Why is this game forcing me to smurf?

Competitive Discussion
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EDIT: added vod links to top of OP for convenience

Vod 1: Placement 1 - YouTube

Vod 2: Real Placement 2 - YouTube

Vod 3: Placement 2 - YouTube

Vod 4: Placement 3 - YouTube

Edit 2: Apparently I suddenly lost the power to embed youtube videos into my posts sometime between when I started the thread and now. Is “Big Overwatch” trying to silence my attempts to expose their broken matchmaker? Perhaps!

I pretty much haven’t played on my original account in almost a year, but when I stopped playing on it, I was at somewhere around 2980 SR (basically diamond)…. but I decided I wanted to start playing on it again so I’m doing my placement matches…

And it keeps putting me in gold matches. Wtf?! First game, I absolutely stomped on enemy team, full holding them. “ok, now it’s going to put me in a plat match for my second game” I think to myself. Second game, I get placed in another gold match. I absolutely stomped on enemy team, full holding them. “ok, now it’s going to put me in a plat match” I think to myself

I’m averaging 15k damage per 10 min with 43 elims per 10 minutes and 25 final blows per 10 minutes, 7.67 elims per life with soldier… 4th game , guess what? Another gold match. I’m going to post my 4 matches here, just so you can see how ridiculous it is that the game is still telling me “I’m at gold level” after them… give me a little bit of time to upload the vids. The first 3 matches I was just taking it easy, making sure I won but not super-tryharding which is why I picked soldier (a trash character). But in my 4th match, about halfway through, I noticed that my dps partner was literally doing nothing all game and that tilted me into try harding like hell (also because enemy team was running bastion when I wanted to play Mei, that always tilts me a little)

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The game puts top 500 in plat/diamond so its normal if u has a diamond/plat player the matchmaking thinks that u are a gold player

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Because there’s too many DPS in queue.

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Don’t worry it will soon give you a gold match that not even top500 can carry

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It sounds like the account was inactive long enough that you got an SR/MMR reset.

The game isn’t forcing you to smurf. You can play on your main.

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Oooo boy. You’re going to LOVE vid #4… I had to carry my BUTT OFF in order to win that game. I started off playing kind of casually and then I realized that I would need to play basically perfect in order for us to win and went full sweaty try hard mode. Still barely won the game… I watched the vod from my dps partner’s point of view to try to understand how the hell that game was so hard and why I never saw him doing anything…

I learned that he was actually a new player (level 25) but by watching him play, it was clear that he had no idea what he was doing. I’m not saying that to be mean, I mean he LITERALLY had no idea what he was doing, it’s a fact. By watching the vod from his pov, it’s clear that he should have been placed in bronze, not gold (I’m actually not 100% sure what the average sr for that last match was, honestly. Only one player had a public profile and he was right at 2500SR, but I think it was an average high gold SR match, could have been a very low plat average however).

I say this not as an insult to him (can’t blame him for being new to the game) but to point out that it is a GLARING indictment of how flawed the matchmaking system is. The system determined that he and I were at the same skill level, I’m actually baffled by it but it’s 100% evidence that the system is completely broken. I’m actually really tempted to post the vod from his pov, because no one could watch it and continue to claim that the system is working correctly when it says that he and I are “equal skill”.

I’m not going to post his pov, though, unless the mods explicitly give me permission, because I think the mods would ban me under the guise of “shaming other players” or something, which again is absolutely not what my intention of doing so would be. I have no animosity towards him or anything, it’s just 100% clear he was a brand new player.

But my mindset switched from start of match of “dooo doo doo, another gold placement match, I’m going to win” whistles casually and then a little while later it changed to “hang on, what the hell is happening? how are we getting steamrolled right now” and that quickly morphed into a steely resolve of “I am NOT going to let my team lose to a bastion, it’s just not allowed to happen” and focused SO hard on trying to win.

But on a final note, I think the Rein on my team was also under-placed. He was making some PLAYS, he did NOT seem like a high gold/borderline plat player

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The system is always generous to new players/new accounts and almost always places them silver to plat, often gold. You’ll see him lose 50+ SR per game to where he belongs pretty quickly though.

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Ye you get some crazy stuff in popular ranks. Most extreme I played is sweating to win plat game, despite being 3 smurfs, masters sup, the other support was diamond at least, and a T2-GM dps. Main tank playing with his laptop’s trackpad or something, couldn’t hit anything, second dps returning player endorsement 1 totally lost in space. Killing them over and over but the tanks but couldn’t hold space due to tanks being bots, 50+ elims as support, the dps had 70+, almost lost lul.

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Alright, here’s my vods. Once again, pay special attention to vod #4 to see how ridiculous that matchmaker was (I’m definitely not the only player that was out of place in that game) vod 3 is still loading, will post later:

Edit: standby for technical difficulties. Will post vods in a few hours

Vod #1:

Vod #2:

Vod #4: Edit: oh poop, accidentally uploaded wrong vid. Uploaded the one from my teammate’s pov. Gonna take it down and reupload. Stand by for vods #3 & 4 a little later this afternoon

Someone tell me how the hell this system thinks I am still a gold (maybe borderline plat?) player. 4 games in a row where I individually had way above average stats and carried the games, not to mention I have no idea why I even started my first placement game in gold… keep in mind, this was my ORIGINAL account, it has the most hours by far of my accounts and should be the one that the system has the best understanding of what my skill level is, as a result. It’s the one where I steadily climbed up to border of diamond with, so there was no massive or sudden jumps in SR. I did nothing to try to “trick” the system. it wasn’t a new account or anything.

Can anyone watch these vods and tell me with a straight face that the system is working correctly and not broken?

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So I looked up your overbuff after watching the first vod (saw some bad habits). Since it was locked it could not show your most up to date info (but it does show your info before the profile was locked). So if this overbuff is your main account, last played was 10 months ago you were at 2379 skill rating. That would explain why you were pairing with golds.

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Sorry, you didn’t solve the puzzle. 10 months ago was around the same time that I switched my profile to private because I didn’t want to deal with toxicity from people detectiving my profile and coming to false conclusions. But at the end of my time on that account I spent like over 100+ hours in plat on that account, peaking at almost diamond on it. That’s when I started feeling too much pressure and didn’t want to fall when I was so close, so I played on my alt, instead (easily reached diamond on account I am posting from after switching from my original account). Then decided to spend most of my time on my other alt, learning new characters rather than trying to climb). But yea, I guess it wasn’t almost a year ago since I last played on it, must have been a shorter time frame. I have hard time with remembering how much time has passed

Also I’m not posting these for vod reviews. But to show how messed up the system is where it keeps making me play placement matches in an elo where I am hard carrying every match and posting way above normal stats every time… yes I’m making some mistakes (never claimed I played every game perfectly, just well above gold level), I’m not playing with the team and I’m not playing anywhere near as cautiously as I would if I was at my own elo (because I know golds generally aren’t going to punish me for being too aggressive or out of position, etc).

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against potatoes i presume?

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Yup.

New placements system is fubar. Has been since launch.

Why I almost quit the game a few months back.

Constantly getting level 25 wood tier players on my team that just fed 1v6 all game.

They’d almost invariably pick Genji, which makes things even worse.

But matchmaker screwed anyway.

Ended up in a 1650 game for some reason and went 41-1 kd on Moira. Just think what I could have done if I was actually any good on her…

One Youtuber Said they had a 2.5k tank in their GM game. Didn’t go well…

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Keep in mind this was based off of the information provided to me/what I could find so there is no way I can tell if you played the account following locking up. It only made sense cause 2370 10 months ago (almost a year) and playing with golds since you came back.

More power to you that you can reach diamond but just a reminder that since you have multiple accounts if one is left alone for several months, regardless of you improving via alts the account will be treated (sr-wise) as if you came back from a hiatus. So you truly claim the account was left around high 2900s, I’m a bit skeptical based off of what I saw and the info you provided me but hey it shouldn’t be too bad to climb back up since you’ve done it before.

Up to Placement 3 and I personally think you are not hard carrying but that will be up for others to decide. You have your moments every now and then but your teammates were doing decent as well.

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Reminds of of that gold game I almost lost with 92 elims. 69 solo kills I believe.

Game can be a dumpster fire sometimes

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Same experience here. 2800 high on support, capable of DPS in SR 3000+, 2800 tank with 60% winrate.

Ended up 500 - 1000 SR under par for beta placements. Games were extremely frustrating due to teammates not playing with any consistency. Accused of aimbotting repeatedly. Teams wouldn’t push on picks. Tanks not being aggressive, etc.

That is a very irritating environment to climb on when you only have limited weekly game time to devote.

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Thats the resson probably. You cant expect to climb and keep the rank without playing the game enough.

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I already climbed. Really didn’t feel like doing it three more times just to get to the level of teammates I enjoy playing with.

Stomping silver and gold players isn’t fun for me or them.

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Ok, apologize for the technical difficulties but we are up and running now. I accidentally labelled vod 3 as vod 2 and vod 4 as vod 3 on youtube, but the way they are listed in this post is the correct order. Pay special attention to vod 4. The system must have been super angry at me for refusing to give in and lose the gold placement matches it kept forcing me into (which would then allow it to sanctimoniously declare that “if you really weren’t a gold player, you would have won this game. see? our system is working correctly” and feel justified with itself.) and decided to give me a virtually impossible game to win to try to put me in my place (I didn’t think it actually did that, but then I experienced it in this game. Can’t ignore what I see). But no, matchmaking system. I am not gold, you are wrong. Accept your defeat with grace:

Vod 1: Placement 1 - YouTube

Vod 2: Real Placement 2 - YouTube

Vod 3: Placement 2 - YouTube

Vod 4: Placement 3 - YouTube

To re-iterate the purpose of this thread, I think this is pretty clear proof that the matchmaking system is broken. It took a diamond dps player (me), continuously put me in gold placement matches, and made absolutely no adjustment or recognition of the fact that I didn’t belong in those games.

This is not a “I can’t climb so I’m going to blame someone else” thread or anything like that. I have stated multiple times that after reaching diamond, I no longer cared to try hard or climb rank (I’m happy with peaking in diamond, nothing left to prove to myself or anyone else). Now I just play to practice new characters and try to get better at them (I am currently quite enamored with Mei <3).

I didn’t go back to my original account in order to test the system or anything, my original intention was just to play (went back to my original account cuz it has the most tokens saved up and I have some skins I want to buy for this event), didn’t intend to make a thread about my results or anything. But doing my placements, it was a disturbing discovery of how messed up the system is and I felt like I should let other people know of it.

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It’s not forcing you to smurf. Stop caring about your rank it doesn’t matter. Problem solved.

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