What I don’t get is… You REALLY need to try to stay below gold.
The skill floor required to climb to low gold is so absurdly low, I’m convinced if you are below that is because YOU WANT TO.
The matches are rigged… by a matchmaking algorithm. That’s his whole point. His “narrative” is around the consequences of this kind of matchmaking system, based on his observations. Whether you think the system is “bad” or not is obviously subjective - he has very eloquently laid out his argument for why he thinks it is.
You, on the other hand, are just attacking him and, using your words, other “naive players.” The irony is that, despite your claims to the contrary, you are the less productive person in this discussion.
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It’s funny you baddies still call it rigging. So if a 50% chance to win fair game is rigged? Doesn’t even make sense. Giving a team a disproportionate chance to win would be rigging.
His observations are obviously biased, because he’d rather blame the system for the “treadmill” as opposed to the obvious answer: he’s bad, hit his peak and can no longer climb . He’d much rather blame the system than get gud, just like most of the baddies on these forums
Expected 50 percent chance to win. Keyword: “expected.” It manipulates the distribution of players on both teams based on hidden metrics to create an “expected” match outcome. That’s the literal definition of rigging.
Again, he has made a series of cogent arguments against doing this and instead adopting a hands-off matchmaker. This has nothing to do with “getting good” - relatively good and bad players will rise and fall, respectively, in the current system. It does successfully achieve a normal distribution of SR. That doesn’t mean, however, it is immune from criticism, as you suggest. Using “git gud” as the panacea argument against any discussion of the matchmaker is just brain-dead and lazy.
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Wheres my 50% chance to win then? Why did I end last season at 85%+ winrate?
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Cuthbert only provided a single developer statement in the overview section of his opening post.
Overview
Overwatch’s designers say they “balance” matches with MMR. The system sorts the twelve players from each match into teams, based on the merit each player has shown in matches past. Matchmaking uses merit-tracking algorithms (MMR) to keep matches from being ‘uneven.’ Principal Overwatch Designer Scott Mercer explains:"When the matchmaker creates a match, it determines the % chance for each team to win based on the match it made. The VAST majority of matches are usually near to 50% (especially if you’re a player closer to median skill rating and you’re not in a group). When we do put you in a match that we know isn’t a 50/50, we adjust your SR gain or loss based on your calculated change of winning.
"We model the synergistic effects of players being together in a group. Based upon the data we see in groups, we predict the win % for each team. We try to match similar sized groups together.
"The amount of MMR (and SR) you go up or down isn’t simply a matter of whether you won or lost, and what was your predicted chance of winning. There’s a couple of other things at work. One is the matchmaker’s confidence in what your MMR should be. Play a lot of games, it gets more certain. Don’t play Overwatch for a while, it gets less certain. You go on a large win or loss streak, it gets less certain. The more certain the matchmaker is about your MMR, the less your MMR will change in either direction based on a win or loss.
"We also do evaluate how well you played the heroes you used in a match. The comparison is based on historical data of people playing a specific hero (not medals, not pure damage done), and we’ve done a lot of work to this system based on the community’s feedback.
“While it’s a minor factor compared to wins/losses (The best way to increase your SR is still to play together and win as a team!), doing so does help us determine your skill more accurately and faster.”
Notice how he does not link to the source of Mercer’s post though. The reason he does not is because Mercer was not trying to say that they distribute the good and bad players evenly at a given SR for a match (I don’t even know how you can read that as such).
Below is the source of Cuthbert’s Mercer quote. The topic was about why matches had some weird groupings such as 6-solos vs 2 3-stacks or 6-solos vs 3-solos and a 3-stack, and the resulting SR gains/losses. It had NOTHING to do with any kind of handicapping.
Kaawumba has collected all Blizzard statements on how Competitive and Matchmaking works in his topic, so go there:
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Yeah, check kawuumba, he has all the data and there’s no biased assumptions in his post.
Good point, Mercer doesn’t outright say anything about distributing players. The language he uses about “synthesizing an expected win %” and “creating matches with a win % that is close to 50%” leaves a lot to the imagination, though. It certainly doesn’t sound like the matchmaker is just grabbing twelve players at the same SR and calling it a day.
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Well, there’s no point trying to talk you out of it.
But, if that was the case, how can I climb over and over without fault, ignoring meta and playing whatever and some times tilting my team on purpose?
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Because you consistently exceed the matchmaker’s expectations until you finally achieve a rank where you don’t anymore?
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And then Im at the rank I deserve!
How is that rigged or wrong or whatever?
It’s not that you won’t climb into your true peer group eventually, it’s that in the meantime there is an algorithm that is using historical player data to arrange teams to satisfy it’s expectations. It’s predictions are only as good as it’s data, and as you and the other people on both teams play more and more matches and as you get closer to your true rank it becomes better and better at arranging “fair” teams.
For example, imagine you are literally the best player there is: you could 1v6 the NYXL. You start a new account in bronze. The matchmaker has no data on you, so it can’t do much one way or another. You rank up to gold, say 2300. It has a little more data on you now, and knows you are an extreme outlier at your rank (i.e. your k/d ratio is way above average, or whatever the relevant metric is). At this point it’s actively matching you up against what it thinks are the six other best players at that rank and matching you with the five worst players at that rank because it’s doing it’s best to prevent you from absolutely dumpstering every team you play against (i.e. it’s trying it’s best to achieve a coin flip match). It doesn’t matter, you’re so good you still stomp. This process continues until you reach a rank (i.e. a general level of player skill) where the consistent stomping slows down and eventually ends - the matchmaker reaches an “equilibrium” if you will.
Now compare that story with the case where you are just paired with eleven random people each match. You will necessarily stomp harder and more often on your inevitable climb because some algorithm isn’t actively working against you. The individual matches themselves will be more one sided, but the process of you getting to your true rank will be less drawn out and painful for everyone involved. If i remember the OP correctly this is part of his larger argument - distributing players in this way unnecessarily draws out the player skill-sorting process by trying to make the individual matches “fair.”
I mean, assuming the matchmaker actually works this way, of course.
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Nopes. You put me in bronze and I absolutely dumpster on everyone until mid-high gold, then I carry until mid plat, and then I’m a little better than the average and climb more slowly.
I did this 5 times or so, and all the randoms are about the same skill level. The only times this doesnt happen is when I’m >500; since there’s no people there I get put in 1.1k games, and I get the better team since they get a >500 dude they need to compensate for.
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No. it does NOT do that. You get random teammates close to your present rank and you also get random opponents close to your present rank.
You can literally have a game where one team just so happens to be 6-solos of 2300 smurfs, all who have main accounts at Masters and above, vs 6-solos of legit 2300 players. The actual matchmaker does not give a damn how you got to 2300.
∆ This.
MMR matching happens at 3k+, so i dont get matched with a decayed GM…
But fear not, there are as many smurfs in diamond than in bronze to plat combined, and, by the way, these people are actually good (unlike the people you meet smurfing at lower ranks).
The funny thing is that you don’t see diamonds/master crying on forums every day, we just accept it and move on.
Source? (Characters.)
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The onus is on you to provide the source that the scenario you posted about happens, that someone that can 1v6 the NYXL who happens to be ranked at 2300, is matched with the worst 2300SR players as teammates, to take on the best 2300SR players as opponents. No, Cuthbert does not count as a source.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t have a source that a theoretical godlike 2300SR player gets randomly matched with any other 2300SR players to take on a randomly assembled team of 2300SR opponents. But I’m also not the one making a statement about “handicapping” using irrelevant evidence.
My extreme example was simply meant to illustrate the mechanism OP described, and I did caveat it by saying “assuming the matchmaker actually works this way, of course.” I don’t understand why you can demand irrefutable evidence but then claim the contrary without support, though. Anyway, would be nice if someone cleared it up so we could at least be sure about what we’re debating.
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Fair enough, I did skip over that last line you typed the first time I read through it before replying.
All Blizzard statements throughout this forum, Twitter, etc. has been compiled in Kaawumba’s topic as I linked above.
In particular, to note, MMR is the sole criteria of how people are matched (reference 25 in Kaawumba’s references list towards the very bottom of his opening post), and SR being a more “digestible” form of MMR (reference 22).
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Not the point of the story, bro. I’m not a plat player who threw down to silver for grins and giggles, bro. I did solo queue (before the LFG system), and lost down to there in placements and subsequent games due to bad teammates, bro. My skills obviously didn’t change, bro. So, when I started getting competent teammates, I was able to climb, bro.
Let me guess, this is where you say I was carried by a lucky string of complete strangers in solo queue, bro? Why do you White Knights find that so easy to believe, but you scoff at a string of bad teammates causing a flaw, bro?
Btw, you need to work on that reading comprehension, bro.
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