Competitive Play is live

[Temp name]

I saw a level 13 in my 3rd placement match. It looks like the stars are suppressed for ranked play but the player was definitely not showing above 25.

I saw a star'd rank 43 player earlier.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I've played 4 games on the ladder so far with a full premade. I've won 3 out 4 games so far and the one we lost was really close. I feel like I will do my best to avoid playing solo because having people that you know play with each other feels a lot more rewarding. So far I have had a great time playing the ladder when compared to Quick Match.

One more thing. I think that they have to change the ladder into two separate queues where full premades fight against each other and you have to solo/duo queue on another ladder like Heroes of the Storm does it. The fact of the matter is that if you ever wish to get anywhere near the top of the ladder, you will need to group up with someone, just because of the big advantage of better group communication. This was the case in HotS when you could queue as a full 5 man in Hero League and I suspect that it will be the same deal in Overwatch.

[Tharkkun]

I saw a star'd rank 43 player earlier.

I remember what happened. I was talking to my wife and not paying attention I queue'd for quick match games before noticing it wasn't ranked play 4 games later...

I forgot about that until now. Crack is bad!

[Koji2k11]

idk who thought it was a great idea to not restrict hero stacking in competitive play .....

[DeadmanWalking]

idk who thought it was a great idea to not restrict hero stacking in competitive play .....

You guys really need to stop with this shit, if you can't figure out how to deal with hero stacking then you may as well walk away now. Hero stacking is a bad ideal because hard counters to that one character will ruin stacking fast. 1 Reaper can wreck 2 winstons easy, that means if an entire team takes 6 winstons it only takes 3 reapers to shut them down and you still have 3 other team mates that can go reaper or any other class to balance your team.

[TheWindWalker]

idk who thought it was a great idea to not restrict hero stacking in competitive play .....

That's something I brought up to a friend when discussing whether or not the placement MMR uses "win/loss" as your pure source of skill assessment during those first games (and potentially beyond) because nothing leads to "four winstons and two lucios" faster than "if we win, skill up, if we lose, skill down" being found out as the actual, only true way it's measured rather than the mysterious "no no no you see there's things under the hood" hypothesis.

On that note, if it turns out the MMR isn't "win +25mmr, lose -25mmr" but rather "we use those points that determine PotG!" then a Lucio wallriding and never getting a kill but simply being on fire because he's not dead and in heal-stance will be the easy street to getting a golden gun.

[xerus]

idk who thought it was a great idea to not restrict hero stacking in competitive play .....

Hero stacking and counter picking is a key design element. If you think they are going to restrict it you are deluded.

[Unknown User]

Did a few of the placement matches tonight but I didn't have the energy to do them all. Oh how stupid I feel now for thinking Blizzard would actually fix the matchmaker this patch. Every single game has been a 5 or 6 man premade against a full random team.

[xerus]

Did a few of the placement matches tonight but I didn't have the energy to do them all. Oh how stupid I feel now for thinking Blizzard would actually fix the matchmaker this patch. Every single game has been a 5 or 6 man premade against a full random team.

I'll believe that when I see a screenshot of it. Every game I've played has been equally grouped / not grouped on both sides so far.

[WskyDK]

Did a few of the placement matches tonight but I didn't have the energy to do them all. Oh how stupid I feel now for thinking Blizzard would actually fix the matchmaker this patch. Every single game has been a 5 or 6 man premade against a full random team.

Highly doubt that.

[Mormolyce]

They said a while ago that they will be changing sudden death. They just won't have the changes ready for this first short season.

Yeah I know. I don't know how they ever thought the current iteration was a good idea though.

[Mifuyne]

Am not done yet with the first 10 matches but have had the white and golden icon since forever now.
First half went pretty damn well, now I've played 3 more and I can add 3 more losses to my page.

[Woobels]

You guys really need to stop with this shit, if you can't figure out how to deal with hero stacking then you may as well walk away now. Hero stacking is a bad ideal because hard counters to that one character will ruin stacking fast. 1 Reaper can wreck 2 winstons easy, that means if an entire team takes 6 winstons it only takes 3 reapers to shut them down and you still have 3 other team mates that can go reaper or any other class to balance your team.

I agree people should stop whining about it but hero stacking is not a bad idea in many situations, it's a very solid way to win games.

Note that stacking doesn't necessarily mean 6 of the same or something dumb.

[WskyDK]

Am not done yet with the first 10 matches but have had the white and golden icon since forever now.
First half went pretty damn well, now I've played 3 more and I can add 3 more losses to my page.

Doesn't the white and gold icon just mean you're placing? It's only visible to the player.

[Ielenia]

? Level 25 minimum.

Probably said 'level 11' had a star underneath its level number and OP missed it. As far as I've found, said star means the character is above level 100. So said Widowmaker may be level 111.

[Nanaboostme]

Difficult ai fo lyfe

[Post]

That's something I brought up to a friend when discussing whether or not the placement MMR uses "win/loss" as your pure source of skill assessment during those first games (and potentially beyond) because nothing leads to "four winstons and two lucios" faster than "if we win, skill up, if we lose, skill down" being found out as the actual, only true way it's measured rather than the mysterious "no no no you see there's things under the hood" hypothesis.

Well I got ranked 42 while losing 8/10 games in placement. I think I'd be a lot lower if it was all about wins/losses.

[Tojara]

Placed 53 (won 7, lost 3) got up to 55 fairly easily, don't really know where I'll plateau.

Personally aside from sudden death I really like competitive over quick play. The games seem a lot closer and people generally don't pick things that don't make sense, which can be frustrating in quick play.

I don't really mind the concept of sudden death, I just don't like how it plays out. For example we played on Gibraltor, captured all 4 points and had over 3 minutes left on our timer, while the opposing team had to go into overtime to do the exact same thing. Coin flip happens, we are attacking and we have 1:45 to get to the second point (for whatever reason, on Gibraltor sudden death you need the second point). We get between the first and second point where we end up losing because they have a more stall oriented team with two Meis. In this scenario I'm not really sure why you have time stamps at all as they simply don't matter.

Honestly even though it's suppose to be 'mastery' of that particular map, they really should just give you a single capture point map in a sudden death scenario or change the criteria for sudden death. In my above example it just doesn't make sense on a map like Gibraltor to even track time if both teams capture all 4 points.

Be nice to understand some of the inner workings of the personal component as well. One of my friends placed a bit higher than me (we didn't play all games together during placement matches), yet we've played all competitive games together since. I'm higher than him now because of the personal component to the ranking (I get more points for winning, and I guess I lose a little bit less for losing some of the games?).

[Deleted]

Think it goes off several factors but the highest must be your win/loss and a couple of really bad losses can totaly screw you.. I pug'd my first 2 games and got railed really hard as my team was just toxic kiddies all on reaper/widow/genji/hanzo (like loosing games within minutes).. When I finally played with my mates I was like 6 for 1, ended 7-3 but only got 49 yet getting gold medals most games and PotG. Those first 2 losses must have really hurt my score as my stats are pretty good I think.

[Deleted]

I didn't check this yet but if there is ability to solo queue, I really see no point in that. It should be forced to play in team with 3 players at least.

I'm doing the first 10 matches but I really doubt people myself included would solo queue after that as from experience so far its just an absolute nightmare, unless you like to be bored & annoyed. People really have no clue. When a team wins by taking an escort objective a mere 16m then you know people can't grasp what on earth their supposed to be doing.