Overwatch’s ranking system has had its fair share of critics over the years, but a bizarre matchmaking incident in a top 500 match may be the best argument for a complete ladder overhaul.
Twitch streamer LhCloudy27 is one of the game’s top players, finding himself near the top of the game’s leaderboards. During a February broadcast, he queued into Temple of Anubis and was matched with other players of a similar skill level – or was he?
The game proved to be a challenge with both teams managing to capture both points twice leading to a 4-4 score. Sadly, his team’s defense buckled upon their third attempt, resulting in a 5-4 loss.
Like many players do, after the match he reviewed the profiles of his teammates to see what went wrong when something caught his eye.
One of the damage players on his team, despite being ranked in the top 500 for DPS, was had an incredibly low SR on tank.
Overwatch’s SR system actually won’t show ranks for bronze players under 500 SR and instead replaces the number with a less than sign next to 500 to indicate how low it is.
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It’s a bit of a mystery how a top 500 player on DPS could be so low ranked on tank, that is, if the player was taking the game seriously.
“This is like a smurf on console,” the Twitch streamer said, referring to how easy it is to make more accounts at no additional cost on those platforms. “He’s just going to do whatever the f**k he wants.”
It seems weird that the matchmaker would let someone who has some massive SR differences continue to queue up as it seems likely the player was throwing games on tank to get his rank so low.
“The perfect example of a smurf,” LhCloudy27 concluded.
Hopefully, Blizzard can do something about this in the future and implement some harsher penalties for throwers and detect them more easily. It’s definitely not fun for anyone in top 500 games or folks stuck way down in bronze.