After seeing another “everyone is bad and toxic” thread (and another, and another), I started to take notes. Turns out, as someone with a decent endorsement level, I tend to be matched up with other players with decent endorsement levels. I thought that it was just inflation, that everyone had a high endorsement and that it didn’t say much. However, it seems to me that matchmaking takes the endorsements into account.
a) With level 4, I generally get matched up with people ranging from 3-4, the occasional 5, but those are rare.
b) People complaining are generally low (2).
c) While watching those incredibly boring streams to get additional sprays and stuff, I too noticed that the player had a very low level and was always matched with low levels.
So here’s my question: is this confirmation bias, or is there some truth to it? Would love to hear from those at level 1-2 and 4-5, whether or not they’ve experienced similar things, maybe only out of comp, maybe even in comp. For the level 3s, I’d think they could get matched with anyone.
I did notice it, too. As lvl 4, I have met lvl 3 and Lvl 4 players rather often but, given the fact that I group up with lvl 1/2 friends and played QP/Arcade only, it does vary.
Maybe, if we collect enough data, we could find a correlation between your own Endo lvl and the other’s endo lvl.
The introduction of endorsements was about this. Helping those who have been promoted by the community as a good player with being matched up with other good players.
I’m usually level 4, yet I often find level 2s in my matches, but that could be due to enemy grouping.
And of course they matter, it shows how the players you play with view you. And I did notice a connection between endorsements levels and claims of toxicity, that’s why I always check out the profiles.
I just started playing this game a couple weeks ago, and had no idea that there was anything built around those endorsements until it said my level went up to 2 a couple days ago.
I have, but did not notice it was giving xp. Will have to pay attention next time and see. I was just giving them to those I thought deserved them. Did not know there was any reward behind it.
But, I am sure there are others out there who can clarify this better, and shall see.
Speaking as a level 5 I tend to agree with that, but I’m not sure if my sentiments will or won’t be taken with a slight amount of bias because of my endorsement level but here goes!
I have started to notice a correlation between peoples usefulness on a team and their endorsement level. I think it’s cool if you’re just spamming the system for XP and that’s cool if you’re just giving out the sportsmanship one as I think just playing the game decently should earn you at least that one. So I find that the colours help too as people are actually giving it thought and carefully selecting who gets endorsed each game.
Uhm… actually… it’s 50 XP per endorsement. Please check your privilege.
This is definitely true. It’s hard to get up to level 4, 5, especially since less and less people endorse. The people who do actually got there because they are consistently good players and the team notices that.
For example you see some people at level 1, which is very telling. It is extremely hard to stay at level 1, case in point, my (then) level smurf reached endorsement level 2 somewhere between level 10 and 15.
More like: flexible, helpful people will get matched with flexible, helpful people. There are tons of DPS mains with high endorsement level (because not every DPS main is a one-trick), and there are tons of tank/supp mains with low endorsement level (because they can be just as toxic if they want).
So far at least it felt like very natural 2-2-2 comps whenever I played comp (which I don’t do all that much), although once I was forced to play DPS so far (which was quite relaxing way to get all those gold medals, I understand why so many people don’t bother learning the harder roles^^).
My teammates tend to often be 3+ (with the occasional 2 when I play late at night), and the toxicity is very, very, VERY low (and almost always coming from the 2s).
[In this last month, I believe the most ‘toxic’ thing I heard was someone saying ‘just switch off Torb’ ONCE to a poor Torb player, after a couple of failed pushes. And it was from a 2]
I play Mercy and flex to Rein when the team needs tanks and already has at least one healer. And maybe due to this, I often get working teams, be it in QP or Comp - people just naturally adjust to what the team needs (tough a LOT of the 3s are DPS players).
I do get the weird comp/unwinnable match, but they are quite rare.
That said, I also don’t ‘give out’ endorsements at random. If a player shot called well, I give shot caller. If he/she was a team player/did amazing stuff, I give ‘good teammate’, if an enemy player is nice, they get ‘sportsmanship’.
If for some reason I don’t find enough people worthy of endorsement, I don’t give them out, or not all 3 of them.
Funny thing just happened: I played vs AI (as I tend to do on days where I don’t have time to play to get the daily win XP), and I picked Bastion so I could have dinner while playing with one hand. Because so few people play vs AI, I had a few 1s and 2s in that game, and guess what: someone was toxic at me for picking bastion, calling me a noob at the beginning, the r word in the middle and trying to incite people to report me at the end. In case you’re wondering about me playing one-handed for most of the game: I had 4 golds and POTG, so it wasn’t throwing. While I get that having that Bastion stealing all those golds and being salty about it, it was still a very “1” thing to do and sorta reminded me of a time before endorsements.^^
I’m a level 2 (I think mostly due to a lack of playing the game more than 2-3 hours a week) and I often find level 4 and 5 endorsement players in my games. So maybe there’s just more higher endorsement level people and that’s why you get paired with them a lot? I dunno.
You never see me flame or being toxic with anyone on my main account and yet I’m level 2. You want to know why? Because I leave games in QP or Arcade if we get stomped right away and teams are clearly unbalanced. Just because of that I wasn’t able to reach even rank 3 but honestly who cares, it’s just some extra lootboxes once per month.
Basically if this is true, that means someone with a low endorsement level right now due to inactivity or recently created account, needs to go through all the toxic players, keep a healthy mindset to get endorsed by presumably toxic people until your endorsement rank up and you get matched with people with better mindset?
This seem to be a very badly designed system because being surrounded by toxic people when starting the game does not entice players to stay in a good mindset and continue playing the game.
Use to have my main at 5 when I cared but lfg is just utterly bad on top of doing nothing for my matchmaking, but forcing me to not leave troll qp games so I stopped caring for it… Staying in troll games isn’t worth it for a number that does nothing… Endorse doesn’t even protect you from punishment/random reports like the honor system in lol making it more pointless and useless… Just a big waste of time and an excuse to not add role queue.
