Why Overwatch 2 Competitive SUCKS - MMR Analysis

OverWatch competitive has the worst competitive system in the world and I think everyone can agree with me here so what exactly is the problem with competitive well there's so many problems it feels like an endless list from queuing matchmaking and even the ranked system coming into OverWatch 2 the devs promised a better competitive system but the entire OverWatch Community across all regions feel that the system has gotten worse not better rather than listing out the problems today I'll be talking about the potential solutions for the game the current problems with competitive can be split into three parts first is a matchmaking rating or the MMR system in OverWatch MMR and competitive rink are separate although the players are divided semantically by their ranks and divisions matchmaking is based on the internal MMR the separation between Rank and MMR is not necessarily a problem itself we can see this in other games like League of Legends for example then why is the current MMR system a problem let's take a look at the distribution of MMR and the curve of this graph it's a normalized curve AKA a bell curve although this is the MMR distribution for quick play based off the previous rank distribution in OverWatch we can confidently assume the competitive MMR and rank distribution is likely the same so to put it shortly the majority of players are Consolidated in gold and plat and we have three reasons to believe this is true first there was a survey conducted by aichi during OverWatch 1 and it resulted in the same normalized bell curve the results support our hypothesis that the players are Consolidated around gold and plaid but because this was a survey it isn't a definitive resource second is data scraping the website Esports Tales previously scraped OverWatch rank distribution Data before the implementation of rollq and the data was updated monthly up until 2019 when OverWatch was terrorized with a goats meta for an entire year if we plot season 16's data from 2019 we can also see that the players are Consolidated in Golden plat rather than silver and gold third this is a recent Community post asking about your ranks as expected we can see the majority of the player bases can Consolidated around golden plat rather than bronze and silver we can see the same normalized spell curve occurring with high gold or low plat at its peak although we can technically only assume the MMR distribution of OverWatch 2. chances are our assumptions are correct blizzards post on MMR distribution as well as the various data suggests this normalized curve in the current competitive system and this is our first problem the rank and MMR distribution shouldn't be a normalized bell curve needs to be closer to a logarithmic distribution at least 50 percent of the player base should make up silver and gold while we increase in ranks the number of players need to noticeably decrease there's a reason most competitive games choose to have distribution like this League of Legends Apex valorant you name it they all share a bottom heavy MMR distribution OverWatch also had a bottom heavy distribution during the beginning of the game and the data is available on the previously mentioned Esports Tales website season 3 and even up to season 8 OverWatch had the ideal rank distribution But as time went on the game began experiencing rank inflate Nation leading to the current normalized graph where Platt has the highest number of players in other words OverWatch 1 launched with the logarithmic distribution but whether because whoever was in charge randomly disappeared or who even knows what happened the MMR distribution got screwed up and it was directly transferred to OverWatch 2. the current bell curve becomes a problem for both high and low ranked Players let's talk about the lower ranks first in general the lower the rank the less likely you are to be invested in the game itself so depending on the person the total number of games played heavily varies keeping in mind players who are talented but simply don't play as frequently as others when you distribute the ranks in a normalized form the rank system has no other choice but to be an inaccurate representation of each player's rank even a bigger problem is the number of negative experiences the normalized MMR distribution inevitably makes it more likely for players in the lower tiers to experience demotions and provide negative experiences and competitive players who are new to OverWatch 2 are already going through this problem because new players initially we started off at Gold closely to the average MMR the majority of these players would run into lost streaks and competitive in order to fix this problem the devs lowered the average MMR of new players but this is only a temporary fix and it doesn't solve the underlying issue of the normalized curve in Reverse if the rank distribution is closer to a logarithmic this can increase the desire to climb ranked for lower players and reduce the stress of the ranking in the first place starting your ranked experience with a 10 game lost streak into another 10-game lost streak just to place in Silver versus the average MMR being silver and giving you the starting opportunity to rank up is very very different no matter how you look at it the second option is obviously going to be a better choice the normalized distribution becomes a problem in the higher ranks as well specifically the spectrum of high ranks is far too limited the highest tiers in general have the highest interest in the game so it's important to spread out the ranked distribution in the upper percentiles currently the tier ceiling in OverWatch is too low there are top 500 players forever every rank which is 1 500 players including open q and the combined leaderboard that's 2 500 spots for the highest ranks in every season the normalized distribution also leads to an increased usage of alt accounts because the ceiling is so low it makes it convenient for players to play on multiple accounts while retaining tall 500 or Grandmaster status and the more alt accounts in top 500 there are the worst of an experience it is for players in diamond and above so it's pretty clear that a normalized rank distribution is a problem with Platt having the highest number of players and the rank ceiling being far too low then what exactly is the solution there of course can be many ways to solve the problem but the most obvious way is to just follow the leader there's a recent League of Legends is the most successful competitive game in history and whether you enjoy League or not we can still acknowledge that fact all the issues we've discussed so far are problems the League of Legends Community also experienced throughout the past 10 years and have ultimately fixed the League of Legends Community was in distress because of the same issue 10 years prior which is why the most fundamental rank system the ELO rating system was discussed in the community the ELO rating system is the mathematical basis and origin of the modern MMR system and has made tremendous impact on most online multiplayer games influencing both early League of Legends and season 1 of OverWatch 1 but the mathematical model of the ELO rating system has a normalized distribution at its core some might argue that a normalized distribution is the most fitting because it's a good reflection of statistics on a population but at the end of the day there are almost no games that directly implement the ELO rating system even League of Legends Place their own rank distribution system on top of the ELO system after season 3 which is how the current logarithmic or lock normal distribution came to be standard practice so what the devs need to take note of is the number of players in the League of Legends MMR distribution as League of Legends continue to be serviced for over 10 years they also experience rank inflation in the game and as a solution they created addition no ranks on each end of the ringed Spectrum ideally the devs should have redistributed the MMR coming into OverWatch too but as of now it's a tad bit too late for that if they redistribute the ranks now there would be too much backlash coming from the immense number of players being deranked for this purpose although with a quote-unquote soft resets that occur at the start of every season it wouldn't be completely out of the question but as mentioned before it's probably the best choice for now just to copy League of Legends by creating iron as a rank we can expand the number of players across the lower tiers and on the opposite end either create a higher rank above GM or even decrease the number of top ranked players to increase competition of course the solution isn't completely void of problems either for example this change can make it easier for Smurfs to ruin games in lower tiers for a longer period of time and players can take advantage of duoing with lower tier players by boosting their MMR during initial placements with large win streaks but I do think this could be solved by preventing players from queuing as a group during placements which can also help with frustration and confusion of when grouped players get placed in different ranks the second topic of today's video is negative experiences and this refers to a collective set of problems that contribute to negative gameplay issues the seven wins and 20 losses system and the fact that only the wins are displayed in the progression being unable to see other players ranks private profiles being unable to see groups they're all along the same lines the idea is to hide away losses and negative things from the player to eliminate the source of stress but this is a huge issue because rather than fixing the core problem itself the systems simply shove everything into the closet and pretend that they were never there to begin with it's unpleasant and frustrating for players who genuinely enjoy playing the game competitively of course reducing the stress for players is technically a good thing but the most important part is how the stress is reduced not just the act of doing it the current Solutions in OverWatch 2 degrade the fundamental desires of competitive play so it's going to be crucial how the devs deal with these issues moving forward let's talk about potential solutions for the seven wins and 20 losses system I don't think the periodic updates to your rank is a problem in and out of itself but completely hiding away the losses in your competitive progression is just wrong we can see this in all the comments and Reddit posts about players who experience quote-unquote win streaks and getting deranked which is most likely because the losses were completely forgotten about so by displacing the losses everyone can more accurately assess whether the rank up or down was deserved or not or even whether there actually is a problem with a ranked system and as for career profiles I can understand the reasoning for implementing this in the past players were often scrutinized and flamed when they would opt to play Heroes that weren't their most played but I think the sentiment on this matter has slightly changed over time and by completely making all of the information private is a limiting factor to competitive games so perhaps only displaying the most blade Heroes without the hours could be super helpful in understanding what kind of strategies or compositions the team could play and can create more room for productive suggestions during the game like like asking to swap for a specific hero rather than just yelling to switch off as an open-ended State group cues are also important to the game and can encourage friends to play together and has its own benefits but the groups should be displayed in the game so that the players can know whether matchmaking is still making the games balanced this one is more for the competitive Integrity of the higher ranks but I'd argue that at the highest tiers group cues should not be allowed because who in the world wants to play against Pro players who are Duo queuing and completely obliterate the opponents but of course these are all personal opinions and at the end of the day the most important part is going to be how well the devs communicate with a player base to solve these issues to add on avoid us teammate killcam hide username settings Etc these are all sensitive topics that requires the devs listening to How The Players feel but it's been frustrating to have private profiles released then receiving little to no communication from blizzard for the next three years luckily coming into OverWatch 2 the dev team has improved leaps and bounds in terms of communication so I'm starting to have a lot more faith in blizzard but I do feel that the current systems in place disrupt the competitive Integrity of the game and I can't wait for some of the competitive changes to be announced for the coming Seasons the last topic for today's video are some additional issues with the competitive system itself first the spectrum of the current matchmaking is too wide in tandem with the mmra issues discussed earlier it's negatively impacting the quality of matches but I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the system because we're so early on into OverWatch 2 and this could just be a problem caused by a lack of players is it better to have 20 minute Q times instead that I'm not so sure second is the rank symbols even within the same tier you can't tell whether you're in high Master 1 or low master one which can be the difference in ranking up after one session or two sessions and for the highest tiers it's become impossible to distinguish skill rating in top 500 which is another issue often discussed in the community so at the very least a numerical representation in each tier seems to be necessary for the ranked system third is the scoreboard I wish it was possible to see the scoreboard after the game and it would be nice to have some extra time after watching the play of the game to talk rather than kicking you out of the lobby immediately my golly why not just copy League of Legends at this point fourth is a stat for healing receipt I think this would be extremely useful for solving issues mid game and since I'm sure OverWatch already tracks most of these sets anyway it wouldn't be difficult to add and for OverWatch specifically this is a really important step for players to be able to view fifth this is a small one but I think it would be nice if the new maps could enter competitive two weeks after the season starts rather than right at the beginning sixth I feel like the competitive season is a bit too short I'm sure everyone has different opinions on this one but with the hot fixes and patches coming through every two to three weeks I think it would be okay to extend the competitive season to be a bit longer since the main patch cycle and battle pass is supposed to correspond with each competitive season this probably isn't subject to change but maybe each season could correspond to one hero release with a new map being added during in the mid-season with two battle passes or one battle pass with double or even triple the rewards by having season 1 equate to one new hero each season can have its own distinct identity and I think this is a plus this might align to an extent with the negative experience portion but I also feel that the soft reset going down seven tiers every two months is way too stressful the grind is just too long per season just to get back to your own original MMR or rank so by having the seasons longer we can reduce the stress of softer resets as well lastly please please please reveal the data of the player base including the once hidden by private profiles it would make our life so much easier for a top 500 tier list videos if the data was straight up available and we would be able to relay even more helpful information to everyone in the community we've discussed all the problems and potential solutions to OverWatch 2's competitive system and if you have any suggestions or thoughts on how the competitive system can improve or have any feedback on the video itself let us know in the comments below thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: KROW

Views: 154,042

Keywords: Overwatch 2, Top500, Gameplay, Overwatch Analysis, POV, KROW, krow, krow overwatch, crow overwatch, overwatch guide, gm, grandmaster, broken hero, overwatch broken characters, guide video, overwatch broken character, ultimate guide, overwatch, overwatch 2 competitive, overwatch 2 skill divisions, overwatch 2 skill tiers, overwatch 2 low rank, overwatch 2 news, overwatch 2 blog, overwatch 2, overwatch 2 matchmaker, overwatch 2 ranked, overwatch blizzard, low rank overwatch 2

Id: pgl20g5BDfs

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 31 2023