You’re obviously not the kind of DPS I’m referring to. I’m talking about the wildly negative KDR-having, runs away from their healers, is always attempting 1v5 solos, eats more damage than anyone can heal kind of DPS players. I’m obsessively on my team with heals/saves, and with competent players, I’m adored. But these guys? I can’t fix them.
I wouldn’t heal you in that situation just for the laughs.
Would you save me in this game?
27 elim kill streak: XBBDCX
Ana used nano cause genji bladed on me.
As for op. I’ll also add that I already recommended that elims / assist need to be stricter. The dps that has low kdr might be the carry and the high elim guy might just be assisting.
I think they are too loose with giving out elims for 1 point of dmg.
Also I recommend a scoreboard addition of “how much healed”.
It’s almost like looking at the stats board of a single match is a waste of time.
Interesting.
Cautiously, I’d say I see the same thing (and I play a lot of games). And I’m hovering between bronze and silver, where I belong (no complaints there). I assume the MMR system works …
But this is about quality of gameplay, and even I can spot the DPS problem.
TL:DR - low metal is frustrating and mostly a complete waste of time. You’ve gotta stick out hours and hours of crap for a few fun games.
But, you don’t need stats - just logic.
The queue times for DPS at lower metal ranks is often 10x more than tank or support. I more often than not see 1/10/2 minutes displayed. Outside of peak times its even worse.
And, the big problem there, is that you can ‘see’ what’s wrong, but you can’t do much of anything about it (frustration), because…
The bulk of the new/casual players want to play pew-pew it seems… I don’t blame them. Experience with other games probably means it’s the most obvious role to play - and let’s face it, it’s fun. There’s lots of cool heroes (and more of them) and conceptually their role is easier to understand for a newer player… I have no problem with that.
But… that means in order for DPS players to get anything close to a reasonable queue time, the supports/tanks have to be matched with much more ‘randomness’. You have to ‘make up the numbers’. That means a huge pool of DPS players who all want a game - with high variance of ability… and they need YOU to join them in order to get a game.
Ok, this evens out over a large number of games; it’s not intrinsically unfair… but, this wild variance means around 70/80% (possibly more, I think we’d all agree its pretty high; the actual number doesn’t matter) of games are completely out of your control as a support player (win or loss - they’re one sided and cancel each other out over the long run)
And this leads to frustration because…
Of the remaining 20/30%… we can assume its a ‘fair’ matchup, right? So, in theory you will only win 50% of those unless you are the only player who is ‘better’… i.e. you are the only variable across two teams (and the MMR system doesn’t ‘know’ it yet).
But of course, of that 20/30%, we’re at least going to get some proportion where both teams have a ‘slightly better’ player - cancelling out those results as well.
Where are we now? Who knows? 10/15% of games that you can actually be the ‘variable’?
Also, by now, you have played a lot of games, which also means the Matchmaker system has high confidence in your MMR. This means it won’t move much up or down based on wins/losses. It becomes a slow process, naturally.
Now, if you assume you’ve worked hard and got better…so let’s say you are really a ‘silver 5’ rather than a Bronze 2… how much difference is there between those two ranks MMR wise? Not much, right… Its not like you are going to suddenly improve from B3 to P1 overnight … you will only have got slightly better.
For arguments sake, you are now 20% better than those around you. There’s five on a team, so you’re impact is only on 1/5th of the composition (if we make the wild assumption there’s any sort of balance in 5v5 ;), meaning you will only have a very small impact on those games. And those games where you’re impact matter with only be a percentage of the 10/15%…
A small impact, on a very small number of matches.
It’s tiny, tiny percentages, and, in a nutshell… you have to play a ridiculous number of games (or hit a lucky streak) to climb – and most of the those matches are pointless.
This assumes you never make a mistake (for your level), never have a bad day, never ever play below your ‘real’ skill level… otherwise, a couple of bad games could wipe out any small difference in your skill level for an extended period.
And good luck never getting tilted 
And of course, while supports can make a big difference, your carry potential is limited more than others because…
Bronze lobbies have so many newer players, that a whole chunks of the game, such as cohesion, map awareness, game sense etc. effectively don’t exist - its a mechanically-oriented environment. So, as a support player, some of your ‘arsenal’ is effectively nerfed.
These games often boil down to which team has a ‘sharpshooter’. This probably also heightens the perceived DPS diff as that’s where you’re mostly likely to see mechanical skills dominate.
Now, you always get ‘that guy’ who says its easy to climb - and it is if you are much better than those around you (or you’ve not played enough games for statistical relevance)… but that’s not the same as being a bit better (the natural path for most people trying to improve).
I don’t think any of this is fixable - a game is driven by the player base.
I would speculate that the influx of F2P players are primarily looking at the game as an FPS shooter, rather than a more MOBA-like team game - they certainly seem to be playing it that way, unless my eyes deceive me
If that’s true, then the situation will persist unless the game design changes radically to accommodate it.
A scientific paper that says if one player on your team goes 2-10 (in a 5v5 team game) you are more likely to lose, and somehow limited this to only DPS 
Its exactly the same outcome if the tank suicides or the support doesnt heal lol, I don’t think it will be peer reviewed any time soon
1 - the games become more ‘consistent’ the higher you go but fun is subjective and not necessarily a guaranteed… The current meta lol
2 - You said you are a DPS player in bronze/silver… What do you play? DPS as a role sucks right now for certain things but i’d happily watch a VOD id you have one and try and give some tips
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It does correlate with my experience. I track all my matches in the support role on two accounts, couldn’t bother with more since gathering all this data unpaid isn’t worth my time or anyone else’s. What I can add is that in my anecdotal experience on two different accounts, a bit over a third of all matches are stomp losses or wins (on one account I have more of them in my favor and on the other against me). About 1 in 3 have someone who has poor movement and positioning but incredibly accurate aim, often coupled with x ray vision that makes solid objects transparent for them (and no, it’s not recon arrow or widow ult or simple pings, since they can see sombra when invisible and nail her head or you’ll hide next to their spawn behind cover and they’ll come right for ya and nail your head). In terms of close matches where things felt balanced regardless of getting the win or not, that’s about 1 in 8 games. Pretty appalling for a game that punishes you based on your random teammates and enemies.
As a side note, lately I keep getting matched with solos but against stacks of 3,4, and 5. Either population is really low or the paid boosting is flourishing, but what I can tell you is that 9/10 times my team of solo queuers loses. Sometimes my team has a duo and the enemy team is a 4-stack or a 5-stack, which also ends up as a loss. The system doesn’t take these things into account, so the experience is horrible since people coordinating on discord while stacking are going to have a huge advantage over a team that’s not even using pings, let alone text or voice chat.
The problem with 5v5 is if the tank or at least one support dies then that fight is essentially over, generally speaking. In 6v6 you had a back up tank to help peel supports, or pick up slack when someone got picked off. Now, matches are coin flips. Either you steamroll or get stomped. It’s very rare to get a competitive match that’s a constant back and forth.
I think Blizzard needs to implement a hero banning system before the match starts. For example, each person gets to pick 1 hero to ban. Each team can only ban 1 supp, 1 tank, and 3 dps. The game is literally team deathmatch at the moment; whoever gets the first kill wins the fight, which is why dive is so good especially in lower brackets.
Support is so frustrating to play now. Sombra’s rework has her time to kill at .5 seconds. If your other support player doesn’t have inhumane reaction time then you’re dead…super fun. Dps don’t peel in the metal ranks and the tank is too busy trying to alpha the enemy backline rather than helping the team. It’s just bad.
I think they need to slow the game down to allow for longer team fights where strategy comes back into play. Increase CD durations on EVERY heroes abilities, ult generation, and nerf some of the damage output/healing as well. I think Winston’s shield should be only on his self, like ball. That way, there is some counterplay to his dive rather than just changing to a different hero just to counter.
All in all, the game is complete trash right now, no cap. They need to bring back the slider that shows your progress in ranked, fix the ranking system to not be dogwater, slow the game down/tune champions so at least there’s some counterplay/strategy involved other than just picking a different hero, or implement a banning system. That’s my rant for now!
Sincerely,
A frustrated support main.
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The dps metric is more apparent, that’s it - been the reason for all the “dps bad ruin ma gaem” mindset since ow1. Even then, its kinda bad at doing its job, cause to get an elim you need as much as to tickle your enemy, and assists are essentially the cc abilities of yours that led to an elim. Even dmg done isn’t very illustrative, cause different heroes pump out different dmg, different comps take different amounts of dmg, and so on.
I disagree tbh, it’s the easiest thing to blame in an FPS so everyone blames them, 99% of people do not say this because of statistics lol - you can get more kills and the enemy still wins, because kills aren’t everything
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That is some OP (and no, I didn’t read all of it) - seems a classic case of cause not being the same as correlation. Also a staggeringly small and bias sample spread at an uncommon rank.
Still, I like the effort and it’s way better than the usual fallacious broken matchmaker rants and other toxic nonsense.
The matchmaker is actually great at determining who carries and who is dead weight. What it fails miserably at is how it uses this information.
Instead of putting similar skills together it mixes the good players with the dead weight. The theory being that good players will know they deserve to rank up and thus keep grinding. The dead weight will also keep playing due to not being discouraged by immediately dropping to bronze where they belong.
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this made me laugh, so thanks.
Thanks, appreciated; however I’m not a DPS player - I mainly play support (and less frequently) tank.
I’m also pretty aware of what I do wrong, where I make mistakes, areas I could improve and so on. I enjoy studying the game, and my own replays. Mechanical is probably my weakest ‘skill’, and I tend to favour heroes that place less emphasis on this. Positioning, awareness - my stronger skills (but could be a lot better). Zen, Brig, Moira… mostly. Depends on situation, matchups etc…
Although, much like poker - optimal play falls apart if the game is too loose.
I have some friends (better than me) who are always helpful if I need advice.
I’m not claiming to woefully mis-placed btw. But, after a few thousand hours of this game, it seem incredible to me that even if I grind out a bit of a climb, it soon pushes me back to B5/4. The worst of the worse… and yet, if that’s true, why is it clear there are players on my team way worse than me? There’s nothing lower than B5?
Because…
There is genuinely a problem in lower metals ranks I described before.
There are way too many players queuing up for DPS, and because this is low metal that’s a very wide spread of ability. I’m told the queue balance is different at higher levels, but down in Bronze and Silver its DPS DPS DPS - usually with a 10-1 difference in queue times.
That means, however you look at it, support players (and now it’s even worse for tanks), have to be matched with just about any random DPS, or those players will not get a game in a reasonable amount of time. The game needs Bronze level supports/tanks or no one gets to play. ( lol)
I’m not great, but I have reached a sufficient level of ‘awareness’ that I can at least spot the differences between players (and my own mistakes). You might say I’m at the ‘conscious incompetence’ level.
But for most games, it boils down to the same thing. The DPS players are more often than not, ‘unconscious incompetent’ - they don’t even know what they’re doing wrong (or don’t care. It’s become a lot like QP).
All too frequently, it’s the two support players who are clearly more ‘game aware’. Metaphorically shaking our heads at the randomness in front of us. I’m glad I don’t play Mercy - I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be
When you get so many of these random DPS per-game, its almost a lottery. A coin toss (which coincidentally is also 50/50).
There are 2 ways to achieve a roughly 50/50 outcome. Either lots of well-balanced matches OR lots of random badly balanced matches. Statistically the outcomes will look the same… but which, I wonder, is easier for OW to create? ;')
Because it’s so random, unless you are much better than those around you (like plat+), you just cannot have enough statistical influence over the long term. It’s tiny percentages. If you are muchbetter, I believe the MMR system can spot that, at least, and will quickly shift you out and up.
(When you get that lucky night where you stack with a team of peers, its a completely different game btw).
Added to the that is the casuals problem. The game tends to throw them in the middle somewhere initially which leads to rank inflation and deflation at either end… and then, those that keep playing inevitably sink, and you catch them as teammates on the way down because their MMR hasn’t found it’s level yet.
The idea that ‘average’ at a game is the default position for a new player is just mind-bendingly dumb. Hardly anyone starts any new activity as ‘average’… so, the majority will fall not rise.
And these are mostly DPS just by numbers, not by any facet of the role.
Well, that’s my theory anyway… I could be wrong; however, its looks fairly obvious to me.
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Not like your damage player can do much when your tank isn’t moving forward and your support only heals him.