Dev blog low key admits elo hell exists

Facts!!

:100:

Yes it is.

This is Dunning Kruger settling in. You’re really not that much better (if at all) than the people you’re being teamed up with or matched against.

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No it doesn’t.

You want it to, because you don’t want to be wrong. But it doesn’t.

If anything it tells you that you are the problem.

Perhaps you can provide a few examples? I’ve seen people say this, but I’ve never seen any examples provided.

Unfortunately I don’t watch these streams. If I find any of the discussions I’ll let you know.

Honestly, I understand that people can’t find any examples of this. So there’s no worry there. It’s just weird to say a thing is true when you have no knowledge of it being true, and I wish people would do less of that.

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I haven’t bothered to look, it’s not that they aren’t there. I play with a friend from time to time who was a mid masters widow, he now plays in Plat on his main and hasn’t been able to climb back.

I remember watching Unsaltedsalt and Jay3 Dropping as low as Diamond and stayed there for months on their main roles. There are examples of people experiencing Elo hell. If you haven’t seen them then… Ok?

Of course they cant because its nonsense, i myself used to smurf and know many others who did. If you have diamond skill, you might get stuck in gold for a while. But eventualy you climb. Same in plat, which is even closer to your true elo.

But GM stuck in gold? Lol no, skill difference is so high that GM will greatly affect every match. Even if you lose some , it doesnt matter as you win most games.

There might be some initial shock and adaptation as people play differently lower, but thats just temporary untill you adapt.

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This isn’t true though. There are reasons that top 500 players sometimes off role in lower ranks for a period of time. But top 500 players do not get stuck in diamond for months on their main roles. That is a nonsense thing to say and the only reason you believe it when someone says it (or, more commonly, believe it when someone says something sort of related to it) is because you are invested in the notion of Elo hell.

But if you take these sorts of extraordinary claims more skeptically and actually look into them without having already made up your mind, you will be less likely to believe and to say things that are simply untrue.

And the broader point is that, because people keep repeating this nonsense, and because people continue to believe this nonsense (even when there is no support for these extraordinary claims offered), the entire community suffers.

These sorts of conspiracy theories make people less likely to try in their games, less likely to improve their understanding of and skill at the game, more likely to leave their games (even after a single lost team fight), more likely to tilt and act like a fool in their games, etc.

That’s why I’m suggesting that people should stop saying things that they actually do not know are true as though they were facts. We would all benefit if people simply took a moment to ask themselves, “do I actually know if this thing I am about to assert factually, is true?”

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Same…

What he (and a lot of people) mean is that Samito (and like Kabaji or something) had a couple of games back in the day (like 2 years ago or so) where they both lost multiple games in a row in Gold/plat rank.

Samito never got stuck in Gold/Plat. He just rage quit because he was tired of playing with gold players expecting them to play well when they’re obviously not qualified to be in his game.

That’s the only instance I know of.

Here’s an example of the EXACT opposite.

So you really think that talking about people getting stuck in certain ranks will affect the game in such a way that people will start throwing all of sudden and stop trying anymore? That definitely sounds like a speculation to me.

My thinking would be players would be more likely to stop tryharding, throw and troll if the game is less fun.

It was some time ago and perhaps I am misremembering and they weren’t on their mains, but I watched those videos and they were milked as content.

I see it currently all the time. I’ll give you the general case:

I am in a match. We lose the first team fight (for any number of reasons including that we didn’t all pick characters at the beginning of the match so we start the first team fight 4 v 5). My thinking at this point is something like the following, “What went wrong there and how can I fix it?” In match chat I see something like the following, “matchmaker sucks. gg” and then someone leaves or goes afk or starts throwing.

And I’m left thinking, “What are they talking about? These people aren’t even that good. We can totally win this, all we need to do is x.”

But because people go into a match expecting to lose, believing that the matchmaker has it out for them, thinking that the matchmaker creates matches they cannot win, etc, they do not consider how they can win the match, instead giving up almost instantly.

And this severely decreases the average match quality in the game. So I wish people would stop lying to themselves and each other about “losers queue” or “Elo hell” or “forced loss streaks” or however else they want to frame it to themselves and simply pause, take a breath, and ask themselves, “what needs to happen in order for us to win this match?”

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Ah I see now what you are talking about.

You are however misguided.

You are confusing a naturally occurring phenomenon in the ranking system with conspiracy driven structures within the game.

We should be able to agree that the matchmaker is currently kind of broken. The Devs have admitted this to some extent and are making changes.

I agree that the matchmaker performing poorly at the moment could aid casual throwers in coming up with an excuse to throw. The truth is that throwers will throw and use any excuse to do so. Whether they blame the matchmaker, their team mates, their upbringing etc doesn’t matter.

The reason people like you and myself try to improve and not throw isn’t because of a lack of excuses to do so. It’s because we have a different mindset.

Elo hell has nothing to do with the matchmaker, “forced losses” or “losers queue”. It has to do with naturally occurring spikes in difficulty at different levels of play.

Preach!

There are things outside the control of the “match maker” if they let it. If they dont do the analytics and if they dont look for things (certainly if a point is raised, lets not rank shame or belittle the person but argue the merits of idea). Sure it may only affect a low population, but it may indicate a bigger problem.

Cant wait for Season 3, I cannot stress enough how “being fair” actually changes the dynamics of the game. Sure it may not seem like Role avg vs team avg will affect the majority of play, but even the ocean has micro currents and sub flows.

taking 5 seconds to ask “what is the win condition and how do i help make it happen” is the single thing that has elevated even my QP/arcade games more than anything else.

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The problem with this line of thinking is that the spikes in difficulty differ from player to player. There is a reason that some people experience Elo hell in Bronze and others do not, and that some people experience Elo hell in Silver and that others do not, and that some people experience Elo hell in Gold and that others do not, etc. If Elo hell were naturally occuring spikes in difficulty as you suggest, then each player would experience the phenomenon at whatever level.

Since this is not the case, however, and since whatever level people struggle to get past depends upon their current skill at the game, the term Elo hell is a misnomer (as it does not exist at any given Elo for players of various skills), and what people are actually describing is the limits of their own skill.

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I actually think it is far more interesting to look at what the devs are actually saying than to use these sorts of shorthands. What the devs have said is that there is confusion surrounding how the matchmaker works and that they are investigating the claims of long losing streaks.

Those are specific statements that have specific meanings and it hinders understanding to replace those statements with phrases such as “the matchmaker is kind of broken.” The thing I will agree with is that the matchmaker can be improved. The single biggest opportunity for improvement is one that they are already taking steps to implement: matching based on individual role MMR rather than team average MMR.

What I am pointing out, however, is that the various conspiracy theories exacerbate things. There are threshold responses at work here, in that there are not two types of people- throwers and non-throwers. The more conspiracy theories that are prevalent in the community that suggest that one’s performance in game has little or no correlation with the outcome of matches, that high skilled players are purposely saddled with low skilled players, etc, the more likely it is that any given player will believe these conspiracy theories and act accordingly.

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If every Overwatch player would actually take those 5 seconds to assess the situation, this game would actually be a lot more fun.

i’m not always right in my assessment, and when i am, i can’t always make it work but it has really improved both my mental and my ability to have a measurable impact in any given game. back when i used to play mixed-rank PUGs with a group of 20 friends or so, it was always a huge boost to have the masters/GM players acknowledge a strat of mine as a winner and coordinate to pull it off.

It’s like saying… if everyone playing sonic wouldn’t get hit if they ran out of rings.

Either you do it once and people see the game over screen too many times they learn to get better.

OR if they keep doing and not learning does a big portion of population (nearly half) has a learning disability??

Perhaps there needs to be MORE information given to the users so they can properly learn.

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No that is not how it works. Just because you end up getting “stuck” at your rank cap, that doesn’t mean it’s elo hell. As I have said numerous times. Elo hell describes when you are stuck at a rank for any given period of time even though your skill level is higher than that of the rank.

You tell me then why we had a T500 player in a Plat/Diamond game earlier this week as well as a Masters player in one of our games last night?

The matchmaker is not working as intended.

“Improving” the matchmaker and fixing the matchmaker in this case are synonymous.

As I said before. Throwers will throw regardless of reasoning. Non throwers won’t suddenly be “converted” by some tinfoil hat “forced losses” theorizer.