Medals DO mean something

Competitive Discussion
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My all time favorite logical fallacy when someone proceeds to call you trash only to find out you are leading the team in: Kills, Damage Done and Objectives kills by a wide margin is to throw the HAIL MARY of rebuttals “Gold Medals don’t matter.”

Some of you are thinking right now “You idiot, they DON’T matter.”
YOU are the person I am talking about, please consider the following:

A common occurrence you’ll find when exchanging fire with the enemy team is to see 3 kills pop up on the kill feed (maybe even a DVA mech for good measure) by one teammate before ultimately being focused as a major threat and taken down.

Simple math would say at that point your team has 5 players standing vs their remaining 3. This itself is a HUGE advantage that person has given your team that should be capitalized on by taking objectives with the remaining five players, but often is not.

So repeat this scenario in the same match 2 or 3 times and now the player in question has racked up numerous kills and put their team in prime position to make plays numerous times, but as we all know it’s STILL a team game. And this, boys and girls, is where the clock starts to run down, the panic sets in and the triggered ones become the best Overwatch coach imaginable.

“STOP DYING!”
“DUDE SWITCH THEY KEEP KILLING YOU!”
“WE’D BE WINNING IF IT WASN’T FOR THIS KID!”
“REPORT X FOR TROLLING”
“GOLD MEDALS DON’T MEAN SH*T”

Do you see the problem with these statements?

Is it possible to win as a full 6 through cooperation, team synergy and coordination? Absolutely it is.

How many times have you seen this successfully done in solo/duo ranked play?

(Don’t worry…I’ll wait.)

So next time someone is killing HALF OF THE ENEMY TEAM BEFORE DYING, maaaaaaybe re-think the “Medals don’t mean anything” garbage you heard on your favorite OW youtube streamer’s channel and understand stat tracking exists not for the hell of it, but to gauge how you are performing as an individual in a team game.

Unless you’re Hanzo. F*** Hanzo.

Thanks for your time.

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Metals don’t mean everything though. Sure, they mean something but when someone says they mean nothing, they’re generally referring to how eliminations don’t mean last hits, but rather “I did 1 point of damage to them within 5 seconds of their death” and how damage blocked could mean “I took all the spam damage when my team wasn’t there” or even how things like Damage delt could be easily done by someone like Junkrat.

They don’t mean nothing, but they’re not something you should look at and say “Man, my team is worthless. I have gold everything” as you’re playing junkrat or someone that capitalizes on the situation.

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They do mean something, but not as much as you think they mean. And they are taken out of context far too often.

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Game needs a scoreboard, period.

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What about the widow who gets big opening picks at the start of fights? What about the rein who pushes the payload with his shield up? What about the mercy player who heals the DPS the whole game? Or, the soldier that spams enemy tanks in the backline while not actually picking up important kills but still racks up damage stats?

Heroes have different roles on teams, which is why medals don’t mean anything. If you manage to kill half the enemy team on DPS, and you still can’t win, then you need to improve your communication

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Make medals accross both teams and theyd mean a lot.

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What beshiss said. If you are getting those large picks and your team still isn’t winning than my god you’re against some clutchers, or you’re just not communicating. I’ve had games where our dps uses an ult after we’re all dead and says “3 dead get in there” then gets pissed when we all have to walk back from spawn. Communication is huge in this game, I cant stress it enough

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Gold Elims - you damaged the most enemies that died. If you are a DPS, it is your job to get gold elims. That is your function.

Gold Obj Kills - this is a better measure, but it still means you damaged the most enemies that died close to the payload.

Gold healing - if you are a healer, you did your job. Good for you. If you are soldier, hog, or sombra. Your healer didn’t do their job.

Gold Obj time - Unless you’re a flanker, you did your job.

Gold damage - you probably fed healer ults all game if you don’t have gold elims.

Bottom line, medals should correspond with the role you’re playing. They are nothing to brag about.

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This doesn’t change my reasoning. If someone is finishing off opponents and tipping the odds in your favor prior to being taken down, commend that person.

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Medals only have meaning with context.

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So if I play Soldier and spam at everything but never look at pharah, because she scares me, and also just chip damage stuf others were killing anyway.
Then pharah destroys my team and we lose, because they are bad.
My gold elims mean I am good?

:rofl:

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Yes, absolutley commend them. The problem with your argument is that medals can not indicate if you were getting final blows, solo kills, majority of target HP taken or ‘tipping the odds in your favour’. A good teammate will have good awareness and know if you were doing your job well. They won’t look at medals to determine that.

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When you’re losing badly, they really don’t mean anything though. And I say this as someone who regularly gets 3-4 gold medals.

Let’s say you’re playing on Temple of Anubis. The choke is on complete lockdown. You manage to pick off some random players out of position a few times. You have gold Elims, great. But you and your team still can’t get passed the choke.

Obviously your team comp has to change. If you scream “I’m not switching, I have gold elims!” Then you are just as at fault as the rest of your team who won’t flex.

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^ Exactly. Medals don’t mean you’re contributing to your team winning. Contributing to your team winning may win you medals.

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I don’t know why everyone says they mean nothing. Sounds like someone bad at the game spewing nonsense to make themselves feel better about not having medals.

The truth is that medals don’t ALWAYS matter. If your Winston dives in and cleave damages 3-4 people then dies and your team dies at the choke, his gold damage doesn’t mean much. However, assuming that isn’t the case and your Winston has gold damage, chances are your Junkrat is doing really poorly. Or if one DPS has 15k damage and the other has 7k and there’s no excuse (like a McCree dedicating his whole game to countering a Tracer or Pharah), chances are the 7k DPS should switch.

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I just re-read the entire thread to make sure. Nobody wrote that medals mean nothing. Everyone who opposed the OP wrote, in one way or another, that the context needs to be taken in to account.

FWIW I get plenty of medals.

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Generally speaking “Damage Dealt” is the most useless medal there is. Trash damage is a term to understand, it’s generally why characters like Junkrat lead damage by huge margins but don’t put medals up for anything else.

If you’ve got gold Elims/Objective kills, you’re definitely putting in work. Objective time is also important. Healing is… A mixed bag. There’s no such thing as “Trash healing” after all, it’s all relevant… But generally 6 people are doing damage, only two are healing.

However, there’s another side to this. If you have gold elims and damage but are doing jack to cap points or move the payload you ain’t really helping your team win.

Thing is, I can play Pharah into double hitscan and probably get gold elims and damage. Doesn’t mean I should stay on Pharah. End of the day, you gotta accept that people are gunna stick to their guns and no amount of arguing will get them off their Hanzo/Torb/Widow/Pharah.

Imo though, if you don’t have gold objective time y’all need to get back on the payload and quit trying to compare sausage sizes over who hit the tanks more.

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To be fair, that is pretty much what the OP is arguing as well.

The upset, over the dismissal of the OP for having gold medals, by calling them useless, is his overarching point. They DO mean something, in context.

So the real question is, does the OP present context worthy of his position.

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How about this scenario? Guy gets two - three kills on the enemy team, shame it’s after his team are already dead and they are the defenders and so the enemy has spawn advantage.

Guy keeps running in 1 vs 6 and dying after getting a couple of kills, no one is there to follow up because the fight was already lost.

I mean, there are a tonne of scenarios in this game where you can have gold medals in damage and kills or whatever and have accomplished absolutely nothing. You conveniently left those out of your examples.

Medals are not a good indicator of anything because you are just as likely to have medals and be carrying as you are to have medals and be undermining your team. In other words, they don’t mean anything.

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In my experience the people who say gold medals don’t matter are probably the people who never get any gold medals. aka the ones who get carried/boosted.

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