I’ve spent over 1,500 hours on my main account, playing every role across both Competitive and Open Queue modes. The first 800 hours were spent in Quick Play before I finally ventured into Competitive. Over time, I’ve improved dramatically—easily becoming 100x the player I was during those early 800 hours. Yet, despite 700 hours in Competitive, I’ve barely managed to claw my way out of Bronze and have been stuck in Silver ever since.
Frustrated and looking for answers, I sought advice from other players. Many pointed to my “hidden MMR” as the culprit, claiming it was holding me back. According to them, the only way to truly climb was to start fresh with a new account.
So, I decided to give it a shot. On my new account, I placed Gold 1. Over the next week, I poured hours into the game, quickly climbing through Platinum and even reaching low Diamond. This experience left me completely disgusted. It became painfully obvious to me that the system is designed to keep players trapped—to keep them grinding endlessly. Starting a new account effectively erases everything you’ve earned from hundreds of hours of play, forcing you to either return to your “Elo hell” account or invest even more time (and potentially money) into your new “Elo heaven” account to regain the cosmetics and assets you once had.
Unfortunately, this disgust has only deepened my frustration with the game rather than giving me any sense of accomplishment. I think it’s time for me to move on. I love the game, and I’ll always respect Blizzard for creating some of the most polished games out there. I played World of Warcraft from 2005 to 2011, and even then, I encountered similar frustrations. The endless balancing in PvP, Arenas, and Battlegrounds felt more like a tedious grind than a fair competition. It’s not a question of OW skill—it’s the excessive hours required just to make minor progress, only to be pulled back due to systems like “hidden” MMR or mechanics designed to keep players playing rather than advancing. The fact that I could climb so easily on a new account only highlights how flawed this system truly is and how it undermines genuine progression.
I’m sharing this not to vent but to call attention to the problems Blizzard has introduced into what was once a beloved game. These systems don’t challenge players; they frustrate and discourage them. I hope this feedback helps the developers reflect on the state of the game and its impact on the community.
I’m not watching 1.5 hrs of trying to explain why I can go plat/diamond on a new account but my old account is hard stuck bronze/silver. It’s time to move on. Have fun.
You just need to watch the 10 minutes after about 11:28.
But if you don’t have the attention span to watch segments of videos as you go about your day. It probably explains why you’ve latched on to misinformation.
Anyways. The information is all there in the video. The section “is forced 50/50 real?” they spend the beginning part explaining how MMR is no longer hidden (outside of a few specific scenarios)
What’s with the childish response? You’ve provided zero value to the discussion. So being able to rank out with a new account, but not an old account, is a skill issue? I think not. It’s an issue with how this system works, however that is, and it’s something that more players than not experience.
I love the part in the video he says “we would be also matching you with 4 other players that we would be rigging their matches too…” Well duh, how stupid do you think we are?
It’s pretty obvious that you are put in pools of players that need to lose and ones that need to win. Not hard to match those 2 pools on the same teams.
Like look at the damn Icons after you play a game, it literally tells you if you were supposed to win or lose. The game already knows what the outcome will be.
Yes there are times when you can “surprise” the MM and win a game you were supposed to lose due to human interactions like a thrower or D/C, but overall the game is dictating if you win or lose the game to make your climb take as long as possible. The longer you are in game the more chances you will open the shop and buy something. For GODS SAKES WHY IS THERE A “NEW” ICON NEXT TO THE SHOP EVEN AFTER I’VE LOOKED AT EVERYTHING ??? I’ll tell you why, because it’s a PSYCHOLOGICAL plant to drive people to LOOK in the shop. This crap have been engineered to make money and they have been doing it for decades. Yet people still think it’s not there.
I swear, they have literally won, because they have done their jobs and made humanity dumb to keep them in line and under control.
People making new accounts have proven this over and over.
If it’s not designed this way, it sure does a great job of doing exactly that as is evident by the hundreds, if not thousands, of posts and videos about it. It’s broken. You’ll not convince me otherwise no matter what rhetoric you lace it with.
At the end of the day this is most likely why the system operates as such. I understand, free to play needs people to pay, so if players think the management is going to be happy without a system that keeps people putting in time/money you are naive. The more time you spend the more likely you are to click and buy something, especially as you get more invested in the game. Business 101 I suppose, but whatever the case is, it’s not creating an enjoyable environment. I’d rather PAY to have a better system than a F2P flawed system that is the current state of OW2.
Play 700 hours of comp and you will be silver again…
Simple maths :
Your team → you (1500 SR)/player 2 (1490 SR)/p3 (1510 SR)/p4 (1505 SR)/p5 (1495 SR) = 1500 SR average
Enemy team → p1 (1500 SR)/player 2 (1490 SR)/p3 (1510 SR)/p4 (1505 SR)/p5 (1490 SR) = 1499 SR average
You win, it’s expected, you lose, it’s not, even a child understands that…
It’s called being better, like you’re expected to lose and you win, if you don’t win then you belong in this rank…
Damn, feels weird having this in ALL your games, isn’t it?
It’s weird because good players climb really fast (especially on new accounts), so if it’s long it’s because you are barely better than the enemy team, aka your rank.
Funny since you and your friend told us something else, “make a new account to climb”, so if you make a new account (maybe over and over) you will never buy skins since you know you will need to buy a new one in order to “climb”.
Would like to know how many hours you have played on your new account because I have two accounts and they basically have identical ratings on each role on each account even though for one of the accounts I try not to play my mains.
Overwatch takes a lot of games to get your ranking dialed in.
It’s good to finally see a lot of people realising this. I never understood how I could climb into top 100 pretty easily, but then also had a 50% win rate on a diamond account. I ended up making my video about the ranked system being rigged and it blew up and THOUSANDS of people were telling me about how they had identical situations. I have personally seen well over 100 players get on a fresh account, hit a new peak (usually a huge spike) and maintain it with 0 issues.
Ranked has been knee capped for a long time, but it makes me super happy that people are now realising how terrible the experience truly is. I wouldn’t say it’s “rigged” in the sense that there is some algorithm keeping you back on purpose. More so that there is 0 carry potential in the game, and the game very clearly stacks you with terrible, or great players on purpose, but still people withing that rank.
Getting rank 1 on EU with Genji (Who’s terrible) is easier than climbing my d5 account into d4, and it makes literally 0 sense.
Hypothetically speaking, no it wouldn’t be hard. BUT, the OW match maker doesn’t have access to your win/loss record, or your stats. So it quite literally can’t do that.
Someone has already explained it. But it doesn’t mean you were “supposed” to lose, it just means your teams MMR was fractionally lower. Rarely is it beyond a 55/45 split.
A summary of what they said in that video… 95% of matches are within 55% to 45% win probabilities, with a hard bound of 60% to 40%. More unfair matches are a lot more common at top ranks to reduce queue times, but a mid-gold player almost never sees 60% to 40% matches
In short.
Could the match maker be improved - yes. always. no one has a perfect match maker.
Is it the reason for your rank / failure to climb - no. and it never has been.
