So how are your games going lately? [megathread]

[DeadmanWalking]

Matchmaking is so broken in this game. Win 2 games, lose 1 and you're back to where you started. That's not how a rank system should work.

So stop using the random group button. You push a random group button and you seem surprised that it randomly gives you bad players. It is what it is designed to do.

[Katie N]

So stop using the random group button. You push a random group button and you seem surprised that it randomly gives you bad players. It is what it is designed to do.

I have 55% win rate but have lost 200 rating, that's a bad system.

[Jessicka]

Hidden MMR seems to have some lag behind your SR, I’ve noticed that when I climb a bit, my SR gains will slow a little until I’ve played maybe 5-8 matches at the new level before the gains return to ‘normal’. Similarly if I drop a chunk of SR it’s very quick to pick up again.

I lost about 60 SR the other day, including 50 for a DC, then yesterday after losing nearly another hundred, it only took 5 wins then to restore the full 150 and then some.

I feel like matchmaking and SR this season has generally been a lot better, but too often still getting put with a premade with a large disparity in the group causes a lot of problems and is pretty much a guarantee on a poor quality match. The 500SR limit above Diamond should be universal.

[Freighter]

So stop using the random group button. You push a random group button and you seem surprised that it randomly gives you bad players. It is what it is designed to do.

That seems like a pretty senseless statement. Your rating is supposed to be a measurement of your skill, if there are people that are below your skill level at the same rating that's kind of evidence that the system is not really working. You should be able to go for random people in a system which bases your rating on your skill, since they'd be at the same skill level as you, not bad players, if it was working.

[Rotted]

So a few of you might have noticed each season I post my win / lose / draw rate in placement games. You might of noticed I get pissed off because since S2 I usually get the 8 wins, 1 loss 1 draw and I keep getting placed into bronze no matter how I perform on what ever character (Talking gold kills, damage, healing, objective kills on a Zen here)

This is all due to me sucking donkey dick in S1 and getting a really bad wood division.

In s5 I managed to climb out of that cess pit into silver and I dropped straight back to 1600 because of trolls and quitters.

So a few people quoted me saying, "It's how you perform on characters that effects your score mostly" "You must be playing shit to place that low" blah blah. So this time around I went over to a friends. This friend in S1 was either just in or just short of Grand Masters as a mercy main. He placed in the top 0.4 percent of top mercy players. You see these videos of what 400+ hours of mercy exp looks like? They haven't got shit on him. S2 onwards he's always been in masters.

So I decided to run an experiment. He played all my placement games as mercy (couple as lucio), he won every single game, all 10, and took gold healing every time. My rank? 1700. Seventeen fucking hundred.

It's infuriating how a previous season can fuck you over and it just keeps knocking on. And it's virtually impossible to climb pre 2k because of the amount of trolls and quitters - My mate went into the first ranked game to see (as him and the others think I'm expatriating all the time about it). His response 'Holy fucking shit, why do you even bother to play ranked like'

[Jessicka]

Placements are kinda pointless. They are by no means a hard reset. You have to play the game to climb. I’ve been as low as 1700 and found it very easy to get out of Silver. I now sit at 2350, mobility in Gold is hard, but I’m tracking my SR gains and losses and so long as my win rate is above 48% I climb. That actually gives me space for the disproportionate number of throwers and trolls I have to put up with for the heroes I play.

People are looking at their SR in too narrow a band on too short term a basis. A couple hundred SR is one nights variance, you get two months a season to build on it. I’ve only played comp seriously since S5, I didn’t expect to go from placing mid Silver to Plat or higher over night. But I’m consistently able to reposition myself into mid-high Gold now; and I am improving at the game in the process.

I can though, see in front of me when I play players at 2800 that they’re vastly better than me, and that’s okay. It only annoys me that such is the grouping system that I have to face them at all. That does feel unfair, but it thankfully isn’t happening often enough that I feel like it’s holding me back, even when Endus’s maths above clearly shows that guy is much more likely to be on the other team. Even here I’ve found that focusing that guy alone can actually win the match since so much stock is on them to do well and make up for shortcomings elsewhere.

[Kelimbror]

I have 55% win rate but have lost 200 rating, that's a bad system.

Have done the same in the past and lost over 500. Robots on here will say that means you're bad and it's Blizzard trying to force you where you belong, but gosh darnit you just are stubborn and somehow keep rising to the higher rank. Hrm...it's almost like the system doesn't actually work to place you at the proper skill and instead just continues to make sure you never rise above certain marks.

- - - Updated - - -

So I decided to run an experiment. He played all my placement games as mercy (couple as lucio), he won every single game, all 10, and took gold healing every time. My rank? 1700. Seventeen fucking hundred.

It will happen every time. I guarantee your friend could likely play all season and not get you above gold. Personal performance in placement is a lie. It always places you pretty much exactly where you last were. The only season that matters is the last one you played and the first one you ever played in this system. It's not real matchmaking or placement. It's pretty garbage.

They value short queues above everything else and part of that is always ensuring an even spread between the colors. You started off in bronze? Welp, doesn't matter if you are a GM now...you gonna be in bronze forever.

[Rotted]

It will happen every time. I guarantee your friend could likely play all season and not get you above gold. Personal performance in placement is a lie. It always places you pretty much exactly where you last were. The only season that matters is the last one you played and the first one you ever played in this system. It's not real matchmaking or placement. It's pretty garbage.

They value short queues above everything else and part of that is always ensuring an even spread between the colors. You started off in bronze? Welp, doesn't matter if you are a GM now...you gonna be in bronze forever.

Indeed. It's my own fault really in S1 I told the group I wanted more practise until I joined them in comp, they went off and did it and placed high. I played it casually as I would league and got stung. Besides that, all the people I group with are diamond and masters and I hold my own with them which is why they are always confused why I can't climb higher. As I say he had one test match after placements and he couldn't get over it.

[ThatsOurEric]

You must be great at debate.

Already told him why he was wrong. Do I need to repeat myself?

It's exactly correct.

It is absolutely ASTOUNDING just how many people fail to understand how horrible this system is.

As I've said repeatedly before, this is a team based game. You win and lose with the team.

If someone on your team sucks donkey dick, guess what? You're handicapped. So when you lose,
it :

Does.

Not.

Matter.

How well you performed. You could have gold in everything, be on fire the entire game,
whatever. You will still lose the same SR, the same as the person who did the worst.

Yeah, leavers lose the most SR. However, you'll still lose quite a bit of SR as a result,
since you won't be able to "perform well" since its a 5 v 6 match.

And even without the leavers thrown in, if you get bad players on your team, well,
you're going to suffer for it, everytime. Because the game *should* reward you
for how well you do individually, but it instead, punishes you when you ALL fail
equally, regardless of personal performance.

[Gandrake]

They value short queues above everything else and part of that is always ensuring an even spread between the colors. You started off in bronze? Welp, doesn't matter if you are a GM now...you gonna be in bronze forever.

if you were gm you could just play a hero like tracer and be platinum in a few hours. Now... a gold level player, if dropped to bronze, would be there for quite some time as it takes a ridiculous amount of skill and luck to make up for the shortcomings of players who play so poorly that they do not even deserve to have a rank.

You're also not going to get out of that rank playing Soldier unless you are shooting at 50%+. in 1v6, mechanical consistency is everything. You really have to play heroes that literally torture players for their mistakes at their respective ratings to climb and down that low it is definitely positioning.

You could have gold in everything, be on fire the entire game,
whatever. You will still lose the same SR, the same as the person who did the worst.

in stomps (completely lost 1v6 games) i lose 30sr but in the hard ones i lose where i am obviously the carry for retards who can't even play DPS and doing my job by outperforming them at an incredibly disgraceful clip, I usually lose like 10 or 15 SR

I mean, it's bullshit that I lose any SR at all but i definitely lose less

[Endus]

How well you performed. You could have gold in everything, be on fire the entire game,
whatever. You will still lose the same SR, the same as the person who did the worst.

I've tracked my SR gains and losses for every match across multiple seasons. What you're claiming here is flat-out not true. Personal performance DOES matter. I'm a support main, and I usually played Zen for a long time. If we had two instalock supports, I'd play something else, like Soldier 76. And that one match would stand out, in my data. I'd either win way less SR, or lose way more, because I'm not as good with Soldier 76. Not compared to the average player at my rank, at least. That's been consistently true every time it's popped up.

If your team is getting crushed and you can't get any opportunity to perform well, that'll lead to one bad match, but I again point you at the math section in the post you ignored; at any given SR, if we assume that you are appropriately at that SR rank and aren't shitting up your own matches on purpose, you're generally going to see more wins than losses due to people throwing matches and the like. Not by a huge amount, and bad luck may mean you see streaks which run the other direction, but as you get more games in, that RNG is less likely to remain streaky.

You can flip a coin 5 times in a row and get Heads each time, fairly regularly. Flipping that coin 500 times and getting Heads every time is ridiculously unlikely and anyone claiming it to be true is probably wrong. Since we KNOW, in this case, that the "coin" can't be weighted; in any given match, considering both teams, there's as many losers as winners.

[DeadmanWalking]

That seems like a pretty senseless statement. Your rating is supposed to be a measurement of your skill, if there are people that are below your skill level at the same rating that's kind of evidence that the system is not really working. You should be able to go for random people in a system which bases your rating on your skill, since they'd be at the same skill level as you, not bad players, if it was working.

If the game is randomly giving you people you don't want to play with you can fix it yourself by only inviting people you want to play with. There is nothing senseless about taking the game's group finder into your own hands and not having to deal with the bullshit of random players.

Creating your own team means everyone will be at the sr you want, there are no throwers and there are no one tricks. The only downside is that you can't smack one button and let the game decide everything for you, it requires pushing 6-7 buttons. Hard stuff to do I know.

[Kelimbror]

Um, this guy figured it out. We were all right. This system is fucking broken:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/c...nderstood_the/

[A-sayo]

Um, this guy figured it out. We were all right. This system is fucking broken:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/c...nderstood_the/

That was an interesting read. Not worth a tinfoil hat, but that kinda explain most games some people have been having so far.

[Eapoe]

Um, this guy figured it out. We were all right. This system is fucking broken:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/c...nderstood_the/

Well, as he stated, it is a hypothesis, albeit a good one.
This is something close to a post of mine from 2-3 seasons ago where I observed that my teammates skill swung wildly. My SR was decently steady for win/loss; however there was definitely the feeling the game was "testing" me to see if I should be where I was.
My post was merely personal observation (and one of the gentleman arguements I participated in with Endus), but the Reddit post seems like there is more in depth research to it.

[Batar]

Went from silver to Platinum (2600SR) over the past 2 days and then i came in shitloads of groups where people refuse to switch and people trolling / being toixc and now im down at 2300... FML.

[Freighter]

If the game is randomly giving you people you don't want to play with you can fix it yourself by only inviting people you want to play with. There is nothing senseless about taking the game's group finder into your own hands and not having to deal with the bullshit of random players.

Creating your own team means everyone will be at the sr you want, there are no throwers and there are no one tricks. The only downside is that you can't smack one button and let the game decide everything for you, it requires pushing 6-7 buttons. Hard stuff to do I know.

Yeah, because I know 5 other people who will play at the same times as me every time I play. At best I can gather 1-3 others, rarely ever 5.

[RobertoCarlos]

If the game is randomly giving you people you don't want to play with you can fix it yourself by only inviting people you want to play with. There is nothing senseless about taking the game's group finder into your own hands and not having to deal with the bullshit of random players.

Creating your own team means everyone will be at the sr you want, there are no throwers and there are no one tricks. The only downside is that you can't smack one button and let the game decide everything for you, it requires pushing 6-7 buttons. Hard stuff to do I know.

Whats the point of SR in Overwatch then if personal skill doesn't matter and its just "random" or "play with your friends".

You must realize how pointless this argument is

- - - Updated - - -

And you dont need to defend overwatch, they make enough money without you.

And speaking of money, people spent it on the game, theres no single player campaign to fall back on. Its not a big ask of an online competitive game to have a match making system outside of "have 4 other people online everytime you want to play or dont bother playing it at all"

[Endus]

Um, this guy figured it out. We were all right. This system is fucking broken:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/c...nderstood_the/

He's making up a lot of that, and most of the rest was publicly stated by Overwatch devs within the first year, if not pre-release.

The stuff about there being your SR and an internal MMR and how the system adjusts SR gains/losses to push your SR closer to that MMR? We know that's how it works, because Blizzard's told us so.

The stuff about deliberately making "bad" matches to screw you? That's tinfoil hat stuff, and they provide zero evidence.

[Endus]

I did an experiment myself. I'm not great, only been low plat and mostly gold. Each season, not matter how I placed I was drop an insane amount of SR, climb to gold/low plat, rinse repeat. In season 6 I started in low silver for some reason. I got the typical "get gud" responses. So I made a new account, did placement matches and was in high gold. IN fact, i lost one more game on the new account and still went to gold.

This doesn't say anything at all, really. The new account has a much smaller sample of your gameplay to draw conclusions from, and is thus much more likely to be wrong.

I got placed in mid silver a few seasons back. The last few, I've been placed in low plat. The big difference is that I got way more consistent, and played better; earlier, I played as a swing player and played whatever the team needed, and since, I've been a support main, playing mostly heroes (Zen, some Mercy) I was reasonably good at. By focusing on a narrower selection of heroes, I got better, and my results are more consistent as a result. Not that shocking, really.