Like if you look at EU top 500 dps. Season 36(last OW season) top 500 was down to masters, than suddendly in OW2 its GM 2 something, but at the same time 30 people are missing from the leader-board. So either these players were banned afterwards or something weird is going on here already. Than you look at current season and its GM 1 or you ain´t it.
Some previous top 500 from last season are masters/GM 5 as well. Yea maybe they ain´t really playing, but the game is a mess. I dunno anymore, are there even 500 GM 1s qualified to be top 500? That would be every top 500 player is 4,5k minimum going by blizzards own statesment of every 1 rank being 100 SR. That has never happened in the history of this game. Top 500 at the highest started at around 4,2-3 and this was with a lot win trading and abuse and also waaaaaaaaay back. average has been 4,1k, but now it has jumped to 4,5k? C’mon… Seriously feels like blizzard is manipulating stuff here big time or the whole board is inflated with cheaters right now.
It’s just because there are more players now. More players means more players at every rank. At the end of OW1 top 500 went down to Masters because there were so few players in the game. This is also why top 500 went down to Diamond in the less played modes.
Since there are so many more players now, there are more than 500 players in GM1. If the game gets less popular that will change, but if it stays popular it won’t.
Seems like copium claims to for the game to be honest. Getting 4,5k does not randomly happen either just cause there are more players. Top 500 was never 4,5k in the history of OW1 and I am willing to bet a lot the game is not more popular now than it was season 2-5.
This is my take as well. Free accounts allowed for easier access and bigger stream of cheaters constantly upsetting the boards.
The distribution of players at any given rank is a percentage of the total number of players. This means that as the player population grows, the number of players at any given rank will also grow. So while you are correct that 4.5k does not simply happen, it is also true that the more players there are playing the game, the more 4.5k players there will be. And since OW is now free to play, there are a ton more players in game currently.
The easiest way to confirm that it isn’t simply some crazy influx of cheaters is to watch top 500 matches and to pay attention to what the top 500 players are saying. If there were more cheaters, the matches would look very different and the things top 500 players were saying would be very different.
It’s literally just more players equals a greater number of players at any given rank, which means top 500 will skew toward higher ranks. And, again, we’ve seen what the inverse of this looks like- how would you explain the fact that top 500 decreased in rank toward the later years of OW’s life cycle? Did players just get worse? Were there no cheaters?
And why is top 500 lower on some platforms and modes than others? Are there no good players playing open queue, etc?
It’s literally just that the player population is way bigger now.
I must admit that I do not understand how you think this counters the fact that there are more players now. Could you possibly expand upon your point and talk through why you think this means there cannot be more players now?
The reason there are more players in the lower ranks is literally the huge influx of new players, by the way. But this also means that existing players move up the ranks. More new players who do not understand the game, means better players win more matches, which increases the number of players at the top ranks as well.
And this has become very apparent in top lobbies. This is one of the major complaints that top 500 players currently have- lower skilled players are attaining GM ranks, and they have yet to adjust to the faster, less forgiving, pace of the game in those lobbies, which makes GM lobbies feel a bit weird at the moment.
All of this is the expected result of a huge influx of new players.
Analyze what though? It’s literally the expected outcome. If someone says that the reason people fall to earth after they jump is gravity, you don’t then say, “yeah, but let’s do some analysis.”
As many scientific research has been done on gravity, and you choose that as a metaphor? People do analysis on many things. Why? To further our understanding and to push the envelope to see what we can control.
You want to control how many people are playing Overwatch? Ordinarily, someone needs extraordinary evidence if someone wants to question something like the existence of gravity.
I dont know what your going on about… but please realize I was using what the developers said to further explain the weirdness the OP had.
Why do we have weirdness at the .1% of the ladder if MOST of the InFlUx is at the bottom. Thats all I’m really saying. Perhaps it deserves some analysis then just put it aside as “influx” without us actually know…
That’s not actually the way it works though. The influx of new lower ranked players pushes the previously lower ranked players up and this filters all the way through to the top of the rankings. And we have literally observed this happening. That’s why so many long time OW players are currently reaching peaks they’ve never held before- precisely because the newer players are worse at the game.
If you want a simple way to think about it: the ladder rankings are relative skill ratings. This means that if worse players enter the player pool better players will rank up. And that is why there are more higher ranked players now.
It’s all due to the fact that the playerbase is currently larger and that the influx of players are lower skilled (as you point out). The only way for that to shake out is that there are more players at all ranks.
That’s why it’s like gravity. People falling back to earth after they jump is not some weird occurrence that needs to be investigated. We already know that happens- due to gravity.