Portrait tier is not synonymous with rank tier

Competitive Discussion
1

I’ve been fluctuating between plat and diamond all season, and I’m just sick of guys cracking jokes about my gold portrait/border. I got it a couple of weeks ago or so. I went through the same **** back in season 8 when I had a silver portrait too.

“Silver portrait hard stuck in plat lul”

“Silver portrait in plat OMEGALUL”

etc.

Now I’m having to hear it all over again because I have a gold portrait, but I’m in plat. The portrait just tells you how much I play the game, more or less. Something tells me that regardless of what rank I was actually at, it wouldn’t matter though. If I was diamond, they’d just give me grief for that and tell me I need to be higher, if I got higher than that, they’d laugh and ask why I wasn’t GM, and so on.

It’s just kind of ridiculous, honestly. The worst part is, a majority of these players calling me out in match chat and going “OMEGALUL” over the color of my portrait… They’re the exact reason why I’m unable to climb any higher. Don’t get me wrong, I win every now and then, and I’ve maintained a positive win ratio on my mains for this season (aside from D.Va being at 45%, but with an overall win percentage of 50%+ in comp), but my SR always takes a hit at some point.

It’s usually something like… I’ll win one or two, then I’ll get a guy like this on my team for one or two matches, who behaves toxic as hell the entire time, then I lose, then he has the nerve to call me out and trash talk even though he basically threw because he was too busy typing or talking **** at me in voice chat. I’m never going to hit GM or anything like that, regardless of how much time I invest into the game though.

It has nothing to do with wanting it enough or anything like that. It’s just that it’s physically impossible for me to do so. I’m going on 33 years old this year, so it probably goes without saying that I’m outmatched by most of my peers in this game when it comes to reflexes, hand-eye coordination, etc. I’ll keep doing my best anyway and hope I can consistently stay in diamond at some point, but that’s probably my limit, given my abilities (or lack thereof).

1 Like
2

theres alot of things people make fun of you for. i see people in my games who touches master once like 2 seasons ago and when you ask them to swap they will say “lul hardstuck diamond have fun” and the amount of smurfs in plat-master is insane.

if you are a higher level it would make sense to be a higher rank though, maybe turn off mouse acceleration. get a 144 hz moniter, gaming mouse and mouse pad, under 60 ping, etc

3

Yeah, it makes sense on paper, but even getting a new monitor, gaming mouse, or any of that stuff won’t automatically make me a better player. After all, just because you give someone a hammer doesn’t automatically make them a carpenter. There’s a certain threshold that I can’t pass and diamond is pretty much it because of age, unfortunately.

I just can’t really keep up with the other players much at that point because their reaction speed, timing, etc. are just downright better than mine. That’s to be expected though since a lot of the top 500 players are in their early 20’s or teens, both of which are waaaaaaay younger than me. I remember when I had that kind of energy and speed when playing fighting games competitively, but these days… It’s kind of like sending in a 40 year old into a boxing ring against a 22 year old.

It’s hopeless, lol.

2 Likes
4

oh lol i forgot about age. then ya diamond is a really good rank for anyone who is not in their 20s. just tell people who make fun of you that you are 40. no shame in that and ost people will understand. its incredible someone can have a disadvantage in reaction time etc but still touch top 15% of the player base.

5

The theory that older people have slower reaction times has been disproven. It’s actually a misconception on what actually happens when you get older.

The brain speeds up pathways using a compound called Myelin. It wraps around the axions that are used more often. This is what doing the same action over and over does is tell the brain to use more Myelin on those pathways so they fire faster because they are used more often. This is what creates fast reaction times is having the brain wired to deal with the specific task with large amounts of Myelin insulation.

Now the difference between someone who is older and someone who is younger is the Myelin production rate. It would be higher in a younger person then in someone who is older but still differs from person to person. This means it would generally take slightly longer for an older person to develop a new skill then a younger person. However of the older person has been doing that activity for a long time they may have a leg up on the younger person.

This way it’s possible for an older person to have the same or better reaction time then someone younger. It just depends on how the brain has been trained.

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7

Yeah, this sort of thing is true to an extent, but it’s like having an older man on a tennis court with a teenager. Sure, he could hold his own for a while, but eventually, the teenager would beat him simply through stamina because they’d be able to put more force or technique behind their shots and wear the old man down. Now, that’s not to say that he wouldn’t have his own trick shots or anything like that, but when push comes to shove, there’s no reason why an older player should ever beat a younger player in a competitive video game, if the ground is on an equal playing field.

By that, I simply mean that both are equally skilled, more or less. I guess it’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s basically why a majority of the winners in esports, fighting game tournaments, etc. aren’t in their 30’s or 40’s. It’s because even if they may have been doing this for a long period of time, the younger players still have an edge due to their speed and reaction time.

I can only input the commands and react so fast. Unfortunately, my reflexes have deteriorated over the years and I can’t do these things near as fast as I used to, regardless of how long I’ve been doing them and even if they’re embedded into my muscle memory. We all reach a limit at some point and usually that just comes with the territory of age.

I’m not sure what you’re even getting at. I already told you I win enough as it is, but usually when I lose, it’s because of some toxic player on my team that ruins it for the rest of us. Of course it doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens enough to keep me (and others) from climbing, even if we maintain a 50%+ win ratio, which is what I’ve been doing this season.

Now, if you honestly believe people that have nothing better to do than badmouth their teammates 24/7 in chat are actually capable of helping you win matches, rather than bring you down, then by all means… Feel free to explain. For now though, I’ll just flag this as trolling since it was completely unnecessary, especially since I just told you that this was something that annoyed me in-game, and now you’re forcing me to deal with it on the forum too.

Enough.

8

You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you’re trying to say your level is holding you back.

9

blaming your inability to fix your repeated mistakes on random people pointing out your silver/gold boarder.

might as well connect your progress to the curvature of the omegalul

12

That’s not what I’m doing. I’m saying it doesn’t help when players are laughing at you for having gold border and being stuck in plat. I didn’t say it was the only factor. Please stop twisting my words.

And what happens when I do fix those “repeated mistakes” and still end up losing because of players like this? You know that does happen, right? You can do everything you’re supposed to and still lose because of toxic teammates. You make it sound as if toxic teammates don’t exist.

You’re just looking to argue for the sake of arguing here if you truly believe that only I am capable of changing my losses to a win in a team based game.

13

Sometimes you need to remember…“who cares what kids think?”.

16

Now that i’ve reached the Gold portrait, i keep hearing that oh so clever “gold in gold” or “gold in plat”

All i can say to these toxic, terrible players trying out new heroes in ranked for the first time, or just sitting on attack torb while blaming ME…

Hard to rank up when the game teams me up with YOU.

17

Yeah, this is pretty much what I was getting at. While I am perfectly fine with acknowledging my own mistakes, people have to realize that you are not the only player responsible for your win or loss. This is a team game and 9 times out of 10, if you have a toxic individual like this on your team, it usually doesn’t end well.

There are very few times where I’ve heard someone behave in a toxic manner on voice chat or through team/match chat and we still managed to win. Most of the time, they’re so busy talking ****, they’re not paying attention to what’s going on around them. It’s a much better sign when you start the game and you have teammates that aren’t giving you **** for having a gold border and playing in plat. Now, I’m not saying attitude is the only reason why you win or lose, but it just helps when your teammates are willing to cooperate with you instead of degrade you and put you down for having a gold portrait in a plat game.

Whenever someone like that starts giving me grief and laughs about me being “hard stuck in plat” I’m just staring blankly at my screen and I’m like “Gee… I wonder why I’m hard stuck in plat…”, lol. They don’t seem to realize how little they contribute to the match, outside of their snide remarks and toxicity. It just sucks encountering these guys sometimes, that’s all.

They’re on a whole different level of trolling, honestly. When we inevitably lose, they’re quick to blame me for the loss because of my gold border, cause apparently I’m supposed to be good enough to carry the team (or at the very least, them). I had one player in particular that called me out on my level while he was playing Junkrat and I had gold damage for most of the match as Rein while still having nearly 20k damage blocked at the end of the match.

He still had the nerve to type in match chat “gold border stuck in plat omegalul” followed by “gg :)” and left after we lost. I don’t mind owning up to my mistakes, but these guys are some of the most toxic players I’ve ever seen in the game and they think they’re God’s gift to Overwatch or something, then still somehow have the nerve to continue talking trash even though they got outdamaged by a Rein as Junkrat, lol.

I just don’t understand how some of these players can think this way. I really don’t.

1 Like
18

To be honest, that is the reason why I barely play this account anymore. It’s so close to gold border and yet I am still hard stuck in diamond. I rather play my other accounts since both are at only 120-200 level and still the same rank.

19

Yeeeeeah… Even when I was in diamond with my silver border, people were still giving me crap for not being higher, so I guess there’s just no pleasing guys like this, honestly. Even if I was an OWL player, they’d just grief me for losing a match, so there’s really no way to win here.

20

well try being a golden portrait in silver rank (borderline bronze on bad days). sometimes I snap back with a response of: goodluck being GM/top 500 when you reach silver border.

1 Like
21

I have a friend who has a plat portrait. And has never played comp. People get totally confused. You can’t judge him on anything. Since there’s no data. Portrait shouldn’t mean nothing. But how much you played the game.