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[BadRNG]

Took a small break around when Ana was announced, back to playing, went from 58 today up to 61. Then ended on a nice losing streak to finish the day back at 58

Spoiler

damn you sudden death

. So it goes. I'm never going to understand the calculations for rank gained/loss though, it seems completely all over the place sometimes. I lost over half a rank as the underdog in one game, lost barely anything at all as the...overdog? In another.

The 1HL and overtime changes are so nice. Watched the developer diary on the patch and just found myself nodding the entire time he was talking about their thinking on the changes. No HL was certainly counterable, it just wasn't fun.

Is it me or is Ana kinda... crap? Mercy and Lucio are way better at healing, her damage seems to be inferior to post-buff Zenyatta and while her ult is nice, I'd still probably rate it at Zenyatta's level at best, with Lucio's/Mercy's still being way better. So, while definitely fun to play, she seems to be neither good healer nor DPS/heal hybrid.

I think you are overlooking how strong her support abilities are. Zen's "extra" stuff is all about damage, but her's is utility that applies to both offense and defense. A long ranged ult stopper is pretty strong by itself, but her grenade is nice too. I am looking forward to seeing how people learn to use her heal stopper considering how heal focused most fights are.

Yeah, you probably don't want her as the primary healer, but I think she still has a place as a secondary support like Zen. It'd just depend on the team comps for which you'd want more. Lucio/Mercy are just so damn strong that it will be tough to ever dislodge the meta of having at least one in most cases.

 

[Antiwhippy]

To be fair nano boosted symmetra can put in work.

https://gfycat.com/ThriftyAfraidIndianpangolin

 

[Red Arremer]

To be fair nano boosted symmetra can put in work.

https://gfycat.com/ThriftyAfraidIndianpangolin

Sure, but not in the scenarios I got boosted in, lol. There was only one, maybe two enemies nearby, and I had to resort to chasing one trying to murder them. It was quite silly.

The Zenyatta one was probably the least offensive nanoboost out of the ones I got, but given the fact there was a perfectly fine Soldier and Winston nearby, yeah...

 

[Antiwhippy]

Also is it just me or is there not a lot of fun pharah/ana conversations in game? I seem to get more with soldier and reinhardt than pharah.

 

[abundant]

Oh God, I just thought of something. Being nano boosted by Ana is going to be more nerve racking than being damage boosted by Mercy.

 

[optimus8936]

30 seconds left in the match and I'm walking to the payload from spawn. No one is pushing it. Fuck me.

 

[Azoor]

Oh God, I just thought of something. Being nano boosted by Ana is going to be more nerve racking than being damage boosted by Mercy.

A nano boosted Bastion is a beast.

 

[Data West]

Oh God, I just thought of something. Being nano boosted by Ana is going to be more nerve racking than being damage boosted by Mercy.

On my last game as Genji on Lijiang tower, we had an Ana and a Mercy and halfway through the map, they decided to focus on boosting me. I guess because we didn't have a tank anymore.

this is how it basically went down

 

[Vault Dweller 111]

So I'm not totally sure of the algorithm so if someone could shed some light here.

Moving through the lows 60's I was consistently in games with high 60's and 70's so winning was seen as a big deal, like full levels each time. And losing wasn't bad at all. Often less than half a level.

Then I went on a losing streak and now it's the complete opposite. I'm in the high 50's but consistently being out in games with low to mid 50's. So it's seen as no big deal to win (very little gain in rank) but losing is a whole level most of the time. So moving up is hard as hell you would need to win 2/3 games at least and good teams just don't come around that often. The game just doesn't want to put me in games with high 50's and 60's anymore.

Does this sound right or is it all in my head?

 

[Borden]

So I'm not totally sure of the algorithm so if someone could shed some light here.

Moving through the lows 60's I was consistently in games with high 60's and 70's so winning was seen as a big deal, like full levels each time. And losing wasn't bad at all. Often less than half a level.

Then I went on a losing streak and now it's the complete opposite. I'm in the high 50's but consistently being out in games with low to mid 50's. So it's seen as no big deal to win (very little gain in rank) but losing is a whole level most of the time. So moving up is hard as hell you would need to win 2/3 games at least and good teams just don't come around that often. The game just doesn't want to put me in games with high 50's and 60's anymore.

Does this sound right or is it all in my head?

There's a giant magnet on 50. The closer you get to it, the stronger the pull. As you get away from it you'll seen more movement in your ranking. At least that's my experience.

 

[Prelude.]

Are people really using a new hero in ranked already? Guess they don't care about losing.

I didn't yet, but I'd have no problem. I used her for 15 matches in qp, won 12, and I turned around many overtimes, I'm pretty confident already. Her learning curve isn't that steep imho.

 

[ramyeon]

What Kaplan said about people perceiving the rank system as a progression system is so true. The design must be misleading if it's this widespread.

You're not supposed to be constantly moving up. That's not how it's intended to work.

 

[Kor of Memory]

What Kaplan said about people perceiving the rank system as a progression system is so true. The design must be misleading if it's this widespread.

You're not supposed to be constantly moving up. That's not how it's intended to work.

What exactly did he say?

Also, does anyone think this way?

Most games with ranked systems involved fluctuation. Do good, rank up, do bad, rank down.

 

[User 85168]

What exactly did he say?

Also, does anyone think this way?

Most games with ranked systems involved fluctuation. Do good, rank up, do bad, rank down.

It's more of a mindset that people have with "MMR trenches". They think they should be settling in at a higher place, but their teammates drag them down.

 

[Pooya]

I feel I can carry just about any team with d.va now, killing just about anyone that is out of position and triple ult kills almost every time. Defense Matrix is pretty good for preventing my team from getting wiped too and when it comes to that final push to get the win when randoms fall apart usually, save an ult for easy win. seemsgood, better than zarya for carrying even, fully self sufficient. If you use your brain you can do everything with her.

 

[killdatninja]

So I'm not totally sure of the algorithm so if someone could shed some light here.

Moving through the lows 60's I was consistently in games with high 60's and 70's so winning was seen as a big deal, like full levels each time. And losing wasn't bad at all. Often less than half a level.

Then I went on a losing streak and now it's the complete opposite. I'm in the high 50's but consistently being out in games with low to mid 50's. So it's seen as no big deal to win (very little gain in rank) but losing is a whole level most of the time. So moving up is hard as hell you would need to win 2/3 games at least and good teams just don't come around that often. The game just doesn't want to put me in games with high 50's and 60's anymore.

Does this sound right or is it all in my head?

It doesn't sound right but I experienced this, I'm really not sure how to make sense of it. I have the highest skill rating out of all my friends that I regularly play with (i'm hovering low 60's), and the team average is usually low-to-mid 50's (both teams) when we play, because of this, I'm also usually the highest ranked player in the game. It feels like I should have less to gain more to lose, but there are games where I get almost half a bar for winning. I know personal performance has something to do with this, but I don't think it's always stats either, my best performing games (with loads of OT/Sudden death on both sides) gain me maybe 1/10th of a bar. Whereas a dominating game (one-sided) with low stats but quick caps, nets me much larger bar progress (barring no rage quitters).

 

[Kayo Police]

What Kaplan said about people perceiving the rank system as a progression system is so true. The design must be misleading if it's this widespread.

You're not supposed to be constantly moving up. That's not how it's intended to work.

This is what kills me. We had a bloody "progression" like system in Beta, but the vocal minority that was in beta cried, bitch, and whined about it being a grind.

You reap what you sow.

As I said before Jeff was 100% right, very few people even gave the old ranking system a chance. They didn't want to grind wins to enter the upper leagues, and yet now what are we doing right now? Grinding wins to rank up our skill ranking and in most cases a single loss wipes all that progress away. Resetting the grind back up.

 

[Davidion]

What Kaplan said about people perceiving the rank system as a progression system is so true. The design must be misleading if it's this widespread.

You're not supposed to be constantly moving up. That's not how it's intended to work.

No skill ranking system has ever worked this way. If that's their genuine sentiment, then that is a major fault on the part of their design team (edit: or as others have noted, a bad attempt to cater to certain sentiments from the community).

The idea that presenting someone with their relative ranking in a system, competitive or non-competitive, and expect them to just take that as a reflection without wanting to advance it somehow, is incredibly misguided. I would hope for their sake that none of them actually thinks this way.

 

[mxgt]

Those nights when you just seem to lose every fucking match.

 

[Palmer_v1]

My only complaint is the damn KOTH bug kinda hosed me early on, so despite going 7-3 in placement, I was rank 50 to start. Just makes me lose motivation to even play the mode when I know I'm going to have work through intervening ranks just to get to where I should have started.

 

[Red Arremer]

So a thing for the friends of datamining.

First of all, Hammeh has put together a video where he has pieced together certain voice lines that hint that one of the new maps is going to be

Spoiler

the Black Forest in Germany

.

 

[Kor of Memory]

No skill ranking system has ever worked this way. If that's their genuine sentiment, then that is a major fault on the part of their design team (edit: or as others have noted, a bad attempt to cater to certain sentiments from the community).

The idea that presenting someone with their relative ranking in a system, competitive or non-competitive, and expect them to just take that as a reflection without wanting to advance it somehow, is incredibly misguided. I would hope for their sake that none of them actually thinks this way.

What are you talking about?

Almost every ranking system works this way.

You play a certain way. The game tries to figure out where you sit, and puts you there. Except you, and everyone else, are a big variable, so you fluctuate. Sometimes your rank goes up, sometimes it goes down. Sometimes you play well, others you play like shit.

I don't understand how this is different than almost every other ranking system.

 

[Animator]

On my last game as Genji on Lijiang tower, we had an Ana and a Mercy and halfway through the map, they decided to focus on boosting me. I guess because we didn't have a tank anymore.

this is how it basically went down

What game is that gif?

 

[Dunfisch]

When you chuck a Graviton Surge and your whole team starts blasting.

"QUINTUPLE KIL- TEAM. KILL!"

Why yes, thank you, thank you. I'll take that foregone conclusion PotM. Some other good games too today. The D.Va and Zenyatta Buffs are most definitely real, had a 14 kill streak with the later.

 

[Red Arremer]

What game is that gif?

That looks like one of the modern Ninja Gaiden games, probably 2 or 3.

 

[TheWorthyEdge]

Anyone wanna play some PS4?

I'm sick of these lobbies. You know your teams bad when you're Lucio and you have a Gold Medal in damage done...

 

[BigDug13]

I'd like them to eventually tweak the potg system to account for ult combos and combos in general and maybe reward all participating players as POTG.

Example, Ana uses ult on Reinhardt or Roadhog or whoever while Mercy damage buffs him and he rampages down the entire opposing team. That should be a POTG for 3 people. Or Zarya chucks a graviton field and Hanzo dragons them down. That should be a POTG for both Zarya and Hanzo.

I'd also like to see defensive uses of ults earn potg if it ends up shutting down another ult. Examples would include Zenyatta letting the team tank an Ana-ulted Soldier or Roadhog ult using transcendence. Or Lucio dropping a sound barrier that lets the team tank a junkrat tire. Ana putting an opposing ulting player to sleep for their ult duration.

 

[Pooya]

What game is that gif?

it's ninja gaiden 2.

 

[Davidion]

What are you talking about?

Almost every ranking system works this way.

You play a certain way. The game tries to figure out where you sit, and puts you there. Except you, and everyone else, are a big variable, so you fluctuate. Sometimes your rank goes up, sometimes it goes down. Sometimes you play well, others you play like shit.

I don't understand how this is different than almost every other ranking system.

I was addressing the part of the comment about "The design must be misleading if it's this widespread. You're not supposed to be constantly moving up."

People are going to want to constantly advance. The idea of them just accepting the fact that they're of a certain rank, when the game frames it as such an explicit identifier, makes no sense. At the scale of a community, people are going to treat it as a goal to move up. I'm talking about it from a player desire and perception perspective, not an algorithmic one.

 

[BigDug13]

I was addressing the part of the comment about "The design must be misleading if it's this widespread. You're not supposed to be constantly moving up."

People are going to want to constantly advance. The idea of them just accepting the fact that they're of a certain rank, when the game frames it as such an explicit identifier, makes no sense. At the scale of a community, people are going to treat it as a goal to move up. I'm talking about it from a player desire and perception perspective, not an algorithmic one.

The desire should be there. But the only way to do it is to simply get better at the game in comparison to others. It's not an experience and leveling grind and I read a LOT of posts from people treating it as such. "I lost 3 levels last night". No you didn't. You got ranked differently after some losses. Those aren't "levels". It's simply an indicator of your current skill and the way to advance that is not to "grind it out", it's to get better.

I think there's a mentality in a lot of people that expect everything in a game to be a constant advancement. People were fine playing the game in quickplay and seeing their leveling bar go up. It's still doing that btw. But now there's this secondary bar that may go up or down and people are getting super pissed if their bar goes down.

 

[benzopil]

God I love playing Torb on KotH maps (PS4), but if EVERYONE on your team dies immediately and can't kill anybody, it's pretty much impossible. And some people start to blame me -- like if I switch they suddenly will stop dying. If I'm in a good team, I usually have 60-65% kill participation and give a lot of armor to teammates.

=/

 

[Nocturnowl]

Those nights when you just seem to lose every fucking match.

My last two nights in particular have mirrored this, my competitive rank has gone from 58 to 53, the salt has consumed me I'm sad to say.

I also feel like my accuracy has plummeted down the shitter as of late, I inadvertently defaulted all my control and sensitivity changes and can't remember what worked best for me on console.

 

[Borden]

What Kaplan said about people perceiving the rank system as a progression system is so true. The design must be misleading if it's this widespread.

You're not supposed to be constantly moving up. That's not how it's intended to work.

Yep. He said if you are in the 60s you are badass.

If they would've just named the tiers and not had numbers I think people would've been happier.
1-10 Beginner
11-20 Novice
21-30 Amatuer
31-40 Worker
41-50 Veteran
51-60 Asset
61-70 Superstar
71-80 Elite
81-90 Professional
91-100 Champion
Fighting weight classes would've been fun too. Straw weight to Heavy weight.

As he said in that interview, in NA most people are taught that 60% grade isn't very good. One point that I think is being missed is that no one is in the 91+ category, at least that I can find. So really their scale isn't a true bell curve. Also, I can't find anything that says what the current lowest player rank is so the scale/curve (made by their parameters) may be even further out of wack.

At this point I don't care at all about rankings, nerfs, buffs, etc. I just want them to do something about leavers. I would it's safe to say 1 out 10 games both teams stay for the full game. Also, I have finally gotten the hint from Blizzard that as soon as they give you the option to leave, it's time to leave. You get hit hard for staying and playing when you're down by a hero and they even put the red warning message over the CP symbols so you can't even see if something is being taken, who has it or how many people are on it. I thought this was a misstep by them but it's actually them yelling, "LEAVE THE GAME YOU BIG DUMMY!"

 

[Dead Prince]

feelsgoodman

but it's QP so it doesn't count ;P

 

[Davidion]

The desire should be there. But the only way to do it is to simply get better at the game in comparison to others. It's not an experience and leveling grind and I read a LOT of posts from people treating it as such. "I lost 3 levels last night". No you didn't. You got ranked differently after some losses. Those aren't "levels". It's simply an indicator of your current skill and the way to advance that is not to "grind it out", it's to get better.

I think there's a mentality in a lot of people that expect everything in a game to be a constant advancement. People were fine playing the game in quickplay and seeing their leveling bar go up. It's still doing that btw. But now there's this secondary bar that may go up or down and people are getting super pissed if their bar goes down.

We're in agreement about your second paragraph. And to your first point, where I agree with Ramyeon is the idea that the current design may very well exacerbate the drive to advance. But even competitive games, particularly ones played in a non-professional context, asking a community of players to process (at least somewhat opaque) ranking systems purely logically doesn't really work.

To reiterate, one of the points I was trying to make, relevant to everything you said, is that the game's designers should be aware of and design the game around all this.

 

[Borden]

It doesn't sound right but I experienced this, I'm really not sure how to make sense of it. I have the highest skill rating out of all my friends that I regularly play with (i'm hovering low 60's), and the team average is usually low-to-mid 50's (both teams) when we play, because of this, I'm also usually the highest ranked player in the game. It feels like I should have less to gain more to lose, but there are games where I get almost half a bar for winning. I know personal performance has something to do with this, but I don't think it's always stats either, my best performing games (with loads of OT/Sudden death on both sides) gain me maybe 1/10th of a bar. Whereas a dominating game (one-sided) with low stats but quick caps, nets me much larger bar progress (barring no rage quitters).

You're winning as a team. You've grouped and are winning. That's pretty much the entire point of the game, to play as a team. You are doing what many people (myself included) are not doing when we go solo. Blizzard is trying to force people into playing as a group. People say "I'm tired of losing" then have a game where someone is communicating and using characters properly and maybe they send them an friend or party invite. That's where it seems they want to take this game.

 

[Azoor]

Found an interesting video about Overwatch's hitboxes and how generous they're.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ-sip4-CFw

 

[Ertai]

There's so much fluctuation in rank going on, it's not even funny. I dropped from 63 all the way down to 56 right now and there wasn't a damn thing i could do about it. People

I get that there's a ceiling that you hit at some point but this just isn't funny anymore. I lose a fuckton of ranking each time i lose and when i actually do win i get so little in return back.

The ranking system is terrible and there's no good explanation as to why i lose so much. Do i suck? Was my performance terrible? Do i lose more when my personal rank is way higher than my enemy teams? Do i gain less when my rank is way higher? Why am i losing so much when a teammate decides to leave the game after half a round? Just some questions...

 

[ramyeon]

No skill ranking system has ever worked this way. If that's their genuine sentiment, then that is a major fault on the part of their design team (edit: or as others have noted, a bad attempt to cater to certain sentiments from the community).

The idea that presenting someone with their relative ranking in a system, competitive or non-competitive, and expect them to just take that as a reflection without wanting to advance it somehow, is incredibly misguided. I would hope for their sake that none of them actually thinks this way.

This has already been adressed I suppose but I thought I would reply regardless.

If you want to advance in the rank system you just have to get better at the game, simple as that. For all its misgivings and faults the system works. Pro players are amongst the highest ranked there are so it knows how to distinguish the good players and rank them accordingly.

Grinding will not rank you up and that's specifically what I was talking about. That's why I said "you're not supposed to be constantly going up." You're never going to reach 100. You just won't. The aim of the system is to put you in a bracket where you will experience fair and fun games. If you're constantly ranking down then most likely your initial ranking from the placement matches was off. It happens.

I've seen so many people here talking about how much they ranked down or up in a night and that's not the point. I've also seen so many people claim they think they should be much higher than they are, to which I always want to reply telling them sorry, they're not. If they want to get into the 60s then they have to improve their game it's as simple as that.

Kaplan noted that perhaps the way rank is presented post match, coupled with the 1-100 system may lead people to misunderstand the system to be a leveling system when it isn't. This appears to be something they're aware of and wanting to tweak.

 

[Red Arremer]

Found an interesting video about Overwatch's hitboxes and how generous they're.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ-sip4-CFw

This is before the patch, mind you.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Had a really great Ana game earlier, 8.5k+ healing done. Was a DVa, Reinhardt, McCree, Junkrat and a Genji.

The trick to Ana's healing - and it can be incredibly powerful - is the team sticking close together. While this is true of all the healers, Ana has insane healing potential if the group will just gather together. Grenades, shooting, sleeping any big things that come close... She works in that dynamic SO well. I hope that as people continue to have her in games they will start to catch on.

 

[Vol5]

Woohoo. Got all my rank, items and coinage back on PS4.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

God I love playing Torb on KotH maps (PS4), but if EVERYONE on your team dies immediately and can't kill anybody, it's pretty much impossible. And some people start to blame me -- like if I switch they suddenly will stop dying. If I'm in a good team, I usually have 60-65% kill participation and give a lot of armor to teammates.

=/

if you're doing your job, and your stats show that, don't worry about what other people think. It's hard to do so, but there really is no arguing with stupid. Don't let it get you down

 

[Antiwhippy]

Had a really great Ana game earlier, 8.5k+ healing done. Was a DVa, Reinhardt, McCree, Junkrat and a Genji.

The trick to Ana's healing - and it can be incredibly powerful - is the team sticking close together. While this is true of all the healers, Ana has insane healing potential if the group will just gather together. Grenades, shooting, sleeping any big things that come close... She works in that dynamic SO well. I hope that as people continue to have her in games they will start to catch on.

I think she works pretty well with the flankers too with her long range healing.

 

[Dead Prince]

when your team doubts they can capture point because i played hanzo and someone did torb on Ilios Wells.

Spoiler: i stayed on the point.

Spoiler

we got the point and won the round and won the second for victory.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

I think she works pretty well with the flankers too with her long range healing.

True, as long as they double back to the group. If she can perch above the battleground but still have the main body within grenade range then that's good, but I usually find that if I leave the main battle to chase down flankers who are demanding healing that I just die.

The Genji in my game was great though, he would flank and get right up close to do damage, double back to where he knew I could hit him, call for healing, and then had back into the fight. Great synergy.

 

[ramyeon]

You're winning as a team. You've grouped and are winning. That's pretty much the entire point of the game, to play as a team. You are doing what many people (myself included) are not doing when we go solo. Blizzard is trying to force people into playing as a group. People say "I'm tired of losing" then have a game where someone is communicating and using characters properly and maybe they send them an friend or party invite. That's where it seems they want to take this game.

Pretty much. It's not surprising when the initial iteration of ranked that never made it out of the dungeons was group only. Literally no option to play solo, they knew that the key of the game was teamwork and they wanted people to focus on that.

But the community hated the idea, needed the option to go solo and that's why we have what we have today. Seems like they're working on ways to make it easier to stick with people who you mesh well with as a group.

I liked what they mentioned, I think in the Ana developer stream with Ster, the function to stick together as a group with people you play well as without needing to actually exchange IDs or add each other as friends.

 

[Red Arremer]

I think she works pretty well with the flankers too with her long range healing.

Honestly I think her main problem is her lack of mobility. Widowmaker has her hook, Hanzo can climb shit, but Ana has to walk everywhere. I feel like she'd be a lot more effective at taking care of her team if she was capable of reaching sniper spots.

 

[Corpekata]

"Oh boy, Ana is our only support" - said no Overwatch player ever.

I just had a fucking gold medal for healing for 75 percent of the match as Soldier 76.

Spoiler

Yes I know there are good ones, just venting about the average quick play so far these days

 

[Antiwhippy]

"Oh boy, Ana is our only support" - said no Overwatch player ever.

I just had a fucking gold medal for healing for 75 percent of the match as Soldier 76.

Maybe let people learn the hero first?

Her healing potential is actually better than Mercy.