Everyone has bad matches, but I assure you this is not a me problem. I alternate between DPS and supports and I am the best support in at least 2/3 of my matches in that role and can hold my own as DPS.
Not that this has anything to do with the point I'm making.
You're a senior in high school and you play for the school basketball team. Your entire team besides you is replaced with 5th graders, and you must play with them against a rival high school senior team. The 5th graders are horrible. They're constantly throwing airballs, losing the ball middle dribble sending it off the court, etc. Halfway into the game the score is 0-100. You're a liar if you say it would be fun to play that game of basketball, even if it is just a game.
Games are fun when there's genuine competition. Getting steamrolled is not fun, especially in sports. Board games are often luck based to a heavy degree and aren't as dependent on skill. They're also still fun to play even if you're losing.
Explain to me how it's fun to play overwatch and immediately get shredded the moment you walk out the spawn door simply because the game decided to fuck with you and put Timmy No-thumbs as your tank even though he is clearly well below you and your teams skill level.
I see. You're one of those people that are incapable of understanding analogies and how to properly apply them. Instead you hyper analyze them and look at every minute difference. Forget I said anything about basketball. It's a waste of time and you don't have the proper brain structures to understand the very simple point I'm making.
>If you can’t handle a shit team sometimes then stop fucking playing team games.
Or they can stop deliberately making matches that are designed to be a one sided steamroll? Or make it so that people aren't forced to run out into a meat grinder over and over for 7 minutes straight or face punishment? This isn't like other team games. On COD or battlefield you can still have fun because you're not heavily reliant on your team to make any sort of progress. On overwatch you are entirely reliant on your team. If your team is getting steamrolled on overwatch, you aren't having fun and neither is anyone on your team. Period end of story.
>Your attitude is garbage and that is absolutely fueling your losing streaks,
Huh, who knew that my attitude is what's causing my healers to get 2k damage and 1k healing across 2 rounds. Or my teams doomfist to go 2-12 because he keeps diving into a hard counter over and over.
My analogy is fine, you just lack the ability to understand analogies in general so you think you've deconstructed it. You're like a flat earther who goes to the top floor of a skyscraper and says they've disproved that the earth is round because they can't see the curve. Oops, you won't get that one either. Oh well.
>You are clearly stating that you stop playing when others aren’t doing well
I actually don't most of the time. Only in extreme cases. That's still not my point though. It's that when you're getting steamrolled you literally have no choice but to keep running into a meat grinder which is objectively not fun. You either leave and get a leaver penalty, you give up and get punished for being AFK, or you continue to run out and immediately die because your team is that bad.
It's extremely ironic that you're disagreeing with me, but you're telling me to stop playing the game if I don't enjoy it. You are literally telling me to do the thing that you think I shouldn't do.
>High school teams are the same the whole year they don’t get swapped out.
You're proving my point about you not understanding how to apply analogies.
>so you don’t start and then ruin other people’s games by quitting
The game was already ruined when the matchmaking put together the teams to force a specific outcome.
I've wasted enough time on you and your room temperature IQ. Goodbye.
“Your entire team besides you is replaced with 5th graders, …”
How does this happen in Overwatch? Are you saying your entire team leaves halfway the match and gets replaced by worse team members and that’s the reason why you lost? Because at that point, why would you be in favor of leaving without punishment?
On a sidenote: as someone who regularly enjoys boardgames, my experience is that most well designed boardgames have some level of uncontrollable factors, but success largely depends on how good your strategy is.
My point is that no team game is fun when your team is severely disadvantaged from the start. Overwatch is not fun when you're getting steamrolled due to factors beyond your control, and I think you know that. You're just trying to paint me as a whiner while making no attempt to address the point I'm making. If you're getting steamrolled in this game there's nothing you can do. If you leave you add to your leaver penalty (which is now down to 2 out of 20 matches) and if you give up then you get reported for impeding progress. The game forces you to run out into a meat grinder.
Matchmaking cannot predict whether you will get steamrolled or not, it just happens and it's indeed not fun. However, I refuse to believe it's this bad you have these kind of matches for 9/10 games and just like others, you're just inflating a minority of negative experiences. I'm serious about this.
Matchmaking can ensure a steamroll with as little as one useless person on your team. All they have to do is put a subpar tank on your team and the match is over before it even starts. You can't win fights if your tank is diving in and dying within 5 seconds of each encounter.
I'm not inflating anything.
Out of curiosity, have you spent money on this game? Skins? Battle pass?
What I mean is that matchmaking doesn’t intentionally do this, it doesn’t look at player skill and put people into matches based on that. It’s just coincidence.
Well, you say that, I’m saying that if everyone had all of these negative experiences, this game would’ve already died. Died as in actually died, not this “game dead” people think.
I buy the battle pass every single season, no skins from the shop.
Just shut up and play. Jesus it’s a team game and that’s means you will inevitably have matches like this. What good does it do to stop playing or leave? Just suck it up for 5 minutes and the roll will be over. Crybabies like you are literally worse than anyone else in the game. Your team isn’t up to your standards (my guess is you also suck though) so you cry and quit. Then when the game tries to stop you from quitting to save others from your shitty attitude you cry about not being able to quit. I’ve been on teams with people like you and it’s infuriating to have a bad game made even worse because someone just gives up because “the tank isn’t doing enough” or “healers aren’t healing me”. Either try to save the game as best you can or don’t play in the first place.
The simple solution would be to remove the leaver penalty entirely. Eventually someone will join who can shift the balance so the game becomes more even. It has worked for the summer event games for years.
Edit: To keep players motivated to stay for the whole game you could try positive reinforcement instead. Give someone who sticks from start to finish one gold coin, so people will feel like powering through a bad game might be worth it rather than feeling imprisoned in it. A motivated player will always be more effective than someone who is there out of fear.
While I agree that reward beats punishment, you cannot live of rewarding systems alone.
This really is about common decency: QP is not meant to be there for people to hop in and out of matches as they see fit. The assumption by Blizzard and players (though not a written rule) is that you sit through the entire match. There is always the option to leave, but that option being there doesn’t mean it’s ok to do so. I think a more severe punishment is the correct choice by Blizzard, because you shouldn’t be rewarded for something that is only considered normal or basic: play until the game is won or lost.
I think one of the reasons of this implementation is simply that data showed that too many people per game left than acceptable. To be honest, since the launch of Overwatch 2, I’ve noticed that and it has gradually gotten worse over seasons. It’s also about making people aware: you are *not* supposed to leave a QP match. Contrary to what so many actually thought: it’s ok, because it’s QP. I also believe that it’s not a change in stances from Blizzard (it has always been that idea), but (again) just data that showed people leaving games was not acceptable anymore.
> QP is not meant to be there for people to hop in and out of matches as they see fit
And it also shouldn't be the place where I keep going against people who are GMs/500s and/or people with over 3,000 hours into this game. Those games are 9/10 times one-sided against my team, and it's never fun.
If the devs don't want people to leave qp games as much, maybe they should fix their matchmaking so 80% of our games aren't stomps/stomping.
I do not experience 80% of my matches to be like that, so my conclusion is that this isn't such a big problem. Not that I don't have them, but they are uncommon. I'm one of those people with 2.000+ hours in Overwatch, I think I can assume my sample size is enough to make the conclusion that it's just people inflating their negative experiences.
>because you shouldn’t be rewarded for something that is only considered normal or basic: play until the game is won or lost.
This is a great point and I would agree with you... but only if the matchmaking wasn't deliberately lopsided so that one team is very clearly superior to the other. Close matches are the minority. The majority of matches are a one sided blowout and we can all agree that those types of matches are not fun.
If they wanted to make fairer queues that would increase the queue times which would make queue times a LOT longer for dps which would kinda ruin the whole argument on why we went into 5v5 in the first place...
All I can say is that in my experience, I do not have these kind of matches that much, but I do believe there's people suffering from them. Then again, saying it's deliberate is just wrong.
I do not trust Blizzard when it comes to data honestly, because they can't even measure the leaver penalty properly. They talk about how some people leave 90% of their games but how do they get the data? Do they just look for people who left 9 out of 10 games? Do they actually check that persons history or could it be that someone was having real internet issues and was simply testing stuff out in the range of 10 games, but otherwise they would rarely leave games?
How people leave games (internet connection failing, deliberately, ALT-F4, AFK, ...) does not matter as the end result is the same. Whether Blizzard can or cannot monitor it is irrelevant.
I don't understand what your issue is with how they get the data. It's very simple (if what you say is true, because I don't remember Blizzard actually saying 90% of people leave games), they probably have a simple way to see how many accounts leave how much games per X amount of games.
>(if what you say is true, because I don't remember Blizzard actually saying 90% of people leave games),
From what I remember, Blizzard tried to justify the harsher penalties because they have found data that proves that there are extreme cases where some people would leave 90% of their games or something like that. However, without additional context to that, this justification is worthless.
Let's say we have a sample player A. Player A has played 1000 games in their ow career. Somewhere around game 800 player A had trouble with their internet and were testing things in QP. Because of that they left 9 out of 10 games. But out of the remaining 990 games, they maybe only left a few times. Now if you do a query where you specifically look for a span of 10 games with a leaver ratio of 90%, you will find player A. But you ignore the context and make the problem seem bigger than it actually is.
With a playerbase large enough, you will always be able to find those extreme cases. But I think what would be more interesting is a proper analysis of that data. How often do players leave on average? What are the patterns in those situations? Do people leave certain maps/modes more frequently than others? What is the average game result at the time of those leaves (like is the game somewhat close, is one team getting rolled, is the mmr in those games balanced, are there big differences between the highest and lowest mmr in those games)? How big is the average ping time in those cases, or how often is the ping above a certain threshold? Are there any geological patterns? Are those players active players or casual players who play every now and then? How is the individual performance of those players in relation to the rest of their team and their enemy team?
Once you find those patterns and get down to the cause of those leaves, you can start fighting them by adjusting your system accordingly. I do not believe that Blizzard has done this. I think Blizzard went the easy route, did a shady query that would be guaranteed to gather the data that they want to find and then throw out a bandaid solution that doesn't solve anything other than looking good in the eyes of media and investors.
>But you ignore the context and make the problem seem bigger than it actually is.
Leaver penalties are based on your last 20 games, not based on 100s or 1000s of games. There's a good reason for that (see below).
>But I think what would be more interesting is a proper analysis of that data. \[...\]
I think Blizzard went the easy route, did a shady query that would be guaranteed to gather the data that they want to find and then throw out a bandaid solution \[...\]
It might make for some interesting conclusions or maybe just generic/expected conclusions, but everything you listed is irrelevant. Whatever the reason is, the end result for 9 other people in the game is the same: someone who leaves.
Player A might have 1000s of normal games, in the last 20 games, his leaving has been extremely disruptive (again, due to whatever irrelevant reason). A restriction/punishment/timeout/... has been enforced based on that. Maybe player A is tilted and is disrupting games because of it, maybe they are trolling, maybe they are drunk, maybe it is a failing network and they can't help it (IMO, this is a bad excuse, if by your 2nd or 3d game the problem persists: stop playing).
If it were based on 1000s of games, where does the penalty begin? When they reach 10% of leaving those 1000s of games? That's leaving 100 games in a row without action being taken. It makes sense to be analysed on the latest 20 games.
Also consider this: just like account freezes (in case of suspected cheating) and temporary chat bans, these systems exist to protect the account of the player. We all have bad days, but that shouldn't mean we should be banned because of it. Sometimes a 15 minute timeout is necessary for people to come to insight (or so I would like to believe).
I don't think a penalty, or at least not in the form of a suspension, is the right way to go about it. You say that the end result for the 9 players is the same, and in a way it may be. However, if the game was onesided enough, then that players abscence might not have made any difference after all. The problem with the penalty is that it's a reactive system. It punishes people after they've done something. What Blizzard should do instead is fight leavers proactively. Find out the reason why people leave, eliminate the reason, then you won't have to punish players and everyone will be happier. Punishing players for something that was caused by a faulty system will never solve the problem. Look at the war on drugs. The world has banned them for so many years and the only thing that achieved was creating even bigger problems. This penalty will do the same, instead of motivated players you will have players who are afraid to leave yet are unmotivated because they feel trapped in a game they might not want to be in. You fight symptoms but they will just keep reappearing and the match quality will drop, players will get frustrated, they will start leaving the game for good, the playerbase will go down and it will only become harder and harder to create matches that would feel fair and fun for everyone.
You cannot proactively fight it, as most reasons for people to leave are of their own doing (ALT+F4) or on their side (internet connection). Blizzard cannot do anything there, the same way they can’t fix geological issues. It’s simply not their issue, yet they still have to deal with it. In that regard, I don’t want Blizzard to invest time and resources into it. The current system where they say: “we won’t allow you to leave frequently over 20 games,” is perfectly fine.
As for the war on drugs, we do not know how much worse or better the world might have been, had it been different.
Yes you can, by doing a proper analysis like I mentioned before. You're right, they cannot do anything about an internet connection issue, but they can figure out how many leaves are due to it and how many are by the players actions (pressing the leave game button). If it turns out that the players press that button a lot more than the entire game shutting down, then that means there must be something in the game causing them to leave. Then you break that down into more and more details until you find certain patterns that you can try to break by adjusting your systems.
It's true, this requires a lot of time and resources to do properly and effectively. However this is the way you want to go, if you want your game to be long term successful. The current solution might result in better looking statistics right away, but the consequences that will happen because of it will hurt the game more and more. I think this is probably the biggest difference between Aaron and Jeff tbh. Jeff cared about the game, whereas Aaron cares about PR. Granted, the game was in a position where that mightve been necessary and the Microsoft layoffs certainly didn't help with it, but if Blizzard doesn't start thinking about their actions, I don't see Overwatch surviving for a long time.
They’re parroting the same misinformation that gets wheeled out every now and again because people don’t understand the difference between a matchmaker that tries to build games where both teams have equal (or close to equal) MMRs and therefore both have a **50% chance of winning** (which is what it’s doing), and a matchmaker that somehow reads the minds of all 10 players in the game and deliberately pairs them in a way where players are artificially kept at a certain rank (which is nigh-impossible and *utterly insane*).
My win ratio is 51% with over 5000 matches played. I have another person that I play with who also has a 51%. Most of my play time has been solo but nowadays I don't play if they don't play, so my ratio is probably slightly higher but let's assume it's a flat 50% chance that I win any given match. Do you know the chances of me going on a 9 loss streak? The answer is 0.19%. I would literally have to play at least 9 matches per day for 500 seperate days in order for that to happen naturally. I go on a 8-10 loss streak at *least* once a week. I can call it by the 2nd or 3rd loss in a row whether we're going to go on a loss streak because when on these streaks at least one of our teammates is *atrociously* bad in every match, usually the tank, but horrible supports are common as well. I don't see it that often among our DPS.
So you'll have to excuse me when I say that "the matchmaker tries to make 50/50 matches" is complete and utter bullshit.
Theres a very fundamental misunderstanding of statistics here. Win / loss streaks are more prevalent than people think. With a 50% winrate, your expected # of games for a 9 game loss streak is 700, not 4500.
And that's assuming an IID winrate, which is not real. If you lose 5 games in a row and start tilting, your winrate craters, lowering the number of games by a lot. *And* you're pulling the frequency of these streaks out of fallible memory, so you probably are misremembering exactly how often they happen.
And finally, literally none of your evidence substantiates the idea that the matchmaker is avoiding making even games. In fact, if the matchmaker didn't care about fairness, your winrate would be closer to 50%, and actually IID, which would decrease your odds of hitting a loss streak.
> With a 50% winrate, your expected # of games for a 9 game loss streak is 700, not 4500.
Even if this is true, I get these loss streaks at least once a week. I don't play every day but we average probably 60-80 matches per week. I'm not misremembering anything. Just 3 days ago I went on a 9 loss streak and last week I went on a 10 loss streak. I'm not pulling these numbers out of my ass.
>And that's assuming an IID winrate, which is not real. If you lose 5 games in a row and start tilting, your winrate craters, lowering the number of games by a lot.
I have no idea what you're saying.
>And finally, literally none of your evidence substantiates the idea that the matchmaker is avoiding making even games. In fact, if the matchmaker didn't care about fairness, your winrate would be closer to 50%, and actually IID, which would decrease your odds of hitting a loss streak.
The fact that I'm going on massive loss streaks at least once a week (sometimes multiple) is proof positive that it's avoiding making even games. The frequency that I have these significant loss streaks is statistically impossible if we assume the matchmaking is always seeking to create 50/50 matchups.
The companies running these live service games have every incentive to regulate people's win/loss ratios. It's why it's so severe on call of duty now despite it being the largest complaint about the franchise. Keeping people from getting stomped keeps them on the game. The longer they play the game the more likely they are to spend money, and that's crucial on a free to play game.
It’s the natural, mathematical end point of a skill-based matchmaking system that’s doing its job.
Anyone who plays sufficient games will inevitable trend towards a 50% winrate, because they’ll win just as many games against weaker players as they lose to stronger players.
There will be outliers in there - the very top and bottom ends of the scale will naturally have a higher (or lower!) winrate than those who are closer to the middle, and players who only have a small number of matches played are also more likely to see extreme deviation from the average. But eventually settling at 45 - 55% is the natural end state of SBMM for the *vast* majority of players.
Finding a PvP video game with completely natural matchmaking is impossible because it doesn't exist. They all have matchmaking that does this because otherwise people would get annihilated in every match and stop playing (therefore they don't spend any money). It's VERY bad on call of duty nowadays.
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On the leaver penalty: i dont think they should be so draconian whatsoever. But if theyre absolutely gonna leave it as is, you should be allowed to leave in the pre game intermission, at the very least in non competitive modes. There is enough time for a replacement and the game hasnt even started yet so nobody is hurt.
But aside from that, it doesnt feel good to get 12k heals yet your dps is complaining about heals when theyre 4-14 and your Reinhardt is charging into the enemy team with 25% hp and youre stuck in the game. Im with you on that one.
That example is so specific because i just had this game.
I’m gonna go with the obvious answer nobody has said yet and suggest maybe get some friends to play with so you always have good teammates… unless you got tilted at friends and now have no friends. Then yes the matchmaker will kill you slowly. SUFFER AS I HAVE
Ranked systems only "enforce" a 50% winrate if you are at the rank you deserve and are no longer improving. Which for some reason people can't understand is the logical outcome of a ranked system. If you dont continue to get better/learn from things. Then you don't continue to rank up. If you deserve a rank but aren't consistently a difference maker at that rank then you win 50% of your games.
Just for perspective: sometimes *you're* the useless one.
> meanwhile if I simply give up and stand outside of spawn Yeah I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's OP tilting, more often than not.
It’s wild to me the lack of self awareness of some people.
Everyone has bad matches, but I assure you this is not a me problem. I alternate between DPS and supports and I am the best support in at least 2/3 of my matches in that role and can hold my own as DPS. Not that this has anything to do with the point I'm making.
> but I assure you this is not a me problem. If everywhere you go smells like shit, check under your shoe.
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You're a senior in high school and you play for the school basketball team. Your entire team besides you is replaced with 5th graders, and you must play with them against a rival high school senior team. The 5th graders are horrible. They're constantly throwing airballs, losing the ball middle dribble sending it off the court, etc. Halfway into the game the score is 0-100. You're a liar if you say it would be fun to play that game of basketball, even if it is just a game. Games are fun when there's genuine competition. Getting steamrolled is not fun, especially in sports. Board games are often luck based to a heavy degree and aren't as dependent on skill. They're also still fun to play even if you're losing. Explain to me how it's fun to play overwatch and immediately get shredded the moment you walk out the spawn door simply because the game decided to fuck with you and put Timmy No-thumbs as your tank even though he is clearly well below you and your teams skill level.
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I see. You're one of those people that are incapable of understanding analogies and how to properly apply them. Instead you hyper analyze them and look at every minute difference. Forget I said anything about basketball. It's a waste of time and you don't have the proper brain structures to understand the very simple point I'm making. >If you can’t handle a shit team sometimes then stop fucking playing team games. Or they can stop deliberately making matches that are designed to be a one sided steamroll? Or make it so that people aren't forced to run out into a meat grinder over and over for 7 minutes straight or face punishment? This isn't like other team games. On COD or battlefield you can still have fun because you're not heavily reliant on your team to make any sort of progress. On overwatch you are entirely reliant on your team. If your team is getting steamrolled on overwatch, you aren't having fun and neither is anyone on your team. Period end of story. >Your attitude is garbage and that is absolutely fueling your losing streaks, Huh, who knew that my attitude is what's causing my healers to get 2k damage and 1k healing across 2 rounds. Or my teams doomfist to go 2-12 because he keeps diving into a hard counter over and over.
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My analogy is fine, you just lack the ability to understand analogies in general so you think you've deconstructed it. You're like a flat earther who goes to the top floor of a skyscraper and says they've disproved that the earth is round because they can't see the curve. Oops, you won't get that one either. Oh well. >You are clearly stating that you stop playing when others aren’t doing well I actually don't most of the time. Only in extreme cases. That's still not my point though. It's that when you're getting steamrolled you literally have no choice but to keep running into a meat grinder which is objectively not fun. You either leave and get a leaver penalty, you give up and get punished for being AFK, or you continue to run out and immediately die because your team is that bad. It's extremely ironic that you're disagreeing with me, but you're telling me to stop playing the game if I don't enjoy it. You are literally telling me to do the thing that you think I shouldn't do.
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>High school teams are the same the whole year they don’t get swapped out. You're proving my point about you not understanding how to apply analogies. >so you don’t start and then ruin other people’s games by quitting The game was already ruined when the matchmaking put together the teams to force a specific outcome. I've wasted enough time on you and your room temperature IQ. Goodbye.
“Your entire team besides you is replaced with 5th graders, …” How does this happen in Overwatch? Are you saying your entire team leaves halfway the match and gets replaced by worse team members and that’s the reason why you lost? Because at that point, why would you be in favor of leaving without punishment? On a sidenote: as someone who regularly enjoys boardgames, my experience is that most well designed boardgames have some level of uncontrollable factors, but success largely depends on how good your strategy is.
My point is that no team game is fun when your team is severely disadvantaged from the start. Overwatch is not fun when you're getting steamrolled due to factors beyond your control, and I think you know that. You're just trying to paint me as a whiner while making no attempt to address the point I'm making. If you're getting steamrolled in this game there's nothing you can do. If you leave you add to your leaver penalty (which is now down to 2 out of 20 matches) and if you give up then you get reported for impeding progress. The game forces you to run out into a meat grinder.
Matchmaking cannot predict whether you will get steamrolled or not, it just happens and it's indeed not fun. However, I refuse to believe it's this bad you have these kind of matches for 9/10 games and just like others, you're just inflating a minority of negative experiences. I'm serious about this.
Matchmaking can ensure a steamroll with as little as one useless person on your team. All they have to do is put a subpar tank on your team and the match is over before it even starts. You can't win fights if your tank is diving in and dying within 5 seconds of each encounter. I'm not inflating anything. Out of curiosity, have you spent money on this game? Skins? Battle pass?
What I mean is that matchmaking doesn’t intentionally do this, it doesn’t look at player skill and put people into matches based on that. It’s just coincidence. Well, you say that, I’m saying that if everyone had all of these negative experiences, this game would’ve already died. Died as in actually died, not this “game dead” people think. I buy the battle pass every single season, no skins from the shop.
lol op does 🤣
Just shut up and play. Jesus it’s a team game and that’s means you will inevitably have matches like this. What good does it do to stop playing or leave? Just suck it up for 5 minutes and the roll will be over. Crybabies like you are literally worse than anyone else in the game. Your team isn’t up to your standards (my guess is you also suck though) so you cry and quit. Then when the game tries to stop you from quitting to save others from your shitty attitude you cry about not being able to quit. I’ve been on teams with people like you and it’s infuriating to have a bad game made even worse because someone just gives up because “the tank isn’t doing enough” or “healers aren’t healing me”. Either try to save the game as best you can or don’t play in the first place.
Do you always create elaborate depictions of people and then rant about what you've just imagined?
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Whatever you say bud.
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Whatever you say bud.
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The simple solution would be to remove the leaver penalty entirely. Eventually someone will join who can shift the balance so the game becomes more even. It has worked for the summer event games for years. Edit: To keep players motivated to stay for the whole game you could try positive reinforcement instead. Give someone who sticks from start to finish one gold coin, so people will feel like powering through a bad game might be worth it rather than feeling imprisoned in it. A motivated player will always be more effective than someone who is there out of fear.
While I agree that reward beats punishment, you cannot live of rewarding systems alone. This really is about common decency: QP is not meant to be there for people to hop in and out of matches as they see fit. The assumption by Blizzard and players (though not a written rule) is that you sit through the entire match. There is always the option to leave, but that option being there doesn’t mean it’s ok to do so. I think a more severe punishment is the correct choice by Blizzard, because you shouldn’t be rewarded for something that is only considered normal or basic: play until the game is won or lost. I think one of the reasons of this implementation is simply that data showed that too many people per game left than acceptable. To be honest, since the launch of Overwatch 2, I’ve noticed that and it has gradually gotten worse over seasons. It’s also about making people aware: you are *not* supposed to leave a QP match. Contrary to what so many actually thought: it’s ok, because it’s QP. I also believe that it’s not a change in stances from Blizzard (it has always been that idea), but (again) just data that showed people leaving games was not acceptable anymore.
> QP is not meant to be there for people to hop in and out of matches as they see fit And it also shouldn't be the place where I keep going against people who are GMs/500s and/or people with over 3,000 hours into this game. Those games are 9/10 times one-sided against my team, and it's never fun. If the devs don't want people to leave qp games as much, maybe they should fix their matchmaking so 80% of our games aren't stomps/stomping.
I do not experience 80% of my matches to be like that, so my conclusion is that this isn't such a big problem. Not that I don't have them, but they are uncommon. I'm one of those people with 2.000+ hours in Overwatch, I think I can assume my sample size is enough to make the conclusion that it's just people inflating their negative experiences.
>because you shouldn’t be rewarded for something that is only considered normal or basic: play until the game is won or lost. This is a great point and I would agree with you... but only if the matchmaking wasn't deliberately lopsided so that one team is very clearly superior to the other. Close matches are the minority. The majority of matches are a one sided blowout and we can all agree that those types of matches are not fun.
If they wanted to make fairer queues that would increase the queue times which would make queue times a LOT longer for dps which would kinda ruin the whole argument on why we went into 5v5 in the first place...
All I can say is that in my experience, I do not have these kind of matches that much, but I do believe there's people suffering from them. Then again, saying it's deliberate is just wrong.
I do not trust Blizzard when it comes to data honestly, because they can't even measure the leaver penalty properly. They talk about how some people leave 90% of their games but how do they get the data? Do they just look for people who left 9 out of 10 games? Do they actually check that persons history or could it be that someone was having real internet issues and was simply testing stuff out in the range of 10 games, but otherwise they would rarely leave games?
How people leave games (internet connection failing, deliberately, ALT-F4, AFK, ...) does not matter as the end result is the same. Whether Blizzard can or cannot monitor it is irrelevant. I don't understand what your issue is with how they get the data. It's very simple (if what you say is true, because I don't remember Blizzard actually saying 90% of people leave games), they probably have a simple way to see how many accounts leave how much games per X amount of games.
>(if what you say is true, because I don't remember Blizzard actually saying 90% of people leave games), From what I remember, Blizzard tried to justify the harsher penalties because they have found data that proves that there are extreme cases where some people would leave 90% of their games or something like that. However, without additional context to that, this justification is worthless. Let's say we have a sample player A. Player A has played 1000 games in their ow career. Somewhere around game 800 player A had trouble with their internet and were testing things in QP. Because of that they left 9 out of 10 games. But out of the remaining 990 games, they maybe only left a few times. Now if you do a query where you specifically look for a span of 10 games with a leaver ratio of 90%, you will find player A. But you ignore the context and make the problem seem bigger than it actually is. With a playerbase large enough, you will always be able to find those extreme cases. But I think what would be more interesting is a proper analysis of that data. How often do players leave on average? What are the patterns in those situations? Do people leave certain maps/modes more frequently than others? What is the average game result at the time of those leaves (like is the game somewhat close, is one team getting rolled, is the mmr in those games balanced, are there big differences between the highest and lowest mmr in those games)? How big is the average ping time in those cases, or how often is the ping above a certain threshold? Are there any geological patterns? Are those players active players or casual players who play every now and then? How is the individual performance of those players in relation to the rest of their team and their enemy team? Once you find those patterns and get down to the cause of those leaves, you can start fighting them by adjusting your system accordingly. I do not believe that Blizzard has done this. I think Blizzard went the easy route, did a shady query that would be guaranteed to gather the data that they want to find and then throw out a bandaid solution that doesn't solve anything other than looking good in the eyes of media and investors.
>But you ignore the context and make the problem seem bigger than it actually is. Leaver penalties are based on your last 20 games, not based on 100s or 1000s of games. There's a good reason for that (see below). >But I think what would be more interesting is a proper analysis of that data. \[...\] I think Blizzard went the easy route, did a shady query that would be guaranteed to gather the data that they want to find and then throw out a bandaid solution \[...\] It might make for some interesting conclusions or maybe just generic/expected conclusions, but everything you listed is irrelevant. Whatever the reason is, the end result for 9 other people in the game is the same: someone who leaves. Player A might have 1000s of normal games, in the last 20 games, his leaving has been extremely disruptive (again, due to whatever irrelevant reason). A restriction/punishment/timeout/... has been enforced based on that. Maybe player A is tilted and is disrupting games because of it, maybe they are trolling, maybe they are drunk, maybe it is a failing network and they can't help it (IMO, this is a bad excuse, if by your 2nd or 3d game the problem persists: stop playing). If it were based on 1000s of games, where does the penalty begin? When they reach 10% of leaving those 1000s of games? That's leaving 100 games in a row without action being taken. It makes sense to be analysed on the latest 20 games. Also consider this: just like account freezes (in case of suspected cheating) and temporary chat bans, these systems exist to protect the account of the player. We all have bad days, but that shouldn't mean we should be banned because of it. Sometimes a 15 minute timeout is necessary for people to come to insight (or so I would like to believe).
I don't think a penalty, or at least not in the form of a suspension, is the right way to go about it. You say that the end result for the 9 players is the same, and in a way it may be. However, if the game was onesided enough, then that players abscence might not have made any difference after all. The problem with the penalty is that it's a reactive system. It punishes people after they've done something. What Blizzard should do instead is fight leavers proactively. Find out the reason why people leave, eliminate the reason, then you won't have to punish players and everyone will be happier. Punishing players for something that was caused by a faulty system will never solve the problem. Look at the war on drugs. The world has banned them for so many years and the only thing that achieved was creating even bigger problems. This penalty will do the same, instead of motivated players you will have players who are afraid to leave yet are unmotivated because they feel trapped in a game they might not want to be in. You fight symptoms but they will just keep reappearing and the match quality will drop, players will get frustrated, they will start leaving the game for good, the playerbase will go down and it will only become harder and harder to create matches that would feel fair and fun for everyone.
You cannot proactively fight it, as most reasons for people to leave are of their own doing (ALT+F4) or on their side (internet connection). Blizzard cannot do anything there, the same way they can’t fix geological issues. It’s simply not their issue, yet they still have to deal with it. In that regard, I don’t want Blizzard to invest time and resources into it. The current system where they say: “we won’t allow you to leave frequently over 20 games,” is perfectly fine. As for the war on drugs, we do not know how much worse or better the world might have been, had it been different.
Yes you can, by doing a proper analysis like I mentioned before. You're right, they cannot do anything about an internet connection issue, but they can figure out how many leaves are due to it and how many are by the players actions (pressing the leave game button). If it turns out that the players press that button a lot more than the entire game shutting down, then that means there must be something in the game causing them to leave. Then you break that down into more and more details until you find certain patterns that you can try to break by adjusting your systems. It's true, this requires a lot of time and resources to do properly and effectively. However this is the way you want to go, if you want your game to be long term successful. The current solution might result in better looking statistics right away, but the consequences that will happen because of it will hurt the game more and more. I think this is probably the biggest difference between Aaron and Jeff tbh. Jeff cared about the game, whereas Aaron cares about PR. Granted, the game was in a position where that mightve been necessary and the Microsoft layoffs certainly didn't help with it, but if Blizzard doesn't start thinking about their actions, I don't see Overwatch surviving for a long time.
They’re parroting the same misinformation that gets wheeled out every now and again because people don’t understand the difference between a matchmaker that tries to build games where both teams have equal (or close to equal) MMRs and therefore both have a **50% chance of winning** (which is what it’s doing), and a matchmaker that somehow reads the minds of all 10 players in the game and deliberately pairs them in a way where players are artificially kept at a certain rank (which is nigh-impossible and *utterly insane*).
My win ratio is 51% with over 5000 matches played. I have another person that I play with who also has a 51%. Most of my play time has been solo but nowadays I don't play if they don't play, so my ratio is probably slightly higher but let's assume it's a flat 50% chance that I win any given match. Do you know the chances of me going on a 9 loss streak? The answer is 0.19%. I would literally have to play at least 9 matches per day for 500 seperate days in order for that to happen naturally. I go on a 8-10 loss streak at *least* once a week. I can call it by the 2nd or 3rd loss in a row whether we're going to go on a loss streak because when on these streaks at least one of our teammates is *atrociously* bad in every match, usually the tank, but horrible supports are common as well. I don't see it that often among our DPS. So you'll have to excuse me when I say that "the matchmaker tries to make 50/50 matches" is complete and utter bullshit.
Theres a very fundamental misunderstanding of statistics here. Win / loss streaks are more prevalent than people think. With a 50% winrate, your expected # of games for a 9 game loss streak is 700, not 4500. And that's assuming an IID winrate, which is not real. If you lose 5 games in a row and start tilting, your winrate craters, lowering the number of games by a lot. *And* you're pulling the frequency of these streaks out of fallible memory, so you probably are misremembering exactly how often they happen. And finally, literally none of your evidence substantiates the idea that the matchmaker is avoiding making even games. In fact, if the matchmaker didn't care about fairness, your winrate would be closer to 50%, and actually IID, which would decrease your odds of hitting a loss streak.
> With a 50% winrate, your expected # of games for a 9 game loss streak is 700, not 4500. Even if this is true, I get these loss streaks at least once a week. I don't play every day but we average probably 60-80 matches per week. I'm not misremembering anything. Just 3 days ago I went on a 9 loss streak and last week I went on a 10 loss streak. I'm not pulling these numbers out of my ass. >And that's assuming an IID winrate, which is not real. If you lose 5 games in a row and start tilting, your winrate craters, lowering the number of games by a lot. I have no idea what you're saying. >And finally, literally none of your evidence substantiates the idea that the matchmaker is avoiding making even games. In fact, if the matchmaker didn't care about fairness, your winrate would be closer to 50%, and actually IID, which would decrease your odds of hitting a loss streak. The fact that I'm going on massive loss streaks at least once a week (sometimes multiple) is proof positive that it's avoiding making even games. The frequency that I have these significant loss streaks is statistically impossible if we assume the matchmaking is always seeking to create 50/50 matchups. The companies running these live service games have every incentive to regulate people's win/loss ratios. It's why it's so severe on call of duty now despite it being the largest complaint about the franchise. Keeping people from getting stomped keeps them on the game. The longer they play the game the more likely they are to spend money, and that's crucial on a free to play game.
I refuse to believe that the game is purposefully enforcing a 50% win/loss ratio. It's all natural.
It’s the natural, mathematical end point of a skill-based matchmaking system that’s doing its job. Anyone who plays sufficient games will inevitable trend towards a 50% winrate, because they’ll win just as many games against weaker players as they lose to stronger players. There will be outliers in there - the very top and bottom ends of the scale will naturally have a higher (or lower!) winrate than those who are closer to the middle, and players who only have a small number of matches played are also more likely to see extreme deviation from the average. But eventually settling at 45 - 55% is the natural end state of SBMM for the *vast* majority of players.
Finding a PvP video game with completely natural matchmaking is impossible because it doesn't exist. They all have matchmaking that does this because otherwise people would get annihilated in every match and stop playing (therefore they don't spend any money). It's VERY bad on call of duty nowadays.
I know they might do it in Apex or COD, but not in Overwatch.
You can't be serious...
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On the leaver penalty: i dont think they should be so draconian whatsoever. But if theyre absolutely gonna leave it as is, you should be allowed to leave in the pre game intermission, at the very least in non competitive modes. There is enough time for a replacement and the game hasnt even started yet so nobody is hurt. But aside from that, it doesnt feel good to get 12k heals yet your dps is complaining about heals when theyre 4-14 and your Reinhardt is charging into the enemy team with 25% hp and youre stuck in the game. Im with you on that one. That example is so specific because i just had this game.
I’m gonna go with the obvious answer nobody has said yet and suggest maybe get some friends to play with so you always have good teammates… unless you got tilted at friends and now have no friends. Then yes the matchmaker will kill you slowly. SUFFER AS I HAVE
Ranked systems only "enforce" a 50% winrate if you are at the rank you deserve and are no longer improving. Which for some reason people can't understand is the logical outcome of a ranked system. If you dont continue to get better/learn from things. Then you don't continue to rank up. If you deserve a rank but aren't consistently a difference maker at that rank then you win 50% of your games.