaking just makes a team with average SR on each side (ignoring decay). That’s it.

A relay race could fit if you ran hundreds of relays with random teammates. That’s the key in both poker and Overwatch. Sure, for any SINGLE game/hand you might be unlucky, but your success is not determined by a one event. (Unless you go all-in in poker, which isn’t a thing in Overwatch).

This simply comes down to understanding basic probability, and not letting your own bias cloud your judgement. No one is specially given more bad teammates than other players.

I’ve read far too much of Cuthbert’s writing and the vast majority of his energy is not spent asking for public code, but claiming the system is rigged and holds him down.

Which we can prove isn’t true even without public code.

This really ignores the fact that the two have separate gains and losses. MMR can stagnate with wins and losses, SR cannot. Making them two separate things representing skill, and connected in that MMR can manipulate SR gains and losses.

This is called 1v6ing YOLO ulting @ 99/99…

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No, there is no 2 magical factors that influence matchmaking, its just SR or “sr without decay aka hidden mmr”. Its a very simple ± system that just adds and subtracts to make two teams have even average SR. One of the devs that worked on matchmaking tried to explain exactly that while sounding “smart” and making it seem as if he was doing some big brain work for the entire time he was on payroll which got a lot of people confused and the whole hidden mmr myth started. All that “hidden mmr” ever was is just SR without decay for people above diamond which is used in the matchmaking algorithm instead of displayed SR that can be decayed.

Its also rather amusing how all the conspiracy theorists on here blaming their lack of skill on teammates or other imaginary factors are around silver.

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Yes, there is, the Devs mention both MMR and SR and that SR “chases” MMR. Please look at Kaawumba’s post:

It has references and links for you to see where all of the information has been gathered from.

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Like most mainstream game developers, Blizzard considers themselves quite above the player community’s feedback or criticism. They don’t even respond to inquiries about how the Competitive Play system works. And what they tell us about SR/MMR is contemptuously simplistic.

There is no way that MMR is simply SR without decay. Did you read the quotation from Scott Mercer in the original post? There is a lot more to it.

What do you mean by ‘public code?’

Good summary and great question. What do you say FriendlyFire? What’s the harm in trying to know about these things?

Blizzard claims to be protecting the game from exploitative players, by keeping the workings of MMR secret. But they are only protecting themselves from scrutiny. Players will find a way to game any system, no matter if the company tries to keep things opaque.

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LOL … They do as good a job protecting themselves from scrutiny as they do redesigning heroes like sym.

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What’d they do to sym?

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