Why is the matchmaking so uneven in this season?

Greetings,
I have been playing OW since S6 and I am a high plat - low diamond player. So I know I am not brilliant. This post is not about why I am losing games or such. I am happy where I am. This is totally about matchmaking.
I see that in every game the matchmaking is extremely uneven this season. 2 diamonds in 1 team vs 3 gold in other or so. You get the point. And these are not people in group. You can easily understand this by inviting people to your group whilst in game. If they are in group they game will tell you so. If not it will say it is not possible during a match. I know technically this is possible and it happened before. But it happened occasionally. This season I see this in almost every game.
What is the reason for this?
Did so many players already leave that they can not find a suitable match for their rank?
Also in many games I see a LOT of new players. I sometimes suspect that the game is free to play.
I know there are many possible fixes for this and all them are shared and Blizzard(or now Microsoft) simply doesn’t care. So again that is not point. All I am asking is what is the reason of this uneven matchmaking.

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Mostly down to stacking, a tiny bit down to a slightly smaller players base.

If a low diamond player duos with a mid gold player… You will get a slightly spread out range of players.

The system is flawed. I mean you even admit the match-making is a problem, tbh I think it is. It’s been this way for some time now.

I wish I knew the reason.

It isn’t flawed. It is designed to allow people to play with friends and have fun.

It’s just a dead game now, if you wanna have fun just stack with friends or troll, unless you’re cracked and backpacking every game there is no climbing.

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This ranking system is designed to rank 6-man teams which don’t change roster, not solo players who play with different people all the time. The moment Comp is played by mostly solo players, everything is just wrong, and upside down.
On top of that, solo players are constantly on the back foot, compared to any premade team with the same skill level. Basically, if you intend to play solo, you are being screwed.
It’s clearly corroborated by the fact that players with more than one account have sometimes vastly different ranks than their other accounts. In some extreme cases, difference can go as far as 1000 SR.

If it was for 6-man teams then why would blizzard prohibit people from stacking at the highest level of play(gm)

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This is false information.

If is designed to rank individual players based on their skill.

You all gain different amounts in victory for a reason. Being able to work with randoms to achieve this goal is the biggest skill you can work on.

Having a baseline +/- for each team is not the same as it being designed for stacks. It is an individual SR.

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Blizzard has a tendency to mess with balance in an artificial way. Maybe they think that people on top are so good, that if they team up, no one will even beat them, so they created artificial limitation to shuffle people on the top, to reduce some level of stagnation, and make them feel like they have something to fight for.

As for the ranking system itself, it’s obvious that it ranks teams, not solo players, because you gain /lose rank based on whether your team won/lost, and not on your personal stats from the game. You can be on fire, and all gold medals, and you still lose ranks, if you lose the game.
So that rank of yours is clearly not about solo player, but about overall team performance, which makes sense, since it’s a god-damn team based game :slight_smile:

This also isn’t the case.

The change to limit it to duos above 3900sr was to stop Contenders and T3 teams using ranked as scrims, and also to stop the infamous late night groups of OWL players.

Nothing to do with artificial manipulation, more a sledgehammer approach to allow high ranked casual players to still enjoy the game.

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You are all missing the point. What you all say is true but what I am asking is the immense difference in THIS SEASON. These all were happening before but maybe 1 in every 10 games. Now it is in 9/10 games. To be honest I really haven’t played any game this season that I said “well that was fun” no matter if I win or lose.
What happened this season that this became common?

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This season is the first one where I saw so many Bronzes in Gold games, so maybe player base dipped hard for some reason, or maybe Blizzard screwed up something on their end. Who knows.

You are 1700sr.

You will get match with solo players around there and stack that could have bronze and gold players in.

These are not “gold games”, their groups will average around your SR as you solo. So they will be silver games.

So it is neither of those things. The player base is lower than it was a year a go… But it is still relatively healthy.

I’m new to the game and I’m 2300 in tank. Just won one and got 100 points for it. Do you win or lose 100 in a game normally?

Only in your first 7-10 games after your first placements. This is to rapidly adjust you to a more suitable rank when you start.

Is skill not involved in the points you get? I read that it is.

Yes it is. Your initial placement when you first drop is usually fairly conservative. somewhere between 2150 and 2750 usually.

So if indeed you are a 1600 player… you will lose a few of your first matches and drop to that region much faster. Same in theory if you are much better than that. As you get the standard +/-25, which is then given hefty adjustments to move you about.

If your placements are about right. You will probably just 50/50 your first bunch of games as when you win, the next game will be much hard, and then you lose and so on.

After that you will just get the usual +/-25 which is then adjusted by the normal metrics to judge your individual performance. So if you are gaining less than 25 when you win, and losing more than 25, you are not performing to the average standard of that rank. And the same for the opposite, when you are outperforming.

So solo pop off potential is just as, if not more important than team play. This is why it is better to just “git gud” on a small pool of heroes, and not sweat over the number. As you improve on those heroes you will see your in match impact increasing and you will be winning more as a net result.

So a win grants me 100 points, what is your logic on that?

My logic is, see where you are after your first 10 post placement games.

But based on that, if you win the next few, 2300 was clearly a little too low for you.

My first placements, I landed about 2200 on tank. Went 8-2 and was around the 2800 mark after those first 10. Sweated to mid diamond, found that sweating for wins wasn’t that enjoyable and chilled out. I now bounce around 2600-2800 on tank depending on how I am playing that session.

Once a new player gets rank, there is a system which checks your performance in the game, and if it is higher than what is expected of your rank then you get extra points to get relocated to a higher ranking. Ofc. if you get placed too high, you can lose 100 points for the same reason. It’s basically a backup rebalance system for ranks to account for w/e happens in rank placements games.