I’ve been thinking of the responses people give when players blame bad teammates for their difficulty in ranking up.
I’d like to quickly mention .this is a discussion. not an argument. As of now, I’m not sure of my final opinion on the matter. I agree with things from both sides.
Some people say the matchmaking system is messed up causing them to drop in rank. Others reply to those comments saying that if you can’t carry, then you’re in the rank you deserve. To focus on your own game and you’ll eventually climb out.
And that got me thinking…
EXAMPLE - a silver player plays with 5 gold players in 28 gold level matches. If each of those 5 gold players got to gold because they were able to carry lower ranks… then why did they still lose 16 times when 5 gold players were carrying one silver person? (2/3rd’s loss) If 1/3rd of games, you’re destined to lose. 1/3rd of games you’re destined to win. And 1/3rd of games you have to carry in order to rank up… then doesn’t that mean that the 5 gold players should have been fully capable of carrying 1 silver for at least 9 of the games? (at least 1 time carried + the 8 “destined to win” games). < This is a real scenario with real data.
But I know real life won’t always happen like the text book says (Newtonian mechanics don’t describe the quantum world). But you would think that if each of those gold players got to their rank because they were “good enough to carry and rank up” as so many people suggest - then they should have theoretically won anywhere from 9-16 times. Instead of only the 8 - the easy win portion.
So at this point, you could think that you don’t rank up by “learning to carry” or you think that the 1/3rd rule is bull. I feel as though- in either of those cases, you’d have to consider that it is at least partially a team-effort. I’m thinking that at this point it is a team effort and improving does start with yourself first.
EXAMPLE: Say 1 person is dragging your team down - each person of the team makes up 16% of the win. The person dragging you down is only putting up 10% effort. Thus making the other 5 people put forth 18% effort in order to win (to get 100%). The more people not doing their full 16% - the more effort has to be distributed onto fewer people. So yes, you do have to carry. And then there’s the fact that role que has now made some of this harder. Because if the person dragging your team down isn’t preforming their duty then the numbers get all thrown out of wack, there’s no way to distribute the missing effort evenly, someone has to pick a the majority of the slack and if the rest of the ‘slack’ isn’t able to be picked up by the rest of the team, then this leads to someone having all gold medals / potg/ etc (the counter part making up for the majority of the slack) and still losing (the rest of the team unable to pick up the rest of the slack).
Which would indicate that the match making system could use some work. If one person can put forth 10%, their counter part puts forth 22%, and the remaining 4 players put forth less than 17% - the 10% and the 22% players should not have been placed together in the first place.
So I would suggest that the rank system get split into more ranks
Bronze I (skill rating: 1-500)
Bronze II (skill rating: 500-1000)
Bronze III (skill rating: 1000-1500)
Silver I (skill rating: 1500-1750)
Silver II (skill rating: 1750-2000)
and so on throughout diamond rank.
This way you still get matches within your SR - but you’re not having a newly gold player ruin the chances of a high gold player advancing to plat. Matches are more evenly matched - increasing your chances of winning. I know that I would be willing to wait longer if it meant that I have a greater chance of winning. And if I don’t want to wait so long… do quick play.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion. Your input has helped construct how I (personally) think the matchmaking system works/how it could improve.
You carry the same way a basketball player carries his team. The better you are, the more you can do, the more chance you have of winning. Are you going to win every game? No of course not. The other team has people trying to win too.
It depends what role you’re playing, too. I’ve seen people tell Bronze Mercy mains and the like that they’re terrible at the game and are where they deserve.
Technically a T500 Mercy main could be stuck in Bronze if they solely healed/DMG boosted because they aren’t the ones making the kills.
People equate carrying to getting kills, and there is weight to that (not saying that not getting kills doesn’t mean you’re not contributing - I’m a Diamond Mercy main so of course I don’t think that Everyone’s role matters in a game). If kills aren’t being made by your team, your team are the ones getting killed. You can’t advance the game that way.
My point is, the “carry” logic applies pretty much solely to DPS (and I guess partly Tank as well as Supports such as Moira and Zenyatta, but overall it’s a little different.) because they equate carrying to getting kills and making those big plays which are important to advance the game. But, you could also argue that carrying is simply another word for “outperforming”. Say, a Tank blocking DMG like a boss or decimating flankers for their healers, or healers keeping their team alive as well as themselves. Because a Tank isn’t going to be held to a high standard by their team if they’re acting like a high HP DPS, just as a Support won’t be liked very much if they aren’t healing or are dying too much to contribute.
here’s the detail you missed - gold level players should be able to carry in silver rank games. if a gold player could carry in gold rank games, then they’d become a platinum. in your example, 5 gold and 1 silver vs 6 gold is a clear advantage to the higher ranked team, and your results support that.
learn to carry really is summarized by your example #1: you are expected to do ~17% of the work to maintain your rank. if you can consistently do 20%, then you not only can make up for teammates having poor games, but if everyone else on your team brings 17% and you bring 20%, you will eventually climb. that’s what “learn to carry” really means, I think.
Carrying is providing more value than expected from whatever hero you are using. It could be in the form of kills. Or it could be in the form of healing, damage boosting, drawing enemy fire and staying alive etc. A T500 can never be stuck in bronze on any hero.
My point is that a person who is playing Mercy’s likelihood to win is far more at the mercy (pun intended) than, say, every DPS character in the roster. There’s a reason why there are more Support players than any other role who complain about “bad teammates” because they can only contribute so much when their primary purpose is to heal and buff their team.
If a Mercy player consecutively gets put with particularly bad teammates, healing and DMG boosting can only do so much. If those DPS/Tanks aren’t making the kills, the game isn’t advancing in that team’s favour. If you read the rest of my post, you would understand that a little better.
Well my answer is the same, i just shared my experience. It doesnt matter at all what you play in bronze to gold. Any hero can carry just with good performance as it will result in better PBSR. Even if you have trash team mates in 50% games. You dont even have to carry to have crazy plays, just playing good is enough.
You’re ignoring the other half of the equation here. The opposing team.
Each of those Gold players did really well when they were put against lower ranked players (ie Silvers). That’s why they were able to carry, they had easy opposition. But if you throw 5 Golds together, you’re going to get pretty much entirely Golds on the other team. Now the opposition is tougher than before, so obviously they won’t be able to carry quite as easily and the entire situation gets flopped onto its head. Instead of 11 Silver players and 1 Gold giving their team an advantage, you have 11 Gold players and 1 Silver player giving their team a disadvantage. It’s the enemy team that now has the lesser opposition, so naturally they’ll be more likely to win.
That’s not really how the system works though. It doesn’t look around and just put Golds with Golds, regardless of SR. It does its best to put 2436 players with other 2436 players, give or take some natural error room. The ranks themselves are honestly pretty useless beyond knowing what shiny badge you see when given the actual numbers.
The real issue is that that “acceptable error room” gets bigger and bigger the longer you wait, and we just implemented a system literally designed to make everyone wait longer, ironically for the purpose of higher quality and more accurately made matches.
That said though, I do like the idea of splitting up the ranks further in favor of hiding said SR from the player, but people focusing way too much on SR when they really only need a broad idea of where they are is a separate conversation
I agree/disagree slightly. There’s soldier that has the heal pack, sym who has the wall. Both designed to make up for a lacking 1-2% “effort” that I talk about in the post. I’ve seen plenty of tanks (not just off tanks) get more kills than both dps. I’ve seen moiras, lucios, zens, anas get about as much dmg as the lower of the 2 dps. -Again all making up for the lacking 1-2%. But I think (As of now) there’s a threshold for what’s carry-able and what’s not and it all has to do with how much effort the team can compensate for. And my theory is that the match making system has not compensated for the role lock throwing off the “compensation” numbers. - As in, it’s unrealistic to expect a support player to compensate for 32% of the effort - unless they’re smurfing hard.
But everybody gets crap team mates. It’s almost an exogenous variable that can be excluded as it’s so prevalent.
If you play enough games you’ll be at the correct rank.
My tank rank is correct as I don’t play the optimal tanks for low elo (Hog and Zarya) to a competent standard.
My support rank is correct as I don’t do enough damage or get enough kills as Moira. I’m also crap on Baptiste, who is godly when learned.
Bizarrely, I’m on 70% Lucio win rate and I don’t really know why. I’m doing “something” right with him. Just not sure what…
My dps rank is wildly overstated as I’ve not played enough games to crash down yet. The rank was correct a few seasons ago, but since the meta shift my fave dps just isn’t great…
Players have bad days, can’t play the new meta heroes, get drunk, get tired, get stoned, get a random DC, decide to learn a new hero, get tilted, decide to throw, etc etc
Game is full of chaos, but in the long run, people end up at the right sr. The chaos affects everybody equally, given enough games played.
(Although we all know unlucky players, like my friend had five leaver games out of ten placements…)
I said this like 2 years ago. Welcome to reality of having to carry especially if you off meta. You have whiny people who have been on losing streaks and you’re a good target no matter how often you win, etc.
I want to point out real quickly (not that results will change) but gold is the average rank, if you know one of the key elements of OW you will most likely place and stay at gold. so maybe higher roles can carry easier.
Gold carries in silver because they’re supposedly carrying their team (As in more than one silver) or because some from of teamwork. That’s why when people blame their teams for their loss, people say “learn to carry”. They’re suggesting they carry their team to victory. But what I’m thinking is that regardless of how much you carry, if others arn’t also carrying - then you’re destined to lose. So I think I’m about 50/50 - learn to carry/pray for a good team. But simple unluckiness (consecutive games without multiple people pitching in extra effort) will cause you to go down in SR - making you more likely to get matched with lower-skilled teammates-causing you to have to carry more. It’s almost like you’re lucky or you have to team up with people you know.
this is pretty much my attitude. I’ve seen top 500 players on stream lose games as low as silver. sometimes, playing perfectly really isn’t enough. but if you can’t be the one to drag your team over the line in a close game, you’re probably at the rank you deserve
Yes, good point. But at the same time 1 “gold” player apparently good enough to carry a silver team against a team of silver players. But 5 “gold” players can’t carry 1 silver? It just seems like the emphasis they put on “learn to carry” doesn’t hold as much weight as they try to use the phrase for when responding to people who talk of bad teams on forums.
Not really, the match making system seems to do things via averages. For example a couple weeks ago, I -at the time- 1300SR was in a game with silver and gold players because I was grouped with 2 friends at high silver + low gold. (when we started the gaming session I was low bronze and they were high bronze / low silver). Our team averaged mid-silver range and thus the enemy team averaged mid-silver range. (Don’t worry, we won so I wasn’t throwing or anything). But scenarios like that can happen.
Probably yes, but my rebuttal would then be that - say someone ques most commonly in the middle of the night. Their work schedules or sleep schedules - whatever. Fewer people on, more strain on the matchmaking system, more likely to get placed with lower-skilled teammates because the higher and lower ends of the data pool are separated more- (because of lack of players online) thus bringing their SR down more, even though they play at a higher skill level (but obviously not high enough to carry a whole team). This starts the cycle of low SR/low SR teammates - a decline in player SR and thus not being in the rank they actually play at. I feel like it’s more likely to happen in this direction because if one were to que during busier times of day, they would have more variety and their SR would in fact, be more accurate because of more data points. The high and low ends of the data pool when creating a team also wouldn’t be so different, because there’s a greater data pool (players online) to pick from.
I played soccer at a high level my whole life. Now that I’m in the real world I play coed on weekends with people who maybe played in high school. The other teams are similar to mine. Normally it’s just me out there doing what I can to “carry”. Last game a guy I played with in college played and we absolutely stomped. Having one good person makes a small difference. Two good people who know how to work together makes an exponentially higher difference. Point is one person can only carry so much.
You say you are a diamond support main yet you seem to fall into the same logical pitfall that is being brought up over and over here whenever people talk about carrying. Why does the argument always say “you can heal and dmg boost until you’re red in the face but if the dps can’t kill a single person you will lose”? Yes I get it if not a single player on your team can kill a single enemy it is difficult to win but when does that happen really? It’s like being the carry genji and saying “I can get 4 kills every fight but we can’t win a game when the rest of my team doesn’t know where the objective is and keep falling off the map over and over again while looking for it”.
A bronze dps that’s being supported by a t500 Mercy will win significantly more engagements against another another bronze dps who is supported by their bronze support (who will most likely be dead most of the time or off healing their 450 hp rein holding his shield behind a corner).
You can’t seriously think that if you were smurfing in bronze you couldn’t support a potato aim bronze McCree in a way that he would win a duel vs normal skilled genji in bronze at least 80-90% of the time?
Everyone’s role matters in a game). If kills aren’t being made by your team, your team are the ones getting killed. You can’t advance the game that way.
