Why does the matchmaker create "highly unfavorable matches"?

I’m silver 1-3 on the three roles, and apart from having to deal with leavers, throwers, bots and Hanzo, Cassidy and Widow smurfs / aimbots at least every other game, the matchmaking makes me ride a rollercoaster, from enemy teams in high bronze in one game, to a full plat enemy team the next.

This has been confirmed by Blizzard, and that they adjusted it the last patch, but clearly not enough.

I’m not writing this to QQ or to discuss whether “Loser’s queue” exists, which is directly related to the Elo Hell discussion. Because Loser’s queue exists.

Quotes:

"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. "

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".”

(copy the quotes and Google them to find the sources)

These statements confuse me a lot.

" while most OW2 matches appear balanced to the matchmaker, some games still heavily favor one team"

  • Why? I guess he’s talking about smurfs making the matchmaker think that the teams are balanced? And it sounds almost like it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable scenario.

But it is NOT! And it is the single reason to why so many players are going mental over the matchmaker.

"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. "

  • So, the matchmaker deliberately places players in “highly unfavorable matches”, and I wonder why? What could possibly make sense in doing that?

“So all this change is doing is telling the matchmaker to stop making those matches”

  • Either Blizzard knew about “those (unfavorable) matches” the whole time, or they discovered these common scenarios quite recently, and that would make me question the competence of the developers.

Why does it have to be so ****** complicated?
Why can’t the matchmaker just match players within each rank tier? How can it be that hard?

Silver players should play against other silver players, and those who are more skilled than other players in that tier, will most likely have above 50% wins, which will make them progress to the next tier, sooner or later.

I can’t see a single reason why it would make sense to place some players in “highly unfavorable matches”. Unless it is needed to maintain a balanced population between the tiers.

Last but not least;

“He (Server Engineer Morgan Maddren) clarified that the developers’ focus was on balancing, not simply eliminating the “loser’s queue”."

Ladies and Gentlemen…“Loser’s queue” exists.
But the question remains; Why does it exist, and for what purpose?

If the reason is to maintain a balanced population between the tiers, then I’m afraid that it will remain a mystery, since Blizz never would admit that.

And for all of you who counter these discussions with “Blizzard says that there is no such thing…”, you should learn how to read between the lines and to use your own brain for thinking. After all, there are very good reasons why Blizzard would deliberately create a bad matchmaker.

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It does. It just uses MMR instead of rank. Your MMR is pretty much the same as your rank.

If you’re silver and getting plat or bronze players, it’s because they’re stacking. Even if all were solo you could theoretically get anyone from very low bronze to high gold in your lobby.

Quite possibly. And if so there is nothing they can do to sort that. But it’s not frequent for actual smurf players to appear. Its a very small issue.

This is because MMR didn’t adjust fast enough, especially on loss streaks. The assumption being that if you’re losing that often, you’re too high MMR. So now it drops quicker, allowing you to be in a more appropriate lobby sooner.

It really isn’t that complicated. But as with a lot of things there is a lot of people who’ll always be “where is the conclusion, and how do I jump to it”. Instead of thinking things through. But that seems to just be a common trend in society these days sadly.

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Alternately, they slightly bias towards a more favourable match when in a losing streak, without otherwise touching MMR.

Either way, it’s just a small tweak to MMR to make losing streaks less likely/shorter on average.

The irony… Fact is, MMR is and has been broken for a long time now. You either get cheaters, smurfs, complete opposite “mmrs”, steam roll or get steam rolled.

The match maker heavily favours one team, a lot, and has been the case for some time.

It doesn’t seem to improve at all. And that’s only one of the issues with the game.

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I’m on a 20 game win streak at the moment, one of the matches was a grind, all the others have practically been stomps. One game out of these 20 actually felt competitive, the others was just… mid, due to one-sided matchmaking.
For now, and for a change, I have been on the side that hasn’t had a leaver also - shocking.

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