I have finally done it: I have Understood the Matchmaker
My friends,
I wanted to tell this story on the battle.net forums and gave some information of how the matchmaker work. This thread was closed and I am now suspended from posting on the forums. They say that I cannot give away internal information. But what is strange is this my theory, many 100's of theory have been posted before, why am I suspended [edit to clarify: I only mention small portion of my theory and ask if I should reveal the remainder before typing out because so long, I did not have in-depth explanation as I have here. This is when the thread was lock and moderator calls me troll and say "posting internal data not available through normal gameplay is against our Forum Code of Conduct."]? I have not any internal information, I use my own data as others have but I have really figure it out in my opinion, maybe this is why they stop me, I cannot know.
Please let me start off with apology for my English, I know that some of what you are about to read is going to cause a ruckus in this place. People will be saying "I cannot believe this to be true" because they are in denial. Others already know this to be true. This long post is only for people with strong mind who want to understand the real way matchmaker work. I must disclaimer, this is my theory based on many seasons of data, observation, testing on multiple accounts and testing with friends. I am very good with numbers, I can solve any kind of code or puzzle and I have created a predictive model and it is now testing very accurately so this is why I believe I have figured this out. I can even predict most every game if it will be easy to win, fair game, or too difficult to win. What I am about to explain to you is how matchmaker work, there may be a few things that are different, it is inevitable that with something so complicated as this matchmaker that I got some small thing wrong. I cannot see the actual alogorithm and do not have every answer but what you are about to read is for the most part I believe correct, and some if you will be so shock you must lay down and stare at ceiling this make you so bewildered.
What I ask of each of you is this, read this entirely. Then go and play competitive and observe with your own mind, free from what you have been told. You will see that this is the truth.
Let's begin:
Most people believe that you can move up or down in rank depending on if you win or lose. This is in some way true, but what is more accurate to describe is to say that as you are playing Overwatch, the matchmaker is monitoring multiple variables in order to determine how good you are as a player and it uses this data to then FORCIBLY PUSH you to the rank it feels you deserve by giving you easy to win matches (if you are playing above your current rank), hard to win matches (if it feels you should lose some to get to the rank it feels you deserve), or fair matches if it feels you are your correct rank. With this in mind, let's begin:
Everyone knows this already but for those who do not:
SR = visible rank
MMR = invisible rank that only matchmaker uses
Now I will walk you through how matchmaking work by telling you a story that many are familiar with. This will make you see how matchmaker work:
The matchmaking is constantly tracking everything you do, and comparing it to how other people did who won or lost with that specific hero, on that specific map, playing offense or defense.
SR will always go up or down depending on if you win, or lose. BUT
REMEMBER: If you perform better than other people at your current rank, your MMR will go up, regardless if you win or lose.
REMEMBER: If you perform worse than other people at your current rank then your MMR will go down, regardless if you win or lose.
So here is an example of two players, I will call them Player A and Player B both start at:
SR = 3000
MMR = 3000
Player A won the game but did not do well when compared to other people at SR3000 who used the same hero, and won on the map they played. His end result is:
SR = 3020
MMR = 2980
Player B is in the same match and same team as Player A, won the game and did well when compared to other people at SR3000 who used the same hero, and won on the map they played. His end result is:
SR = 3020
MMR = 3030
Now it is important to inform you that the matchmakers goal is to push people to the rank it believes they belong at based on how well they perform compared to other people. Eventually (in theory) this will lead to fair matches. So, you could say that the matchmakers goal is to create fair matches, but it does this in a very different way than you can imagine.
So person A joins the queue again. He notices that Player B, who was on his team last game, is now on the enemy team. The matchmakers job is to push people to the rank it believes they belong at (MMR) and so it purposely split these players up in a way that everyone on Person A's team has an MMR lower than their SR, and everyone on Person B's team has an MMR greater than their SR. Their ranks are similar, but the match is in favor of Player B's team. The other players that are on Player A's team are other people who have an MMR which is lower than their SR and the matchmaker believes they should be ranked down. The other players on Player B's team are people who have an MMR which is higher or the same as their SR and the matchmaker believes they should be ranked up, or stay at this rank.
Continue with this example.
Player A plays and gets all gold medals but his team gets beaten. The result:
SR = 3000
MMR = 3000
Because he played well his MMR went up even though his SR went down. The matchmaker has done its job and now the SR and MMR converge. On his next game Player A will receive a well balanced match, this is the fair match that the matchmaker has been designed to create.
Let's follow Player A only now.
Player A queues once again and plays this fair match, and they win but unfortunately he performed far below other people at this tier. But there was a reason. His team asked him to focus on keeping the turret down by spamming with Pharah. He did his job well, he kept the turret down and his team won because of this, but he did not get a lot of eliminations at all. He also did not do a lot of damage compared to other Pharah's at this tier who spam at the entire enemy team and he didn't get a good chance to make use of his ults (keep in mind matchmaker looks at far more variables than eliminations and damage output as a deciding factor of whether MMR goes up or down). The matchmaker determines he is not really fit for this high of SR and the end result :
SR = 3015
MMR = 2985
Because the matchmakers job is to make MMR converge with SR (in order to eventually create fair matches) he is now placed on a team that is unfavored to win. He plays, he loses. He gets all gold medals because his teammates were not good, so he feels he played very well, and he did when compared to other players on his team, but because the other team was so much better he wasn't able to perform well when compared to the avg player who is usually in a fair match at this point, matchmaker thinks he doesn't belong at this tier so it lowers MMR. End result:
SR = 2995
MMR = 2975
He queues again, matchmaker sees the SR still does not converge with MMR and places him on the team that is not favored to win in order to get him to the rank it feels is best suitable for him. Again, he gets gold medals but because the other team is so much better he again cannot perform as well as other people in this tier. The result:
SR = 2980
MMR = 2965
He is now on a loss streak. If he was placed into a fair match he could perform as well as other people in his tier and prove to matchmaker he belongs, but herein lies the problem with matchmaker. It is trying to get him to a rank appropriate for him, and in doing so is making it too difficult to perform well so his MMR keeps going down. He loses many more. and the end result is:
SR = 2600
MMR = 2580
Now Player A queues again. Although he is placed on the team that is unfavored to win, he is now at a rank that is so far below what his actual skill is that he can perform at least what the avg person in this rank does despite the fact that he is favored to lose. He loses, but performed avg so the result is:
SR = 2580
MMR = 2580
Finally, his ranks have converged and he is given what the matchmaker erroneously perceives as a fair match. This is the fair match the matchmaker was designed to provide. Now that the teams are "fair" (i.e. his teammates are as capable as the other team) he can perform. But because of this loss streak he is far under his actual skill level, so he really shines. He gets all gold medals and demolishes the other team. He performs far above the avg person in this tier. End result:
SR = 2600
MMR = 2620
Player A queues again and is placed on the team favored to win. Not only is he on the team favored to win, but because of the loss streak he is at a tier far below where he should be. This is a steamroll. He outperforms the avg person in this tier by high margins because of this synergy.
SR = 2620
MMR = 2650
He receives a little MMR boost and gets placed again on the favored team and eventually this leads to a win streak and he is right back where he started.
SR = 3000
MMR = 3000
Player A is now receiving fair and balanced matches. It will stay this way until he performs in a way that the matchmaker perceives as less, or better than his peers. Then the cycle will start again. Adversely, if he does something really good, then he will start to move up and this can snowball into a win streak and people will be at ranks they do not belong leading to confusion.
THE BLIZZARD ANTI SMURF/BOOST ALGORITHM YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT
Matchmaker has built in "smurf" and "booster" recognition. When the matchmaker recognizes that an account begins to play significantly better than it has in the past, it is flagged as an account that is possibly being boosted. It will be given a test game / gateway game that is difficult to win for someone at the current tier, but not for someone boosting. Example: a Top 500 player is boosting an SR 2200 account. The Top 500 player logs in to this 2200 SR account and suddenly this account begins to perform far beyond what it has before. Matchmaker recognizes this after a few games and at this time a gateway game is introduced that would be almost impossible for someone who has the skill of a 2200 to win, but a Top 500 could carry to victory. If this game is won then the account is flagged as being boosted. The purpose of this flag is to keep this top 500 smurf from ruining regular games. He will then be placed on the team with other players who are either currently marked as "smurf accounts" or placed with people who have an MMR that is significantly higher than their SR. So then who is on the other team that takes the punishment? I will get to this in a moment.
So the smurf continues to play and get this 2200 SR account up to 3000 and then hands the account back to its original owner. The player logs into his newly boosted account and begins to play. Matchmaker is still giving easy games but recognizes that this person is performing significantly lower than what a rank 3000 should be, and also lower than his several previous games and it also sees that the account was flagged as boosted/smurf. If this player continues to perform significantly under what someone at rank 3000 should be performing, and less than his past several games, then the account will be flagged to rank down to the SR at which it was originally flagged as being boosted (probably around 2300). This player will now be placed in almost unwinnable matches. Who is on his team? Other people who are marked for downrank due to boosted accounts, and people who have a significantly lower MMR than their SR. These are the types people who the smurf/booster was playing against. The ideal scenario that Blizzard is trying to create is this: People who are purposely downranking their account to a low SR by throwing and playing bad so they can later use it to boost other accounts, will be marked for downrank and will be playing against accounts that are currently being used for boosting. So it will be throwers and purposeful downrankers against smurfs and boosted accounts. It places all of these toxic players in a match together to protect the general public from playing against/with these players. This is how it is supposed to work, and does work sometimes, and also has huge problems (I mean huge).
So here's the idea: You are separating smurfs/boosters and placing them all on one team and getting them to where they're going quickly, and the only peoples games they are ruining are people who were boosted themselves or are purposely downranking their account. This might even be a good idea on paper, but it is not working as they think it is. These streak triggers, boosted/smurf triggers, are being activated at times which they are not meant to. This is why you see the Blizzard forum boards innundated with people saying there is something wrong with matchmaker. People talking about loss streaks that are un-natural (of course streaks are natural, every person on planet know this). The problem is they are doing things that are productive but that the matchmaker sees as trolling or unproductuve, or troll/downranker/thrower actviity. Again, Pharah spamming a turret and getting a very low relative amount of kills and hero damage in a game can be very productive, but matchmaker may see this as unfavorable and if done enough times are placed into a downrank spiral.
THE TAKE-AWAY
Here is the big take-away: How well you perform in your current match and the several matches before it compared to other people in the tier, will determine if you get good or bad teammates in the next matches. Getting all gold medals just means you did better than your teammates in that game, it does not necessarily mean you did better than people in your tier. So when you get 4 gold medals for a few games and then are placed on an obviously outmatched team, it means you are not performing as well as other people in your tier with the hero that you use in the past several matches. It may be that you are not satisfying one of the hidden performance metrics that Blizzard is monitoring (shot accuracy, damage TAKEN (as opposed to given), grouping with your teammates etc. and many others that are unknown to us.
This has many problems, as we saw in the example, once you are placed in a match where you are favored to lose it is difficult to do well. The stats you are being compared with are mainly people who played in fair matches. Of course if you are placed in a fair match you will do better than someone who is placed in a match they are favored to lose. This creates a snowball effect. Now let me tell you how you can help avoid some of these problems. Never solo queue. Solo queue makes it very easy for matchmaker to do its poorly designed job. When you are in a group, the more people that are with you the more difficulty it has splitting the teams. So if you played well in the previous games and your MMR has gone up, but your friend did not play well and his MMR went down, then it makes it more difficult for the matchmaker to push you to ranks.
If you do solo queue and you are on a win streak, keep playing back to back games. If you are playing and you are on a loss streak, it is important to queue dodge. Your MMR is lower than your SR, so you are being placed in games that are difficult to win. If you play with some of the same players from your last game it makes it easier for the matchmaker to know which players are better and worse than you are. If you queue dodge it will be less certain although you will still be placed in a match that is difficult to win, it has a better chance of being fair. If you are on a loss streak, your MMR may be signifcantly lower than your SR and it may take you 4-5 games to raise this to where you can get normal games. It will be very difficult because as I state, you are on a team of toddlers and playing against very good teams.
The other problem is there are things that can be done in a match that are very beneficial but are not seen as productive by matchmaker. For instance, Pharah spamming a turret and getting low damage output and low kills. She helped win the game but was punished and the next game was placed to rank down.
WHY DID BLIZZARD DO THIS?
I do not have all the answers. I think they intentions are good to protect the general public from booster/thrower/deranker etc, and it works at some times but it has failed in some big way in others and caused so much confusion and frustration. We could also consider that they want to have control over what happens on their ladder.
HERE ARE QUESTIONS ASKED OFTEN WITH THE ANSWER:
Q: Why is it that the better I play the worse my teammates seem to be?
A: This is very smart observation. There are two reason:
1 Your account has been mark for de-rank and you are placed with horrible player that have low oxygen in brain so bad. They are so bad that you easily get 4 gold medals so this skew the pereception of how well you are doing. The next game you get the same thing over and over and constantly get all the gold medals and so it seems like you are getting bad teammates because you are playing well, when it is actually you are appearing to play better because your teammates are so bad.
2 When matchmaker is trying to create fair game it matches you with people who are of similar rank, AND it looks at individual statistic in order to split the teams fairly. So let us say that it get 12 people together for a match. It will look at individual player statistic and find the best players and be sure that they are not on the same team. It will also find the worst and place them on different team. But this is not always the case. Sometimes it will place 6 people that are "ok" on the enemy team, and then give you 5 sub-par people because it see that you are so good you can carry enough to make it a fair match. This is terrible idea so bad make me sick. This mean that you must babysit all your games these bad players just in order to make it a fair match. You will feel like you are doing everything and yet not winning, only it being close match. A proper matchmaker would find 12 people who are the same SR/MMR and place them all on seperate teams randomly and assume they all are of equal skill since they are at same rank. Eventually the matchmaker would work itself out organically, not artifical as it currently is.
Q: If what you say is true then why is it that Blizzard has said that it only tries to create fair matches and nothing is rigged?
A: In Blizzard mind they are creating fair matches. They are pushing players they seem as poor performers to their proper rank so they can receive a fair match. They are pushing better players to higher ranks so they can receive fair match. They have said they only create fair matches game after game because that is what they believe they are doing. The problem is HOW they are creating the fair matches, it is completely terrible like some smell you cannot get rid of. Also, they know if people understand how it work then they could manipulate it so of course they cannot describe this.
Q: I am playing extremely well, definitely far above my current tier and still get garbage teammate that play like some toddler. Why is this?
A: You are probably very good and are missing some hidden performance metric that Blizzard like to see. Maybe not staying close enough to team. Maybe feeding too much even though you stay alive. You are doing something that the matchmaker erroneously believes is bad player.
Q: So you are saying that when I am marked for downrank it is impossible to win?
A: No my friend, I am saying you have a much less chance of winning. If you happen to win this game you will get big MMR boost and maybe even immediately stop this downrank. Good luck, it will be very very hard. Only GM+ can do this or these cheater guy with aim assist.
Q: So are people at their correct rank or not?
A: Many are, many are not. This matchmaker system does work in some sense, but it has unforseen consequences that lead to people being at high or low ranks they do not deserve.
Q: Are you to say that this entire game is rigged?
A: Yes and no. You still need to be skilled in order to hit the hidden performance metrics, so most people who are at high rank are there for good reason. Once you reach the rank matchmaker thinks you belong at, the games will be fair and not too rigged, but if you are on a loss or win streak then you are in completely rigged matches. This matchmaker is very complicated, many things are happening, it is not so fair to say the entire thing is rigged, more closer that it is like a child who has been hit in the face with board.
There is my theory, I have tested this and can now predict when I am put on loss streak and win streak and whether or not my next game will be easy or hard. When my next game will be won and when it will be lost before I even play it, not with 100% accuracy but most of the time.
Again, What I ask of each of you is this, read this entirely. Then go and play competitive and observe with your own mind, free from what you have been told. You will see that this is the truth. Please do not misunderstand the point of this thread, I love Overwatch and enjoy playing, I think Jeff can fix this, he is good man.
Good luck my friends.
Overwatch geht mir jetzt endgültig auf den Sack, das geht gar nicht mehr. Sobald ich dann wegen meiner SSD den PC formatiere, wird es danach nicht mehr drauf installiert. Gibt so viele andere, bessere Spiele.
