I didn’t say I did. I just said if I don’t have the specifics, get rid of it.
They’re saying a touchdown may be worth 6 maybe 4 points. You just never know.
If you don’t spell out exactly how to gain SR, you cannot call that competitive.
It goes against everything that competition stands for. This isn’t a game of Hearthstone where you opponent’s deck is kept a secret and that is part of the game.
You need a circle around the payload so you know when you’re on it.
If Blizz wants to sacrifice practicality so they can be cool, so be it. I just disagree with some of their choices, regarding not posting DPS numbers. SR number. PBSR numbers.
Why go through the effort if the numbers already exist?
It’s very easy to spell out how exactly to gain SR: Win. Perform well. Both of these are in a competitive spirit.
You also need to consider the resources that would go into correctly documenting every aspect of PBSR (if any changes were to occur it’d have to be documented again, so this is not a one-time cost). Could something more useful be done with the time?
You’re also assuming the information would be useful. It would probably boil down to git gud, as I’ve outlined earlier.
You are both showing very valid points that have given a strong debate between your points of view.
In my opinion, the problem is not MMR, it is the perception of the playerbase that SR is an accurate reflection of a players skill. The hidden MMR is most likely a much closer depiction of a players skill.
The example i would give is the 10s of thousands of players in gold and plat. I would argue there is a low chance they are all of similar skill level. If they were, then the match maker would not take 2+ minutes to find a match each time. Also, how can you think a new player who places as 2200 is the same skill as a seasoned player who has played 1000s of games starting at bronze and ranked up to gold?
Another example is players dropping rank on purpose to enjoy less-stress wins below their actual skill. Or players who pay to be boosted. There are a ton of these players due to the falicy that SR represents your skill accurately.
Anyways, if you stop thinking your skill is based is related closely to your current SR, then you will be less attached to this issue.
The data that I have is looking at player SR with respect to team SR over many games played. My data for season 5,6 is here, as well as tawT for season 5. SR vs Team SR - Google Sheets
tawT thinks that this data shows manipulation. I think that it shows indirect and muddled consequences of matching by MMR, but displaying SR. Recall that in season 5 SR was bumped below MMR for fifty or so games. The large onset effect went away in season 6.
That’s essentially a rigged system. Anything that alters your chances or predetermines any sort of circumstances is “rigging”. If it’s only - and I mean ONLY - a calculation of SR, then it’s not rigged anymore. But at the current state with that MMR it’s rigged. You played bad? Get a minus on your MMR and therefor a higher chance of falling in SR, because you don’t belong in an higher SR matchup. Who’s to say that? And how is a mathematical algorithm a good judge at all? And even if it was a good judge - it’s still rigged.
yea this is exactly what i was talking about. MMR changes quickly and accurately depicts your skill. SR “can vary by 1000 SR in extreme cases, and 500 in normal cases (27)”.
1000 is a huge variance. And that is just based on players limited testing, not reported by blizzard officially. It is quite possible the variance is larger.
If MMR was shown, players could use that as a reference for determining skill of themselves and their peers. But I get why they hide it, they are afraid players would exploit how it works to “game” the system to rank up. But the current system is not player friendly, so not sure how much worse it can get?
No. MMR and SR are close to each other. Errors in SR shadow errors in MMR.
Yes.
That link is not a blue post. It is based on a player’s (that is my) testing and data gathering.
Blizzard doesn’t really comment on SR/MMR accuracy. The only post I’ve seen was a statement that top players who try hard on new accounts get their new accounts up to GM+ quickly.
Because 1000 is a huge variance, and all the players compare skill levels based on the SR, don’t you think this creates tons of toxicity and animosity towards blizzard and their system? Lack of transparency and an inaccurate rating system is not healthy for the playerbase.
Transparency is a problem that Blizzard can and should fix.
I’m not sure they can fix the accuracy problem, more than a few slight improvements. It’s a fundamentally very difficult problem to rank people quickly and accurately when you have teams of six, solo-queue, 27+ heroes, team-focused game. All proposed ways of improving this: role-queue, more performance SR, easy grouping, heavier punishments for toxic behavior, etc. have negative side effects that you may or may not find acceptable.
Yea, its a super hard problem to fix. I think the reason Cuthbert wants MMR removed is how it is non-transparent and created distrust. Having a hidden metric to determine skill creates lots of speculation, and accusations that are probably incorrect. Blizzard just doesn’t listen well to its player base and is extremely slow to respond to change.
The suggestion of showing Match Making Rating has come up in this thread before. On the one hand, it would give players some recognition for their skill. But on the other hand, it would not change the handicapped nature of the game. And it would make handicapping into something players could monitor with their own eyes. If we could see how the system works on us, that would prompt outrage. Blizzard has a clear interest in keeping MMR veiled.
These are the most sensible things you’ve said on the subject! Yes, impartial matchmaking might make groups impossible to accommodate. Blizzard might have to restrict participation in Competitive Play to solo-queue only.
‘Rigging’ was the term I used for this, before I settled on handicapping. But the hidden nature of Match Making Rating (handicapping) makes it feel a lot more like a rigged carnival game. It’s the patent dishonesty of it, because nobody knows exactly what MMR is or how it works.
Thanks for appreciating both sides of the argument. I think you are on to something, about Match Making Rating being a better measure of player skill than Skill Rating itself.
Documentation isn’t that expensive or hard to do. Blizzard doesn’t explain how Match Making Rating or Performance-Based SR Adjustment work because they don’t want us to understand. They are artificial means of manipulating our game experience, and corrupting the win-lose results of every match.
To me it’s a case of false advertising. Blizzard can’t call an abomination like this “Competitive Play.”
Not sure if that’s related to handicapping, sounds a bit like Smurfing.
I hear some players defending the status quo, when they know practically nothing of Match Making Rating. But the polls in my threads indicate the majority of players would like to know more about this. And many of us want to abolish it.
You’re confusing me with another poster, I’ve never said anything about “forced losses.” Please read the original post, which is about Match Making Rating/handicapping.
Right? These sanity checks are refreshing, thank you.
Probably because it’s a pretty accurate, and fairly simple ranked system.
Win = Go up
Lose = Go down
MMR only really impacts players on the extreme, and those in Diamond and above. The average player in Plat and below playing consistently wouldn’t notice a difference.
I’m just complaining about how there is not an official rule book for competitive. I think Blizzard should publish all the DPS numbers for soilder, how fast Orisa can walk etc etc…
That’s a fair request. I just take issue when people go from a reasonable request like that to implying that MMR is somehow handicapping, or even nefarious.
I cant wait for LFG just because of this. The teams I find are pitiful and laughable in their blatant disregard for team construction and communication. Beyond saying 2 words then getting silent after dying once or twice, No one seems to have any game sense, or ability to NOT walk right into a fight that’s already lost. I am trying my BEST to keep communications live, but when you LITERALLY have to tell someone, “don’t do that, your going to die” and they repeat their mistakes more than twice, how can you say you’ve been equally matched with someone, let alone a team of people you want to call “teammates” but end up calling “Idiots”. No matter how good I get, or better I become, the adjacent players I match with are seemingly getting worse and worse. And sure, that’s probably a good allusion to where I WAS in rank and skill, but after hours of play and clear reflection of better skills, HOW CAN YOU SAY THEY ARE MY EQUAL. They are easily less then. The Matchmaker seems to deem ones personal growth at such a small scale Null and Void.
I gave up on Competitive Overwatch when I realized the ranking system was not separating inferior players from superior ones. When you see players making the same mistakes over and over again, like running into the enemy spawn doors, it is easy to dismiss them as morons. And some of them are. But most of them are just inexperienced players who have not had time to figure out the things that one figures out before getting the first star under their portrait.
Why are experienced, skilled players inexorably surrounded by inexperienced, unskilled players? It is because all of our matches are being handicapped by Match Making Rating. Let’s try to keep that in mind and treat each other kindly, even if we are just crabs in a barrel, constantly churning in the machinations of Blizzard’s corporate psychopathy.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=5" ":stuck_out_tongue:")