Overwatch 2’s Ranked System Still Imbalanced Despite Significant Matchmaking Changes

Despite “significant” matchmaker changes that the Overwatch 2 developers have disclosed, users still complain about imbalanced rated matches. Despite the developers’ repeated attempts to reduce wait times and create worthy matches, Overwatch 2’s ranked system still drives players crazy.

Low ELO players have often been put in Grandmaster lobbies throughout OW2’s brief existence, which has led to frustration. On March 23, Server Engineer Morgan Maddren announced that additional improvements had been applied, including significant changes to the matchmaker’s handling of groups and high MMR players.

You might have noticed your queue times in OW got shorter since mid-last-week, especially at high MMR and in groups. We made some big adjustments the matchmaker, but queue times were only a secondary goal.

— Morgan Maddren (@SrslyPaladin) March 23, 2023

Significant matchmaking changes in Overwatch 2

The Overwatch 2 game developer posted on social media that the matchmaker has experienced some tweaks and suggested that users may have seen decreased queue times. “Matchmaking with a narrower distribution of MMRs is the primary enhancement we’ve been tuning for. The dev proclaimed that the spread of a regular match had been cut by about 10% in Comp, which is progress.

This may sound like a modest improvement–reducing MMR spread in matches is a really tricky problem. The main way we improve it is to be smarter and smarter about how we matchmake groups.

— Morgan Maddren (@SrslyPaladin) March 23, 2023

The developer continued by saying that narrowing the MMR spread was “tricky,” mainly when it came to players banding together and trying to matchmake in accordance with that. Regrettably, according to Maddren, the matchmaker is “probably about as good as it can be for this patch,” although he also stated that they intend to increase match speed.

Players reported conflicting results with the improvements in the comments. While some claimed that recent matches were fair, others experienced problems that persisted. “I played 15 games in one lengthy period yesterday, winning 10 of them, and the matches felt fair and engaging. I’ve had the most fun since OW2 released,” one person commented. Prominent streamer Samito also recorded having to wait 17 minutes for a game before a Platinum support player showed up in his lobby, which made the game unbalanced.

I'm rank 60 and wait 17 minutes for this game ;-; If this is what we are gonna do just insta queue me 12 deaths in an 8 minute game

Literally said "I'm sorry guys I don't know why I'm here"

No one flamed them, tried to help but it just doesn't matter this should never happen pic.twitter.com/z8K505EPdP

— Samito (@SamitoFPS) March 23, 2023

Another person said, “Last night, even though I’m diamond, I did cross paths with silver teammates, and in some other matches, while I didn’t look, it did seem like the other team had silvers as well.” However, Maddren pointed out that these significant SR differences are uncommon and are probably the result of stacking several extensive groups.

Queue times have definitely been great. Last night while I’m diamond I did run into silver teammates though and on some other matches while I didn’t look it did seem like the enemy team had silvers as well. Thanks for the transparency though. Good to hear and see. 👍

— Zemnoxas_OW (@Zemnoxas_OW) March 23, 2023

It would be interesting to see if Season 4 brings about any significant changes, but the ranking is a bit of a mixed bag for now.