Sick of the 'Play Better' Argument

Competitive Discussion
70

personal performance will determine ur rank, the only constant factor of your games is yourself

trust me, i was “hardstuck” (dont like using that word, nobody is ever hardstuck) in silver (~1600-1800) for about 4 seasons. i never gave up trying to improve and kept playing despite seeing little improvement in my rank.

However, i saw improvement in my gameplay as i picked up 1.) more heroes and 2.) got better at my mains. eventually you will climb to wear you need to be (shockingly, the matchmaker rewards you in low ranks because of the performance- based system), it just takes time

i am now 3100

its all about your gameplay.

stop blaming the factors you cannot control

4 Likes
71

It seems to me that the biggest issue with games like this is that there are too many heroes, so there are too many combinations that have an impact on your success. Nobody wants to feel like they did a good job but lost. That’s silly. If you do a good job, you should win.

In my opinion, that’s one of the bigger issues that we’re not talking about. Maybe what’s needed is that the game needs to stop focusing on the team rank, and needs to only start looking at the player rank.

Team rank is worthless. That’s like trying to say that everyone on the NBA is equal, yet you’ve got players you’ve never heard of playing alongside LeBron. That’s silly. LeBron is going to play circles around most of the NBA, and you know it.

And what’s more, in professional sports, everyone knows who’s on each team, and what they can do. So you can plan accordingly ahead of time. This is why LeBron can’t just carry his team to victory solo every single time.

But we’re not compensating for any of this, and the teams are all completely random for the vast majority of the players. This would be like if LeBron–each game–was being placed into a random team every game, and even though he’s one of the best, he’s going to lose, a lot.

The focus should be on the individual, not the team. And there should be a hell of a lot more ranks. I don’t want to see a few ranks. I want to see bronze level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4, level 5, silver level 1, etc. I want to see solo scores. A bronze level 3 team player who plays a Phara at gold 4. I want the game to know who can play what at what level and make sure it’s not making matches where the player who plays a Phara at gold 4 actually has a player who is a viable counter. You can’t put a Phara at gold 4 on one team where the opposite team’s best counter is a Mcree silver 2, who can’t switch to the Mcree, because they’re also the team’s only Mercy gold 3.

This is the problem, and there’s the solution.

72

Agree, and I try to have fun. But when 1 out of 8 games is actually a fun/good game because there is clearly a teammate not up to speed with the rest of the team, it gets old.

73

Maybe you should watch some of Jayne’s videos where he experimented with low sr players against a high sr player.

1 Like
74

Just to add another post to the list of anecdotes:

My gold account was 2020 SR at the end of Friday night. Saturday I played a bit in the morning and then some more in the early evening. I played a fair bit, but not all day. I ended Saturday at 2556.

It’s easy to climb when you have decent winning streaks and are getting 30 - 45 SR per win and then when the streaks end you’re only losing 17 - 18 SR for a loss. Also having ~87% win rate helps.

My other account is at ~2700 at the moment. So I climbed more than 500 SR in a single day while my “real” SR was only ~700 above where I started.

So again, if you’re really a diamond player you do not get stuck in silver.

1 Like
75

People that have been in gold multiple seasons don’t gain SR that fast, and they also don’t get that kind of win rate. Had you thrown to get to 2020 SR? How many games has that account played in Gold? Have you always played with your normal stats?

Normal SR gains are 24 according to the best guide I have found (below). If you’re getting 30-45 SR, I believe that means the system is in correction mode, or it has designated your account as one that belongs much higher, and is being given matches that will get you out of gold.

I don’t think any account that has thrown to derank, or any fresh account behaves in the same way as an account with 5+ seasons of being in the same rank. The matchmaker tracks both what skill it thinks you are, as well as how certain it is of that skill based upon the results of the matches it has put you in over time. On new accounts and thrower accounts, that certainty is wide, making it more willing to move your SR.

76

No. I was ill for about a month and was on some pretty strong pain meds. Opiates really mess with your reactions, decision making, aim etc. I dropped without throwing.

Anyway, the point was that by playing better than I had been recently, and consequently better than my enemies, I climbed very easily. The OP is apparently “sick of the ‘play better’ argument” but playing better sure is a great way to climb.

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77

That’s ridiculous. I heard that if you play well you get “potato” teammates and smurf enemies!

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78

If it’s impossible to climb out of silver,how come boosters exist?

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81

That’s all fine and dandy but the matchmaking system still sucks.

I actually watch the replays of my teammates from their perspective and have seen a game where someone picked ashe, got 0 kills, died 10 times. Then on the same exact game, another person picked widowmaker got 0 kills and died 8 times. Who then swaps to mcree and then gets a kill only to immediately die after.

Like at this point I’m playing on what feels like a 4v6 and if I truly am where I deserve to be matchmaking wise… then how can you expect me to carry? So I’m supposed to beat 6 equal skill players in a 4v6?

I think the real problem is having people who are too high. People placed much higher than they belong ruins the matchmaking system. There’s no “safe” rank. You’ll see fools get into master who deserve to be plat. Or bronzies in plat who need to fall back to wood league.

The entire placement system is a sham and doesn’t work. Everyone should start out as a bronze player, and rise to what they are capable to rise.

82

And these bronze accounts, were they all yours? If you were mid masters, how do you have bronze accounts? If they are not your accounts, your boosting, 2 violations of the TOS. Again an open admission to violations that have ZERO repercussions. You are not the only person to do so, how is it so hard then to believe that someone has had a horrible string of bad luck when it comes to encountering players such as yourself?

83

Hardstuck mid to high gold btw, and I could take my accounts out of bronze and silver. Yeah, healing too if required. As a matter of fact I can probably do it playing tank and dps too. There’s no way you’re diamond and can’t do it.

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84

Because it’s mathematically impossible for smurfs to be in every game. There was a youtube video that explained the math behind it but it was something like if the entire GM population was online simultaneously AND on smurf accounts, there’d be a smurf in 1 in 10 games. That situation is obviously never going to happen so you’d have even less of a chance to have smurfs on the enemy team. Sure, you might have a brief unlucky run where it happens a few times in a row but in the long run the entire place is at this same disadvantage so it’s not like your rank would be higher in the long run with zero smurfs.

Each rank is what it is AMIDST smurfs. Plats smurf in gold, golds smurf in silver, etc. If you can’t win against the occasional smurf or climb amidst the losses when you can’t, it’s because you BELONG at that rank. If you’re masters and you queue in the morning you go against actual OWL players who are WAYYY better than masters. Much bigger gap there than a plat in a gold game.

85

You never answered the questions proposed, only chose to invalidate the argument.

It was on Youtube must be true!

You brought mathematics into this argument. Statistically speaking you are correct it is rare but not impossible.

Again you never answered the questions asked which leads me to believe my accusations are correct. Sorry, anything you say is no longer taken into consideration as you are apparently part of the problem, thank you, drive through.

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86

It’s based on official numbers published by Blizzard about the population of the various ranks. It really is impossible for GM smurfs / alts to be in a significant number of Gold / Plat games. There are just so few GMs compared to the number of Gold / Plat players.

87

Bronze and Gold / Plat are completely different worlds.

If you go low enough in Bronze (I estimate from experience 500-800 SR) the population of people who belong there is so tiny, and the number of throwers that want to be bronze to troll about is so large, that it really is nearly impossible to play a 500-800 SR bronze game without 1-4 smurfs in the game.

Just climbing to about 1000 SR makes the experience dramatically different (which I did this season). I’m currently about 1340 SR, and the number of smurfs I encounter is just getting less and less frequent.

The new replay system actually helps a great deal with identifying smurfs. Now you can go back and watch them play, and that really gives you an idea of what they were doing. Maybe they were wrecking you and your team because of something that you can learn from. Maybe they really were just very very good, and that level 27 account just gives it away that they’re a smurf. I don’t know, but the information available is so nice these days.

88

The “Play Better” and “Git Gud” and “You are at the rank you should be” arguments are actually 100% stupid, just like those who use them, because the way the matchmaker works is it tries to make “even” matches.

What that means is that you can be a “good player” and be playing great but you will be matched with garbage teammates so as to make the match “even”. Like on a scale of 1-10 you can be an 8 but you will always be matched with 2s because this terribly broken and plain idiotically stupid matchmaker is trying to make games “even”.

89

I don’t think that’s anything like what the matchmaker does. Have you read the article about it?

90

There will obviously be subpar players in your games. At the same time, you will also have players that are really good. There is equal chance of having either bots or gods on your team - the only constant is you.

That one match may be a guaranteed loss. On the other hand, you’re just as likely to have a 6v4 game, and even more likely so unless you’re one of the players contributing to the 4v6 scenario.

SR is variable and is a range. Sometimes people will be too high, sometimes people will be too low. The main thing is that they will always go back to where they belong. I’ve seen people get boosted to high SR, and they will always fall back to where they belong if they can’t maintain it. The only exceptions are if they queue with smurfs who continually boost them or don’t play much and camp the rank.

While placements are only 10 games and not accurate, the matchmaking system itself is fine. All my accounts, assuming I play on them like I do on my main, will always reach the same SR as it. I’ve done this multiple times over multiple seasons, and I know multiple people who’ve done the same.

1 Like
91

Vurg this wasn’t aimed at you it was directed towards Pyah.