A development blog written by the Overwatch 2 dev team is shedding some light on recent improvements to the game’s MMR and matchmaking.
Today’s blog is the first in a two-part series that aims to keep players informed on how Overwatch 2 handles matchmaking. In the post, the development team explains that their ultimate goal is to quickly get players into matches that are as fun and fair as possible. “Our highest hope is to make a match that feels fun for everyone, even the team that loses,” reads the final paragraph in the blog.
To do so, they’ve tweaked the systems that determine how a player’s MMR is created and adjusted when they play any of Overwatch 2’s modes, including quick play. When someone plays the game for the first time, they don’t have an MMR. At that point, the game works to bring players up to roughly a 50 percent win rate as quickly as possible, which is where the vast majority of the player base sits. To do so, new players are now matched with players who are the equivalent of Bronze 5 rank, which is lower than the center of the player MMR distribution but enables new players to win more frequently and makes matches feel more fair.
The team has also implemented what they call a “streak modifier system” that follows changes in a player’s average win rate. Players who win more than 50 percent of their matches will find their MMR increasing more quickly than usual. This effect will taper off once the system feels as though these players are entering matches that are “fair” relative to their MMR.
The combination of these two changes means players now reach that 50 percent win rate mark much more quickly, meaning they (and everyone who plays with them) have fewer “unfair” matches to deal with.
In terms of matchmaking, Blizzard is looking to make changes to the way the game pairs existing groups of players with widely varying MMRs. Their goal is to have teams feel like “mirror images”: for example, if one team has a damage player whose MMR is at a certain number, the game will try to find an opposing team that also has a damage player around the same MMR.
The end result should be that each player on a team will face off against someone playing the same role as them whose numerical skill indicator is about the same as theirs.
More details on Overwatch 2 matchmaking, including how MMR is distributed across the player base and how larger numbers affect the system, are also in the blog.
