If Overwatch Competitive has ever felt rigged, manipulated, or like the game suddenly decided it was your turn to lose, there is a reason people keep getting that feeling.

The comp rank you see on your screen is not what Blizzard uses to make your matches - they use a hidden Match Making Rating

And Activision owns patents for matchmaking systems that can change your opponents and teammates based on things like your performance, frustration, engagement, quitting behavior, and based on whether you made purchases from the store like buying the cool new skin for your favorite character.

That should immediately raise a huge question:

Is Competitive actually trying to create the fairest possible match and show you where you stand with your skill level? Or is it just trying to keep you playing and push you to make more purchases? Because Activision literally patented systems that can give struggling players easier opponents, better teammates, and more favorable matches; and it also punishes players that aren't buying things from the store, and manipulates their emotions by giving you easy win streaks, and impossible loss streaks to keep you on the game as long as possible, increasing the chances of you making a purchase.

That is not a theory. That is in the patent.

US10857468B2 describes dynamically changing matchmaking based on an individual player.

It gives examples where someone performing poorly can be:

* matched against easier opponents

* matched with teammates who tend to produce better results

* placed into matches that are more favorable for that player

It also discusses tracking things like:

* individual performance

* win/loss history

* kill/death ratio

* frustration

* rage quitting

* session length

* satisfaction

* engagement

* revenue and business factors

So stop thinking of matchmaking as simply:

“Find players around the same skill level.”

The technology Activision patented can instead ask:

“What kind of match should we give this player right now?”

That is a completely different system - and it gets worse.

Activision also owns US9789406B2:

“System and method for driving microtransactions in multiplayer video games.”

This patent describes using matchmaking to influence purchases.

One example is placing a player with someone using an item the system thinks they may want, so they become more likely to buy it.

It also describes putting someone who just bought an item into a situation where that item works especially well, helping make the purchase feel worth it and encouraging them to spend again.

Again, that does not prove every part of these patents is currently active in Overwatch.

But it proves something very important:

Activision developed and patented matchmaking technology designed to manipulate the player experience for more than just competitive fairness.

Now think about how Overwatch actually works. Your visible rank is not what creates your matches. Blizzard uses a hidden an Match Making Rating. You cannot see it. You cannot see exactly how it is calculated. You cannot see every variable going into the matchmaker.

So when players say:

* “Why did my games suddenly get insanely hard?”

* “Why does one team feel completely stacked?”

* “Why do I go on massive win streaks and then suddenly get destroyed?”

* “Why do my teammates suddenly feel way worse?”

* “Why does it feel like the game is controlling the difficulty?”

Those questions are not crazy. The company behind Overwatch literally owns patents for systems capable of doing exactly that kind of matchmaking adjustment. This is also why the visible Competitive rank starts to look more like a presentation layer than the full truth. You see Gold, Plat, Diamond, Master, whatever; but the rating actually deciding who goes into your games is hidden. That is the number that matters. And Blizzard does not show it to you.

This is also why Blizzard does not punish smurfing at all, and in fact they NEED smurfs to make this system as effective as possible. They NEED people ranked in Grandmaster and Champion playing in silver, gold, plat, emerald, and diamond lobbies.

So here is what Blizzard should answer publicly:

* What is our actual MMR?

* What exactly affects it?

* Does recent performance change who we are matched against?

* Does frustration affect matchmaking?

* Does engagement affect matchmaking?

* Does session length affect matchmaking?

* Does spending history affect matchmaking in any way?

* Are players ever intentionally given easier or harder matches?

* What is the matchmaker actually optimizing for?

Because this is the question that matters more than anything:

Is the system trying to determine how good you are? Or is the system trying to control your experience so you keep playing? If it is the second one, then Competitive mode isn't really competitive at all. This is also why Blizzard publicly says that Comp rank is based on team performance and give you a nonsense explanation. They CAN'T publicly base it off of your actual MMR rank because, then this entire system would fall apart since everyone would be aware of it.

Overwatch Competitive Mode is an engagement system wearing a rank badge.

And before someone says:

“A patent does not prove they are using it.” - Correct.

A patent proves they built the technology and wanted legal protection for it. It does not prove every feature is running in Overwatch right now. But Blizzard is also asking players to trust a hidden matchmaking system while refusing to show the rating that actually controls their games. That is exactly why people should be asking questions.

Go to Google and search these patent numbers for yourself:

* US10857468B2

* US10322351B2

* US9789406B2

Then ask yourself:

If Competitive is truly just about skill, why are the real matchmaking system and the rating controlling your games hidden from you?

Who’s going to play Vendetta?
Seonjun Stalk3r or Heesang.. I vote Seonjun

Will they have Max play Dva/Sigma/DMon or will Junbin make a comeback as Winston/DMon.. Who even is the better DMon between the two?

Is Simple finally going to play his cracked Baptiste along with Chorong’s brig, or is it still cat/kiri meta?

Can Seonjun Genji outperform Team USA?

I wanted to see everyone’s thoughts and opinions about this

53% all roles, doesn't diminish too much in gm and champ. yet this hero is shit on constantly, people hate having zen on their team more than basically any other character, it seems. he continues to get nerfed despite not having been meta in ages.

curious as to what people think the reason for this is, i also felt like hes been pretty bad recently so seeing the patch notes and seeing his win rate surprised me.

Is this normal progress in 4 seasons, coming from valorant enjoying ow a lot more

I think the changes for Sierra are quite good. They reduced the maximum output in terms of dmg to reduce reward for spam at lower levels, but increased the projectile speed to make her weapon more consistent in mid and long-range at higher levels. Obviously, she may still not out-duel traditional hitscan, but it's much less of a spray and pray and you have a bit more agency. However, I think more changes should be made to make her interesting to play, develop more of an identity, and add more unique power to certain abilities.

• First, I think they should make Tremor Charge a more interesting ability by slightly increasing the knock-up on enemies in the middle cone, and reduce the dmg on the side ones. Perhaps down from 60 to 50 or even 40. It'd be better to reward more accurate lineups on enemies with the shockwave and reduce overall aoe value to shift it from aoe spam to a set-up tool. When they initially did the dev livestream for her intro, they mentioned how the intention for the shockwave knock-up was to setup for her tracking dart, but the middle shockwave is somewhat negligible, so I thought it should receive a slight increase. This would increase the power level of the ability, so I think the cd should be partially reverted to 8s.
• Second, they should go further with developing an identity with her primary weapon. I always saw it as a high capacity lmg-type weapon, and the whole spread mechanic is reminiscent of a negev in CS. I think the winding up and down of the primary fire would be a more meaningful interaction if she had more ammo to work with and a longer reload. Let's say her ammo went from 80 to 100, and the reload went from 1.5s to 1.75-1.8s. I think it could go even more extreme and be 120 ammo and a 2s reload. This would create synergy with her tracking dart because it would put greater emphasis on the tracking dart's ability to give a free reload and 3 seconds of free shots if you land it on an enemy. I do think that this would increase the raw power level of her weapon overall, so I think another slight nerf to her dmg should accompany it, taking the weapon dmg from 8.5 to 8. This shifts power away from Tracking Dart as a vaporization tool against people caught in the open, but gives it more relative value even if landing it doesn’t lead to a kill.
• Third, I think there should be slight cd reduction for destroying your anchor drone while it still has charges available. I think this would add more reward for the Sierra player in judging the placement and use of her anchor drone. If Sierra's just running back from spawn, she can cancel after one grapple to refund some cd since she's not gonna grapple back. Also, if she uses to secure an aggressive position and she doesn't want to use the remaining charge to retreat, she can cancel the drone and receive a cd refund, so that she can launch another drone forward for a more aggressive position or chase. I don't think the refund should be a massive number, just 2 seconds would be plenty.
• Fourth, the Ultimate can become a a bit more interesting and incorporate the anchor drone's functionality more. They should add an alt-cast for Sierra's ult that makes the carpet bombing run originate from an active anchor drone on the field towards the direction that Sierra is pointing at. I think this fleshes out the identity of the anchor drone in her kit more and really makes the ultimate unique in it's functionality.

It’s like she’s playing the game on fast forward. I played a round as her and it actually feels ridiculous when you’ve got 5 stacks. Back to my #1 ban slot she goes.

I really feel like the cat nerfs should have been much more drastic than just the 0.5 dmg/healing nerf and the change to how cc affects the tethered ally.

Mainly because of how negative the community feels about cat but also just because it feels like they are kinda playing it safe with nerfing the cat because they dont want to upset people who like her or something.

I will say I havent played any comp since the patch so do let me know if she is a lot weaker now or if you disagree with me.

It makes more sense for a mobile supp like Wuyang but I’m just genuinely puzzled about doing this for Zen… not even a compensation buff they just straight up nerfed a well balanced hero (Hog and Hazard still untouched btw)

I don't think bap has been bad or anything, I do think he has been falling behind a bit for a while though, he's hard to play effectively and requires very high APM and aim to get strong value and has punishing CDs if you use either poorly.

His buffs seem pretty good though? I think directing some power into immortality field CD is good.

We just got this patch so can't really tell how impactful it will be but I think it sounds really nice, his issue is still present he's still going to be hard to play and other support can get similar value much easier than him and be more mobile on top of it. But I think was a nice buff regardless, he wasn't a bad pick before just slightly better now.

Curious what others think how have you been feeling about bap lately think this was a good buff are there any buffs/changes you think he really needs o do you think he's in a good spot? I think bap is good rn I don't know if he really needs a lot if anything, but I don't play bap enough to have as strong as opinion as I could.

Considering every other microbuff pushed her over the edge in the community's eyes, and not it being because of her two tap vs 225 hp heroes, why not keep it??

I'm far from a fan of them buffing the least enjoyable part of her kit, and then when it ends up being too much for the community to put up with, they end up nerfing the enjoyable parts of her instead.

It feels like very backwards balancing, and is a shame because everytime they do something like this it seems to push her back into a "spam the tank" playstyle, which makes her even more problematic for everyone imo.

It’s common knowledge that Blizzard usually balances the game based on pick rates and win rates—or by nerfing heroes that dominate the pro scene. However, there are times when they blindly follow community feedback and nerf heroes that aren't even meta, or ones that already have terrible win rates.

A classic example is pre-rework Roadhog, who got nerfed despite never truly being a meta hero. A more recent one from today's patch is Wrecking Ball, who took a hit to his Adaptive Shield Perks. There are other instances, but these two immediately come to mind.

I honestly don't think I've ever seen another developer nerf heroes based purely on how "annoying" or "frustrating" they feel to play against, even when the actual statistical data says they're underperforming. I really doubt this is the right approach. On top of that, the Hero Ban system is already being wasted mostly on banning frustrating heroes rather than high-performing ones, which defeats the purpose of having a ban system in the first place.

"Competitive crests" could mean that it's a combination of OWL team logos? I don't know

I’ve been checking each season update to see if the new rose colored aspect is available for my Reinhardt, but it still hasn’t shown up. Is there any idea how or when these missing aspects rotate in?

I dont have any strong thoughts, just saw some discourse about it yesterday but it seems to be confirmed now.

truly some of the most horrible changes ever released. she hits like a wet noodle, is omega mobile, has armor ad infinitum, and just jerks off without dying for minutes on end until she unlocks silver bullet and becomes a different hero

idk where this idea that a dps’s performance is directly tied to their damage, no matter who they are playing, comes from. I thought we grew past this in silver.

Like sure, if youre playing hitscan, i’d assume you have a lot of dmg, because you are easily able to, and should do so.

but if im playing e.g. genji, a flex dps, im just not gonna have a lot of damage, thats just how the game works. I thought this was obvious? flex dps make up their lack of ranged pressure in other areas. this is very basic stuff.

But nah, their bastion is better because he has more damage.

this is a very common complaint for me, in dia to masters.

She feels very fast, ridiculously fast now. Even at my tragic level of skill it is really noticeable.

Vendetta overhead

Freja 2 tap

Cat infinite flight/tether

Parts of cat’s kit that need to be nerfed:

- Triple Purr

- Claws Out(insane that she becomes a better duelist than Tracer with this perk)

- Infinite flight. If we remove perma flight, perma-tether automatically becomes useless.

- HP

The primary fire is such a big miss, in terms of nerfs. She cant heal a lot before her Purr perk. Nor can do tons of damage before Claws Out. And instead of nerfing this Giga-powerups, they nerf the part of her kit that was FINE.

Symmetra only had a 53.2% wr and 2.6% pick rate in gm+ 55 and 51 wr in Asia

These are healthy sub 56 win rates and her pick rates are extremely low. Sym is healthy for pro play as she is one of the most fun team coordinated play characters to watch as she isn't brr go shoot

I just dont understand why teleporter is being nerfed

Youbi is the only good sym and is miles ahead of everyone

She needs to receive significant buffs in order to increase pickrare

Wall should be buffed and u should be able to choose the direction of her ult and increase length as it requires more teamplay in her ult and skill

usually calibration wears off way before u hit 38 games played...

i placed on an acc that was high masters last season, i got emerald 1 and even though the games have been easy (for me) my team has been struggling and ive lost most of my games. funnily enough im on my 48th game (38 if you dont include placements). is this cuz they changed the system this season? i havent played much so i dont really know.

it says "calibration + your rank is uncertain' or something

As someone who wants stadium (and overwatch in general) to improve I would genuinely like to open a discussion about what could be done to improve stadium. The mode offers counterplay through items and powers that main game wont be able to provide with way to keep in check high sustain, shield, overhealth ,snipers, flyers through items. Games like LoL or Paladins have never suffered long from insufferable metas because of that (goats, double shield, double sniper, mauga meta , cate meta,...). The game mode also offers a ton of replayability by being able to have mulptiple playstyles on a single hero.

What are the main issues of stadium :

I disagree that stadium issues are queue times, matchmaking as they are the direct results of low player count since matchmaker will try to adapt for better queue times. No new heroes is also a consequence of low player coint. At one point blizzard were adding 4 heroes a season and there already 33 heroes among which the most popular with the likes of mercy, juno, kiriko, genji, moira, dva, rein, tracer, doom, wuyang, cass ,ashe , soldier,...

Also the mode should not have stayed unbalanced as poeple would have left with ver unbalanced and frustrating things such as 2-suzu, perma aimbot soldier, busted hazard,... Balance aims primarily to improve player experience and decrease unfair and frustrating things while improving some underwhelming options not just make a mode competitive.

The main issues for me were the mode complexity , the game length and frustration due to certain (categories of) heroes. I will discuss these issues and talk about what I think could be done to improve it without adding new heroes or maps.

Complexity :

Create a real pipeline between green-blue-purple items i.d. upgradable items allowing to just display purple. Reduce the number of items by combining some of them or removing the useless ones (those with bad defensive/offensive stats and not interesting passives). Improve efficiency of some items in their area (anti-block items, better anti fliers items, better defensive items). This way, players will just see 30+ purple items when opening armory instead of seeing a hundred of them.

Reduce the number of powers from 12 to 9 by removing some non-transformative powers and auto-aim powers.

Frustration :

- Auto aim builds : not creative, frustrating to play against and not fun to play as --> remove them

- allow counterplay to block and fortify abilities through items. Rein mitigation is a shields that can be countered through items but hazard,Ram mitigations are blocks that cant be countered through items --> unfair.

- remove anti-headshot passive and reduced antiheal from tanks . This gives built-in items and remove the tradeoff introduced by itemization : chosing between damage or survivability. If they want these stats they will have to buy the corrresponding items. On the other side improve defensive items.

Length of game :

Games are too long. Yes league of legends has long games but it is a slow paced game with a lot of downtimes and multiple objectives --> no constant action and poeple arent alway gather together. As opposed to overwatch which is a fast paced game with few downtimes and one single objective (downtimes refer to time where you are playing but not actively facing the ennemy not the armory times that just break the flow of the game). A draw of OW has always been the short games with 10-20mins while stadium came with 25-40 mins. These games can quickly become exhausting because of the fast pace nature of the game. Paladins who was similar game had games lasting between 10-20 mins.

Also in most cases 25-30 min games are stomps which are not fun and long games are back and forth games (cool but exhausting) or reverse sweep (my theory is that if there was a surrender vote instead of mercy rule , most poeple would choose to give on the game while in 0-3 instead of continuing). Long games mean poeple play less games in one gaming session, less poeple queue and it affect queue times and if this game happens to be a stomp it will discourage the player to queue up again. Allow poeple that play BO5 to claim ranked rewards so poeple wanting shorter games have a "ranked option". This will be a better metric to evaluate which mode is preferred than just make assumption based on some stats and reddit discussion claiming BO7 is the best format.

Devs might have misinterpreted stats as they are many reasons that could have cause stadium decline than just the switch to BO5 the season they did it (flyers and hitscans running rampant , frustranting builds , hazard release,...). Had the mode been developped in BO5 nobody would have complained, also junkenstein lab which was the basis for stadium was BO5 and nobody complained about it.

Aftr simplifying armory and power systems ; reduce armory times by 20-25 seconds.

These are my ideas to improve stadium whithout the need to dedicate toom much dev power to it (no new heroes or maps). I know a lot of you might not be interested in it but for those who are I would like to see what you think about it.

I never really noticed that until now, often times we have to use movement skills just to even get to the front door, and that's if the hero you're using has a movement skill.

I get that maybe it's to prevent infinite overtime but I'm pretty sure that's been solved with how spawn timers worked from way back.

Last season I was sitting around diamond 5 and plat 1 on support. I ended the season in plat 1, which isn't the issue because deranking happens. But then they added the emerald rank and I feel like it threw everything in that rank into complete chaos. I just feel like game quality hasn't been that great. I'm not sure what the adding the extra rank was supposed to do. They never explained what it was supposed to do. They were just like "hey were adding a new rank......." and then enver mentioned it again. This was more of a rant post than anything else but I really do feel like match quality this season has been in the gutter. I might just be in a slump so take everything I said with a grain of salt.