The facts are right in front of us, just look at all the threads created in this comp forum, and how many % of them that are about bad matchmaking and forced streaks.
And just read Blizzard’s statements.
1. Blizzard developers have confirmed that the matchmaking system matches low-skilled players with other, much more skilled players.
"Overwatch 2 Server Engineer Morgan Maddren explained that while most OW2 matches appear balanced to the matchmaker, some games still heavily favor one team. Previously, the matchmaker did not account for streaks, resulting in players who had just lost several games being placed in highly unfavorable matches that would just continue their losing streak."
I mean, read this sentence; “players who had just lost several games being placed in highly unfavorable matches.”
This tells us that the matchmaking system deliberately places players in “highly unfavorable matches”. But why? How does that make any sense out of a balanced matchmaking perspective?
How can they say that they are working hard on improving matchmaking, when they deliberately makes matches unbalanced?
Here’s another statement from the same article:
This just felt like a bad match for us to be making. It seems less likely to be a fun match. So all this change is doing is telling the matchmaker to stop making those matches, just avoiding this case we think is bad.**” He clarified that the developers’ focus was on balancing, not simply eliminating the “loser’s queue.”
Why make unfavorable matches in the first place?
And apparently, there is something called “Loser’s queue”, that hasn’t been eliminated.
What could that be, if not forced losses?
“Since most matches will have a team that has a slightly higher chance of winning, placing a player on the team with the higher chance who is currently on a losing streak is aimed at helping them have a fair chance of breaking that streak,”
And now we know why we sometimes get completely useless players on our teams, that makes it impossible to win games.
Unfortunately, I can’t include links here to the sources. But the statements can easily be found in various posts on gaming news sites or just by copy/paste the quotes here and search for them.
But there is one question that I believe summarizes this entire mess;
Why not just let people play and not mess around with either handicaps or uphill battles?
Blizzard calls the matchmaking system “complex”, and no wonder they do, because they made an overcomplicated mess out of it.
I have also done my own research and experiments, and I’m confident that “Elo Hell” exists, which indirectly is confirmed by the above statements.
But I’ll say fair enough, because it makes sense too, since it’s a brilliant, and perhaps the only way to maintain a balance between the rank tiers.
And don’t forget, we don’t have to pay a cent to play the game, so how can we complain?