Stop saying/implying that climbing is impossible

Competitive Discussion
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It’s not impossible. Would ML7 be hardstuck playing on your account no matter how old the account or how bad the matchmaking? Of course not. So it’s not impossible.

It also has to be objectively true that if you consider skill as units of improvement, once some quantity of improvement has accrued, you will be able to climb. Why is this objectively true? Because the counterargument CANNOT be true: “no amount of additional skill enables climbing.” I won’t bother explaining why this violates common sense.

So here’s the only logical, non-self-defeating argument left: “Climbing in OW is (substantially) harder than it should be due to skill inflation.” And I’m not saying whether this is true or not (that’s not the point of this post).

Skill inflation, if it’s a thing, exists because all sorts of (real or perceived) unresolved problems stack, one on top of another, gradually making progression (potentially much) more difficult over time. These problems may or may not include: smurfing, poor matchmaking, alt accounts, inadequate penalties for underperforming players, insufficient rewards for overperforming players, profit motives driving bad competitive models, teammate apathy, low pop, etc.

Citing skill inflation does not violate common sense (“i.e., climbing is impossible”), while accounting for the reality that some players can and do climb, while also accounting for the possibility that “reasonable” amounts of improvement (real vs. imagined or significant vs. insignificant) still lead to inadequate results.

So technically, if you’re not climbing, you’re not good enough to climb (if you were, you’d be climbing!). The only relevant discussion point left is whether skill inflation exists and to what extent (and perhaps the various causes).

So please stop saying/implying climbing is impossible, which takes these conversations down the same monotonous and ridiculous paths. Bad arguments are a lightning rod for mockery, misdirection, and boilerplate (on both sides).

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Real. Even though we disagree on many things, we can agree that these sort of discussions are good for no one and never get anywhere. They take away from those that might have some actual substance to their thoughts.

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Hi BrightTitan. I don’t believe that deep down, many who claim that climbing is “impossible” actually believe that it is impossible. Most of the time, I feel as if they are frustrated after a match, thus leading to exaggeration.

Yes, it is definitely possible to climb. People will get to their ranks the more they play.

But the problem is that Overwatch is a team game, not a solo game. Let’s say a player is rated 2600, but their “true” rating is actually 2700. They will get to 2700, but only after a TON of games. Why? Because they aren’t good enough to carry every match. In fact, using ML7 as an example, sometimes you just can’t carry hard enough (as seen when he lost in a gold lobby). And this isn’t anyone. GMs can lose to master teams, even though they are 500 points rated higher.

So, people aren’t saying that climbing is impossible, but rather the system makes it difficult to climb by forcing players to play more games to get to their true rank, and that’s why people are upset. Now for players who are “hardstuck”, it is definitely true that they aren’t good enough to carry matches in order to climb.

Hopefully this gave you a different perspective!

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This isn’t just OW, this is pretty much everything in life. You can’t control other people, you can only control yourself. Focus on what you can do to improve, regardless of what anyone else does. Any energy you spend upset at other people for ‘holding you back’ is wasted effort.

You’ll always have your share of morons, improve yourself to the point you can climb in spite of them, and improve your mental so that you never tilt because of them.

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This is where improvement dies.

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I don’t get what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

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With any topic like this, you have your extreme views with your Ethernyets on one side saying that it is impossible to win a single game out of 1600 in low bronze. Then you have your Abdullahs and lights and washed up former Gm’s who now smurf in gold at the other end.

They like to claim it’s all Dunning Kruger and you can get coached from hardstuck bronze to master instantly by healing your team less, taking high ground and using cover once in a while. And anyone who complains about the matchmaking is high on copium.

Like most things I believe the actual truth lies somewhere in the middle and I have often considered you to be one of the few voices of reason on these forums, BrightTitan.

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It definitely is a thing. Its not the word I would use but I still agree with the point youre making. We are basically at end of life for ow1 ranked. Even tho there is no real mmr reset (and perhaps they are choosing not to do an mmr reset to prevent people from completely giving up respect for ladder integrity) it seems people care a lot less about what happens on ranked.

Its hard to gauge your progress when the ranks of everybody can be so questionable as of late. Its hard to take well performing players at face value bc cheaters are in top100+ games all the time, who knows if you are playing against one. Odds are you arent, but that lingering doubt is there. You cant take non-silver border accs at face value because dudes are on their 6th alt accounts rapidly alternating between not giving a damn, and being egod so hard they rail a line of adderall try their best

OW has always been “fuzzy” when it comes to correlation and causation. By that I mean what you change in your gameplay, does not always have a clear and reliable impact on matches. And when the matches themselves become more inconsistent, its no wonder people feel confused and defeated when they try everything and never achieve the result they desire

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And for the statement, “it’s impossible to stay in bronze even doing nothing”?

It had been written often, contrary bias. Is it only true? This one is really frustating for bronze players who try to climb. If it’s true, it imply that there is some sort of mecanism to let derankers out of this Elo. To let them out you have to keep other players in.

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ive always read those statements as tongue-in-cheek ways of highlighting how much room for change people have, whether they acknowledge it or not. i dont think its particularly effective when it comes to convincing someone (i would guess it makes people feel attacked rather than motivated, like when a teammate flames you)

its obviously false that its impossible to stay in bronze, there by design must be a bronze population in a ladder like this. you could take a ladder of exclusively 500 gm’s, and in that ladder, they would be stretched from bronze to gm. that said, there probably are some who legitimately think everyone in bronze is stupid or there intentionally. personally, i have had many bronze friends and i have had gm and top500 friends, so for me its very easy to stop myself from forgetting that not everybody has the “default” skills that we might take for granted that stop us from falling below a certain rank… even by doing “nothing” -which is still usually more than nothing just through passive habits

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I don’t think its fair to compare ml7 to a normal player when they are the top .01% in skill. A normal player in low plat might have the skill and game sense to do well in high plat/low diamond, they just arn’t good enough to break out to the rank they feel they should be, when they are a small part of 6 man team. The average player can only do so much, thus they feel cheated.

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nah, the skill disparity starts to expand a decent amount going from low plat which is essentially gold, into even low diamond. Low plats will hardly hold their own in a full diamond lobby

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Nobody sane says that climbing is impossible - main reason behind those statements is undeniable fact that OW matchmaker system sucks. It is bad in its core and there is no fixing that - especially considering that overwatch team did not make that system to begin with therefore they do not know how to alter it without breaking it.

Handicapping people by using mmr is wrong to begin with and that is whats wrong with competitive - it defeats the purpose of SR number even existing - thus why SR is being deleted in OW2 and replaced by separate ranks that will not display any number. The cheapest and laziest solution they could have found. But I guess even that is ok when you have 2 developers employed full time.

Argument that ML7 wouldnt be stuck on someones account is also non viable IMO. Because superior aim and superior understanding of game pace would carry him out of regular ranks.
What most people are saying is not that they deserve to be GM players like you imply but that they are 400 SR for example lower than where they deserve to be - and that people who gets matched with them surely can not be placed in same rank since that would be unfair. But that again is systems fault - because MMR just assumes that all players which are human beings by the way - are in fact robots and that they will preform same every single day, every single game - which is again, wrong.

My personal opinion is that player based preformance - simialr to valorant one would solve a lot of problems.
Not player based preformance as mild as it exists until diamond - because its so mild that its almost non existant.

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Im not saying it a high number of players, just that it is a possibility. Unless your saying that it is physically impossible to be in the scenario I provided.

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It’s a statistically unlikely possibility, but not impossible.

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This is one of those obscure arguments where someone is like:

Well the probability is not “00.00” so therefore I’m not wrong.

:woman_facepalming:t2:

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The year is 2022, the competitive side of the game has been pretty much dead for 2 years. Not only this discussion is meaningless as it is proposed but it is also displaced. Even though I disagree with most of the “I can’t climb” arguments, people who say “Climbing is impossible” don’t mean it literally.

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They actually do.

For some, there is a theory of how the MM system works which implies that skill is 100% detached from rank. They will straight up tell you as much when asked directly. This is the “handicapping” theory. If the system worked like this, it would be literally impossible to climb, and the progenitor of this theory believes as much.

Even people that seem to know better seem to believe parts of this theory, because it’s so prevalent on these forums. It becomes a “I don’t know how it works, but it obviously does” situation.

People that are being annoyingly hyperbolic that are saying this, in a sense, they’re right. 1SR out of 5000 is meaningless. As far as most people seem to say, going +/- 250 SR is, or used to be, about the equivalence of actual skill. Above that it’s hard to win, below hard to lose, unless you’re tilted, etc. Anywhere in there, well, who knows who will win.

When you look at this:

or this:

Both of these are well within that 500SR range of meaningful difference. Which means that if you are “100 SR too low” then yes, it probably is impossible to climb. But it’s impossible to climb because you’re at your proper rank and it should be impossible to climb above your actual skill. If you’re really 400 too low, you can expect to climb about 150 SR, but not the full 400, pretty easily.

These tiny ranges of “problem SR” are pretty common complaints. I see worries about that last 1-200 SR all the time. It’s ridiculous, but it’s not undeserved.

The problem here isn’t actually matchmaking. It’s a mismatch of promise and delivery. The game promises 5000 levels of absolute skill, but only gives you 15-20 levels of relative skill. The new system will give less levels of skill and hopefully will behave less relative to the exact time and day you are playing.

Anyone that says that they are 1000 SR too low is lying to themselves. Anyone that says they are 100SR too low isn’t actually saying that they are too low. Anyone that looks at other players and thinks they can judge the tier where someone belongs better than the system can is fooling themselves. You’re forgetting that people are human, and not robots, and that the ranking they earned yesterday may not carry over to today.

The problem is in fact solved by removing SR and going to tiers, because you’re making the SR a meaningful number (or rather, the tier a meaningful descriptor).

This general type of system is the fastest, most accurate way we know how to accomplish the task of determining skill levels. If it’s not fast enough for you, or accurate enough for you, or people are intentionally breaking it, I don’t see how it helps anything to blame the tool for a PEBKAC error unless you have a faster, more accurate way lined up. But, maybe they don’t actually mean “matchmaker” just like they don’t mean “impossible”.

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Even though I agree with pretty much all you said I absolutely hate that word - because it automatically degrades the quality of product that is supposed to come out.
‘Our new Mercedes stops from 100 to 0 in 3.2sec, hopefully.’
And looking back at old Blizzard launches and new ones, I don’t want anymore degradations of quality because last few years, its all we are being served.

Only part where I actually disagree in general, because I know players with multiple accounts on same role being in both gold and diamond for example - consistently.

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I know people who claim this, but none who are actually able to post on both accounts on the forums.

Seems a simple matter, to post from different accounts with an open profile. That’s the minimum I’d expect if someone truly believed this was happening.

To be clear, they never claimed this. This is my hope, based on what I’ve understood to be the actual problems since 2018 and the potential solutions. I don’t actually know if the “7 consecutive wins” thing is meant to reduce SR drift due to errors induced by time domain population changes, but it seems possible, and I hope it helps.