Marvel Rivals' matchmaking system has sparked controversy, frustration, and deep speculation from players who believe their matches are being manipulated. But is the system truly rigged, or is there a more complex reality at play?
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💬 Comment below: Do you think Marvel Rivals' matchmaking is fair or manipulated?
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In this nearly 1-hour deep dive, we explore:
0:00 Intro
1:40 From Fair Play to Engagement: A History of Matchmaking
5:11 The Rise of EOMM - Engagement Optimized Matchmaking
8:59 The Science Behind the Scenes: EOMM, OptMatch, and EnMatch
17:15 Why Players Believe “Matchmaking Is Rigged”
27:24 Behind the Accusations: How Does Marvel Rivals’ Matchmaking Actually Work?
41:39 The Pros and Cons of Marvel Rivals’ Matchmaking
48:38 Conclusion: Rigged or Just Reality?
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🔍 SOURCES & REFERENCES 🔍
📜 Primary Research Papers & Academic Sources
EOMM: Engagement Optimized Matchmaking Framework (Chen et al., 2017)
📖 Proceedings of the 2017 International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2017)
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1145/3038912.3052559
OptMatch: Optimized Matchmaking via Modeling High-Order Interactions on the Arena (Gong et al., 2020)
📖 Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining (KDD 2020)
📖 Proceedings of the 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2024)
🛠️ Industry Documents & Patents
Activision’s Patent on Matchmaking to Encourage Microtransactions (2015, Published 2017)
📜 US Patent 20160005270A1
🔗 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270A1/en
🎮 GDC Talks & Developer Presentations
NetEase GDC 2021 Talk: "Find the Right Match – AI Enhanced Matchmaking Practice"
🎤 Game Developers Conference (GDC 2021)
📖 GDC 2006 & Microsoft Research
🔗 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/trueskilltm-a-bayesian-skill-rating-system/
💬 Forum Discussions & Community Insights
Marvel Rivals Players Discussing "Forced 50% Win Rate"
🗣️ Reddit /r/MarvelRivals, Overwatch & Dota 2 matchmaking threads
🔗 Overwatch 50/50 Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/17iogt3/why_is_forced_5050_real/
Marvel Rivals Players Analyzing EOMM
🗣️ Reddit /r/marvelrivals discussion on engagement-based matchmaking
🔗https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelrivals/comments/1iiclq3/analysis_of_eomm_in_marvel_rivals_2017_2025/
📖 Arpad Elo’s "The Rating of Chessplayers, Past & Present" (1978)
📖 B.F. Skinner’s Variable Reward Systems in Gaming Psychology