Winning is not a function of skill, but teamwork

It doesn’t matter if you’re bad at the game on a team with good synergy or vice versa, the game outcome depends almost entirely on wether your team is working well together or not.
Putting the arbitrary skill ranks in the game aside for a second, skill is indeed a factor, sure, but it has diminished returns in a game where the most important determinant of victory is cooperation.
So, yes, in that regard the matchmaker is rigged, because it knows who you will play well with, those games that really click right off the bat, and it knows damn well that it’s putting you in a losing game with teammates that you won’t get along with*.
Sometimes it will put you in a game where it’s neck and neck, it’s a coin toss, and those are the best, because even if you lose, you felt like you did something, you felt accomplished for your effort.
So the matchmaker is not skill-based, it’s cooperation-based. And that’s something nobody has control over, because even if 5 people on team A are playing together, but on team B there are 6, chances are that team B will win no matter how good the other players are, granted they are of the same skill level.
And that’s something no amount of counter-picking, strategizing, or voice comms can compensate for.
I’m not even mad that the matchmaker is actively trying to keep you at 50% WR, but rather that the number of games that are damn close to those odds are hilariously few, and you are stuck in mostly snowball games for either side.
And I’m speaking from a position of someone who has been in gold for almost the entirety of their OW career. Had I been a GM smurfing through the ladder , sure, I would have been able to climb out just out of sheer superiority in every aspect like gamesense, awareness, mechanics, reaction time, etc.
But this is something that the majority of the playerbase has been dealing with almost universally, which is making the experience of the game bitter and unrewarding for many players. And disregarding it, or chalking it up to a lack of skill, is completely superficial and lacking understanding.
I know where my strenghts lie and I know my weaknesses and I’ve come to terms with my rank in the game after so many years and yet I can sense when the matchmaker is working for or against me.

*This now-notorious thread explains it in more detail, but I felt like it needed to be said, in light of all the gaslighters telling you that you suck and need to git gud. Yes, you do, but that’s just half of it.

Teamwork is a skill.

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No, teamwork is the dreamwork.

Would be good if they introduced voice comms queues, for those who use voice comms. That is one big instance that can assist in game quality/more competitive queues. Quite often people are sitting outside of Voice Comm missing out on/not sharing key info.

Usually people do that for a good reason, like not getting a migraine because a 12-year old is screaming down his mic because he’s being outplayed by the enemy Widowmaker and it’s somehow a healer diff.

I’ve had my fair share of games where I just peace out of voice comm when people start being overly toxic or loud, I want to enjoy playing the game and vibe.

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I’m actually growing towards that at the moment, meaning that I still join voice chat to listen, but I don’t talk anymore. I used to play comp solely with voice comms for reasons of, well, wanting to win - and a good oiled teamwork machine backed by clear communication is how the game is most engaging for me. I was pretty vocal with my callouts too.

I’ve been away from the game for quite some time and played a lot of QP, and ventured into playing comp again. I don’t know why exactly, but at the time I couldn’t be bothered to set up my mic and just wanted to play comp casually, so I didn’t talk anymore - still playing to win and using the in-game communications as best as possible. And I still join voice chat to be able to listen, but frankly, in most of my games there are only 2 or 3 other people on the channel and they rarely talk. And if things turn south, I just leave voice chat. And I discovered that I find that rather enjoyable and relaxing. Ranked games became much less high stake for me.