Last few weeks I’ve played on my older account that has the problem of getting queued fairly consistently with 5 other people with silver border or higher. Meanwhile the enemy team is fairly consistently bronze border. I suspect this means that the game wants to put experienced players against newer players so that they win, according to the 50% wr that blizz wants for us all. However smurfs seem to skew this and make games that should be won, lost. This results in people trying to rank up their account being put with people that are hardstuck, forcing a loss against smurfs that are already projected to win against the hardstuck players.
Basically the problem is that accounts with more games are forced into 5050 winrates at any given rank. The older account was in masters with such a winrate when I was active on it. After losing several games playing at the end of the season (quality of games hits rock bottom, blizz pls go back to longer seasons), it got to low diamond. the matchmaker keeps me at low diamond now like it did at mid masters before. In diamond i still consistently win the winnable games but the unwinnable games (the other 50%) are complete rolls. Puts me with people that are dropping one game, and people climbing the next. For perspective my alt account I brought to mid masters shortly after buying it, unlike my older account that has had no luck for months. If it just gave you a random assortment of people at that rank, there would be no issue of this. A fresh acct should have an equal chance of climbing to an account that has a played hundreds of games over its lifetime.
When you get better over time you should be rewarded for your performance, not tossed into an algorithm that only tests you every other game or so. The only escape from such algorithm is literally buying a fresh account that only puts you against the bad players, and pairs you with smurfs most of the time. You can be stuck in the algorithm with a 50-50 wr that cant climb at any rank. Once your mmr is mature enough it wont let you leave. Solo climbing is only possible on a fresh account, there a reason all the bronze to t500 streams are on new accts.
Your whole post was spot on and really agree with this last paragraph of yours. That is why it is insanely hard to level because if you keep trying to carry a team, you keep getting stuck with worse and worse players to “balance” things. You seem to win more if you are middle of the pack because then the odds of you getting another great player is better than when you carry a team yet still lose.
I will fight your claim with the following arguments.
1.personal experience: When I was climbing on mercy it was often through win streaks where I was playing really well on a hot streak. I was earning stats consistently in top 5-10% every game. I would finish games with between 0 and 3 deaths.
Personal observation: saying people in the middle of pack climb better is unsubstantiated in my observations.
A. I never see posts like “I played like an average plat and climbed to diamond “.
B. None of my friends who play average relative to their rank are climbing.
These sort of claims are meaningless without linking the accounts in question with open profiles. Being maybe a person ranked up the old account in Orisa meta and then flopped out trying to learn dive. Yet the new account is more Zarya and is doing fine.
maybe new account is like played 20 games and ducked out. Old account is 100 games and losing most of the time.
The swirling nature of the meta shifts and balance patches is why people tend to be at some given SR for a while, the flop out later. Most of all if the ranked up on very friendly meta for their play style or hero picks.
yeah…lets ignore statistics that most players are now 1 or 2 ranks lower than former seasons. i suppose we all got collectively worse at the game. rather lets believe in hopes and dreams and in irrelevant advice of season past.
lets also ignore the sharp rise in seal clubbing smurf accounts and derankers. we’re just bad…we belong where we are…if we’re losing 10+ games in a row…tis probably because we actually belong 2 ranks below what we think we belong (you know…where we’ve been historically).
been watching the fake news eh?
want to take a guess why the only account ive ever had…is now routinely getting matched with fresh new lvl 35-40 accounts of 2 or more…every game… why tracer and genji (broken rt clicks) are in silver and gold…where u almost never saw a tracer before? especially a tracer that rolls your whole team…
No. The average player has gotten considerably better. If you have not improved as much as the average player, you will fall in rank. It’s pretty simple. You could be BETTER than you were a year ago, but a rank lower, and nothing would be amiss. You not only need to improve to climb; you need to improve more than the average player at your rank improves.
i go into every game expecting a smurf…this is what you mean correct…i will say it is satisfying when you clap these chicken nuggets. becuase theyre too chicken for their own rank. their peers wouldnt let them get away with half the reckless stuff they try in the lower ranks. of course it puts a satisfactory and (vengeful spite filled smile on my face) knowing theyre gimping themselves in the long run. I guess we just have to tolerate it…until lady karma sees fit to humble them in the most COMPREHENSIVE ways imaginable. silver lining i suppose.