Overwatch 2 team investigating ways to “mitigate” lopsided stomp matches

The Overwatch 2 developers are looking to prevent lopsided matches from plaguing the game, even with two evenly-balanced teams.

Overwatch 2 is a few months old now. In that time, players have been experiencing both joy and anger at the matchmaker for some questionable decisions when putting together games.

Although Season 4 has seen players finally get their true MMR in an attempt to stop instances of bronze players ending up in GM lobbies.

However, lopsided matches can still be a big issue, and in a new blog post, Software Engineer Morgan Maddren and Lead Meta Designer Scott Mercer explained what they’re doing to address this.

Overwatch 2 devs take aim at lopsided matches

When discussing data they had acquired by looking at the matchmaker, the devs revealed that stomps still occur in matches despite both sides being balanced.

As such, the team is investigating why they happen and what the system could potentially be doing differently to prevent them.

“These types of games could indicate areas where a player gets mis-calibrated, and our ratings need to be smarter,” Maddren said.

However, according to Scott Mercer, sometimes an otherwise balanced game becomes a stomp due to factors that occurred in the game to really shake up the outcome.

“What makes looking at stomps tricky is that they also happen with two well balanced teams. A really great ultimate, a key pick, or a few lucky critical shots can make a huge impact in a game of Overwatch,” the Lead Meta Designer added.

Luckily, the team is researching measures to show how close or lopsided matches in order to provide “much more precise signals to look at when assessing new changes.”

So far, the devs say they’ve managed to improve matches in quick play games by making it so that a player who backfills is a better fit for the lobby based on their MMR.