Grandmaster player shows why Overwatch needs an MMR reset

With season 18 of Overwatch competitive in full swing and role queue now implemented into the game, ranked is in an interesting place with some players climbing far higher than their skill should allow. 

Part of this problem is meta shifts and certain players deciding to main heroes who get tremendous value with minimal effort. For instance, some players reportedly went from being stuck in platinum to Grand Master by just playing Brigitte when she was at her most overpowered. 

Then, when that powerful hero gets nerfed, the player has to explore other options and can’t cut it at a higher ELO. 

Other times, some players may duo with friends in higher ranks who have secondary accounts in lower SRs. As a result, these smurfs end up boosting their friend to levels far beyond his or her actual skill.

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What ends up happening can be frustrating for anyone who ends up on the same team as the artificially boosted player. This very thing happened to GM tank MEGAMEGA who reviewed the gameplay of an Orisa in his game using the replay tool. 

As you can see in the footage, the Orisa player missed practically every single shot, uses abilities at weird times and has bizarre shield placement.

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“That guy hit 3900,” MEGAMEGA said in disbelief. Later, he checked what SR the player had in Season 17 and couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw he finished in platinum. 

It was so shocking, MEGAMEGA decided to post the video on Twitter and begged Blizzard to attempt an MMR reset. 

What is an MMR reset? 

An MMR reset would essentially completely wipe the slate clean for every single player, making them have to start again and climb the rankings. Previous stats would be thrown out the window leading to previous Top 500s being matched with bronze players and the like.

When season 18 first went live, players experienced this – sort of. A matchmaking bug prevented values from prior seasons from being respected leading to pros being matched with gold players. 

Despite the initial confusion, some welcomed the temporary reset and saw it as a reason to grind. 

Frequent Top 500 player PVPX, who is known for his incredible Junkrat play, said the lack of an MMR reset “tilts him”. 

With so many metas, heroes and a lack of SR decay now that role queue has been added, he was annoyed that someone who played 10 seasons ago could still log in and place at GM.

Will Blizzard do an MMR reset? 

In a post on the forums back in August, developer Scott Mercer said the team had tested a partial SR reset, but the results were horrible. SR is your skill rating while your MMR is your hidden matchmaking rating. An SR reset would come combined with an MMR reset. 

“When you queue for a match with an SR that doesn’t accurately reflect your skill, the quality of the match drops tremendously. Therefore, we try to quickly change your SR as a new player to more accurately determine your SR, and we can’t ever really consider implementing a full SR reset,” he said. 

However, it seems like the match quality isn’t good at the moment either with MEGAMEGA’s video serving as an example. 

Time will tell if Blizzard decides to rethink their opinion. After all, Overwatch has changed a lot since its launch. It may be time for yet another change.