Hi everyone
No, this is not the common thread to complain about how broken is the Matchmaking in overwatch, but to talk about how broken is the Placements system, that is the origin of all this Matchmaking mess.
I’m sorry Overwatch 2 devs, but the Placement system you designed is pretty bad.
First of all, basing the first placement on quick play (aka QP) games is a completely error. QP doesn’t represents the skill that a user has. QP is more chill, people doesn’t play QP as they play in rankeds, so it can never represent the base skill of a user.
Secondly, once a new player finishes the required QP matches to start playing in rankeds, it seems like the system places that new user in a lobby with a rank higher than that user skill represents, and this has a bad effect on the quality of that game, making that game unbalanced in the 75% of the cases.
Also, 10 placement matches maybe are not enough to fully place that player on his rank, which means, that until that player is not well positioned, the matches for the rest of the players will be frustrating.
On third, you are matching players doing placements, that maybe are new and don’t fully understand the mechanics of the game, with people that has been playing from a while ago, which again, can result in very frustrating games.
To be honest, in my personal opinion, a player that just played the game for 10 hours, can’t be placed over platinum or higher. He didn’t had the time to undertand the base mechanics of the game!
And this makes me to ask for another point, and is the rank decay. Is that implemented? If that’s implemented, is working? Because a player that didn’t played for months can’t maintain his old rank, mainly because a lot of things can change on the metagame, making the game totally different.
And I don’t think the “Calibration” parameter is enough for placing that player against on the rank that belongs. Because it will need a lot of games until that player is fully well placed on the ranking system, but in the journey, that player will make the games frustrating for other players.
And as you can see, I’m not blaming the new player that starts to play rankeds, or the players that cames back to rankeds, I’m blaming the Placement system, that is not placing this players rightly on the rank they really belong.
And to be honest, this situation gets worst during the “Drives”, where a lot of people that usually don’t play rankeds during the season, starts playing on that weekend just for try to get the fancy name.
And this makes me to ask for another point, and is the rank decay. Is that implemented? If that’s implemented, is working? Because a player that didn’t played for months can’t maintain his old rank, mainly because a lot of things can change on the metagame, making the game totally different.
And I don’t think the “Calibration” parameter is enough for placing that player against on the rank that belongs. Because it will need a lot of games until that player is fully well placed on the ranking system, but in the journey, that player will make the games frustrating for other players.
And as you can see, I’m not blaming the new player that starts to play rankeds, or the players that cames back to rankeds, I’m blaming the Placement system, that is not placing this players rightly on the rank they really belong.
And what can be done to avoid this frustrating situations? First of all, stop making the first placement based on QP games. That’s a non sense. QP can be used to understand if the player has been played enough time to understand the mechanics of the game, but not to mesure the skill of that player.
Then, when a player starts playing rankeds, you have to use more parameters to stablish the first placement match for that user, and place that player in the rank it really belongs, even, I’m going to say, a bit lower, but never in a higher rank.
And finally, you have to apply the rank decay properly. Each week that a player doesn’t play rankeds, his rank has to decay, and never allow that player to return with the same rank when the player left.
I don’t think a ranking system that is benevolent with the new players, or the players that came back, is going to be fair with the other players. In my opinion, even as a new user, I prefer a less benevolent ranking system that is fair with all the playerbase.
So, in summary for that people that doesn’t want to read a long text, I don’t think that the Matchmaking is the real issue, but the Placement system. And really, stop blaming other players in your matches, because most of the times, is not their fault, but of the Placement system that placed those players wrongly.
That’s my full opinion, and you may disagree, and I totally respect it, and if you want to share your opinion, please do it kindly.
Regards!