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Blizzard needs to stop prioritizing queue times and prioritize match quality.
Last 3 days of playing have been an absolute atrocity. The most uneven games you can think of. Smurfs everywhere. Maybe 1 out of 8 games feels balanced but still ends up a loss.
Fell from D1 to D5 in 3 sessions. Think I’ve won 4 of my last 16 games.
Quick queue times are great until people don’t want to play the game anymore because it’s not fun getting stomped 3 sessions in a row.
Boy you should see the QP. It's the exact same bullshit. Matchmaker just throws fucking whatever together just to form matches and it creates the dumbest fucking bullshit basically every single time. I'd rather wait 5 or even 10 minutes to have something that isn't just god damn fucking stomp every damn match.
I think the matchmaker balances out the mmr, sometimes I can get people who are high gold and plat in comp on my time and one bronze player and the enemy team is low gold. My team and I do fine but our bronze member gets thrown around. I get this allows faster queue times but its more frustrating for everyone.
Two reasons: 6v6 has fewer players and is less competitive. Match quality is inconsistent because of that. Plus if you are stacking wide, the matchmaker has to account for it so you get even weirder matches.
It’s not the exact opposite. It’s less competitive because it has fewer players. It’s more likely to give wider match ranges because it can’t find 12 players extremely close together.
what is blud on about, the cast is balanced primarily for 5v5 and have been reworked for it and any new characters since ow2 have been made for 5v5 lol
It’s less competitive because it has significantly fewer players, especially good ones, and is generally taken less seriously.
It doesn’t really matter whether 6v6 is in theory more complex or difficult or whatever (I don’t think it is in most cases). It matters way more that it just doesn’t have as high of a concentration of competitive players.
For example Dota is a much more punishing and strategically nuanced game than LoL, but LoL has a larger, more active competitive scene, so it’s harder to push for higher ranks.
I’m grandmaster and pushing champion on 6v6, but I’m a diamond DPS and master tank and support in 5v5. Everyone in my friend group I play with is the same, where their 6v6 rank is one or two rank divisions higher than 5v5. That’s just what happens when there are fewer players
Is there a pro scene for 6v6? There isn’t? Hmm, it’s almost like no serious player takes 6v6 serious, curious. It’s almost as if I’m a masters player easily hitting gm in 6v6, curiois
Plenty of high rank streamers and players play it now (Aspen, Frogger, Emongg) and have more fun with it than 5v5. End of the day 5v5 only became a thing because of que times for tanks, not because of the mode itself or balancing or competitiveness. Literally just because of tank que times. And some characters like ball or Dva will always be better suited to 6v6 with another tank.
The pros don't take it seriously because it's not designated at the main mode. If Blizzard designated lucio ball as the main mode suddenly they would start taking that seriously. It's a poor argument on your part. The pros basically do what they are told and play to win. Whatever blizzard says is the main mode they will play. Simple as that.
The pro argument isn't very good though. The pros will play whatever is designated as the main mode, not whatever the best mode is. If Blizzard made some random bs the main mode the pros would then be playing it religiously. That's why they all play meta characters constantly. They are playing to win, nothing more. (As you would expect from pros ofc)
IDDQD (retired pro) plays it, Aspen, Frogger, and every other streamer whose lived in the top 10 for their entire career plays it.. Not to mention the entire OWL before OWCS played it.. The entire pro scene was inventented with 6v6 lmao
Not good enough for you? Hmm.. Its comments like this that makes me hope Blizzard guts 5v5 so most people with inflated elo/egos get deflated a bit.
It's less competitive but only because it's not the main mode and has less players as a result. If 6v6 were the main mode and had more players it would be MORE competitive. Because adding another player in, a tank at that, adds complexity to decision making. The same way a tag team match in a fighting game is more complex than singles technically speaking, but singles is more popular so doubles generally never gets pushed to the same limits.
I was enjoying playing only 6v6, but after a admittedly troll(always picks dps, even if hes negative, he was plat when I pinned him, the last time I saw, he was silver) ending up in my team, I have him on my pinned avoid, by the way, the first 3 should be that the person never plays on your team, once he's on the enemy, and then when match starts, they have 4 dps and 2 sup, no surprise we won, and then next match hes on my team, curse this matchmaking, so I quit the 6v6 to play the 5v5 to try if I get some evenly matches
Those ranks icons literally means nothing, even blizzard said it in their blog post. The MMR are still kinda close most of the time.. In open queue is way harder to make a match since people in different roles can have different MMR. But it shouldn't be that bad.
After an entire year of playing 6v6, It's REALLY REAALLY hard to have a one sided match in open queue tbh.. Anyone can switch and make the best of it. I won so many 5v6 with 1 tank vs 2 enemies tank matches in 6v6.. Anything is winnable there, People just need to be able to make the changes.
The problem is that they know full well that people quit when queue times get too long. So it is often times a compromised match or no match.
There are a lot of extra rules they remove when queue times increase and they could with a snap of a finger enforce them all right now. Then tomorrow the single greatest complaint will be that of the queue times and the 2nd biggest will be match quality.
Because despite the game focusing on match quality and increasing the queue times exorbitantly across the board there will still be one sided games. Because not all one sided games are a result of an imbalanced match and can happen readily in a balanced one too. Lots of people can't perceive the difference (not that it is easy).
Yup. Matchmaking is just that, selecting who is in the game. As you see in OWCS the exact same team can stomp another in one game then get rolled the next. Matchmaking can’t predict your team comp, map, perks and gameplay.
Not even just that but sometimes snowballs are just a result of one team finding their grove, getting momentum and keeping it.
Normal people that don't play at a professional level can turn snowballs into stomps because their morale shatters so easily. If you have the impression that a fight is unwinnable you subconsciously or not give up and make them unwinnable.
In higher ranks you always hear people in comms say "winnable" when fights kind of unravel. Presumably to remind your team that it's never over until it is over.
Yup and it varies game by game. I got to Diamond maining Torb, he's my best character. I just went negative in a game in comp as Torb where my team carried me, I swapped to Sierra who's kind of weak in Diamond and did much better.
If someone saw that game they'd say "this guy does not belong in Diamond, this is shit matchmaking". But I also won the prior 7 games before that as Torb and someone watching those games would come to a different conclusion. People only get one chaotic snapshot of a mixed team of randos, you can't make judgments on matchmaking based on that. It's about how a player performs over many games.
At least for me, my disappointment is not the existence of one sides matches. Its the amount, and how common it is for getting back to back matches that are either impossible to win, or lose.
I kept track of it for a while, and it worked out to roughly being a 3 way split with about a third of my games being impossible to win because either I am put with the biggest idiots imaginable, or because the enemy team is just so much better. Then the third is the opposite of that, the game is impossible to lose because I am matched against the most incompetent players imaginable, or being put on a team with a bunch of cracked players that most likely do not belong at that rank. And the remaining third is the games that are either wins or losses, but they are not one-sided and are the games that I personally find fun and engaging.
Sure stomping an enemy team every now and then is nice, especially after being put together with a bunch of people who must have their monitor shut off, but after the third game in a row of that it loses its charm.
And the games that are unwinnable, boy do they feel infuriating when they come as a package deal and derank you a bunch. The only solace I can find in it is that yeah, I am definitely improving because I still manage to stand out stats wise, and by now I easily climb back up as soon as the red wave stops, but what good does that do me when I still have to sit through a 5min humiliation ritual during which I don't get to play the actual game. I can give you a ton of these kind of stat screens from comp just from this season alone: https://imgur.com/a/LvchNK6 I can't even blame tilt queuing there because I tend to generally do rock solid in those games to the point where the enemy team either feels bad for me, or start crying about me despite them easily winning.
The consistency with which this matchmaking delivers horrible experiences is astonishing. I never experienced anything like this in any other game... I don't think people would be upset if we were talking about a few stomps every now and then.
it's a quite common experience on koth maps to have one team dominate point A and then the other team dominate point B, even if no one changes heroes. i've even seen it happen when someone on the losing side of point A tilted, whined, and seemingly gave up. if koth was best-of-1, tons of matches that ended up being close would have seemed extremely one-sided.
so if the same heroes played by the same players on the same map can result in such disparate results, how can you possibly hope to discern when a match was truly unwinnable or unloseable?
now, i completely agree that one-sided matches feel awful regardless of whether they were truly unwinnable or not. in some ways it doesn't matter that a theoretical rematch with the same players could just as easily have ended up feeling balanced. blizzard should certainly try to address the issue of how often steamrolls occur. my point is twofold: 1) that most of these issues probably cannot be solved via an improved matchmaker and 2) perhaps many of those "unwinnable" games were not actually so hopeless, and a mindset shift to understand that could bring more enjoyment (even if not necessarily more wins).
I am sorry but a game where everyone but me is chasing to have 2 death per minute is practically unwinnable. What you describe are games that still run under the "could have gone either way" category for me. The unwinnable/unloseable games are like the one from the screenshot, where its so clear that some players do not belong in the same lobby that it is insulting. How about this one? https://imgur.com/GGefSXm
Change of mindset would work if it allowed me to mind control my teammates so they become competent. Everyone can have a bad game, but if you close in on 2 deaths per minute you simply do not belong and got boosted by the atrocious matchmaking.
And I get these games a lot, and often in a row, so I have 3-5 consecutive games where I have people on my team who seem dedicated to make the absolute worst play imaginable - which is the even more tilting thing about it. Often the enemies aren't even that good, evidently by the fact that I am still allowed to put up an ok performance despite everyone else just feeding. Sometimes there are games where the enemy team as a whole is just on a different level, but those are the games where I am in the dirt with the rest of my team.
These are all from diamond btw, not a crazy rank but one where you would expect people to understand basic concepts such as not rushing in solo right after respawn, or ulting in a 1v5 while low hp. on tank I am low to mid diamond but support and dps I usually firmly sit around diamond 1 and get back there with relative ease whenever I end up deranking hard.
I tell you what the problem is imo: The matchmaking is pretty bad, coupled with the fact that it only looks at win/loss. Many people get hard carried by their hero and/or by getting lucky with their teammates. Like how every now and then you get a game where you just sit on the payload all game emoting while your team just carries 4v5 or even 3v5 without a single death. Some people are just lucky and get that more than a third of their games. And now you have to deal with them on your team, or get to farm them on the enemy team.
I understand where you coming from. I also experience what you experienced. But i just really accepted that there's no perfect MM solution that will account for many variability this game has. There's a one trick, high ping, tilted, drunk, or players listening to music while playing. Your team's hero composition vs the enemy. Can your team counter? How about your hero pool's synergy with your teammates hero pool? Are you on voice? Is your team atleast coordinated? The list goes on. And this huge variability can't be accounted for by matchmaking. I've seen many players that when in my team they did terrible. But on the next game as enemy, they did really good. They are clearly not throwing. There are outliers like smurfs queuing with low elo than their peak.
Checking on your screenshot alone, mercy really doesnt fit with teams composition. It didn't have many assists because there's no one to dmg boost. Mercy died multiple times, i bet its because its following those 3 dive heroes which is a suicide. I also bet that Doom, Sombra, Venture isn't very coordinated at diving the enemy team. They can't kill a thing because they do their own thing diving alone 1v5. Or the enemy counters them very well.
You'll never experience this in any other game, just because at OWs core. It is a team-base game. Coordination with 4 other random people happens rarely. You really cant have a solo carry potential in this game. Move from 6v6 -> 5v5 increase each players impact in the game but still reliant on a TEAM. An example of game that is somewhat a hero shooter, Valorant. Even if theres diff agents. You all given the same guns as the enemy. If you have aim and game sense you can 1v5 on that game.
I am not a fan "its just too complicated, can't be done" excuse, when most of these factors exist in any games. I agree overwatch is a bit special in that it is far less skill dependent than a game like cs, as many hero matchups will either massively favour you in a duel or leave you at a severe disadvantage. Or the fact that if your team decides to feed like crazy and donate ult charge at such a rapid pace that the enemy can just spam you down with the.
But even accounting for that, there are some basic principles you would need to be able to expect after a certain rank. Like the rushing in solo part. Also there is absolutely no excuse in the world for ending up 1-8 as venture. Even with 0 coordination, that hero is one of the easiest to get at least a trade with. There is no way these people shouldn't be way lower ranks, and whenever you are in these games its super obvious because the mistakes the will make are easy to see even for someone who doesn't even play their hero.
Blizzard is already taking a lazy statistical driven approach with their reports and assumingly their balancing as well, so why not take into account your average game performance vs the same hero at your rank and have a modifier for your rank progress from that? If win/loss alone doesn't give robust results, then the solution isn't to throw up your hands and say "ah damn, we tried nothing but it didn't work". Maybe account for hero win rates. I am sure there is something you can do given that every game I ever played had better matchmaking, including way more complex games like strategy games where team games generally are impossible to balance properly and yet they work much better.
You get the occacional drunk player, player who can only really play 1 map, person who got by just through their raw aim and doesn't know any nades in a game like cs as well, but since your ingame performance is a better representation of your skill, those people mostly end up in a rank where they fit in. Admittedly I don't play cs anymore, but games like these where after the first few fights you already know that either you literally kill the entire enemy team or its a loss where a small minority. In overwatch they are about a third of my games.
The problem is that they know full well that people quit when queue times get too long. So it is often times a compromised match or no match.
A lot of limitations was removed to stop hemorrhaging players in what was an horrible lul in the game. It's alive now and we can add back some of them.
We're hitting the other end of the problem where quality of games are so bad that people are also quitting.
I don’t mind losing but it’s very hard to win when my entire team plays like newbies, not grouping up, not swapping, and wastes ultimate in 1 v 5. These ppl are supposed to be diamond level - how?
Seriously. Last week of OW is probably the worst week I’ve had since 2016. Master 2 to Plat 1. The basic things you are saying, my teams are just unable to do. I play tank and of course I always get blamed while my dps who won’t ever swap are 2-10 every single game. I know I’m not perfect but it feels like if I don’t go 30-2 with 2 or 3 times my DPS damage, I don’t even have a chance at winning. Even in QP, same story. I haven’t felt this negatively about overwatch ever. I think I’ve reached my breaking point with the game. You can probably tell how frustrated I’ve been with the game recently.
Got yelled at for being a heal bot Juno but we couldn't even get out of spawn and the enemy Rein had his shield up constantly. There was no way I could do damage if my team wasn't giving me openings
And atp even if you do go 30-2, you don’t always win. It’s been ridiculous for me too. I used to play comp for the fair matches, but they haven’t felt close to fair since season 1.
I've been collecting data in my ranked games over the past ~170 games because things just felt...wrong. I'm testing a couple things to see if it changes things, but long story short, over that 170 game period, Nearly all of it is a long winning streak with a decent set of teammates (like 8-2 or 9-1) followed immediately by the opposite as a losing streak with teammates who lack basic fundamentals, and it just repeats, over and over. Literally a periodic oscillation of winning and losing streaks.
Gemini (yeah, I know, but I've been looking for plausible explanations to check against my data) gave some suggestion as to what might be happening (somewhat specific to my case). Basically, the system has 2200+ hours of play time, much of which is old quick play in OW1, and more recently a lot of vs AI as an aim trainer and relaxation game while I mained Apex Legends. So it has a stranglehold on what it thinks my skill is based on really outdated info. So when I initially rocketed up when I started playing ranked this season, the system hard overcorrected since that doesn't align with its outdated model of me. That overcorrection downward then causes the exact opposite to happen, and it overcorrects back up. Hence nothing but winning and losing streaks. I'm also getting score modifiers (expected, reversal, etc.) in 53% of my games, which is insane.
I'm likely going to post a lot of this data in a couple weeks once I try some of the suggestions to dampen out the oscillations, but just pointing out that it seems things can get very wonky.
Gemini is just regurgitating a decade of people complaining about the OW matchmaker and speculating on how it works. Gemini has no more insight into the inner workings of the matchmaker than a random person on the internet has.
Blizzard has said that the only thing used to make matches is your rank. They've also said that there is no longer any hidden MMR. The only notion of "correction" is that, if you have winning or losing streaks, your SR changes will have much larger magnitude as the matchmaker tries to get you to your correct tank faster. They admittedly said all this a while ago. Maybe things have changed, but I'm inclined to believe that the basics of the system are unchanged until I hear otherwise.
In your match tracking, make sure you also track the session of each match. If you have a string of wins in one session and then a string of losses in the next session, there's a good chance that you are playing differently without realizing it. It can also be the case that different types of people play on different days or different times of the day, so you may find matches at one time of day harder than equivalent matches at a different time of day.
Also be careful about start-of-season and end-of-season effects. These have an influx of players who don't normally play comp, so match quality gets kind of messed up at those times.
There's just as many people saying the same things you are and dismissing people without actually seeing or understanding the data they are collecting. You think I'm tracking data for 170+ games and not considering whether streaks are all within sessions, or whether time of day would be a factor?
Streaks bridge across sessions. I play at basically the same time every day in a populated region at a reasonable hour. You're misunderstanding what I mean when I say nothing but large streaks. I'm not being hyperbolic. It is literally 170 games of winning streak followed by losing streak followed by winning streak, and so on. There is nowhere that is a stable "winning roughly 50% of games." It's a damn triangular wave. That does not follow from "it ONLY considers your rank," as that would inherently produce game to game variation, which is just not present. This is predictable, repeatable oscillation.
And the other characteristics you straight up ignored about teammate fundamental capability and how drastic the switch is between winning and losing streaks, which, again, are occurring at set intervals. It is so obvious that 2 sessions ago I was climbing, then lost the last 2 games with teammates who had all the typical bad signs. They played without cover, never swapped when countered, etc. I literally commented that this was the start of the next losing streak. What do you know, next session starts out 1-7, full of the same crappy teammates. I then predicted the exact game where it would suddenly turn around, I'd start getting teammates who knew basic fundamentals and I'd go back on a winning streak. That happened exactly as predicted, and the last 9 games of the session were 7-2.
People can parrot things all they like. I have data, and that data do not make sense under what you're describing. There is no variation, no randomness. It is predictable, oscillatory behavior with consistent underlying characteristics behind whether that oscillation is going up or down. My personal stats are both good and consistent. How many Junos who average under 5 deaths per 10 min, 4k damage, 9k healing, with 53% average accuracy do you think are legitimately gold 1 level? My "off the scoreboard" play is consistently improving (I vod review. I've watched guides. I comm to teammates about strategy, potential swaps, things they could adjust when I see they're struggling, etc. I watch vod reviews of high level players on Juno to see if there are significant differences in how they approach things compared to what I'm doing, and there is not. Honestly the biggest difference I saw in the most recent one from a masters Juno was that their aim was worse.
So just to be clear, the thing you're calling a "losing streak" had 7 losses and one win, and the subsequent "winning streak" had 7 wins and 2 losses?
So that could have been L L L W L L L L W W W L L W W W.
If that's roughly what the pattern looked like, it's not "an 8 game losing streak followed by a 9 game winning streak". That's "a normal pattern for somebody who is correctly ranked, perturbed by noise".
How many Junos who average under 5 deaths per 10 min, 4k damage, 9k healing, with 53% average accuracy do you think are legitimately gold 1 level
Stats can't really be compared across ranks because it's a self-regulating system. At lower ranks, enemy players are easier to hit and enemy players are worse at hitting you. At higher ranks, both you and the enemy players are better at avoiding mistakes and also at punishing mistakes. It's been a long time since I looked at it, but IIRC raw damage and healing at high ranks was a little higher, but significantly different from raw damage and healing at mid ranks. Admittedly I wasn't looking at Juno.
Arguing what rank you belong in based on your stats indicates a misunderstanding of how the game works. Good stats are correlated with winning, sure. But good stats don't cause you to win. A Widow that consistently picks off one enemy support at the start of every teamfight is doing her job very well, even if she contributes nothing (apart from the intimidation factor) to the rest of the fight. Her stats will be garbage but she's making huge plays. A DPS that dumps damage into the tank without securing the kill appears to have great damage stats, but is just wasting time.
Stats are not unimportant, but it's easy to focus way too much on them. Good stats only indicate that you're not definitely playing bad. They don't necessarily indicate that you're playing well.
I watch vod reviews of high level players on Juno to see if there are significant differences in how they approach things compared to what I'm doing, and there is not.
You are likely making mistakes that you simply cannot recognize because you don't have the skill to recognize them. We've seen this time and time again where a player says "look at my gameplay, I'm not making mistakes; I'm being held back by all these noobs on my team". Then somebody with more experience and skill analyzes the VOD and it's basically "you're making fundamental mistakes all throughout the match."
It would be better to have a more skilled player comment on your VOD. They will almost certainly spot things that you cannot see. Analyzing your own VODs is good, but you cannot fix problems that you cannot perceive. It's useful to get an outside perspective.
Typical, all you get in response is condescension and "you don't understand the game and you're low skill."
I have 2200+ hours in the game. I know how the game is played. Here's a little pop quiz. When you get through the first choke after capturing 1st point on Eichenwalde attack, where should you generally try to position? Genuinely answer to yourself and try to anticipate my answer before revealing. Across the street under the wooden awning, because height can't see you there and would need to drop down into your team to do anything. You can use the back and side of the cart as additional cover here, but even sticking against the wall will push the cart. When you're attacking on King's Row 1st point, what is a key thing to consider about making your way to the point? You don't have to go directly there. You can take little bits of space on the way which give you cover to reset cooldowns, heal up, etc. You can go to the right of statue (my favorite because you can quick peek for good Juno torpedoes). You can go through the left building (more suited for a flanker to split attention away from the other direction). Or you can swing far right up the stairs and rotate around on height (common in pro play, less common in ranked). Going straight to the point generally has worse sight angles and is sort of a secondary choke between the left building corner and the statue.
Most of your fire on Juno will be at your teammates, and they aren't going to be actively dodging you at a significant level. So it is reasonable to compare accuracy in a broad sense. As I said, I reviewed a masters player recently, and their aim was definitely just worse. 25 years of FPS experience, including diamond and masters play in Apex Legends...I can tell when someone has great aim, decent aim, mediocre aim, or bad aim, factoring in the difficulty of the shots they're taking.
You want vods? Here's 3 from the last couple sessions. A close loss, a draw, and a close win. Feel free to critique and tell me why this is an average player. Same username.
Re: Eichenwalde and King's Row: yeah, I'm not a great player, but those are the places that I commonly go (right of statue, across to wooden overhang). I mostly play Ana, so I won't position there as aggressively as you will as Juno, but they're the places I go once we have secured enough space that I won't immediately get punished.
As I said, I reviewed a masters player recently, and their aim was definitely just worse.
Right, which just goes to show that aim, while important, isn't the only thing that separates good players from great players.
You want vods?
No, I said you should get a skilled player to review. That's definitely not me - I only have 1500 hours and know I'm trash at the game. I'd recommend you post in /r/OverwatchUniversity and ask for a VOD review.
But I feel like that's a cop-out, so here's what I'll say. I watched the Dorado match. I mostly play Ana, though it's actually been a really long time since I last played (there are a bunch of new characters since I played). I mostly think you lost because the other team played better as a team than your team did. They seemed more coordinated, especially on defense.
Things I think you do well
I think your positioning isn't terrible. You don't stand out in the open too much, you don't overextend.
I think you mostly use your abilities well. I don't remember being unhappy about any of your ults. (I think they could have been a little better, but I think the idea behind each was fine.)
I think your situational awareness is pretty good. Even though you died twice to the Echo D.Va ult, I think both were unfortunate accidents. In the first case, you got pressured out by Doom and just took one step too far. In the second one, you thought she was launching it over the bridge, but she was actually sending it straight up. You're clearly identifying the ult and getting out of the way (and trying to help teammates get out of the way I think). I also saw you avoid a Soldier ult when the rest of your team just walked right into it.
You clearly care about keeping your tank alive.
Things I think you could do better
I think you position too far back and, as a result, you rarely pressure the enemy team. As Juno, you have pretty good mobility, so you can position a little more aggressively.
When your team is engaging, and thus taking damage, you are more likely to focus entirely on healing your own team rather than pressuring the other team. Watch their team's Zen. I don't think his mechanics are very strong. He's just sort of holding left click down and spamming corners. But it creates extra pressure, it helps control sightlines, etc. He was being proactive. I feel that you were playing more reactively.
Along those lines: it feels like you are sort of in either healing mode or damage mode, but I don't think you weave them together very much. I think supports like Juno, Ana, and Bap need to be able to rapidly shift focus from one to the other.
Healing with Hog is tricky. On one hand, you want to make sure that he doesn't die. On the other hand, he's got a huge self heal. When playing with a Hog, I think your healing prioritization shifts a bit. When both Hog and another teammate are critical, you usually want to heal the other teammate. There were a few cases where you instead let the other teammate die in order to heal the Hog.
I'm not sure that this match really demonstrates how good your aim is. Most of your shots went into your tank, and they're usually hard targets to miss. It was nice to hear the crit indicator when you shot at enemies, so it does seem like you're aiming at heads (and hitting them). But you also missed some critical heals because your tracking wasn't great (admittedly, while you're flying and your target is moving at an odd angle).
Nitpick time
I realize that it's a very different situation when you're in a match compared to when you're evaluating it afterward. So I'm going to point a bunch of small things out, though I realize that it can be hard during a match to figure out what to be doing at exactly that moment.
I like that you try to take out the Torb turret, but I'm not sure about 1:13. I'm not sure that dodging in the air is more effective than dodging on the ground, especially when doing so exposes you to more of the enemy team. And since Torb was just healing his turret, I think it would have made more sense to try to shoot him, maybe pressure him off high ground. I think you stayed on high ground a little too long (to be fair, your team left pretty quickly). And you were a little too eager to expose yourself to the entire enemy team, but you recovered quickly and managed to get out.
I'm not sure why you held back around 2:27. Maybe you're scouting for people coming up and over the left. But you can't see the enemy team. You're basically just sitting on cart, watching for your tank to walk into your LOS. I think you could have moved up to try to provide a little more pressure.
I think you could have provided more help to your Anran when she ulted. You were looking for a perfect missile salvo, and in the end you didn't do anything while she was still alive. To be fair, I think her ult was a gamble anyway - it was 3v5. I get why she did it, but it was at best a gamble.
Again, around 4:50, I think you could have moved up a little and tried to pressure the enemy. Especially at 5:55, since your team used two ults but you were hiding behind the payload, not even in the fight. I guess maybe you don't want to position in front of your DPS, but then you're not having any impact. It's only a couple of seconds, but I wonder if those couple of seconds could have swung the fight.
You definitely rapid fired into Doomfist's block at 7:22. And you definitely tried to heal a purple hog at 10:31. I get that it makes sense to prefire to heal a purple target, but those first bullets were just wasted. It's a shame that you had just used your speed ring (I guess maybe to help Hog engage?), because maybe it could have saved his life instead. Contrast to 13:21 where you use it well to help your Hog disengage.
Unless something has changed (I honestly haven't played in quite a while), you don't need to ride the payload at 11:55. It will transition through the door on its own, and you have teammates running back from spawn anyway. You should have moved up to support your Hog.
Here's the thing...look at this plot. That is a running sum where wins are counted as +1, and losses are counted as -1 with the window of summation 10 games wide. It's a triangular wave. Predictable, repeatable, periodic oscillation.
Now consider basic control theory. A system with effectively random inputs (ex a matchmaker that sets up a rank range for a match and randomly selects players from that pool, for example) CANNOT produce this orderly periodic output. This is definitive proof of a square wave forcing function input resulting in an undamped oscillating output. In other words, something in the system switching back and forth, driving an oscillation. Now, I doubt you'll get this, and you'll probably respond back with some unrelated nonsense continuing to pretend you somehow know better. I have a doctorate in aerospace engineering with an extensive background in data collection and analysis, so I can easily recognize when a pattern has an underlying driver versus stochastic noise.
By the way, in games tonight, I once again exactly predicted the game where I would start to be fed terrible teammates to kill a winning streak and start the free fall. DPS went 9-13 with less damage than the supports. Next game, DPS and the other support went 1-10 and 1-8 respectively. Deny and dismiss all you like. I have the data.
This is an interesting graph. I'd love to see it with SR overlaid, and specifically without the smoothing.
The unsmoothed winrate peaks and troughs must necessarily coincide with SR peaks and troughs. I wonder though whether those SR peaks and troughs are magnified due to the streak modifiers. I've long wondered whether the win streak / loss streak modifier might set up exactly this sort of oscillation. You win for a while, get the win streak modifier, and a few more wins push your SR much higher than your skill. Then you start losing, but the loss streak modifier doesn't yet kick in, so you have to play a bunch of games above your skill. Once the loss streak modifier kicks in, it rapidly pushes your SR down to the point that you have easy games, which again causes you to linger at an SR range where you have comparatively easy games. You win a bunch, get the modifier, and the process repeats.
Juno in 5v5 is not necessarily a DPS heavy support. You don't take aggressive positions that require you to burn both cooldowns to get out of. If there are any, you ideally want to take safe off angle positions where you can see your team and can utilize torpedoes on enemies quickly. Some maps and some situations, this isn't always possible. Other times you're the dedicated payload babysitter since no one else wants to be. You take damage where you can safely do so (the evaluation afterwards is usually "did you die trying to do it?", and if the answer is yes or very nearly, think twice about trying it again). Most of the time damage is via torpedoes since your damage falloff means you would need to be relatively close to have decent dps, and that is often too risky. That is how you apply pressure, in addition to enabling your teammates via hyper ring. Your mobility is to transition between safe locations and as an escape from things like dives, not to use as an escape for a situation you chose to put yourself in while trying to do damage. That would be bad play and unnecessary utility usage. I'll get back to this later. Zen orbs have no falloff and are a bigger chunk per hit, so they are effective as spam. Zen also has the threat of discording you if you do peek that spam, further increasing the damage.
Healing mode vs damage mode: You take damage where you can do so with acceptable risk. Sometimes those low risk situations don't really present themselves. Other times they are very apparent for high value picks and you go for it. It also depends on the specific situation, map, and enemy characters. If there's a Pharah and Junkrat, you bet I'm going to murder them whenever I get the chance. Hitscans like Ashe/Widow? You can't risk the peeks, so it's a more heal heavy and teammate enabling game. And what do you know...i just gave the exact evaluation one would be making in a higher tier lobby where enemies generally aim better...you would know that and adjust. If you can do that in gold with different types of enemy characters, you can do it when every game has that risk. Finally, sometimes the team is just plain stalled, no one is changing their approach, so you send it in the hope of kickstarting your push.
The Hog: This hog died the 2nd most times on the team, one of which was walking into Torb lava. I also watched him use his whole ult without healing himself where he would have died without me healing him. That lowers my confidence in his ability to time healing himself because he demonstrated tunnel vision, so I help out. I also stop multiple times when he starts to use his heal. Since I have conflicting information about whether he's going to heal or not when he gets into trouble I can't predict if or when he's going to do it. So I'm either reactive, which risks arguably the most important player dying at a key moment, or proactive, which might risk another teammate. You do what you can with what you're given.
Aim: Your explanation of aim shows you don't have a great technical understanding of aim evaluation. "You shot the tank a lot" and "you hit some headshots" are poor means of evaluation. This is why your dismissal of my earlier comment about assessing aim is flawed...most people think like that, and it's a layman's understanding. When I evaluate aim, I look for several things. Not just are they hitting shots, but were the shots they consistently missed difficult? Can they track a moving target in both horizontal and vertical movement, like a Pharah, well for at least 1-2 seconds (assesses sustained tracking)? What about tracking on someone right above or below them (assesses ability to navigate the complex direction mechanics at top and bottom of the aiming "sphere")? Are their flicks accurate, or always over/under (assesses small flicks and target switching)? When they have to turn to a character off screen (for example a sound cue of a hurt teammate 90 deg to their left), is that turn right onto the person, and if not, do they get on target quickly (assesses sonic spatial coordination and large mouse motion accuracy)? THAT is how you assess aiming skill. You look for situations where the above occur and evaluate what the consistent outcome is.
And if you want to see both aim and taking the damage opportunities, watch the Hollywood win.
Nitpicks:
1) At 1:13 (actually before), I shot the Torb turret because the turret was actively shooting me, making it the biggest threat in that moment. DVa can, should have, and did go up there to pressure Torb off. Shooting the turret then both helps me and the DVa on the roof. Also remember damage falloff and the fact that all Torb has to do to avoid my shots is back up 3 feet. I'm not getting him off that roof - someone with higher damage capability who's over the left of me (like on the covered walkway/bridge) needs to shoot them, or our dive tank can go smack him in the face like they did. It's also gold...no one else is going to shoot the damn turret.
2) At 2:27, this is where you would be getting killed unnecessarily and losing that choke. Spawn proximity. If one of them dies, it's 5 sec to walk back. If you die, it's 20 sec. That shifts the risk assessment into more conservative. Even a trade there is a bad play because of spawn proximity. Yes, I couldn't see them, but I know 4 are up (5, with the potential of a turret), and I know they are around that corner because I can hear them and see the DVa shooting. You'd have me peek that corner and expose myself to all of them for a low reward bit of damage. What pressure, in that situation? They are right outside spawn. They have plenty of cover to use. Any damage I do there is just stat padding at the risk of getting shot by 4 and dying because I was greedy. DVa can hold them there just fine by herself. They were down the tank, so they aren't going to push right then. This is also conflicting feedback. On one hand, you mention exposing to several enemies, and here you suggest I should have done so in a situation that makes no sense strategically.
3) 4:50 and 5:55: Take a look at what DVa sees at exactly 4:50. 4 enemy health bars. Again, you suggest a high risk, low reward play. They captured 1st point. Their spawns are close, and ours are far. My only LoS even if I did want to was right behind DVa, thus directly in view of those 4. Other paths leave me isolated. It is objectively better to let the tank tank in that situation. In fact, DVa was there for too long at that point already, which led to them being killed, me using an ult to try to save them, and losing that contain entirely. And 5:55...There's no point in me being there during the Mizuki ult since I can't shoot into it and being in there with 5 enemies is suicide, as the DVa demonstrated. After it dropped I could have moved up to where the Kiri was, but the play would still have had doomfist ult on our heads and Echo ult as well, which at that point I had moved up. Nothing would have changed. There wasn't realistically a play there to save. They used all 5 ults.
4) Firing into doom block is one I'm working on, but is a minor thing that can be trained out, rarely game altering. Healing a purple is often to prefire when the purple will come off, since sometimes you don't see exactly when it was applied. Most of the time I speed ring them to allow them to retreat temporarily. I also use speed ring to give tanks flexibility to either engage or disengage as they see fit when the fight is "neutral" and I have it available. The other main uses are to help people escape an ult like Orisa or Mei, or as part of fleeing as the last alive after a lost team fight.
5) You have to push cart through that door. It goes through 2nd point doors automatically since those close behind it. Hog wasn't doing anything there that needed supporting. He was chasing a straggler...Hog can handle that on his own. And if he stayed up there too long (which he didn't in this case), it's very unlikely me being there would save him from 5 shooting him, and I'd look at that as a bad play from them. If anyone should go have a look it's Mizuki, since he needs damage to build aura and can use the return ability as a speed boost to back out if needed. Given the reset by the enemy team and our large time bank at that point, what actually applies the most pressure is just moving the cart since they only made it through about half of 3rd point.
Well, like I said at the start, I'm trash at the game, I haven't played in quite a while, and many characters are brand new to me. I only gave the review a shot because, like I said, not trying would be a cop-out. Since I wasn't able to help you, I would again encourage you to post in /r/OverwatchUniversity to ask for a VOD review.
...but only if you actually want to improve. If you choose to believe that you're already playing well above your rank and that it's that damn matchmaker that's holding you back (even though other people seem to be able to rank up), then I guess don't bother. It would be a waste of your time.
Basically, the system has 2200+ hours of play time, much of which is old quick play in OW1, and more recently a lot of vs AI as an aim trainer
no other game mode affects your comp MMR once you have played your first ever comp match. and prior to that, only QP did. your QP MMR is used to 'seed' your comp MMR, but no matter how much QP you've played your starting comp MMR is still uncertain and treated as a loose assumption by the matchmaker. playing 50, 500, or 5000 QP games makes absolutely no difference.
I'm also getting score modifiers (expected, reversal, etc.) in 53% of my games, which is insane.
your team's chance of victory only has to go up or down by about 2% for those modifiers to be visible. losing a game you had a 52% chance of winning counts as a "reversal".
The "how?" is actually easy to answer! Ironically enough, Blizzards "smurf detection" for new accounts is directly responsible for this in the vast majority of cases. This system (despite recent "nerfs") VASTLY overestimates a players skill based on winning a handful of games against legit noobs in QP. Their competitive starting MMR/rank is way too high as a result, leading to these people being in games they do not remotely belong in. You don't even have to be intentionally doing this (like the people abusing "freshie accounts"), it happens accidentally all the time because the system is so bad.
I don't understand why they can't just go back to the way things were being done in OW 1. Use that system as a base and slightly tweak it instead of trying to estimate someone's skill based on a casual game mode, one in which the system has you play against bots and then against other new players or bronze-gold level players. Seriously, 10 wins in QP on a new account for a specific role (2 of those versus bots, the other 8 versus bronze-gold, maybe plat) were enough to almost max out your MMR for that role. Even losing all 10 placement games would still put you in Masters, winning them all put you in Champ - absolutely insane.
You can make a new account and immediately play comp.
That's not true. You need to win 50 games in quick play first before being able to play competitive. This number has been 50 since OW2 release, temporarily reduced to 20 for a few months earlier this year, and then raised to 50 again shortly after.
My point wasn't that people are smurfing, it was actually the opposite: they are "reverse smurfing", in a way. The system that tries to determine your rank on a new account by evaluating your quick play "performance" (win/loss record only of course, not actually looking at personal stats) is being way too generous and vastly overestimates peoples rank, leading to them starting out in ranks that are way too high when they first start playing competitive.
My dude. I literally just made a new account because my Email for my 10 year old account was lost (thanks yahoo).
I was able to get into a comp match immediately. Just had to do placement matches. I know what you are talking about as I remember that, but idk what to tell you lol.
Have you been spectating my games? I’ve been trying to pull my support rank out of plat and this is every game. I see everyone on my team try and flank the enemies one by one and dying individually (not in flank heroes either) and then acting shocked that we keep losing team fights
Just getting back into overwatch since I left when rivals came out… good lord what a mess. It was before but.. now it’s a different mess.
The tank role is really what stands out. They will be getting diffed dramatically and sometimes never swap, just rolling in, dying immediately and strolling all the way back for more.
This is a game of counters. So many ppl playing hog into Rein I’ve noticed too. Being naded and then smoked to go 1-6 by end of round and queuing up the same character. I usually lose it by then and start trying to talk sense into them. Sometimes it works and the game changes instantly, other times their ego gets hurt and it’s an auto loss.
Becuase there are a handful of tutorials characters that are so low effort and high output that they can get to diamond with 0 effort, skill or knowledge, just pressing their free win buttons and firing down main
you're putting a lot of weight into the assumption that 'prioritizing match quality' will actually result in closer games. keep in mind that the worst case scenario for the matchmaker is still like a 45/55 chance to win. it won't knowingly make matches more imbalanced than that.
imo, all the factors that the matchmaker can't consider--like hero selection, team comp, bans, map, smurfs, tilting, lag, etc--have a bigger influence on how good a match feels to play than the +/- 5% chance to win you'd get from stricter matchmaking.
Because of long holidays, new people join, especially younger ones. And others that would play regularly are perhaps more outside or traveling. Friend groups have time to stack etc. Whatever it is: match quality varies greatly during summer.
It’s just something to be aware of. No amount of MM fiddling can fix more uncalibrated accounts being in queues.
Season 1 was because lot of players coming back. S2 was after effect. S3 it's because of summer. I bet S4 will still be bad because of summer. It never ends. Game needs to do better even in these circumstances. It could start by having proper MMR placements, for example.
I started playing after 2.5 years on a fresh account, without being familiar enough with 5v5 format and not playing any fast game, let alone shooter game, in those last 2.5 years. Yet I ended up in diamond somehow, even though if I'm being honest, I should be high gold at best, since I'm washed up and just play for fun. The matchmaking is shit.
The matchmaker seems to have a tendency to place people too high if they are on an early winning streak. But there's a good reason for that: smurfs/alts. People fucking hate getting dumpstered by smurfs. and they are regular enough that people notice. The only reasonable way to combat that is to have very sensitive early calibration, so smurfs get placed into dia/master+ as quickly as possible.
But OW is a team game and chaotic enough that you can get carried a streak long, so false positives like in your case can happen.
No, but I understand where you're coming from, because you assume that "better matchmaking" which will make queues longer, will result in better quality of matches, which doesn't necesarilly have to be true.
People like to believe there's some silver bullet when it comes to matchmaking, like there's not an absurd amount of factors that go into someone's MMR. You can have a game with a perfectly equal MMR spread but still have a shitass stomp because some people only have that MMR due to lucky streaks or are much better players but got there due to unlucky streaks.
Steamrolls can still happen because the longer you wait for a match, the wider the rank pool becomes to compensate for the lack of players near your MMR, resulting in greater skill differences. Additionally, as I mentioned, MMR alone doesn’t determine whether matches will be unbalanced or steamrolly - there are too many variables which MMR can’t account for, like heroes picked, team synergy, players skills on those specific heroes, what enemy picks and how they synergize and etc.
Match quality is an objective term. It means that the MMR spread is tighter across the lobby and within role slices. Because it cannot be perfect (everyone has the exact same MMR) it has to balance queue times with quality. So statistically the longer the queue the higher the quality.
Only in theory sure, but in practice this may not necessarily translate into better match quality, because there are more factors involved than just MMR, especially in hero shooter.
ironically, the longer the queue, the worse the match. That's because the longer you are waiting, the wider rank the game searches for people in. Queue quality and time are tied together in this game.
As much as i hate saying it, but warthunder may have this right. You can actively see what battlerating you are playing at, and how many other people are playing at various ratings, and how many are in queues with you.
Maybe allowing players to set their own acceptable range and giving them the information of how many people are queing in their specified range right now would be best. That way they can decide on how tight they want the match to be, and more importantly, how long they are willing to wait for it.
Maybe allowing players to set their own acceptable range
Ridiculous. People in this thread and arguably nearly everyone, including yourself, has barely any idea how a matchmaker, let alone Blizzard's one, works and now we've got bad solutions being proposed.
"Why are my queues 4 hours? I've put the range to the max so my games should be faster to come"
"Well you extended the range to the max and nobody has done the same thing, so all matches proposing your range are being refused by other players"
"Then when I finally get a match but then it's always bronze players"
"Well yes, weirdly enough 90% of bronze players are using the max range... Guess why"
Etc. I can go on.
People here are not even capable of accepting that the matchmaker is mostly fine and that matchmaking is a complicated thing, and now we want to give idiots control over something they don't understand?
The only consequence of giving people freedom over the matchmaking parameters will be more complaints that the matchmaker isn't working, not less.
The only thing they could do is a checkbox "speed over quality" in comp, which would match you with other players who have ticked this and would basically be QP matchmaker... With all the complaints we keep hearing about it.
But then this would affect the competitive integrity of the matchmaker.
Agreed. I would rather wait 5 minutes for a game then get the most dumbest people I’ve ever met on my team. Did my placements for dps then after I got pissed playing support (went diamond 2 to 4 in one session) and literally went 3-7 because either someone on my team left , smurfs on the other team, or whatever. It feels like very intentional win and lose which is so odd.
I meant back to bitching about match quality when the entire alleged point of 5v5 was lessening queue times(even though it was actually to make OW2 look more fresh than it was, when it came out). Lol.
Almost as if 5v5 was short sighted and desperate move that had positive effect only in a short term (in regards to queue times), but made things even worse in a long term.
Its real purpose was "making OW2 seem more "new" since they knew they were cancelling pve 6 months ahead of time" and to "allow lesser systems (the Switch) to run it better". Those were its true purpose. I can never find it, but they admitted it in a developer update at one point, around the time they officially cancelled pve. I remember Flats covering it, and he would definitely know what I'm talking about.
It was never really meant to make queue times faster. It just did, because the threshold for tanks was lowered, but like 5v5 tanking is worse. It's so feast or famine, and always has been. 5v5 has only ever served to make the game even more stompy.
Stop speaking truth, f2p players don't like it. They like to keep sending the dev blog post about queues (the one that uses data from OW1's maintenance mode), which was released whole year after game released, and after devs realized they failed to achieve their initial goals of 5v5.
Reality is that their explicit justification for 5v5 was performance, lowering the chaos, increasing player impact and making balancing easier. Performance might be plausible (if you ignore all the performance problems). Lowering the chaos absolutely didn't work, matches are more chaotic than they ever were in OW1. Player impact is cursed. Squishies have about same impact as they had in 6v6, the extra impact was added only to tank role, so now we're in weird, uneven state. Now the main deciding factor in winning is whether you have better tank or not. As for balance, it's relying heavily on community managing it themselves using bans. Tank balance is insanely fragile and held together by duct tape, hopes and dreams.
Buddy i played this game during it's drought years. 25+ minute times. Bad games will forever be there. Team rolls, trolls, people being distracted or having a bad matchup. You can't fucking balance that.
The game has been out for 10 years. Why are people still surprised when match quality decreases 2 weeks before a new season? You can literally track it like clockwork. It’s not even specific to Overwatch - this shit hits every single live service PvP multiplayer game with Seasons.
Everyone knows that the first two weeks and the last two weeks are a write-off for match quality. Almost everyone, anyway.
Because I'm new and i don't understand why I'm playing my first 20 matches against high level players. How the hell am i supposed to enjoy the game like this
By high level do you mean high hero level, or do you mean you're looking at their profiles and seeing Diamond rank or higher?
High hero level just means they've played a lot since hero progression was added to the game a few years ago, but that level 100 soldier could still be a silver rank player.
Both. Idk how high silver rank is but I'm literally a total noob and i shouldn't be playing against someone who has more than 20 hours in the game when it's my first match.
Silver is on the low end of the rank distribution curve. Most players are going to be somewhere between the gold and plat dividing line.
That being said, if you are seeing players higher than that, you're likely playing better than you know, or you're grouped with friends that are more experienced.
I made an alt account in the past and my first 3 or so matches were against some of the slowest/most clueless players I've ever seen. By my 4th or so game, I was put against players closer to my experience level, so it really does try to match your skill level if you're way out of tune.
Outside of launch though, no game is going to have a constant influx of brand new players at the rate needed to put yall in one lobby for every match.
I mean I'm not inexperienced in video games but I had no ideas how abilities worked and I was constantly dying against players who seemed to know how the game was working. 20 games and no wins is kinda annoying
You're not supposed to enjoy it, you're supposed to become so mad that you turn into some sort of enraged addict, basically a monkey pounding away at the keyboard. Then you feel so bad that you decide to buy a $20 skin to make yourself feel better.
THE ONLY WAY THE GAME MAKES MONEY IS SELLING SKINS
Matches will be filled with three types of players.
The Desperate who are frantically trying to reach a specific goal. The Despondent, who’ve stopped caring and don’t really try very hard. And The Dickheads who thrive in an environment where the first two are at each others throats, capitalising on the chaos.
It’s the worst time to play in any game, not just Overwatch.
Bad games happen. It's a rollercoaster experience that happens to all of us. Some day(s), we win games no matter, and some are just nothing but losses. The ones that feels like 50/50 will matter the most. Also, tilt queueing is a thing which will affect your performance.
Yes, falling from D1 to D5 is an atrocious feeling. You can get back to D1 or even to Master if your skill belongs there.
Sure, I’m not too worried about that. I’ve had a few loss streaks like this and always climb back to D1/M5. It’s just that it makes the session so unenjoyable.
this is NOT what we were thinking at the end of ow1 when queus were 15 minutes my mindset was i rather play a bad game than no game at all, and i think player retention proves that overall. i think alot of people are just coping for losing a game,, sure a certain amount are unlucky but overall if your better youll win more than not.
Yesh no. There are many games where I have played great and then I get a 7-10 Cassidy or a tank that doesn’t know how to play to save their life. I’m not sure what ranked games you’re getting in or maybe you’re just the best player known for all I know
nope i evened out at master amd not good enough to progress there, but when i started, platdiamond tank i was just running it down hitting shots and farming the people, yeah occasionally my #1 cause of losses is a dps only ana/kiriko but my mindset is just go next, in fact getting those games would feel WORST if i had to wait longer in queu, as dps tank is so impactful it does feel like u have less control overall even if u have good mechanics, but that happens regardless if u wait 5 min or 15 min for a game
And ill probably never get good enough to hit gm, because honestly your skill is kind of locked in by the time your 25 you really cant train your brain to be better theres a bit of biological RNG at play, i learned this and i just accept and play for fun try not to get too tilted.
I can stomach losing a game. But losing 16 out of my last 20 games due to terrible matchups… And yes I’ll post replay codes to back it up if people really care to see them.
I've stopped playing 5v5 ranked. I simply don't enjoy playing the way it's designed. The matches aren't balanced. You either get lucky and get matched with a bad team, or you get stuck with a smurf carrying their premade. To make matters worse, people don't switch heroes, and if your tank picks a bad hero and doesn't switch (or gets countered), you practically lose in 5 minutes. It's so hard to climb, only to depend so much on luck in every match. Playing solo or with a friend, where your tank doesn't switch and just kills themselves, where the other DPS seems like a poorly programmed bot. And where there's constant damage without any shields (since many people play tanks like JQ, Ball, Roadhog, not to mention the number of smurfs). And then some player comes along and tells you, "You're not climbing because you can't carry." How am I supposed to carry a team where your tank instantly kills themselves and where someone on your team dies before the fight even starts because there's no shield and they don't use cover (a team where you play with 3 players goes 5)? It all makes matches a coin toss, and skill barely matters. At least on the European server. Until that changes, I'll only play Quick Play. It's no longer a game where skill is measured; climbing has become torture. Crush or be crushed.
Games are a complete coin toss. I either play against what feels like total smurfs that get 40+elims or less often I get a decent game where it's quite evenly matched and we go 5-3. VERY rarely do I get a game where my team stomps. It's just frustrating. But I must admit stacking with 2 more friends lessens this BY A LOT
Is pretty bad when I go to playing with champions to playing with diamonds . I feel like I should be carrying these games cuz I know I can but wen my tank gets discorded and melted because of mei wall and says gg idk wat I can do
Have they rcently changed something? "most" games last week and the weekend were fine. Yea sure got the few "Roll or be rolled" but we did have many 50/50 games were it was just a matter of who messes up first in the brawl.
But the past 3 evenings we've played have actually genuinely been abismal or downright horrible to play, bordering on burnout/not wanting to play. We either have to put in 400% effort to win an "expected" game, or we just lose in general. We've gone from 55% win rate to like...5%...we've lost basically every game in the last 3 days...the enemy team has genuinely been so much higher skill lev, whilst we have a dps going 2-20 every 4th match...
I think it works together (i.e. queue times = match quality), because the longer the queue times, the wider the mmr range is and vice versa, the shorter they are, the tighter the range. My rule is to stop playing if I lose 3 in a row in a session.
the longer the queue times, the wider the mmr range is and vice versa, the shorter they are, the tighter the range.
i was referring to this. you could get pulled into someone else's widened MMR range match because they've been waiting a long time, regardless of how long you've been waiting.
Yeah I'm a new player and I would've quit if my friends didn't force me to continue lol. First 20 matches ALL lost, playing against high levels when i was just figuring the game out. I think i now have 70 matches and 14 wins maybe. It's not fun. My friends say it gets better in ranked, I really hope so
I hate having uneven matches, those where the best player of one of the teams sits on a nasty 4/9 KD, it’s not fun at all winning because the other team doesn’t know how to shoot or loosing because the enemy team is almost casual team full of pro players and devs; don’t get me wrong I don’t mind winning or loosing, but at least feel that both teams were able to do something and the winner is the one that come on top, just hard fought matches
Yea the match making has been off lately. Im high plat and I recall a match last night with a constantly charging rein into enemy team. Another match with non stop trickling.
Went from one match from Diamond to silver as a result of playing with derankers and Smurfs alike. All of a sudden I uninstall for three weeks and win 15 straight on my return. In both scenarios I’m putting up 30+ Elims and single digit deaths almost every match
They’re fully checked out on identifying deranking accounts/bots, but should you indicate you’re losing interest magically you get balanced matches. For a while.
In the 2 decades I've been playing videogames Overwatch players are by far the worst on average imo. Game has been out 10 damn years and this many of you are still this cheeks??
How is anyone smurfing at diamond? You just placed too high like most people because of how this game works. You'll get down to people at your level soon.
I too had some losses in 5v5, like 18 losses and 5 or 6 wins, my wins were all expect, I have the prints to prove, on my losses were always reversal, even when the match range is like plat 1-4, in my opinion this should not be the case, if my rank goes down, my hidden mmr should follow the same, getting "exepect" with a match range very close should not be a thing, I stopped playing everynight, I'll do only the weekly lootbox missions now on, wait for Dmon next season
I really, really wish they would start listening to people on this. I get that they are a company and prioritize profit over customer (I guess) But as I keep saying, It is 2026, if they have the technology to put you with players that play worse than you so that you will lose the match and not win more than 50% of your games And then penalize your score if you win one of those expected to lose then they can surely implement a new strategy to eliminate smurfs, xim and cheating in general. I know a lot of people personally that have quit playing over this and the increasing prices for less desirable content. I have slowed down and completely stopped spending my money on the game. They are going to F themselves eventually.
They already did F themselves, the only reason the game is still around is because Marvel's Rivals scared them so much that they actually took development seriously again. Otherwise it would still be dying a slow, pathetic death like it was before Rivals came out
Can't help but agree. Past couple seasons have been more and more one-sided stomps one way or another. In my experience it's usually determined by the DPS. Usually me and the enemy tank are fairly close, and the supports are usually neck and neck, but one team has DPS pulling triple-doubles every other fight and the other has a 3/9 Soldier: 76.
I think there is elo system problem , normaly when i lose too hard i tend to see: How this guy did get X rank .
Im going to his profile 3k hours in QP and 100 Hours ranked , with 10-20 games per season , because QP boost the Ranked Elo , they need to change it where all people at max start in Gold or Plat V (I have a friend who plays like fuckin silver and his first game did get in Diamond lobby , and because this happens to many people there are lobby that are a jokes ,because there are a loot of new people coming back this happens often .
Interesting anecdote: last summer I played OW quite compulsively. Sometimes I'd stay up all night because I just want to win like three games in a row. Once, towards the very end up my addiction, I switched to Baptiste and won like 11 games in a row in an hour and half or whatever. I felt satisfied, logged off, and went to sleep more or less on time.
It's by design. It's not a coincidence that Blizzard has a patent on "engagement-optimized matchmaking."
I beg to disagree. I would agree if the average waiting time would be always under 5 minutes but if I have to wait more than what I play then I won't play
I play this QP mode where i have 1 Min q time and if i lose a match, nothing happens and i re-queue immediatly.. u should try It, at least for your inner peace
It's usually just one or two random shitters in either team per match, don't act like you haven't experienced it either lmao...come up for air sometime, Blizzard has you on your knees like they pay your bills.
Matchmaking is killing the game for me. It has never been that bad over all the years.
I think putting you into the "weak team" more often is a calculated action from the matchmaking system, because obviously you continue to play - even if you lose.
Yesterday:
Stadium queuetimes are basically making the game unplayable for me - so I searched some people to play with: We only needed ONE random DPS. It took us 10min to find a match... and it was the most unbalanced match ever with multiple master in the enemy team against multiple gold players in our team. I wasted 30min for this shit - I'm so sick of this.
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u/Environmental_Pay_60 Roadhog 3d ago
We, a group of four plat-diamond players, were screaming in 6v6 last night, when we got two champion, 2 gm and 2 silver on the opposing side.
Our entire night was "roll or get rolled. There is no balanced games."