This post has nothing to do with “rigged” matches, it has to do with the fact that Overwatch dev team specfically has said matchmaking only looks for matches where each team has a 50% chance to win -
The simple and primary goal of our matchmaker is creating fair matches. To do that, it evaluates potential matches by synthesizing an expected win %. The matchmaker is normally really good about creating matches with a win % that is close to 50%
I’m discussing why this is bad for gaming and creates a toxic environment.
I’m a Masters player (100% solo queue, never cheated, never grouped, I use skill mechanical hero’s), if I put in more time and effort I’m confident I would make GM /brag#dontcare. I’ve put substantial efforts into becoming a good gamer. Part of the excitement of putting fort effort into getting better at something is knowing that your work will pay off, that if you get good enough you can play any game and be better than 90% of the people in any given random match. When I play other games like call of duty, fortnite, apex legends, counterstrike, I can go into almost any match and stand out as a great player and carry teams (there’s a point to me bragging I’ll get to here in a second), I don’t lose very often. I could literally hop in some games and go for days without losing a match, or possibly just win 90% of the games I play. Why? Because I earned it. I put in the work and time to get good enough to win all the time. Conversely there are people who haven’t put much time into gaming, they hop onto these games and lose 95% of the time, this is how it should be because you get out what you put in, that’s how life works, that’s what drives improvement in people.
In Overwatch this doesn’t happen. Overwatch is candy-land gaming where no matter how bad you are the matchmaker will find you a match where you can win about 50% of your matches because the matchmaker is designed to create “fair” matches. This means that someone who has practiced for years will win about as many games as a person who has practiced only a small amount, does that really sound fair??
Why should people who have put little efforts get the same amount of wins/satisfaction as people who have put in huge efforts? Nothing in life works like this. People who go to college and work hard make more money, people who are lazy and don’t put forth effort don’t make a lot of money. The great thing about it is the person who is lazy and not making money can change this as soon as they put in the appropriate amount of time and effort.
If Blizzard had its matchmaker performing economics then the person who has worked his butt off would make just as much money as the person who is lazy. What do you think that would do for society? If things worked like this then nobody would have incentive to work hard because we’re all making the same amount of money, or in the case of Overwatch few people would have incentive to try to win matches. This IS what’s going on with Overwatch right now. People either consciously or subconsciously realize that whether they play lazy or play hard they seem to stay at the same rank because every match is just a coin-flip, so why change hero’s? Why work with the team? None of it matters!!
The problem here is that “fair and balanced matches” SOUNDS good on paper and when spoken out loud, but it is NOT what is good for games. If a player is not good at gaming, he should log on, get placed into a random match, and probably lose almost every match he plays until he takes it upon himself to GET BETTER. Blizzard looks at this as a bad customer experience, and will place this bad player with players who can pick up his slack and make him feel like he’s doing better than he is. Ever wonder why everyone in this game thinks they are better than what they really are? It’s the matchmaking.
Conversely if a player has put in efforts to get good at gaming, he should win the majority of his matches because he will be, by law of numbers, typically one of the better players in the game.
On the other hand if a player is avg, he will win around 50% of his matches, naturally, without a matchmaker balancing anything whatsoever.
If the matchmaker stopped trying to force “fair” matches it would allow more creativity to happen in the game. You could actually work with a friend of yours to develop a strategy that wins matches over and over just because you’re being clever. Right now if you developed a clever strategy you could win some matches but the matchmaker will quickly realize that you are doing “something” that is winning more and you will be placed against teams that are good enough to cancel out your strategy. So then what’s the point of being creative? What’s the point in being clever?..or creating a special strategy? There’s no incentive! No matter what you do you will be placed in a match where you have a 50% chance of winning, so why put forth ANY effort to do something special?
Story time: I used to play Modern Warfare II and me and a friend created a strategy that was so clever and effective that we literally almost never lost a game ever. We worked on coordinating what to do in certain situations, when to use our specialties, etc etc. Even if we lost the scoreboard showed that we had 3x the kills of everyone else with almost no deaths, so even in a loss there was some “feel good” to it. None of this exists in Overwatch. Some of you might be thinking “what about GOATS?”. Go and try and run GOATS in comp, you will still win about as much as you lose unless you are playing on an downranked account/smurfing, the matchmaker will find a team that runs it just as well as you do. No matter what you do you’ll be in a “fair” match that you have a 50% chance of winning, so what’s the point of doing anything different or unique?
The “fair” matches that the matchmaker creates are not good for any game, it is toxic, just like if a person who worked hard and went to college made as much money as someone who sits at home doing nothing all day. I’m not saying we don’t need a matchmaker, I’m saying the matchmaker is doing TOO MUCH, it is forcing even matches no matter where you are, no matter what you do. The simplest way to put it, is a match in Masters is just as difficult to win as a match in Platinum - are the players better in Masters? Yes, but in both cases you have a 50% chance of winning.
**TLDR - This part probably illustrates my point the most:**
Why should people who have put little efforts get the same amount of wins/satisfaction as people who have put in huge efforts? Nothing in life works like this. People who go to college and work hard make more money, people who are lazy and don’t put forth effort don’t make a lot of money. The great thing about it is the person who is lazy and not making money can change this as soon as they put in the appropriate amount of time and effort .
If Blizzard had its matchmaker performing economics then the person who has worked his butt off would make just as much money as the person who is lazy. What do you think that would do for society? If things worked like this then nobody would have incentive to work hard because we’re all making the same amount of money , or in the case of Overwatch few people would have incentive to try to win matches. This IS what’s going on with Overwatch right now. People either consciously or subconsciously realize that whether they play lazy or play hard they seem to stay at the same rank because every match is just a coin-flip, so why change hero’s? Why work with the team? None of it matters!!