Why I believe the entire system is wrong

Competitive Discussion
21

Then Cobi, you’re actually proving the foundation of my point. If people in Platinum are playing differently–more team focused–than Gold and below, then how I play in terms of team focus is only having a 17% contribution to my team’s overall success.

This is the problem, which I’ve been trying to underline in a few threads so far. Say that in Platinum, I am contributing nearly 100% equally to the vast majority of my teammates across many games, then I belong in Platinum. If what you’re saying is true, then it should be easier to climb once you enter Platinum, so long as you yourself increase in overall skill.

What then you’re inadvertently saying is that your rise/fall pre Platinum is less focused on your contribution, than it is that of your team.

So like my argument is made to imply–pre-Platinum, the players are punished for poor skill/game knowledge of other players, and this should not be the case. This is why I fully believe that the system should only look at you, and should have absolutely nothing to do with teamwork.

If you want players to play as a team, then give a new point system for teamwork, and let players use that system to buy new cool skins and the like that you can only get with (let’s call them) Team Points.

Let’s put it this way: If I am contributing equally in a rank above my current rank, then my mobility in the rank I’m currently in is being judged by other people more than it is myself. The only way then to consistently rise in that rank, is to become so much better than you should be for that rank that your contributions carry your teams to some degree, or get incredibly lucky.

Neither should be the case. You should not have to be Diamond in order to get out of Silver, for example. If you’re as skilled as the average Gold player and you’re in Silver, then it’s the game doing it wrong, not you.

22

Well,it feels better to be a diamond than a Gold.

23

I feel the same way but I feel the emphases shouldn’t be on medals but on the objective. I’ve rolled the dice from mid-plat to low silver just by solo queuing and in 1 game everyone played support dva so that we had decent damage and a tank. but it can be unfair, also smurfing is a massive problem on console heck i played against a whole team of smurfs.

24

At no point would anyone ever be 2 ranks below what they belong. If someone is gold but they think they belong in diamond they are super wrong. Most alt and smurfs are 1-2 ranks below people’s ranks. I win games in plat with my worst heroes without warmup on a tired day and I barely touch masters each season

25

Hahahaha – I am a high Platinum, low Diamond player. I’m in my mid-30s, have a boring office job, and effectively have seen NO improvement since probably season 4. Because I am old and boring, my technical abilities and gamesense are basically parked.

Overwatch’s TERRIBLE Matchmaking had me pushed down to 2300s at one point in Season 6 before parking me back at 2800s for another Season. This Season I hit Masters.

It doesn’t work. Don’t have so much faith.

26

You probably improved or got worse or the meta shifted in your favor. Seasons 6 was a long time ago I was plat then as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if you juno around since you are a mei hog main and off meta heroes have more inconsistent games than meta heroes. If you reached and beloved masters this seasons, you shouldn’t ever drop to plat and be “stuck” there this season.

27

that has little to no impact on players being unable to climb, as most don’t have the needed 55%+ winrate of all games played to climb up in the first place. Players give way too much much focus on SR from match to match and their medal count. It’s not seeing the over all big picture of total win rate of all games played.

28

Can i ask you to make your profile public?

You said that you earn a lot of gold medals every single game so there is no reason to hide it…it should prove that you are right, and you belong to a higher league.

I admit i seriously doubt it, bacuse you mentioned medals, that dosent mean anything…top elim, top obj time. I mostly dont have a single medal for obj time with ana, that dosent mean i am bad…i am, but not because i dont get obj time medals. Also you mentioned three hero…baguette , mercy,moira…yet you didnt mention you get most healing done medals. It shouldnt be hard at 1800Sr to earn one even with baguette.

29

Yup…Funny how I can climb my rank on Halo 5 or Titanfall competitive even when I lose based on my own performance but all Overwatch takes in consideration is win/loss on a rigged matchmaking. These guys have no idea how to write a proper matchmaking algorithm. so sad.

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30

The over all Picture of all games played with PBSR is that you can have 53-58% Winrate and lose SR or stay at your current SR depending on your Hero choices and luck. So yeah…totally no impact at all.

31

No, players who do poorly in game and get a P-SR knock also, shocking I know, tend to have a losing win rate too. Yet they spend time tracking out their data and then go “See!! Even if I had a 60% win rate performance SR would NOT let me rank up!!”…

Then you look at their win rate and it’s like 44%… as in why they are getting a P-SR hit. I mean show me the 58%+ win rate player of all games play, not their main, not one hero, but in total who isn’t moving up in SR?

The trap in all of this is thinking 50%-53% is a good enough win rate to rank up. It’s not unless a player just throwing down pure monster level smurf two or three tiers under their correct SR level of plays. Players need 55%+ to rank up, at least going from the accounts I’ve seen over the last 10+ seasons.

32

Well, those are idiots ofc.

Ok, 58% is maybe a bit high. And i agree that you need more than 51% to rank up but still… I think that PBSR for the regular normie player is just another rock on the path to improvement. It turns your 53% WR into a 52%, SR wise unless you play for stats and not to win or very self reliant heroes that can build stats on their own.
The Game will never give you back the extra SR you lose for an extraordinary circumstance (dominating smurf/leaver/hard thrower) game loss, since your stats will be lower on the winning side of those too. That alone can culminate to 1-2 extra losses SR wise over 100 games. It increases the uphill battle for everyone to be of use to a few.

33

Open up your profile - let’s take an actual look at your stats and see what’s going on.

I main pharah last season, easy climb to diamond, and at one point I was as low as silver.

I have a 2nd account where i’ve played nothing but orisa and I’m 3400 sr

There are times when I get medals, times when I don’t

If you’re basing whether you should win or lose simply down to medals, you’ll never improve.

Compare Overwatch to chess, sure you can take out 5 pawns, but does it really matter if the queen and Bishop are still alive?

What i’m talking about here is key plays. Not, simply being able to kill, but understanding what to kill, or what to heal, what to tank.

Second point, is the game is NOT about wins or loses, as such. and IS about personal skill.

Your performance is measured against other people playing the same hero as you and how they perform, it finds averages and puts you there.

Say the average accuracy for a widow is 52% no matter what rank.

This is based off your ability to hit targets and their ability to dodge your bullets, which as the rank improves, you need to improve accuracy and they need to improve their ability to dodge.

There is a linear graph which is how we can easily notice smurfs or hackers with 70+% accuracy on a widow for example.

Now if we have a smurf in silver that’s a GM and picks widow, they will likely get a much higher accuracy than the average 52% across the board because their aim is significantly better than the opp ability to dodge. So Win or Lose, their performance will ensure that the SR they gain for a win is a lot more than what they lose for a loss, on the basis that they are clearly out performing their rank.

NOTE

I use accuracy as one example, but check all the other stats when you tab on your hero, ignoring medals, for example Pharah, barrage kills, environmental deaths, direct hits e.t.c. there’s a bunch of stats that are measured and this is what determines whether you will climb despite your wins and losses.

34

Medals do not reflect skill. They show how well you can farm stats compared to your team that is all.

35

I feel like your thinking is way too short term and you put to much weight into medals

36

the competitive matching system is false.
It is designed to make you keep playing, almost like addiction!

Power Rangers Legacy War did this, basically when you win 2/3 matches, the next match will pitch you against someone with trash connection or better than you. Therefore after loosing you will then inherit an effect of win a game, lose a game, win a game, loose 2 games, win 1 game, loose 3 games, win 2 games, loose 1 game etc. Makes you keep playing, in the end your score stay the same.

Exactly the same system with Overwatch Competitive system.

i just created a team group, and set the Skill Rating Range to 2000+, because I don’t know what it means, and I set the Endorsement level to 2 and above.
3 people joined who were silver, and I started the match making.
I couldn’t believe I was pitched with other bronze and silvers, however all their endorsement lvl were 2 to 4, same with the opposing team!

Yes we lost!

While I am winning 1 match, loosing 2 match, winning 2 match, loosing 3 matches etc.
I was even pitched with players under PLACEMENT LEVEL! Without being scored, and no I did not even use group matching!

The match making system for competitive is not right, and it is designed to make you become addicted to the game so you stay on the same level all the time.

And I am a gold member.
i disagree with what the devs are explaining about the competitive system, because they are lying, they did this under Activision’s rule.

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37

Can you explain win/loss streaks using that logic?

38

You are just over looking all the VOD reviews that show, I’ll even go as far as saying prove, that the main reason players are at a given SR is the limits of their nerd skills.

Players need a decent mix of positional play, game sense and mechanical skills. You don’t need all three to do well in this game but one does need to better than those at their current SR in at least one or two of them to rank up.

All the tinfoil hat issues about the match making, forced 50%, win streaks, fixed SR, performance SR issues are all just destroyed with a VOD review of players at different ranks.
People play and most of all make errors that seem to fallow a directly pattern that matches up to their rank or at least rank tier in game. So it starts to become very difficult to drink the kool-aid that Blizzard just randomly decided to keep this player at SR ___ and have this other one being at SR ______.

39

Maybe i am not 58% winrate, but i am around 55% and i think it should warrant at very least according to the person that wrote that it isnt enough to climb, that i should stay at my rank, but when you look at my profile you will see that i in fact dropped rank when highest was after placements

40

Some information that I find interesting, taken from overbuff:

I checked the top 5 Pharah players, they have (#5 is actually 6 due to being unable to find their Pharah stats):

# — Win% — Elim — Weapon Acc
1 — 63.23% — 30.24 — 45%
2 — 58.10% — 29.03 — 48%
3 — 62.94% — 28.58 — 54%
4 — 71.62% — 30.82 — 39%
5 — 70.13% — 30.97 — 55%

Does nobody else see a potential problem here, just looking at these numbers? The lowest person on the list here in terms of win rate, isn’t even the one with the least eliminations or weapon accuracy, and the one with the highest win rating, who has a win rating a whopping 13.52% higher than the player with the lowest win rate, has an accuracy rating that’s 9% higher, with almost the exact same number of eliminations per match.

So as a Phara, a pure DPS, virtually your entire role is dealing as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, yet you can fulfill your role to the same level, if not better than another player, and have a win rate that’s 13.52% higher.

What this tells me is that your team is the single major deciding factor of your rank in competitive, and that’s unfair for anyone who solo queues, which I’m betting is the majority.

So this is the order of best Pharah to worst, according to metrics that we can actually pull (it’s an approximation, as it’s difficult to place weight on the difference between elims and accuracy):

# — Win% — Elim — Weapon Acc
5 — 70.13% — 30.97 — 55%
3 — 62.94% — 28.58 — 54%
2 — 58.10% — 29.03 — 48%
1 — 63.23% — 30.24 — 45%
4 — 71.62% — 30.82 — 39%

So what you have is evidence showing that the player does not decide the win rate as much as it should. If you account only for luck and personal skill, measuring metrics you can actually measure, you find that the players most accurate (in this case) with a hero specifically designed for sheer DPS, is not equaling out in relationship to win rate.

If you carry this correlation, you could deduce it possible that players who are inferior to you may have a higher win rate, and players superior, may have a lower. I’m not even arguing that. I’m arguing that it shouldn’t even be possible.

If the system only scrutinized you, as an individual player as to where you should be playing, then this shouldn’t even be possible. But that isn’t what’s happening. These top Pharah players are most assuredly playing on professional teams (at least one of them does, in fact), or are considered top 500 players, so you can assume they have dedicated teams.

So what I said still stands: In a nutshell, the game is not properly scrutinizing your win rate (thus your rank) based on you, but based off of your team, and if you solo queue, too much of your team is randomized. Because of this, it is my stance that the system only scrutinize you as a player, and have nothing to do with your win/lose rate.

Imagine for a second that the metric for deducing placement in Overwatch was based off not your win/lose ratio, but your percentage rate. Imagine that grand master required 70%, master, 60%, and diamond, 50%. The game would then be placing these players as follows:

# — Win% — Elim — Weapon Acc — Rank
5 — 70.13% — 30.97 — 55% — grand master
3 — 62.94% — 28.58 — 54% — master
2 — 58.10% — 29.03 — 48% — diamond
1 — 63.23% — 30.24 — 45% — master
4 — 71.62% — 30.82 — 39% — grand master

One of these players would have made grand master with a hit accuracy of 39%, while another, in diamond, is literally 9% MORE ACCURATE, on a hero who’s self-evident role, is to be as accurate as humanly possible.

This is completely silly. This means that when the player with the 9% less accuracy is on Pharah, his team must be superior in total, to the team that the Pharah with more accuracy is playing. So the system is ranking them by their team, not by their contribution.

And you don’t get to argue metrics that you cannot quantify. Hitchen’s Razor: The burden of proof regarding the truthfullness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim, and if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.

In other words, if you have no data, your argument is automatically to be dismissed.

An Overwatch player ran a personal study, playing 100 competitive matches, and keeping tabs on the data. 39 of those 100 were in a 3-group (gold rank).

Record in solo queue: 46% win rate.
Record in group queue: 62% win rate.

If all we do is assume those statistics are true, then it proves my point that we are being penalized in our personal rank, based off of others. We should move up and down based on ourselves, not others. If the game were placing you where you “belong” based off of yourself, then it would not matter if you group or solo queued, you would have the same win rate, because that’s where you belong. If you can group queue, like the individual above, and go up an entire rank let’s say, that you couldn’t do while solo queuing, then the entire system is broken for people queuing solo.

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