Since the beginning of Overwatch Platinum has been getting bashed on for having trash players, but is this still accurate, or has the rank grown in average skill over time? First, every sport/game evolves over time. As an extreme example, the professional football players of the 1970s would hardly make a D1 college team today.
Iostux actually said that many platinum players today have better mechanical skill than him, but he is grandmaster because of his game sense.
Also, with the implementation of role queue and the separate SR per role, you now have players who are high rank in one role but playing in a lower rank in another. For example a high diamond or even low master support might be playing as a plat dps. Even though their mechanical skill might be platinum, their game sense when it comes to ult tracking, cool down tracking, identifying win conditions, etc. is masters. Players like this bring up the skill and quality of the rank.
Could the platinum players of 2017 maintain a platinum rank today?
Edit: I also wanted to add that people like to say that according to statistics platinum players are slightly above average because it has the second largest concentration of players (behind gold). But this is misleading, because if you look at it another way, only 14% players are diamond and above, meaning a high plat player is in about the 85th percentile of all players. That’s way above average.
Honestly i think yes. I’ve passed many time without playing ranked if not making my placement and stop.
In that time, (2019) when i saw a streaming in plat i thought i was seeing at least a diamond match. Now people in plat are surely more active, fast and more organized as team.
Ofc there are exceptions, but this happens in every rank
(Info: i’m a diamond player)
Plat is the wasteland of the competitive ladder. Players are either really bad or really good. It’s hard to really say if someone can even “stay” in plat. With my experience I just get stuck in plat dropping and gaining hundreds of SR at a time but never actually leaving the rank. After finally breaking through the impenetrable wall that is 2900 I was pretty consistently playing low masters high diamond.
Players are much better now than they used to be, even in mid ranks you notice the skill increase over time.
The issue with platinum is the skill fluctuation is so massive, you can’t really get a good idea of a players skill.
I believe they absolutely could, it would be a stomp.
Platinum players of 2017 are already at better ranks today. If you are talking about “hard stuck” players, yeah they are probably even worse.
With RQ versatility is not a required skill anymore so its actually easier to climb ranks now, therefore plat players from back in the day are better now. Now if we talk about maintaining the rank across all 3 roles, thats a different story.
Always remember: Diamond players are literally called “trash” by Masters and GM’s. To a Bronze, Plats are like demi-gods. Its all relative. Top 500’s think Masters are garbage.
But yes, skill overall has improved greatly. “Masters” in the first few seasons would likely be high Plat now or so.