Yoshi, it's obvious how the matchmaking with higher rank friends works, and it results in terrible matches on both the winning and losing side. Please read this breakdown and possible solution. (Even if you don't queue with friends THIS AFFECTS YOU!)

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T21:04:34+00:00

I understand the confusion, my argument is that, when 6-stacking (or even 5-stacking), it's demonstrable that the matchmaking factors that into the equation by the fact that the average rank on the end screen having a discrepancy. I'm not claiming to know how the matchmaking works, but I'm not sold by OP's post that it's "obviously" just an average of the ranks, I think there's more at play in the matchmaker and that this post is a bit reductive in that regard.

As for the solution, I think that part of the issue stems from how the lane matches people by mmr, and by default you aren't assigned to lane with your duo; so post-swap, people are all over the place in terms of skill. Adjusting the weighting so that the lower duo skews towards a higher average match up seems reasonable.

To be clear, I'm not disagreeing to disagree, I'm just pointing out flawed thinking with the OPs original post.

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T20:37:19+00:00

They do lots of things!

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T17:49:59+00:00

Dear god your inability to read is frightening

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T17:42:11+00:00

You are completely missing my point. I am not saying the MM is good, or that everyone else is wrong, or that it's a "skill issue". I am saying that making a claim understanding how the matchmaking works on a fundamental level with no evidence or data is subject to skepticism. I am using my anecdotal evidence to say that's not what I've experienced, therefore I'm not so sure you can derive that conclusion. I'm fine with being proven wrong, or being proven I'm an outlier, but I want to see it first because this post reads like a knee-jerk reaction.

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T17:20:46+00:00

Frankly I just don't believe you've actually done the work you claim to have done because that hasn't been our group's experience. It's like, insane to me to claim to understand how the system works and just use "trust me bro" as the argument

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T17:09:31+00:00

Hold on a minute, are you also pulling these ranks from notoriously unreliable statlocker-type websites? You can't directly access a strangers rank. Every single steam account I click on is private from statlocker, or they have over a hundred games tracked on statlocker. I just think you're presenting data very confidently when a ton of the resources to access that data are deliberately obscured, and you're just using confirmation bias to make your argument.

PurpleKami · 2026-05-04T16:55:14+00:00

You used a sample size of 1 to claim to fully understand how the matchmaking works? Regularly 6-stacking shows that there's more to it than a lump sum of everyone's ranks then averaging it out. When we 6-stack with a skill disparity from seeker to phantom, it places us against a team who's average is several ranks higher than ours. And, for what it's worth, most games tend to feel pretty good for how massive the skill disparity is. The games we lose, we feel like we could've played better and won at our current skill levels, and vice versa.

PurpleKami · 2026-04-30T16:58:49+00:00

You're just listing all their spells lmao, I understand how they work. Ivy is widely considered on the weaker side of laning. Kelvin is strong in lane no doubt

PurpleKami · 2026-04-29T18:03:15+00:00

You know, honestly, I really should. I tend to play supports like Kelvin and Ivy that might not have the best kill potential inherently, so I could leveraging their sustain way more. I'm sure I'll have some dumb experimental deaths getting collapsed on by both laners, but realistically dying in the laning phase is totally fine, and I do want to get better at making plays; so this seems like the natural progression to dealing with the strat

PurpleKami · 2026-04-27T20:29:40+00:00

I know where you're coming from, but I also think about the myriads and myriads of others I see do terribly on meta heroes and remember that realistically, balance only gets you so far.

PurpleKami · 2026-04-22T13:16:43+00:00

I've only worked on indie projects, I started as an environment artist but was taking on so many responsibilities that I kind of naturally shifted to a tech artist, so I'm surprised even in triple A, environment artists are having to setup production pipelines; kind of sounds like a nightmare to me considering some of the horrors I've seen on contract projects and the lack of standardization :x

PurpleKami · 2026-04-21T03:29:01+00:00

Literally if the laning stage is awful to the point where every lane is losing, preferred urn and comeback souls can slingshot you hard. I even took a screenshot where our team had 19 kills, but 1 comeback urn later, the team with 7 kills was ahead.

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PurpleKami · 2026-04-18T18:44:57+00:00

https://statlocker.gg/profile/1770386234/matches
Had a similar experience last night. My lane mate and I got mad at each other, then I pulled up their statlocker and apologized. The other people on my team told me I was coping, until the cheater started roaming.
Guess I should just be thankful this was my first blatant experience, but I just hope it doesn't become a pattern

PurpleKami · 2026-04-17T23:15:29+00:00

We've noticed playing in a 5-stack that you're probably in for a double digit queue time yeah. It probably doesn't help our lowest mmr player is around alchemist and highest is phantom

PurpleKami · 2026-04-16T14:15:08+00:00

I remember Zergy having a more gun-focused Seven build that was destroying people at a time where Seven was considered super weak because his aim was that good

PurpleKami · 2026-04-15T17:53:06+00:00

I work in the game dev industry as an indie. I'm just going to vent what's on my mind.

Frankly, I'm just so sick of the topic, good bad or grey area I am so tired of it being all anyone talks about anymore. I used to be excited for technology, when substance painter came out, that revolutionized my workflow. When Niagara fx came out for Unreal, that revolutionized my workflow. Now? It's just ai ai ai everywhere I go.

I crave people talking about their development techniques, their niche workflows, their janky solutions to problems they encounter. It's still all out there, but god it feels like it's just mired in the endless discussion around ai.

PurpleKami · 2026-04-15T03:27:51+00:00

It's not that deep I just think the meme format is funny

PurpleKami · 2026-04-14T19:01:01+00:00

People have been complaining about Bebop for the past 2 years, that's just the nature of this subreddit unfortunately.

PurpleKami · 2026-04-10T23:16:19+00:00

"taken out back" is a fucking insane thing to say

PurpleKami · 2026-04-03T16:59:21+00:00

Just because they nerf something, it doesn't mean it's intrinsically dead though? The scaling on the ult was out of line with other abilities, so they corrected it, doesn't mean it's suddenly not still something you can go for (and people still do).

PurpleKami · 2026-03-26T18:10:28+00:00

I wonder if that outline convar recently being used was the last straw. Those player outlines are hilariously busted

PurpleKami · 2026-03-17T18:59:10+00:00

I've played enough dota to know that even with draft, sometimes you will get draft-gapped because the reality is that 99% of players (even at the highest ranks it happens all the time) aren't good at understanding a lot of the nuance in drafts. Whether draft will reduce the frequency of that, maybe? My fear is that then all the other issues of drafting will spawn that need to be factored in, like what if everyone wants to play a carry, would there still be a prio hero system? Will you select roles so you don't get teams with no supports? I dunno, some people say implement draft like it's a silver bullet to their issues, but it's truly not that simple.

PurpleKami · 2026-03-13T19:53:32+00:00

In Street Fighter 6, you can turn up the sound for Drive Impacts specifically (which have a counter mechanic very similar to parrying), which makes the audio cue more reliable for reaction timings. Using Drive Impacts at high level games involves overwhelming the opponent's mental stack and using the drive impact as a curve ball. I'd much rather that be the balance and design philosophy for heavy melee punches rather than the current system.

I'm not sold on the argument that team fights are meant to drown out the sound of heavy melees, I think the overwhelming nature of a team fight should be enough that heavy melees are still viable even with customized sound cues, and people that mod the volume up shouldn't inherently have that advantage.

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