Closed Betas & Competitive Games

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I've been playing the early access to the Ghost In The Shell game on Steam for a while now and I got in a little bit of time playing Overwatch on both PS4 and PC (great game!), but it got me to thinking about the fanbase such betas create.

I have to wonder if these games will keep new fans months after they release because when you jump in at launch, a great deal of the community has already been playing and honing their skills for months. On the free weekend for GITS, the "noobz" got absolutely rekt by people who've been playing early access for a while. I have doubts that these people will be back when the game officially launches. With Overwatch, it all felt pretty balanced on PS4 because people have just started playing there, but playing on PC has made feel useless to my far more experienced team and I have to say, this has been a deciding factor more than anything else in which platform I will get the game on.

What are your opinions regarding the skill gap that is created by new, competitive games that went through a lengthy closed beta phase?

[DusK]

You pretty much described the entire reason I hugely advocate for games having some sort of skill-based matchmaking system.

[Brushfire]

Im in the Pre-Open beta for Overwatch on PC, and there is a definite skill gap that I see in game, but I don't think that is due to shoddy MMR, but more to do with Blizzard wiping everyone's stats from closed to open. The System works, but because everyone was returned back to zero you get matched with SkillGodz. I feel that if you have a long beta, such as with Overwatch you kind need to let the higher skilled players keep their MMR, so newer players arent scared away from skill gaps.

[MindWanderer]

If you don't have functional matchmaking, then the issue with beta testers having a huge skill advantage is the same issue as someone trying to get into the game a year after launch.  If you shut out new players, you're in trouble, regardless of what the launch date was.  If you use progressive stats for matchmaking, great, but as Brushfire said, you have to not reset them.  But then you have to not be affected by grinding, either.  My only experience with online matchmaking is Splatoon: Level (which you gain over time) is a lousy matchmaking metric, as I've seen lousy high-level players who just play a lot, but Rank (which goes up and down) is much better.  It's not perfect, since you can save scum your rank or power-level with friends up to S rank, but then you're only hurting yourself; if you play normally, you'll usually not end up against people better than you in Ranked mode.  And even if you start a new game in Splatoon and restart from rank C-, you'll rocket up through the ranks and very quickly end up about where you were before.

[Cole Train]

Maybe its because I play a lot of fighting games (At a competitive level), even able to compete in Smash Bros for Wii U competitively after getting the game nearly two years late, but this stuff happening really isn't such a big deal to me.
Let me put it like this.
If getting better were a virtually infinite race, the beta players just have a headstart. Those starting at launch are just behind a bit. It's not like they broke their legs. Tl;dr, normal players can get to that level as well with a bit of effort.