Jeff Kaplan Denies Fan Theory Regarding Overwatch Matchmaking
A Twitter user discovered a matchmaking patent by Blizzard but Jeff Kaplan took to Reddit to deny the patent's potential implications on Overwatch matchmaking.
Blizzard continues to tinker with Overwatch balancing with a recent nerf to Roadhog and an upcoming crazy buff for McCree. While the studio has always been transparent about balancing changes, its matchmaking strategies have always been a bit more mysterious.
Twitter user ProtoypeOW claimed to find some hidden details about Overwatch's matchmaking system with the discovery of a patent by Activision/Blizzard. The patent implies that a multitude of data, ranging everywhere from voice chat use and rage quitting to game performance, was all considered in Overwatch's matchmaking.
the matchmaking patent states that worse players are put on the same team as players more skilled than themselves to make games as even as possible. this is done to retain players, and according to the data in the patent, it works.
— crackpot investigative journalist (@PrototypeOW) September 21, 2020
This discovery, of course, spawned a discussion on the Competitive Overwatch subreddit. Jeff Kaplan, game director of Overwatch, was quick to enter the chat and denied PrototypeOW's theory.
Kaplan stated that, primarily, Overwatch uses matchmaking rating (your win/loss along with some variance for new players and other specific conditions), region, and ping as the only three tenets of matchmaking. ProtoypeOW, however, did not find Kaplan's response to be sufficient.
Update: Jeff replied to a reddit thread about my posts, and he denied that chat has any influence on mm, but he said nothing about the other claims I made, like the ones about loss/winstreaks and overall gameplay quality influencing matchmaking. This points to this being true IMO
— crackpot investigative journalist (@PrototypeOW) September 21, 2020
While Kaplan did say that Blizzard doesn't use voice chat monitoring in matchmaking consideration, ProtoypeOW states that Kaplan not addressing a multitude of other claims means that they are true. However, Kaplan explicitly states that Blizzard primarily uses those three pieces of data when it comes to matchmaking. It doesn't seem like he found the other claims worth addressing, and PrototypeOW's conclusion might be a stretch.