on OWs Match Maker, SR and Teaching
Video here
More complaints from the community! Welcome to Overwatch. This time it's about the match maker and it's ability to pull in players that are sometimes 500SR (or hidden MMR) apart. At the surface level this doesn't seem correct nor good for the community but it actually is! While you may not agree I hope that by the end of this post you'll at least understand the benefits to this behavior.
To start this off I'd like to give some background on myself because this subject sucker punched me. I thought this way of learning was normal, to the point that I didn't understand the counter argument. I've been a martial artist for a long time, across multiple disciplines, and while the style and quality of teaching has varied it had one common trait, you learned from everyone.
In a typical class you'll listen to the teacher explain a bit and then you'll start training/drilling with your fellow martial brothers and sisters (Traditionally speaking). You'll practice with one partner for a bit and then on the next drill you'll pick another. This continues on for most of the class. The teacher will pick some talking points and help students as they walk around but most of it is on the students to keep practicing and drilling the techniques. Most classes will have a theme and once the drills and strength training are done you'll usually spar. Obviously classes are different but this is a very common theme.
It sounds similar to how most of academia and disciplines are learned but in reality, its not. If you haven't noticed already, I never mentioned anything about skill levels. Some larger martial schools will have different classes per skill level but largely its adult or child classes. Doesn't matter if its your first day or 10th year, you all train together. This would never happen in academia, in a traditional school you sit with other students in the same year as you. You learn from the same teacher and while you can help each other study you don't learn from multiple sources. My guess on why is that I've mainly learned engineering and sciences in school. Thus all my experiences are with learning an objective topic which doesn't suit subjective learning very well. An easy example is that math isn't a subjective topic. Your opinion can be that 1+1 = 3 but your opinion doesn't matter in an objective science. You're "feeling" on if a bridge can support X weight carries no weight, you have to prove it objectively. I can't go back in time nor with the covid-19 issue currently, attend an arts or music class. I'm curious to know if the liberal arts fields are more subjective or objective when teaching.
Another point I'd like to stress is in a martial class is that while you'll mainly listen to the teacher, you're still training with someone else. While you're trying to train what the teacher told you you'll notice that you and your partner could be doing the same technique differently. This is common and expected, each student is at a different level. The same technique I learned on day one can look completely different a year later and then like something else 5 years down the road. Each person you train with shows you a different step on the ladder and while you may agree or disagree with it, its still a valid interpretation. This allows one person to learn from everyone and dramatically increases the rate that someone can learn, both experienced and inexperienced students.
The more experienced student learns a great deal from a newer student. I'll list a couple examples that show this, while it's not all of them it's the ones I've personally experienced in my life that have provided value.
-Such examples would be what the common response or thought process is to a problem. Newer players don't have the same bias experienced players do, commonly known as a "fresh perspective". A newer player may only play Widowmaker but lacks the confidence to be on their own so they constantly sit with the team. It's on you as a more experienced player to notice this and enable them, sometimes this can lead to new innovations in the game.
-Personality types. Naturally there are aggressive,passive and other personalities that show in someone's art. A novice that's aggressive may see early success but have issues in later years of training while a passive student may have mountains to overcome early on. Both perspectives have their advantage and its up to a good student to understand both.
-The more experienced player can learn how to teach. Believe it or not just screaming at your students doesn't teach them too well, which is odd because that's how most communication in Overwatch is done. Not only is this a useful skill to have in Overwatch but directly translates to skills outside the game.
-It allows experienced players to directly see what happens when part of your team isn't doing their best. It's actually very difficult to see what happens when a player isn't playing their best at their role. What utility did they bring that you notice you're lacking now? Did a specific flank fall or did your team pull back to consolidate their forces and limit the attack surface? What can you do as a player to enable them or protect them? It's common in high level games to lose a tank first, look back at your time as a DPS or support when you had to help your team out when a more inexperience tank player isnt doing as good. The answer will be remarkably similar.
There's much more to learn from a less experienced student. I don't mean to sidetrack too much but while these lessons are good to learn from a teacher you'll internalize them much quicker if you learn them from experience. To top it off, this is only when a less experience player is on your team, but what happens when someone less experienced than you wins? You'll feel a bit dumb and embarrassed. Normally players will say it was "lucky" or that they aren't really that good and they got away with it. That is total bullshit, they won and you lost, End of story. It's your job as a good student to learn from these experiences and be humbled by them. After all, the only way to know of a gimmick or trick works on you is to experience it.
On the flip side!
I understand that players want to have a tournament like experience on the ladder but that's not the purpose of ladder (this is another detailed blog post). The real purpose of the ladder is to train and to get better at Overwatch. With some SR variance we now allow lower level players to experience something that's a couple hundred SR above them. At the same time they will be in games where they're the high level player and then must learn what its like to play against lower SR players. Again, lower SR players still have some legitimate skill and strategy. It's good to understand what they do because in some situations it can be applied at the higher level as well. If a lower skilled opponent can beat you with something, then why can't you do that to someone above your skill level? This is how a contenders team came up with GOATs and how it became mainstream. It wasn't something brilliant brought up by the best team, it was a minor league team that started the most devastating meta to Overwatch. Of course the opposite is true, inexperienced players learn mountains of information from higher level games, I'm assuming everyone knows this so I won't expand on it at all.
I will admit that not all games should be played with a 500SR difference. High skilled players still need to practice against opponents their own level. While I see the overall topic of large SR ranges as non-negotiable, we can talk about how often this should happen and what degree of SR difference do we find acceptable. Personally I find 300-400 SR difference on the same team acceptable. I believe that gives lower SR players enough room to see whats different while still being able to manage themselves in a higher SR game. I'd say that it's reasonable to have 15-25% of your games to have some higher variance in skill level. This would allow the community to create a staircase of skill that keeps new blood flowing into the higher ranks. Think of it as "the path to pro" but in a much more micro sense.
It's absolutely ridiculous for streamers and professional players to complain that their teammates are bad while at the same time complaining about a wide range of SR. It's because lower level players are kept at a low level that they cannot gain skill in a more efficient manner. The biggest lie in the Overwatch community is that we're all enemies trying to step on each other to get a higher rank. The truth is just like my martial classes, we're brothers and sisters looking to the same goal, to get better. The ladder isn't a tournament, it's not only about winning. Its a training environment, it's about getting better. The more we help each other the more we raise everyone's ability, resulting in a higher quality of games and community.
More complaints from the community! Welcome to Overwatch. This time it's about the match maker and it's ability to pull in players that are sometimes 500SR (or hidden MMR) apart. At the surface level this doesn't seem correct nor good for the community but it actually is! While you may not agree I hope that by the end of this post you'll at least understand the benefits to this behavior.
To start this off I'd like to give some background on myself because this subject sucker punched me. I thought this way of learning was normal, to the point that I didn't understand the counter argument. I've been a martial artist for a long time, across multiple disciplines, and while the style and quality of teaching has varied it had one common trait, you learned from everyone.
In a typical class you'll listen to the teacher explain a bit and then you'll start training/drilling with your fellow martial brothers and sisters (Traditionally speaking). You'll practice with one partner for a bit and then on the next drill you'll pick another. This continues on for most of the class. The teacher will pick some talking points and help students as they walk around but most of it is on the students to keep practicing and drilling the techniques. Most classes will have a theme and once the drills and strength training are done you'll usually spar. Obviously classes are different but this is a very common theme.
It sounds similar to how most of academia and disciplines are learned but in reality, its not. If you haven't noticed already, I never mentioned anything about skill levels. Some larger martial schools will have different classes per skill level but largely its adult or child classes. Doesn't matter if its your first day or 10th year, you all train together. This would never happen in academia, in a traditional school you sit with other students in the same year as you. You learn from the same teacher and while you can help each other study you don't learn from multiple sources. My guess on why is that I've mainly learned engineering and sciences in school. Thus all my experiences are with learning an objective topic which doesn't suit subjective learning very well. An easy example is that math isn't a subjective topic. Your opinion can be that 1+1 = 3 but your opinion doesn't matter in an objective science. You're "feeling" on if a bridge can support X weight carries no weight, you have to prove it objectively. I can't go back in time nor with the covid-19 issue currently, attend an arts or music class. I'm curious to know if the liberal arts fields are more subjective or objective when teaching.
Another point I'd like to stress is in a martial class is that while you'll mainly listen to the teacher, you're still training with someone else. While you're trying to train what the teacher told you you'll notice that you and your partner could be doing the same technique differently. This is common and expected, each student is at a different level. The same technique I learned on day one can look completely different a year later and then like something else 5 years down the road. Each person you train with shows you a different step on the ladder and while you may agree or disagree with it, its still a valid interpretation. This allows one person to learn from everyone and dramatically increases the rate that someone can learn, both experienced and inexperienced students.
Make no mistake, it's not always the less experienced student that learns.
The more experienced student learns a great deal from a newer student. I'll list a couple examples that show this, while it's not all of them it's the ones I've personally experienced in my life that have provided value.
-Such examples would be what the common response or thought process is to a problem. Newer players don't have the same bias experienced players do, commonly known as a "fresh perspective". A newer player may only play Widowmaker but lacks the confidence to be on their own so they constantly sit with the team. It's on you as a more experienced player to notice this and enable them, sometimes this can lead to new innovations in the game.
-Personality types. Naturally there are aggressive,passive and other personalities that show in someone's art. A novice that's aggressive may see early success but have issues in later years of training while a passive student may have mountains to overcome early on. Both perspectives have their advantage and its up to a good student to understand both.
-The more experienced player can learn how to teach. Believe it or not just screaming at your students doesn't teach them too well, which is odd because that's how most communication in Overwatch is done. Not only is this a useful skill to have in Overwatch but directly translates to skills outside the game.
-It allows experienced players to directly see what happens when part of your team isn't doing their best. It's actually very difficult to see what happens when a player isn't playing their best at their role. What utility did they bring that you notice you're lacking now? Did a specific flank fall or did your team pull back to consolidate their forces and limit the attack surface? What can you do as a player to enable them or protect them? It's common in high level games to lose a tank first, look back at your time as a DPS or support when you had to help your team out when a more inexperience tank player isnt doing as good. The answer will be remarkably similar.
There's much more to learn from a less experienced student. I don't mean to sidetrack too much but while these lessons are good to learn from a teacher you'll internalize them much quicker if you learn them from experience. To top it off, this is only when a less experience player is on your team, but what happens when someone less experienced than you wins? You'll feel a bit dumb and embarrassed. Normally players will say it was "lucky" or that they aren't really that good and they got away with it. That is total bullshit, they won and you lost, End of story. It's your job as a good student to learn from these experiences and be humbled by them. After all, the only way to know of a gimmick or trick works on you is to experience it.
On the flip side!
I understand that players want to have a tournament like experience on the ladder but that's not the purpose of ladder (this is another detailed blog post). The real purpose of the ladder is to train and to get better at Overwatch. With some SR variance we now allow lower level players to experience something that's a couple hundred SR above them. At the same time they will be in games where they're the high level player and then must learn what its like to play against lower SR players. Again, lower SR players still have some legitimate skill and strategy. It's good to understand what they do because in some situations it can be applied at the higher level as well. If a lower skilled opponent can beat you with something, then why can't you do that to someone above your skill level? This is how a contenders team came up with GOATs and how it became mainstream. It wasn't something brilliant brought up by the best team, it was a minor league team that started the most devastating meta to Overwatch. Of course the opposite is true, inexperienced players learn mountains of information from higher level games, I'm assuming everyone knows this so I won't expand on it at all.
I will admit that not all games should be played with a 500SR difference. High skilled players still need to practice against opponents their own level. While I see the overall topic of large SR ranges as non-negotiable, we can talk about how often this should happen and what degree of SR difference do we find acceptable. Personally I find 300-400 SR difference on the same team acceptable. I believe that gives lower SR players enough room to see whats different while still being able to manage themselves in a higher SR game. I'd say that it's reasonable to have 15-25% of your games to have some higher variance in skill level. This would allow the community to create a staircase of skill that keeps new blood flowing into the higher ranks. Think of it as "the path to pro" but in a much more micro sense.
It's absolutely ridiculous for streamers and professional players to complain that their teammates are bad while at the same time complaining about a wide range of SR. It's because lower level players are kept at a low level that they cannot gain skill in a more efficient manner. The biggest lie in the Overwatch community is that we're all enemies trying to step on each other to get a higher rank. The truth is just like my martial classes, we're brothers and sisters looking to the same goal, to get better. The ladder isn't a tournament, it's not only about winning. Its a training environment, it's about getting better. The more we help each other the more we raise everyone's ability, resulting in a higher quality of games and community.