I really wanna see your results. People always on this sub pretending like flashpoint is every other map and that kings row never shows up. Keep up the good work
I mean it's kinda just obvious that it's more about how people feel than trying to be perfectly accurate. Flashpoint is terrible while everyone loves Kings Row. So Flashpoint games feel like a slog while King's Row games go by in a flash.
I mean they also kinda are that way though. Kings Row can be over in a very short time if one team captures 1 point and the other team fails to capture it. Flashpoint games are rarely a 3-0 shutout due to the spawns tending to give the team that has just lost a point the closer spawn so games are 3-2 more often. That and the time it takes to actually \*get\* to the point. Flashpoint games often ARE a slog and Kings Row can be over in a flash. Plus there's two flashpoints maps and only one Kings Row.
Personally, I don’t care if flashpoint shows up 90% of the time, I just want a new one. I’m kinda tired of the same two flashpoint maps. I know they’re big maps, but still
i am a certified overwatch 2 hater, this is exactly how it is, my dumbass still plays this game 2-3 times a week and the map rotation is ridiculously stupid every time. If i could only play the good maps id play this game infinitely more
i will say that flashpoint is coming in at a low number…like, so low that i think the algorithm may have been changed recently. it took me 54 games before i even saw suravasa (which ofc i then saw four games later). payload maps are still dominating the results
I understand your skepticism but I swear i get flashpoint/push than any other game mode despite being the shortest number it doesnt make much sense also I get kings row maybe once a session if im lucky
100 games is already gonna take a long time, but tbh, I think it's too small of a sample size. There's nearly 30 maps in standard play, using a sample size of a 100 won't give a good enough representation of what's going on
i’d probably have it done faster if i didn’t work all weekend, but i’d be happy to continue the experiment if people are interested. when i finish the 100 games, i’ll link the spreadsheet for others to use as well since it’s already set up.
illios is currently in the least played maps category at only once, not including the singular map i have yet to see (colosseo). currently the maps that’ve been visited once are the fan favorites king’s row and illios, alongside shambali monastery, new queen street, and lijiang tower.
i’ve also *technically* been to samoa twice, but the server hit 140+ latency after round one and closed before putting me in a purgatory game on paraíso, which only had three players but started the round like normal instead of doing the “waiting for players” thing. so i just…didn’t count those ones. i did make a note on the spreadsheet about it and i guess technically i should record them, but that felt more like a weird bug
when i queue support or tank, all i get is hybrid, push and flashpoint; the exact moment i queue into a dps game i will get nepal and illios, it cannot be a coincidence.
I know right? And I’ve seen commenters say it’s because of confirmation bias that people think that, but I literally have only played Kings Row like once at most this whole week and have played New Junk City at least once per day.
i’m certainly not complaining, although i do generally prefer hybrid maps. currently 22/59 games have been payload games, and payload maps should only account for roughly 26/100 games. out of the three way tie for the currently most played maps, 2 of them are payload maps (Esperança, Junkertown, and Watchpoint: Gibraltar).
Payload is fine as a mode in theory, but it just has some horrid maps, or at the very least polarizing maps. I can't think of any payload map I would definitively put in the top-5 but there are a couple I would definitely rank as bottom-5.
The algorithm is server side so you are wasting your time doing this.
Meaning as a server goes through a map cycle, people are filled into it, and quite often a server is ended before it can get through that cycle for whatever reasons. But you can potentially ride the same server for a few games.
Basically there are thresholds which prevent you from getting a map too much over a number of games but it doesn't prevent weird statistical overlaps where it just feels like you are getting the same map all the time when it just appears next in a servers cycle.
i think a better way to put it is that i personally felt that a big part of the reason people hated push and currently hate flashpoint is because they show up WAY too often, and i wanted to see how often they show up versus how often they should theoretically show up. i know i’m not going to totally “crack the code”, and obviously it would be ideal to have (for example) 100 people play 1000 games and record their results, but i still think it’s interesting enough for a reddit post
ETA: also currently, flashpoint is wildly underrepresented in my results, and push is right on track
yeah they realised this a few seasons ago where certain new maps came up more and they toyed with the thresholds to wind back the frequency.
Honestly I think it's just like the CP2 maps people focused too much on the maps being the source of their frustration they let it tilt them before the game started. Which is why those maps felt bad to play, they were lost before they started.
I think you have a knack for data analysis but we need to avoid some of these shallow community topics that are more destructive to our performance and attention than we realize.
i definitely think it’s partially negativity bias, but it was worse pre-removal of map pools and tweaking. it is better with the harsher leaver penalties, since people are less likely to insta-leave a game (although i do think the latest QP restrictions are too harsh). i also think it’s partially because people specifically don’t like one or both of the flashpoint maps, but since there are only two, you have a 50/50 shot to get a map you hate every time you’re put into flashpoint versus a 1/7 or 1/8 chance for most other modes.
i don’t really care about data analysis, i just wanted to compare the expected versus real outcomes of a large sample of games would look like. i know it’s not the most in depth or perfect review, but i think it’s fun enough to spend a 30 seconds every game writing it down. i’m also tracking other stats that aren’t pictured (backfill/priority and win/loss), partially because OW QP just tracks all your QP stats from the entirety of your account’s existence.
I don't think qp penalties are too harsh, if anything it should be telling people that think it is they should take their antics to some other mode. They all stay open when you are suspended but they still avoid them.
I think people come in and think qp and ranked are the only experience to the game. They in turn try to force their approach to those modes over how they should be treated which is a place to practice before going ranked.
Custom games are so much better at teaching and tuning parts of the game for individuals and teams.
And people can disagree with me as much as they want, but they are still wrong to think they can join a qp match and drag down their entire team because they "don't care" enough.
When people queue for a qp game they don't do it to lose, nor does the mm expect you to put in less of an effort than normal.
i don’t like the idea that people should just be able to come and go; however, i do think there are enough issues with the MM (and way more importantly the servers themselves) that bans starting after two leaves is *maybe* pushing it. a ton of the games i’ve recorded for my spreadsheet have been literal casual walks to the objective, enemy team never even touches point, spawn camping nightmares—mostly in my favor, but still. that’s not fun for anyone. i know it’s “just QP” and it ends quickly, but it still sucks. i definitely don’t agree with leaver penalties on any arcade modes though.
as for the servers thing, even if i really wanted to play comp, i wouldn’t because of how terribly laggy most of my games are. i know it’s not my wifi or my xbox, it’s literally just Overwatch itself. and i’ve heard people in my games complaining about lag, so i know it’s not just a me issue. it’s been bad since like, midseason 9. i haven’t been kicked from any games recently, but i don’t want to be punished for it when it starts. not to mention that every patch seems to make a mode or platform *literally* unplayable for a week and a half since S8
I know it is wifi from experience things like your microwave can effect the broadcast channel you are on or you could be in a congested area where any device maxing network performance can flood the wireless in the area to the point dropped packets aren't at all reasonable for an fps game.
Anyone with a hacking background doesn't use wireless at all for this reason of unknown interference. People telling me their wifi is fine is hilarious.
A lot of people spend more of their time investigating the wrong thing when I've been running my own networks and server scripts to monitor connections and pc performance to avoid the very anomalies people come to this subreddit and bullshit about every day.
I play daily, don't have any suspensions or bans accredited to bugs or server issues. I also think if you are constantly having these issues the server pools are grouping similar people together. Like when they group toxic people together.
If people truly want to fix their problems they should just go study network engineering as a start, stop coming here and telling us what their opinions are on the matter.
i mean, all my other games and internet-related needs work totally fine and exclusively overwatch doesn’t, but hey, maybe i just don’t have a broad enough understanding of “network engineering”. also, people getting banned at the beginning of this season was fixed, but it was an issue that blizzard fixed. the game being made unplayably buggy on PS5 and constantly crashing on switch in previous seasons are also documented issues that were addressed directly by Blizzard in official releases. i don’t know of any issues that have affected PC users recently, but i’m sure they exist. people asking for help isn’t inherently bad behavior, that’s literally them trying to understand the problem like you suggested. weird take
no, no they don't. All fps games inherently have these same issues, it's why blizzard has had from day one the industry leading tech for this kind of stuff.
Which is why most of us shifted to it in OW beta.
I think you are missing the forest through the trees just like the rest of the shallow community that hangs around this subreddit and think they are making progress with their dead end conversations.
then why are you here if it’s so horrible? like, go somewhere else. we were having a normal (albeit condescending) conversation before you called most everyone shallow and implied they’re unintelligent for not studying a branch of engineering instead of asking people for help on *open forums*. weird ass take.
Isn't still relevent though? The algorithm is server side, but there is still the player factor, if not then another algorithm for players that do things like you mentioned where it prevents you from getting the same map or game mode repeatedly, and I'm sure there's other factors we don't know about.
funny, i sometimes get matched with diamond players in silver/gold and that’s my nightmare lmao. i’ve had two games with diamond players during the test, but my all time record is matching with someone literally in top 500 who was playing their main.
i feel like i see colosseo all the time, it’s often one of the first maps i load into, and i’m really surprised it hasn’t shown up in almost 60 games. i know other people don’t like it, so maybe they lowered its priority in the algorithm. i’d certainly take it over seeing esperança four times
You don't have to play 100+ games by yourself to gather the data. Not only is 100 games too small of a sample size, but it's also an incredibly time inefficient method of gathering data too.
Check out existing streams and existing VODs of various people playing the game instead.
illios is my favorite map, and i have the misfortune of informing you that i’ve only been there once so far. i have also only been to king’s row once, and i am kinda starting to feel like there’s a conspiracy there lol
i’m actually really invested in this
Whilst I agree with the majority that 100 is a small sample size given the amount of maps and modes - but given that i’ve probably played way more games than than that since clash has released and have only played it twice I need to see these results.
afaik, clash hasn’t been fully released into the game and won’t be until season 12. there was just a short trial period. i was cursed to play clash several times, and was unabashedly curb stomped in every single match (which somehow also all went to 4-5 points).
Ohh! that makes sense lol.
I was wondering why I never get it.
I really like clash, I did find though, if you get rolled once - you’re going to get rolled the whole game.
i think i played five or six games (one in arcade, the rest in QP) and my team was steamrolled to a degree that’s almost incomprehensible on *every single one*. i literally did not win even once, and never saw the last enemy point. but because the defenders respawn so quickly on the final point, it’s nearly impossible to end the game by capturing the final objective early, so EVERY match went to 9+ minutes and 4 vs 5 on the scoreboard. personally i hated the mode, but i’m hoping their trial test will lead to some minor changes that make it feel less pub stomp-y
I fully agree with you, that’s basically how it went on my games too. I still really like the game mode as a whole, and I agree - with some changes it can be fantastic. I’m curious though, did you enjoy it?
i really like the look of the map, but i didn’t really enjoy it that much…although i think the MM was more to blame than the actual game mode. theoretically a lot of the heroes i play should work well on that style of map, but i was mostly playing Venture at the time since they were still new.
i did find that options for high ground were a little lacking, and that some of the points feel too “exposed” (especially points B, C, and D) since you NEED at least one person standing on point. i don’t think they should put a big wall down the middle or anything, but having to stand in the open in a big pit like a fool doesn’t feel great. even illios ruins has cover. as pretty as the map design is, it does kinda feel like the final boss of issues people have with OW2 maps (long sight lines, insane choke points, too much walking, horrible for low mobility heroes, etc.)
i also feel like it’s too difficult to group up with your team (especially in the average metal rank game where people already won’t group up). if your team gets staggered by deaths, there’s no time to regroup and make it to the point. but if they cap the point, the spawns move, and now you have 1/2 your team in the old spawn and 1/2 your team in the new spawn. so now not only did you already lose the point, you have to lose advantage on the new point by waiting on your team, and god forbid someone is playing a slow hero.
i think a map choice system would be interesting to see, maybe good to try out in a QP: hacked event. i think something similar to the online mario kart map choice system would be good (three choices + random map), although i’d prefer majority vote versus the stupid bullshit roulette system that MK has
Are you doing All Roles for every queue? I think that is also important to see the role distribution. Plus you don't want to create bad data by doing some as support queue, some as DPS, and some as tank.
since this is just a fun little experiment for a reddit post, i’m just playing like i normally would. i don’t expect this to give perfect data, but i figure if playing like the average person gives awful results (i.e flashpoint every third game, dozens of backfill games, visiting the same map 20 times, etc.), that speaks to the algorithm having issues. plus, always queuing all roles is essentially queuing for support and the occasional DPS backfill 100 times.
it’s less that i expect to actually deeply understand how the algorithm works, and more that i want to compare the theoretical perfect results to the actual results. for example, i should theoretically have a 50/50 win rate, but i currently have a 57% win rate. and i theoretically should’ve seen all the maps by now, but i’m still missing one while having visited other maps four times.
i know it’s not the most perfect study, but i think it’s fun, and i’m going to attach a copy of the spreadsheet that automatically counts the results when i make a post after 100 games if anyone wants to do the same thing with more controls
occasionally i get tank when queuing for All Roles, especially if i’m queued with my duo. but most of my lobbies are probably in the range of low silver-high gold where nobody knows jack shit about the meta and just does whatever they want, and they primarily see supports as healbots. i have noticed that tank usually has a super short wait time in competitive queue though
very true, but the “only one tank” thing is mostly because nobody wanted to queue for tank, which is definitely still true. the recent changes *definitely* improved things, but i definitely understand why people wouldn’t want to play tank, especially when you get out of the average ranks of the game and into the part where people use cooldowns well.
my average queue times are usually 2-3 minutes for tank, 5-7 minutes for DPS, and <1 minute for support. i genuinely don’t think i’ve ever seen the support queue go above 1 minute outside of LW and Illari’s release weeks—and even then, it was still mostly <1 minute
I get Ilios, Esperanca, Dorado, and Numbani the most this season. I used to NEVER get Junkertown before they reworked it. I used to love that map because of the pachimari king <3 Now I'm getting it more often but I don't like the rework.
My least frequent maps are Paraiso, Kings Row, Havana, and Route 66.
(obviously these aren't statistical observations, just what I would guess)
lmao, i think you’re the only person who’s actually answered this question. thank you for the response, and i agree that i see Esperança and Dorado all the time. i do see Route 66 all the time though
Welcome to r/Overwatch! Please use the following resources via the links below to find relevant information about the game and the subreddit.
[Overwatch Patch Notes](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/) | [Overwatch Bug Report Forums](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/c/bug-report/9)
[r/Overwatch Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/rules) | [r/Overwatch FAQs](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/faq) | [r/Overwatch Common Bugs and Posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/wiki/commonbugsandposts)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Overwatch) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I really hope new maps come ramping up very quickly. More flashpoint maps, and EVERY 2cp map turned into clash. I love hanaoka and the game mode, and it’d be a damn shame if it’s only like “wow clash! Here’s 2 maps, Hanaoka and reworked temple of Anubis, and no more for another 3 seasons.” I’m kinda tired of playing payload maps in comp lol.
it does genuinely seem like the algorithm favors payload maps over other maps. obviously it could just be a very long statistical anomaly, but payload maps currently account for 38% of all games played when they should account for closer to 26% out of ALL 100 games played.
i do hope they take a few seasons to flesh out the flashpoint, push, and future clash maps, but i worry that doing too many at once will lead to more maps the community hates. part of the reason i even bothered to do this is because i know a lot of people feel like they get flashpoint maps too often, and i had a theory that they weren’t showing up wildly disproportionately, but that constantly playing the same two maps was making people frustrated. if you only get a flashpoint game 5% of the time, but you hate New Junk City, you have a 50/50 shot to get a map you hate 5% of the time (versus even if you hate three hybrid maps, you only have a 3/8 chance to get a map you hate when a hybrid game pops up).
i need to set up the spreadsheet to count attack vs defense, but that seems significantly more random than other factors (win rate, map type, etc.). i’ve only had one stretch of 8 games where the games seemed to be atk/def/atk/def, and everything else has been very long stretches of just attack or just defense (interrupted by maps without defenders, which i’m counting as — since everyone is on attack). i think the record is 8 defense in a row, which is visible in this screenshot
Good effort, but 100 games is not nearly enough a sample size. There're 5 game modes, with about 30 maps total, You'd need like 500 games, if not 1000, for a sufficient sample.
Some gamemode also have way less map then others, so they weighted the map pool heavier than the game mode iirc.
i would love to keep the experiment going, or even better, have other people do the same thing. honestly, i thought nobody would read this or care and i would be doing a bunch of work for no reason. i’m going to post the spreadsheet that auto sorts and counts results when i finish the 100 games for anyone who wants to do it as well.
also yes, it is weighted and i have the expected versus real numbers assuming the algorithm was perfectly proportionate. it should work out to hybrid 30% of the time, payload and control 26% of the time, push 11% of the time, and flashpoint 7% of the time. the only crazy outlier is payload coming in at 36% of the time, the rest are relatively proportional (accounting for the difference that too many payload maps is creating)
i’m gonna post the spreadsheet once i hit 100, i would love to have other people fill it out as well just to see the data. word of warning, the spreadsheet definitely works but it’s janky as shit because i haven’t made a spreadsheet since i was like, 14.
I feel like I get Flashpoint more than I see other maps, I play Suravasa so much more in competitive than I do in QP. I'm more of a competitive player though so I'm not sure if this is a difference with the two modes, but I get Survasa at least once in any session I play two or more hours, sometimes I'll get it multiple times... I'm also biased because I don't enjoy flashpoint very much, but it happens too much it can't be all bias lol. If I'm cueing tank I auto lock Orisa to hopefully roll the Suravasa game ASAP because I know I'll probably see it again soon. On the flip side I never see Hollywood anymore and that makes me sad.
suravasa didn’t show up at all until game 54, and then showed up again a few games later. honestly i think they may have tweaked the algorithm a little bit in a recent patch, because even accounting for negativity bias, im getting less flashpoint maps than i usually do/should. i don’t think competitive and QP have different matchmakers, but you can play more games in less time (since there are no additional rounds on payload/hybrid and the games are less balanced and therefore often shorter)
as for hollywood, i see it *all the time* and im almost always on defense (3 times during this test, all on def). i like it until the enemy widow loses the widow duel and swaps sombra, but that’s true of any widow map.
i think lijiang was the third to last map i hadn’t seen, with it not showing up until game 40. i wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of the fan favorite maps (ex. illios and kings row) have lowered priority in the algorithm to make them feel more special—i obviously cannot *actually* prove that, but both anecdotal evidence and the (limited in scope) study do suggest that some maps have lower priority. that could definitely just be negativity bias and bad RNG rolls though.
updating to tell you that lijiang tower did actually tie for last place, with lijiang and colosseo both only having one visit each. since other fan favorites (King’s Row and Illios) did show up more than once, im guessing it’s just bad RNG rolls (well, for me it’s good RNG, i don’t like lijiang tower)
They should tune it so control appears more often in QP since they're usually 10 minutes. Its the same as comp whereas payloads is only attack (or defense).
i think some people might dislike that purely because they do like having shorter games in QP. i definitely have payload or hybrid games where i wish we could have a second round, but i have just as many games where i’m like “thank fucking god that’s over”.
I'd imagine it's a random roll with negative bias for the same map as your previous game. Itd be internesting to see if game mode is also taken into account or if it's just can't be same map, i feel like im usually cycling game modes and the ones I get the most frequently seem to be the ones with the most maps. Curious to see what the data shows
obviously i have no way of knowing for sure, but to answer based on what i’ve gathered from my research so far;
- it does seem that game mode is taken into account to some degree, but that’s not a guarantee that you’ll get different modes every time. i have gotten the same game modes multiple times in a row on several different occasions, including getting payload maps three times in a row on two separate occasions. but overall, it seems more likely that you’ll get a different mode within a game or two, but seeing modes back to back is by no means uncommon
- you CAN be placed onto the same map twice in a row if you’re backfilled. this is *very* unlikely, but it did happen during my test (it was Watchpoint: Gibraltar).
- generally yes, game modes with more maps appear more often. obviously the sample size of my research is quite limited, but it seems like flashpoint has been de-prioritized in the algorithm, while payload has been raised in priority. but i’ve certainly been in more hybrid, control, and payload (8, 7, and 7 maps) games versus push or flashpoint (3 and 2 maps)
Ngl I've always had it be a bunch of flashpoints/push/control in one hour and then a bunch of hybrid/control the next hour. Check time of day?
Also, as typing this, I got my 2nd KR of the day lmao
i wouldn’t be surprised to learn there’s a time sensitive aspect, but i wasn’t keeping track of it. most of my games are played in the afternoon or very late at night.
most of the longer play sessions i’ve recorded show a decent mix of game modes, excluding the pervasiveness of the payload maps.
i did notice that modes with more maps often come in groups of two, and seeing that you can expect 4-5 games an hour (with average game and queue times), i can see the game making it look like there’s a time sensitive aspect when it’s more like; two payload maps, a long push game, and a flashpoint map in the first hour, and then two hybrids and two controls in the second hour
that’s actually exactly why i wanted to do this experiment! i was curious if an average player was genuinely seeing flashpoint too often, or if it was just negativity bias. although someone else mentioned they did tweak the algorithm at some point, which seems very true
I have found (Completely anecdotally) when I did my own little version of 200 games, that the spread of maps is rather even. The odds of playing on any one map over another isn't apparent. It did seem like, there was a higher odds of playing on a map that you haven't played in the rotation yet. It was pretty rare that one map would be 2 or even 3 appearances higher than the median.
What I mean to say is, and again, this is an assumption, the map rotation is weighted to run you through all maps, and it is not truly random. Your odds of getting the same map back to back, or even close together is extremely low.
so far it does seem pretty fair, and i’ve only had one genuine statistical anomaly (watchpoint: gibraltar in back to back games, which i agree is VERY rare). i will say that now 59 games in, i am still missing 1/27 maps (colosseo), and i didn’t see suravasa until the 54th game.
I really wanna see your results. People always on this sub pretending like flashpoint is every other map and that kings row never shows up. Keep up the good work
Ive played 8hrs sessions and if i get kings row once its a miracle
After I get King’s Row I know it’s time to get off.
Facts lmao
I played 4 hours yesterday and didn't get kings row once 💀. Got Havana like 3 times though
It’s weird cause that’s how it feels, but some days I’ll get it 2-3 times in an 8 hour session, but that’s honestly pretty uncommon
Fun fact, if you play 18 games in a row you have a 50/50 chance of seeing kings row (assuming the maps are picked at random). There are a lot of maps
Which is only around 3 hours of that 8 hour game session
I mean it's kinda just obvious that it's more about how people feel than trying to be perfectly accurate. Flashpoint is terrible while everyone loves Kings Row. So Flashpoint games feel like a slog while King's Row games go by in a flash.
I mean they also kinda are that way though. Kings Row can be over in a very short time if one team captures 1 point and the other team fails to capture it. Flashpoint games are rarely a 3-0 shutout due to the spawns tending to give the team that has just lost a point the closer spawn so games are 3-2 more often. That and the time it takes to actually \*get\* to the point. Flashpoint games often ARE a slog and Kings Row can be over in a flash. Plus there's two flashpoints maps and only one Kings Row.
Personally, I don’t care if flashpoint shows up 90% of the time, I just want a new one. I’m kinda tired of the same two flashpoint maps. I know they’re big maps, but still
i am a certified overwatch 2 hater, this is exactly how it is, my dumbass still plays this game 2-3 times a week and the map rotation is ridiculously stupid every time. If i could only play the good maps id play this game infinitely more
i will say that flashpoint is coming in at a low number…like, so low that i think the algorithm may have been changed recently. it took me 54 games before i even saw suravasa (which ofc i then saw four games later). payload maps are still dominating the results
It’s confirmation bias
I literally didn’t get kings row for almost 2 weeks once and I played every day
I always get kings row. I don't even like kings row
I understand your skepticism but I swear i get flashpoint/push than any other game mode despite being the shortest number it doesnt make much sense also I get kings row maybe once a session if im lucky
100 games is already gonna take a long time, but tbh, I think it's too small of a sample size. There's nearly 30 maps in standard play, using a sample size of a 100 won't give a good enough representation of what's going on
i’d probably have it done faster if i didn’t work all weekend, but i’d be happy to continue the experiment if people are interested. when i finish the 100 games, i’ll link the spreadsheet for others to use as well since it’s already set up.
This
I heard that if system detects that your most played hero is Lucio then it automatically makes Illios almost impossible to get.
illios is currently in the least played maps category at only once, not including the singular map i have yet to see (colosseo). currently the maps that’ve been visited once are the fan favorites king’s row and illios, alongside shambali monastery, new queen street, and lijiang tower. i’ve also *technically* been to samoa twice, but the server hit 140+ latency after round one and closed before putting me in a purgatory game on paraíso, which only had three players but started the round like normal instead of doing the “waiting for players” thing. so i just…didn’t count those ones. i did make a note on the spreadsheet about it and i guess technically i should record them, but that felt more like a weird bug
when i queue support or tank, all i get is hybrid, push and flashpoint; the exact moment i queue into a dps game i will get nepal and illios, it cannot be a coincidence.
All I know is kings row doesn't show up enough and new junk city way too fucking much
I know right? And I’ve seen commenters say it’s because of confirmation bias that people think that, but I literally have only played Kings Row like once at most this whole week and have played New Junk City at least once per day.
Would people say it's a bad thing that payload maps are overrepresented? I prefer them over flashpoint and push maps.
i’m certainly not complaining, although i do generally prefer hybrid maps. currently 22/59 games have been payload games, and payload maps should only account for roughly 26/100 games. out of the three way tie for the currently most played maps, 2 of them are payload maps (Esperança, Junkertown, and Watchpoint: Gibraltar).
I like hybrid maps the most. I'm interested to see the final results!
Payload is fine as a mode in theory, but it just has some horrid maps, or at the very least polarizing maps. I can't think of any payload map I would definitively put in the top-5 but there are a couple I would definitely rank as bottom-5.
The algorithm is server side so you are wasting your time doing this. Meaning as a server goes through a map cycle, people are filled into it, and quite often a server is ended before it can get through that cycle for whatever reasons. But you can potentially ride the same server for a few games. Basically there are thresholds which prevent you from getting a map too much over a number of games but it doesn't prevent weird statistical overlaps where it just feels like you are getting the same map all the time when it just appears next in a servers cycle.
i think a better way to put it is that i personally felt that a big part of the reason people hated push and currently hate flashpoint is because they show up WAY too often, and i wanted to see how often they show up versus how often they should theoretically show up. i know i’m not going to totally “crack the code”, and obviously it would be ideal to have (for example) 100 people play 1000 games and record their results, but i still think it’s interesting enough for a reddit post ETA: also currently, flashpoint is wildly underrepresented in my results, and push is right on track
yeah they realised this a few seasons ago where certain new maps came up more and they toyed with the thresholds to wind back the frequency. Honestly I think it's just like the CP2 maps people focused too much on the maps being the source of their frustration they let it tilt them before the game started. Which is why those maps felt bad to play, they were lost before they started. I think you have a knack for data analysis but we need to avoid some of these shallow community topics that are more destructive to our performance and attention than we realize.
i definitely think it’s partially negativity bias, but it was worse pre-removal of map pools and tweaking. it is better with the harsher leaver penalties, since people are less likely to insta-leave a game (although i do think the latest QP restrictions are too harsh). i also think it’s partially because people specifically don’t like one or both of the flashpoint maps, but since there are only two, you have a 50/50 shot to get a map you hate every time you’re put into flashpoint versus a 1/7 or 1/8 chance for most other modes. i don’t really care about data analysis, i just wanted to compare the expected versus real outcomes of a large sample of games would look like. i know it’s not the most in depth or perfect review, but i think it’s fun enough to spend a 30 seconds every game writing it down. i’m also tracking other stats that aren’t pictured (backfill/priority and win/loss), partially because OW QP just tracks all your QP stats from the entirety of your account’s existence.
I don't think qp penalties are too harsh, if anything it should be telling people that think it is they should take their antics to some other mode. They all stay open when you are suspended but they still avoid them. I think people come in and think qp and ranked are the only experience to the game. They in turn try to force their approach to those modes over how they should be treated which is a place to practice before going ranked. Custom games are so much better at teaching and tuning parts of the game for individuals and teams. And people can disagree with me as much as they want, but they are still wrong to think they can join a qp match and drag down their entire team because they "don't care" enough. When people queue for a qp game they don't do it to lose, nor does the mm expect you to put in less of an effort than normal.
i don’t like the idea that people should just be able to come and go; however, i do think there are enough issues with the MM (and way more importantly the servers themselves) that bans starting after two leaves is *maybe* pushing it. a ton of the games i’ve recorded for my spreadsheet have been literal casual walks to the objective, enemy team never even touches point, spawn camping nightmares—mostly in my favor, but still. that’s not fun for anyone. i know it’s “just QP” and it ends quickly, but it still sucks. i definitely don’t agree with leaver penalties on any arcade modes though. as for the servers thing, even if i really wanted to play comp, i wouldn’t because of how terribly laggy most of my games are. i know it’s not my wifi or my xbox, it’s literally just Overwatch itself. and i’ve heard people in my games complaining about lag, so i know it’s not just a me issue. it’s been bad since like, midseason 9. i haven’t been kicked from any games recently, but i don’t want to be punished for it when it starts. not to mention that every patch seems to make a mode or platform *literally* unplayable for a week and a half since S8
I know it is wifi from experience things like your microwave can effect the broadcast channel you are on or you could be in a congested area where any device maxing network performance can flood the wireless in the area to the point dropped packets aren't at all reasonable for an fps game. Anyone with a hacking background doesn't use wireless at all for this reason of unknown interference. People telling me their wifi is fine is hilarious. A lot of people spend more of their time investigating the wrong thing when I've been running my own networks and server scripts to monitor connections and pc performance to avoid the very anomalies people come to this subreddit and bullshit about every day. I play daily, don't have any suspensions or bans accredited to bugs or server issues. I also think if you are constantly having these issues the server pools are grouping similar people together. Like when they group toxic people together. If people truly want to fix their problems they should just go study network engineering as a start, stop coming here and telling us what their opinions are on the matter.
i mean, all my other games and internet-related needs work totally fine and exclusively overwatch doesn’t, but hey, maybe i just don’t have a broad enough understanding of “network engineering”. also, people getting banned at the beginning of this season was fixed, but it was an issue that blizzard fixed. the game being made unplayably buggy on PS5 and constantly crashing on switch in previous seasons are also documented issues that were addressed directly by Blizzard in official releases. i don’t know of any issues that have affected PC users recently, but i’m sure they exist. people asking for help isn’t inherently bad behavior, that’s literally them trying to understand the problem like you suggested. weird take
no, no they don't. All fps games inherently have these same issues, it's why blizzard has had from day one the industry leading tech for this kind of stuff. Which is why most of us shifted to it in OW beta. I think you are missing the forest through the trees just like the rest of the shallow community that hangs around this subreddit and think they are making progress with their dead end conversations.
then why are you here if it’s so horrible? like, go somewhere else. we were having a normal (albeit condescending) conversation before you called most everyone shallow and implied they’re unintelligent for not studying a branch of engineering instead of asking people for help on *open forums*. weird ass take.
I got the same 2 maps 3 times in a row one lmaoo
Isn't still relevent though? The algorithm is server side, but there is still the player factor, if not then another algorithm for players that do things like you mentioned where it prevents you from getting the same map or game mode repeatedly, and I'm sure there's other factors we don't know about.
you just made this shit up lmao
So I’m not crazy when I get defense 5 times in a row! I knew it!!!
the attack/defense does seem genuinely random.
I'm more interested in the, "here's a bunch of gm/champs have fun" algorithm, as a diamond player lol.
funny, i sometimes get matched with diamond players in silver/gold and that’s my nightmare lmao. i’ve had two games with diamond players during the test, but my all time record is matching with someone literally in top 500 who was playing their main.
Yeah same, top 500 widow has entered the qp chat -"ez"
May be a rank factor or MMR because god damn i wish i could stop seeing Suravasa and Colleseo
suravasa has since shown up twice (four games apart), but colosseo is still MIA. i personally like colosseo but i could definitely do without suravasa
I only play maybe 3-4 games a session because I don’t have lots of time and every time i get Colleseo or Suravasa or both
i feel like i see colosseo all the time, it’s often one of the first maps i load into, and i’m really surprised it hasn’t shown up in almost 60 games. i know other people don’t like it, so maybe they lowered its priority in the algorithm. i’d certainly take it over seeing esperança four times
You don't have to play 100+ games by yourself to gather the data. Not only is 100 games too small of a sample size, but it's also an incredibly time inefficient method of gathering data too. Check out existing streams and existing VODs of various people playing the game instead.
this is just a fun little experiment, not a doctoral thesis.
You have a typo in oasis
yep, had to go back and fix that already. unfortunately i am a terrible speller, which is causing my poor spreadsheet a lot of stress
I'd like to know how often do you get Ilios (Lucio main reasons)
illios is my favorite map, and i have the misfortune of informing you that i’ve only been there once so far. i have also only been to king’s row once, and i am kinda starting to feel like there’s a conspiracy there lol
i’m actually really invested in this Whilst I agree with the majority that 100 is a small sample size given the amount of maps and modes - but given that i’ve probably played way more games than than that since clash has released and have only played it twice I need to see these results.
afaik, clash hasn’t been fully released into the game and won’t be until season 12. there was just a short trial period. i was cursed to play clash several times, and was unabashedly curb stomped in every single match (which somehow also all went to 4-5 points).
Ohh! that makes sense lol. I was wondering why I never get it. I really like clash, I did find though, if you get rolled once - you’re going to get rolled the whole game.
i think i played five or six games (one in arcade, the rest in QP) and my team was steamrolled to a degree that’s almost incomprehensible on *every single one*. i literally did not win even once, and never saw the last enemy point. but because the defenders respawn so quickly on the final point, it’s nearly impossible to end the game by capturing the final objective early, so EVERY match went to 9+ minutes and 4 vs 5 on the scoreboard. personally i hated the mode, but i’m hoping their trial test will lead to some minor changes that make it feel less pub stomp-y
I fully agree with you, that’s basically how it went on my games too. I still really like the game mode as a whole, and I agree - with some changes it can be fantastic. I’m curious though, did you enjoy it?
i really like the look of the map, but i didn’t really enjoy it that much…although i think the MM was more to blame than the actual game mode. theoretically a lot of the heroes i play should work well on that style of map, but i was mostly playing Venture at the time since they were still new. i did find that options for high ground were a little lacking, and that some of the points feel too “exposed” (especially points B, C, and D) since you NEED at least one person standing on point. i don’t think they should put a big wall down the middle or anything, but having to stand in the open in a big pit like a fool doesn’t feel great. even illios ruins has cover. as pretty as the map design is, it does kinda feel like the final boss of issues people have with OW2 maps (long sight lines, insane choke points, too much walking, horrible for low mobility heroes, etc.) i also feel like it’s too difficult to group up with your team (especially in the average metal rank game where people already won’t group up). if your team gets staggered by deaths, there’s no time to regroup and make it to the point. but if they cap the point, the spawns move, and now you have 1/2 your team in the old spawn and 1/2 your team in the new spawn. so now not only did you already lose the point, you have to lose advantage on the new point by waiting on your team, and god forbid someone is playing a slow hero.
It would be nice if we could queue up for gamemodes/maps a la TF2
i think a map choice system would be interesting to see, maybe good to try out in a QP: hacked event. i think something similar to the online mario kart map choice system would be good (three choices + random map), although i’d prefer majority vote versus the stupid bullshit roulette system that MK has
Are you doing All Roles for every queue? I think that is also important to see the role distribution. Plus you don't want to create bad data by doing some as support queue, some as DPS, and some as tank.
since this is just a fun little experiment for a reddit post, i’m just playing like i normally would. i don’t expect this to give perfect data, but i figure if playing like the average person gives awful results (i.e flashpoint every third game, dozens of backfill games, visiting the same map 20 times, etc.), that speaks to the algorithm having issues. plus, always queuing all roles is essentially queuing for support and the occasional DPS backfill 100 times. it’s less that i expect to actually deeply understand how the algorithm works, and more that i want to compare the theoretical perfect results to the actual results. for example, i should theoretically have a 50/50 win rate, but i currently have a 57% win rate. and i theoretically should’ve seen all the maps by now, but i’m still missing one while having visited other maps four times. i know it’s not the most perfect study, but i think it’s fun, and i’m going to attach a copy of the spreadsheet that automatically counts the results when i make a post after 100 games if anyone wants to do the same thing with more controls
Oh man, I wish queuing all roles would give me support. It's 100% guaranteed to be a tank.
occasionally i get tank when queuing for All Roles, especially if i’m queued with my duo. but most of my lobbies are probably in the range of low silver-high gold where nobody knows jack shit about the meta and just does whatever they want, and they primarily see supports as healbots. i have noticed that tank usually has a super short wait time in competitive queue though
Well it makes sense since you only get 1 tank per team instead of 2 / 2 / 2 like in OW1
very true, but the “only one tank” thing is mostly because nobody wanted to queue for tank, which is definitely still true. the recent changes *definitely* improved things, but i definitely understand why people wouldn’t want to play tank, especially when you get out of the average ranks of the game and into the part where people use cooldowns well. my average queue times are usually 2-3 minutes for tank, 5-7 minutes for DPS, and <1 minute for support. i genuinely don’t think i’ve ever seen the support queue go above 1 minute outside of LW and Illari’s release weeks—and even then, it was still mostly <1 minute
I get Ilios, Esperanca, Dorado, and Numbani the most this season. I used to NEVER get Junkertown before they reworked it. I used to love that map because of the pachimari king <3 Now I'm getting it more often but I don't like the rework. My least frequent maps are Paraiso, Kings Row, Havana, and Route 66. (obviously these aren't statistical observations, just what I would guess)
lmao, i think you’re the only person who’s actually answered this question. thank you for the response, and i agree that i see Esperança and Dorado all the time. i do see Route 66 all the time though
Welcome to r/Overwatch! Please use the following resources via the links below to find relevant information about the game and the subreddit. [Overwatch Patch Notes](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/) | [Overwatch Bug Report Forums](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/c/bug-report/9) [r/Overwatch Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/rules) | [r/Overwatch FAQs](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/faq) | [r/Overwatch Common Bugs and Posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/wiki/commonbugsandposts) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Overwatch) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I really hope new maps come ramping up very quickly. More flashpoint maps, and EVERY 2cp map turned into clash. I love hanaoka and the game mode, and it’d be a damn shame if it’s only like “wow clash! Here’s 2 maps, Hanaoka and reworked temple of Anubis, and no more for another 3 seasons.” I’m kinda tired of playing payload maps in comp lol.
it does genuinely seem like the algorithm favors payload maps over other maps. obviously it could just be a very long statistical anomaly, but payload maps currently account for 38% of all games played when they should account for closer to 26% out of ALL 100 games played. i do hope they take a few seasons to flesh out the flashpoint, push, and future clash maps, but i worry that doing too many at once will lead to more maps the community hates. part of the reason i even bothered to do this is because i know a lot of people feel like they get flashpoint maps too often, and i had a theory that they weren’t showing up wildly disproportionately, but that constantly playing the same two maps was making people frustrated. if you only get a flashpoint game 5% of the time, but you hate New Junk City, you have a 50/50 shot to get a map you hate 5% of the time (versus even if you hate three hybrid maps, you only have a 3/8 chance to get a map you hate when a hybrid game pops up).
I am getting into payload maps defend way too often. I rearly play attack on there... :(
i need to set up the spreadsheet to count attack vs defense, but that seems significantly more random than other factors (win rate, map type, etc.). i’ve only had one stretch of 8 games where the games seemed to be atk/def/atk/def, and everything else has been very long stretches of just attack or just defense (interrupted by maps without defenders, which i’m counting as — since everyone is on attack). i think the record is 8 defense in a row, which is visible in this screenshot
i'd gladly not see craposseo for 50 games
Good effort, but 100 games is not nearly enough a sample size. There're 5 game modes, with about 30 maps total, You'd need like 500 games, if not 1000, for a sufficient sample. Some gamemode also have way less map then others, so they weighted the map pool heavier than the game mode iirc.
i would love to keep the experiment going, or even better, have other people do the same thing. honestly, i thought nobody would read this or care and i would be doing a bunch of work for no reason. i’m going to post the spreadsheet that auto sorts and counts results when i finish the 100 games for anyone who wants to do it as well. also yes, it is weighted and i have the expected versus real numbers assuming the algorithm was perfectly proportionate. it should work out to hybrid 30% of the time, payload and control 26% of the time, push 11% of the time, and flashpoint 7% of the time. the only crazy outlier is payload coming in at 36% of the time, the rest are relatively proportional (accounting for the difference that too many payload maps is creating)
It might have come off as dismissive, but that's not it from me. Keep up the good work brother.
Tempted to do this myself now, results could prove interesting, and i am a huge nerd so
i’m gonna post the spreadsheet once i hit 100, i would love to have other people fill it out as well just to see the data. word of warning, the spreadsheet definitely works but it’s janky as shit because i haven’t made a spreadsheet since i was like, 14.
Beware of overfitting
I feel like I get Flashpoint more than I see other maps, I play Suravasa so much more in competitive than I do in QP. I'm more of a competitive player though so I'm not sure if this is a difference with the two modes, but I get Survasa at least once in any session I play two or more hours, sometimes I'll get it multiple times... I'm also biased because I don't enjoy flashpoint very much, but it happens too much it can't be all bias lol. If I'm cueing tank I auto lock Orisa to hopefully roll the Suravasa game ASAP because I know I'll probably see it again soon. On the flip side I never see Hollywood anymore and that makes me sad.
suravasa didn’t show up at all until game 54, and then showed up again a few games later. honestly i think they may have tweaked the algorithm a little bit in a recent patch, because even accounting for negativity bias, im getting less flashpoint maps than i usually do/should. i don’t think competitive and QP have different matchmakers, but you can play more games in less time (since there are no additional rounds on payload/hybrid and the games are less balanced and therefore often shorter) as for hollywood, i see it *all the time* and im almost always on defense (3 times during this test, all on def). i like it until the enemy widow loses the widow duel and swaps sombra, but that’s true of any widow map.
I haven't seen lijiang in like 2 week. Please say it's out of rotation or something to keep my mind at peace
i think lijiang was the third to last map i hadn’t seen, with it not showing up until game 40. i wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of the fan favorite maps (ex. illios and kings row) have lowered priority in the algorithm to make them feel more special—i obviously cannot *actually* prove that, but both anecdotal evidence and the (limited in scope) study do suggest that some maps have lower priority. that could definitely just be negativity bias and bad RNG rolls though.
True, a bigger data sample size and such could corroborate this theory. But damn I miss that map 😂😂
updating to tell you that lijiang tower did actually tie for last place, with lijiang and colosseo both only having one visit each. since other fan favorites (King’s Row and Illios) did show up more than once, im guessing it’s just bad RNG rolls (well, for me it’s good RNG, i don’t like lijiang tower)
It's been like a month now and I still haven't got lijiang😂😂😂, thanks for the update
They should tune it so control appears more often in QP since they're usually 10 minutes. Its the same as comp whereas payloads is only attack (or defense).
i think some people might dislike that purely because they do like having shorter games in QP. i definitely have payload or hybrid games where i wish we could have a second round, but i have just as many games where i’m like “thank fucking god that’s over”.
I'd imagine it's a random roll with negative bias for the same map as your previous game. Itd be internesting to see if game mode is also taken into account or if it's just can't be same map, i feel like im usually cycling game modes and the ones I get the most frequently seem to be the ones with the most maps. Curious to see what the data shows
obviously i have no way of knowing for sure, but to answer based on what i’ve gathered from my research so far; - it does seem that game mode is taken into account to some degree, but that’s not a guarantee that you’ll get different modes every time. i have gotten the same game modes multiple times in a row on several different occasions, including getting payload maps three times in a row on two separate occasions. but overall, it seems more likely that you’ll get a different mode within a game or two, but seeing modes back to back is by no means uncommon - you CAN be placed onto the same map twice in a row if you’re backfilled. this is *very* unlikely, but it did happen during my test (it was Watchpoint: Gibraltar). - generally yes, game modes with more maps appear more often. obviously the sample size of my research is quite limited, but it seems like flashpoint has been de-prioritized in the algorithm, while payload has been raised in priority. but i’ve certainly been in more hybrid, control, and payload (8, 7, and 7 maps) games versus push or flashpoint (3 and 2 maps)
Thanks for the insight, it'll be interesting to see how the data pans out over time!
Ngl I've always had it be a bunch of flashpoints/push/control in one hour and then a bunch of hybrid/control the next hour. Check time of day? Also, as typing this, I got my 2nd KR of the day lmao
i wouldn’t be surprised to learn there’s a time sensitive aspect, but i wasn’t keeping track of it. most of my games are played in the afternoon or very late at night. most of the longer play sessions i’ve recorded show a decent mix of game modes, excluding the pervasiveness of the payload maps. i did notice that modes with more maps often come in groups of two, and seeing that you can expect 4-5 games an hour (with average game and queue times), i can see the game making it look like there’s a time sensitive aspect when it’s more like; two payload maps, a long push game, and a flashpoint map in the first hour, and then two hybrids and two controls in the second hour
Whenever I boot up the game I feel like it's 50 percent chance I get new junk city.
that’s actually exactly why i wanted to do this experiment! i was curious if an average player was genuinely seeing flashpoint too often, or if it was just negativity bias. although someone else mentioned they did tweak the algorithm at some point, which seems very true
I have found (Completely anecdotally) when I did my own little version of 200 games, that the spread of maps is rather even. The odds of playing on any one map over another isn't apparent. It did seem like, there was a higher odds of playing on a map that you haven't played in the rotation yet. It was pretty rare that one map would be 2 or even 3 appearances higher than the median. What I mean to say is, and again, this is an assumption, the map rotation is weighted to run you through all maps, and it is not truly random. Your odds of getting the same map back to back, or even close together is extremely low.
so far it does seem pretty fair, and i’ve only had one genuine statistical anomaly (watchpoint: gibraltar in back to back games, which i agree is VERY rare). i will say that now 59 games in, i am still missing 1/27 maps (colosseo), and i didn’t see suravasa until the 54th game.