Elo Prison, Is It Real?

To be honest, most people in bronze aren’t there because they are bad, it’s because their PC is bad.

I had a friend stuck in bronze and I found out they played with 10 FPS.

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Is it that you dont have one or that you cant use one at all. Because you can get them dirt cheap.

This is exactly me T^T I need help…

Well thats the prison - point which you cant pass due to lack of skill.

Elo hell (which i presume is what OP means by elo prison) is a point where you cant get out regardless of skill. If you’re at a particular elo because that’s what your skill is then it’s not elo hell. That’s just how good you currently are.

I hear from people that I should be around diamond right now but due to my lack for the necessary tools to pass on, Im stuck in the place where I can not pass. I want to, but I don’t have the money to…

If your equipment is holding you back that’s still not elo hell. That’s just you artificially limitiing your skill cap. You can do better but you don’t have to tools to do so. What people commonly refer to as elo hell is when they believe they are not the problem, and their inability to climb is due to the game’s matchmaking and bad teammates.

But the thing is I have all those 4 problems and I can not pass to to that issue, bad teammates all around also.

Bad teammates exist on both teams. Statistically you will have bad teammates and you’ll also have bad enemies. Since there are 6 enemies and 5 teammates, you’re statistically more likely to win if you, as the sixth player on your team, are better than your SR.

But you are never stuck in an elo prison. If your equipment is the problem then you have the option to buy new equipment. If you cannot afford better equipment then you must accept that you’ve reached your peak capability.

I’d also like to point out that many people have reached GM with low specs. Some at 30fps, some on very high latency (150-200+ms). There are many ways to outplay your enemies even without better equipment.

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There is no such thing as “Elo Prison” or by what the majority of the community like to call it “Elo Hell”. It is possible to reach your peak in terms of the skill as a player. Yes there are games that will feel absolutely unwinnable due to teammates and that is a factor in every team-based video game.

Now don’t take this the wrong way, but some players do “shoot themselves in the foot” by not playing on an optimal connection or on an optimal computer. The important factor to remember is that the one controllable factor in every game is you. If you are allowing technical issues to cause penalties in Competitive Play, it does make it more difficult to climb the ranks.

Once again that is a controllable factor you will need to try and figure out. There can be a lot of possible causes to this including issues that may be caused by your connection between you and the game server, but it can be investigated.

Teammates are for the most part a non-controllable factor. Now if you want more team-oriented experiences in Competitive, use the Looking for Group tool. But really, don’t let bad teammates distract you from the long-term goal of building your own skill as a player.

Getting an ethernet is one of the cheapest and easiest upgrades you can do to improve your connection. Playing by ethernet allows you to maintain a connection without the constant interference of other radio signals, microwaves (the radiation, not the oven), and electrical charges. WiFi is great where losing packets in mid-transmission are not as critical (web surfing, video streaming, email, etc.) but when it comes to making sure every packet of data is delivered successfully, you do wonders to directly connect to your router or modem by the use of an ethernet cable.

If your living situation makes it too impractical to directly connect via ethernet, a somewhat effective alternative might be powerlink adapters. Which signals run through the hot electrical wiring of your home, however, these can be subjected to electrical interference especially when high voltage appliances are running.


In the end, everyone is subjected to a variety of factors that determine their skill in the game and part of that DOES include your equipment and how you play Overwatch. There is not much in this thread for me to give any specific recommendations, but I will provide key links to existing resources that will help:

First, if you are having any significant disconnection issues, check out Blizzard’s Overwatch Disconnection Problems troubleshooting guide (click here). The steps there are common tasks that you can do to prevent any disconnections that may be caused on your end. Granted, sometimes disconnections can be caused due to factors beyond your own equipment, and if that is happening, you will either need to post in the technical support forum where players like myself and Blizzard Support Agents can offer detailed advice to your specific connection issues.

Likewise, if you are having game crashes, there is troubleshooting for that. It helps if there is very specific detail to the symptoms of your crash (blue screen of death, Overwatch goes black then returns to desktop when launched, etc) or any error messages (“Rendering Device Has Been Lost”, “No compatible graphics.”). Otherwise, anyone with crashes should at least start with the Overwatch Lockups and Crash Errors troubleshooting guide (click here).

Now, even if you do not have any apparent issues upfront, I will observe a high majority of players, do not configure their systems in a way that minimizes the input and output lag when Overwatch is running. I have a written a very detailed guide that goes through very detailed steps to optimize your system to perform at its fastest possible performance. I encourage everyone looking to get the most out of their system to check out this guide:

I think that covers everything I can offer. If you need more detailed help please be sure to give as accurate details to your specific technical issues you are experiencing. Note that I am not always around all of the time, so it helps to start a new topic on the technical support forum or start a web ticket for quicker assistance. I hope you found this information helpful. (^^)v

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Because it’s the average.

It’s not a barrier holding you against your will. You are the barrier. Yourself. People max out at varying levels and it comes down to either needing improvement in certain areas of play, or it’s their peak.

A persons potential varies in all things, and more often than not they’re the deciding factor.

The majority of players are no doubt gold-platinum. That’s the median. And on either side of that median there are those who are extremely bad, and extremely good. The rates of these occurrences become more and more infrequent the further they go in each direction.

The reality is… not everyone is good at this game. And not everyone will achieve high levels. People should know that Competitive is about ranking you with players of similar skill levels to ensure the best possible match. It’s not something you “level up” to win in the sense of going from Bronze to Top 500. It’s a measurement of your skill level at that moment.

Most are gold and then plat follows closely after.

Love knowing I’m still only average with all my effort. :confused:

Elo used to exist but not so much anymore.

Below diamond wins don’t matter as much, its based on your own performance. So if you play well but lose you won’t lose that much.

About diamond only wins matter.

It used to be the other way around. Im not really sure what caused it to swap though?

Also you have improved at the game but so has eveyone else in your rank has. A couple years ago people in diamond were playing the same skill level as people in gold today.

Elo hell is half true. I think competitive works fine in very high ranks and gets worse as lower you go and this game is to random to seriousely measure skill. And there are some heroes who have a much easier time to rank up than other which should not be the case.

Yeah, I know. Still only average.

Where are you getting this info Foxter? I’ve been stuck in plat for awhile and get the same Sr when I carry or when I’m carried. Forums are a fun place to have an opinion and state it as fact…

Gold has the most people. I don’t think it’s just a skill level thing either as to why, but people with little to no MMR tend to start out in gold as well (so basically new players).

I don’t think the problem is really elo hell but anchor stats. People have made new accs and tend to place or at least climb higher than their main accs and stay there pretty easily. This isn’t like normally a drastic different like a bronze player deserves GM, but like a plat player might deserve diamond. A rank above. Anchor stats do hold people back and I don’t really think that’s fair.

Gold is the biggest rank with 32% of players in it. I think the reason for that is the gold is excacly at the middle.
Players know how to play the game but don’t have enough game there, these rank has all kind of players including really good players and really bad ones making it a jail to get out of, not too easy enough to carry but not to hard to get down. because of its size and position compared to the other ranks it’s easy to get into this rank.

Plat is highest amount of players.
And you gotta remember, a lot of people are just casual. They don’t care about improving, they just want a fun game with friends to end their day.

If you remove casuals from the equation, plats basically the same as other ranks.

Aside from that, I do personally think Plat is the hardest rank to get out of. I didn’t spend much time there. When I was ranking up I got lucky. But in s10 I started playing DPS again and decided to play Widowmaker. S10 I ended 2900sr 50hrs played, and in season 11 I went 70% winrate from 3000sr to 3990 sr on Widow.

I still, to this day, as a high master dps player, and a 4200 Support player, would have A LOT of difficulty getting out of plat

Climbed from Gold to Diamond and I’m close to get into Masters already.

I can highlight 4 major components that you need in order to climb in ranks:

  1. Good hardware. (So you don’t crash every single game or your Internet decides that it’s enough for today)
  2. A will to climb and improve upon yourself. (Basically improving your skill)
  3. Some luck. (Hard throwing teammates can slow down your climbing but they are not really that much of the problem).
  4. A lot of time.

Time is the most important component for climbing. You start to improve only on the border of ranks in this game. When you reach that border, you get opponents that are better than you. Then you are probably losing because of that, so you get that experience and learning on your mistakes.

After a couple of losses if you followed these 4 rules/components of climbing, then you will get into new rank and start your life here. If you invest your time in living in this rank, you should start feeling comfortable in it and playing in it should not be a hard job for you. That’s when you know, that you’ve improved your skill. Then you’ll reach the new rank border and it’s just a repeat of the rules.