Changing the number of players is a pretty popular option in Overwatch custom games and content; people love “can six bronze players beat three grandmasters?” videos.
We easily have the option to change many aspects of the game—for instance, we can let the weaker team deal 150% damage or give the stronger team longer cooldowns—but in my experience it isn’t popular. People learn split-second gut-level reactions and habits for certain things, and part of being a “good player” is knowing instinctively whether you can tank a certain shot when you peek it or knowing when your ability will come off cooldown. Handicapping people by changing those learned values messes with their instincts, and it doesn’t feel good to be handicapped that way; people enjoy making the challenge more difficult much more than they enjoy changes that negate their pre-existing skill and nullify their hard work.
It surprises me that this is remotely in question, like 3 GMs will almost certainly smoke 6 bronze players in Starcraft (I’ve seen far more impressive feats), and naively shooter games would be even more asymmetric (like if the GM player has much better aim, they can beat ~infinite bronze players).
Overwatch is a hero shooter where every player has a different role and different abilities. As an experiment maybe a year ago, I once asked the best monkey player I knew at the time (4200 elo on a 0-5000 scale) to 1v1 the worst Bastion player I knew (under 1000 elo). In the neutral, the Bastion player consistently won despite the yawning chasm between their ratings. This is because monkey is a tank designed to take space and counter snipers and isolate squishy targets from their healers, and is not a character designed to 1v1 a Bastion. If you are missing three people from your team, you are missing three of the six key roles. The best player of all time playing Reinhardt could still probably lose a 1v1 to a bronze Pharah.
Running 2-3 higher-skill players versus 4-6 lower-skill players in variety PUGs, I’ve generally found that the lower-skill players very consistently win unless we give the 3 higher-skilled players an additional advantage like extra HP or damage. But that’s with a ton of obvious confounding factors—my higher rated players might be more inclined to just play for fun, plus the lower-skill players in my community are still reasonably strategic from exposure to team environments.
The first result of my YouTube search is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfhdHUQbcNA which, as you predict, goes in favour of the GMs. But I think there’s very easy tweaks (such as to team composition) that would allow the bronze players to do better. You can see that the first round actually goes to overtime for quite a while, so on paper it’s pretty close. Not really analysing this in depth as it’s 8am.
Changing the number of players is a pretty popular option in Overwatch custom games and content; people love “can six bronze players beat three grandmasters?” videos.
We easily have the option to change many aspects of the game—for instance, we can let the weaker team deal 150% damage or give the stronger team longer cooldowns—but in my experience it isn’t popular. People learn split-second gut-level reactions and habits for certain things, and part of being a “good player” is knowing instinctively whether you can tank a certain shot when you peek it or knowing when your ability will come off cooldown. Handicapping people by changing those learned values messes with their instincts, and it doesn’t feel good to be handicapped that way; people enjoy making the challenge more difficult much more than they enjoy changes that negate their pre-existing skill and nullify their hard work.
Well, can they?
It surprises me that this is remotely in question, like 3 GMs will almost certainly smoke 6 bronze players in Starcraft (I’ve seen far more impressive feats), and naively shooter games would be even more asymmetric (like if the GM player has much better aim, they can beat ~infinite bronze players).
Overwatch is a hero shooter where every player has a different role and different abilities. As an experiment maybe a year ago, I once asked the best monkey player I knew at the time (4200 elo on a 0-5000 scale) to 1v1 the worst Bastion player I knew (under 1000 elo). In the neutral, the Bastion player consistently won despite the yawning chasm between their ratings. This is because monkey is a tank designed to take space and counter snipers and isolate squishy targets from their healers, and is not a character designed to 1v1 a Bastion. If you are missing three people from your team, you are missing three of the six key roles. The best player of all time playing Reinhardt could still probably lose a 1v1 to a bronze Pharah.
Running 2-3 higher-skill players versus 4-6 lower-skill players in variety PUGs, I’ve generally found that the lower-skill players very consistently win unless we give the 3 higher-skilled players an additional advantage like extra HP or damage. But that’s with a ton of obvious confounding factors—my higher rated players might be more inclined to just play for fun, plus the lower-skill players in my community are still reasonably strategic from exposure to team environments.
The first result of my YouTube search is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfhdHUQbcNA which, as you predict, goes in favour of the GMs. But I think there’s very easy tweaks (such as to team composition) that would allow the bronze players to do better. You can see that the first round actually goes to overtime for quite a while, so on paper it’s pretty close. Not really analysing this in depth as it’s 8am.