You know, life is cruel.
Want to participate in Olympics? Git gut
Want to marry beautiful woman? Git gut
Want to have good scores in college? Git gut
Want to be good at Overwattch? Guess what
You never can judge yourself properly, you think youre gut, but the sad truth is, its not you who decides if youre gut enough or not. Just like its not you to decide if youre good looking or not.
Something similar happened to me long before i stopped playing overwatch.
I started playing at the silver-bronze borderline. 800-1200 sr fluctuating up and down, i was not good at all but i did what i could.
After some days i “got gud” and started to climb, from 1100 up to 1900-2000, i was hovering there for good 2 weeks or more, i dont remember the exact numbers anymore.
Things were going okay, i could raise my rank i was not good enough for that but at near gold i felt like my matches were filled with people of similar skills. It felt like im at where i belong for now atleast.
Things started to go downhill, the matches become horrid. We had a troll mei freezing up the entrance of our spawn in the worst moment, someone who was just TOO GOOD for this rank, a possible aimbot user and everybodies favorite line of terrible teammates.
I ended up back at 900-1100 sr at the bronze-silver borderline. Nothing changed in my gameplay, i was still the lucio who concentrates on pushing the damm objective and stalling the enemy, the rein who would charge into death to take out the enemies healers while my team is safe with orisa. It was just a simple falldown with no explanations.
The season ended with me around 1300 sr if i remember right, i simply couldnt get higher no matter how i tried.
What happened here? The same skills what kept me floating in near gold suddenly become useless after 2 weeks?
Thats great and all, but half of this thread isn’t about ‘ranking up’. Its about being fairly ranked. Big difference.
Want to know how smart you are? Take an IQ test.
Want to know if you belong in law school? Take LSAT.
Want to know how you compare to other Overwatch players? Check SR…
oh wait its broke af.
Let me destroy everybody’s theory on matchmaking that complain it doesn’t work.
1 - there are people in every rank of the game from bronze to GM. This would be impossible if the matchmaking was legitimately forcing everybody down. That is to say there are people in Bronze, Diamond, GM and even higher (look at twitch if you need some evidence)
2 - There is at least 1 person who one tricks every single hero in every rank. Proving, that no matter who you are, if you one trick, if you flex, there is evidence that you can make any rank, should you be good enough.
GM torbs, GM syms, GM Reins, GM Pharahs, there’s everything up there.
3 - People solo queue, duo queue, triple queue and even 6 stack, in all ranks of the game. Regardless of your grouping, if you’re good enough you will climb.
So to summarise:
So to summarize you took some extremely low amount of minority and told the rest of the playerbase that the system works because of their success.
You know just because the top of the pyramid scheme gets rich as hell that does not mean its a working, well designed system.
.
.
Also how is your “proof” work against contradicting experiences? When someone from plat falls down to bronze and cannot climb out at all, does that mean he suddenly lost the skills what kept him at plat?
When someone buys a new account and gets higher on it with the same heroes does that mean that just buying suddenly granted them more skill?
You cant just dismiss a claim by saying that its not how it works for X people, thats the same what tobacco companies tried to do when it came to the ill effect of smoking “BuT noT EveRYbOdy GetS CAnceR!”.
Why does this guy always make new threads ? Just stop dude
just stop …
Your pyramid example is flawed, Because actually, the pyramid system is fantastic, depending on the type of person you are…because there are 2 types of people
1 - the person who makes the pyramid
2 - the person who pays into the pyramid
Anybody with half a brain knows that you shouldn’t pay into a pyramid scheme, yet people still do.
now THAT’S comparable to overwatch. Because despite people knowing the decision they make in a game is wrong, they still make it. Further more it may not even be obvious to people they’re making mistakes in the first place. The system works, but the people do not.
Now to actually address 2 of your points.
Point 1; is actually not a point at all. When someone falls from plat to bronze and can’t climb up. That’s all hearsay, we have no actual proof someone is playing exactly the same, and has actually fell 3 ranks.
People might go and write a post on here on how they claim they did nothing different, and that suddenly they started losing every game bla bla… But the fact is out of these 2 variables, the system vs the player, which one is likely to be more inconsistent?
I would like an actual example of someone who played EXACTLY the same and over the span of a season for example, fell 3 ranks, there’s nobody.
point 2: when someone buys a new account and places higher. Let me explain to you performance based SR. It’s an average-based system.
That is to say, it doesn’t take every game as a single event and matchmak you based on that. It takes all your games, takes your stats, your averages and aims to keep you within the level that you are displaying (that forced lose people keep talking about)
So let me explain further. The average widow maker scope accuracy across the board is 49%. That’s right. no matter what your rank, Silver or GM, the average Widow in their respective rank hits 49% accuracy. So if you’re in Silver, you have 49% accuracy and you’re complaining the game is keeping you there.
No, you’re keeping you there, because to climb, you have to display higher than average stats. Note i’m using accuracy as the example here, but there’s tonnes of stats on every hero that is used to identify if you’re actually better than your rank.
SO what happens when people make a fresh account? They have no stats… and they start the game with the advantage of actually already knowing the game.
When I first picked up OW, I had no idea how the system worked, I jumped in QP, messed around, casually got to 25 and placed in silver. My stats were likely very average. I eventually hit plat, but thiis was a grind because my average stats were pretty low, I had to not only win games, but had to really work hard to improve my performance for the matchmaking to identify that I was better than the rank I was in.
A year later I made an alt account and immediately placed Diamond. This is because in the first 25 levels of QP, where you’ve got easy prey, your stats are padded to appear like you’re some high level god player, when really you’re just taking advantage of the same new players that have no idea what they’re doing.
I guarantee you, however, that if the ranking system places you too high, even on the alt account, you will eventually fall back down to where you belong.
Do you need any further clarification?
High Diamond main tank here, and while I agree there are issues with the system, if you get better at the game, you will climb, it’s really simple. You talk about how Diamond to GM players as if they would agree with you on this, but I guarantee you that any GM player would tell you getting better at the game leads to climbing.
Okay you’re really just making stuff up here. No one that agrees with the concept of "getting better at the game leads to climbing "would ever say that you can win every game. None of these people say that you can’t lose games if your constantly improving. Everyone has off days, or bad games, even if they refuse to admit it.
And yes, some games are far from winnable due to leavers, derankers and other reasons. All these people you seem to hate so much are saying is that if you get better at the game, and play a lot, then you will climb OVERALL. Do you know what overall means? Because this post would suggest otherwise.
Climbing overall means that you will lose games that are completely out of your control. Any team based game played with random people will have this problem, If you can’t accept that, then go play custom games with organized teams. Climbing Overall means that if you are that person on your team that tips the odds in your favor enough of the time, then you will climb.
All you are doing with this post is arguing with a point of view that doesn’t exist. Play the game a lot, get better at it, and you can climb, anyone can. But if you can’t accept that other people effect the outcome of your game, than go play 1v1’s, or a ranked fighting game, at least then you can’t shift the blame on to other people.
You can have PBSR mostly to thank for that. Because farming stats is a viable tactic from bronze-plat, it’s basically 1 big rank. Things start to change about 2850-2900 when people really start to have good aim , but still until you reach mid diamond it’s just a double coin toss. First one is who gets more trolls , second one is who is farming stats. In mid diamond it’s just who gets more trolls. The game is not about who is better, but how many bad players you get vs they get. The rarity when games are even is when you get same ammount of bad players or no bad teammates at all (which happens in maybe 1 in 20 games according to my experience)
If you don’t play, then why are you here? These forums are for feedback form people that actively play the game, not for you to go around telling people they shouldn’t like a game because you don’t.
The best way of understanding it is if you look at comp as some sort of instrument that measures your skill. You don’t get better because you just won a game or worse because you just lost a game. Improvement comes from practice and focused play around improving certain aspects of the game. Sure just playing comp can net some improvement with the right focus but that’s just one tool. Other tools are watching VODs, joining Widow HS lobbies, juggling training bots with primal rage, using external aim trainers, playing QP etc etc.
When you have improved comp is there to assess your new skill over a significant number of games. SImple as that.
Not climbing still after a significant number of games? Well then you haven’t improved fast enough and it’s time to practice some more…
Are you joking? How many times do you guess someone’s rank right even Jayne only guesses 80% at best. 20% are either way below their deserved rank or too high as if they were boosted.
This games MMR and SR system is trash when games in Silver and Platinum are just as hard to win for other reasons than the enemies skill.
some things the system cannot account for. the trolls. the tilt. the person who plays 60% of the time with friends and gets carried. the people practicing new heroes in comp because qp is a poo show. the leavers.
you can get these people over and over in your matches. and you start to tilt, and you become part of the problem.
my issue is i stop playing when these things happen, its just getting so frequent in my rank its cutting into my game time, which hinders me getting good.
As far as i know this here is a discussion of competitive mechanics just because i do not play actively anymore i can still be part of this discussion because the system we talk about havent been reworked or changed since i left.
Im here because i agree with OP that the system is inconsistent and due to this i gave my feedback on it.
Infact let me ask you did your comment what i reply to managed to add in anything useful to this discussion? Its even less feedback than what i posted above.
Dont take this as offensive nitpicking but what actual evidence you would not take as hearsay?
I mean just above you i posted my story on how long ago i got to near gold then after 2 weeks playing there the same way as everyday i managed to fall back to bronze and stayed at low silver for the rest of the season.
Not talking about the base inaccuracy of the initial placements but about consistently staying higher or lower than your main with near similar stats.
It makes sense when someone plays heroes whos skills do not transfer like junkrat to rein but when the skills requied for two heroes are awfully similar and yet you are playing above or below by large margin compared to your main then something is fishy.
We know how the placements are inaccurate, thats pretty basic knowledge at this point but the problems arise at the later parts of the game where placements no longer have an effect.
It didn’t your right. All I saw was someone who quit playing the game, trying to tell people why the system is rigged for them not to rank up, while at the same time blaming their team for their own bad play.
You obviously felt the need to contribute nothing important, so I returned the favor. 
All i did is that i shared a similar experience with someone who posted an experience where they were periodically jumping up and down in the ladder.
In fact if you read the original post i stated multiple times that im not that good, im doing avarage at most.
I had my stream of awful people on both sides started to tilt and ended up at bronze, theres nothing suprising here just one thing.
If i managed to get to 1900-2000 sr why couldnt i reach that rank anymore? After i got back to low silver the matches gone in the avarage 1 win, 1 loss crawling speed climbing but i was never able to get higher than 1400.
Did i just lost near 600 sr worth of skill there or what?
Nope. The fact that you can guess right 80% of the time with only 9 seconds of random footage just shows how accurate the system is. There are many telltale signs of not only an individual player’s skill level, but the positioning of everyone else in the game is a big clue into what SR range someone is in.
If you think silver games are just as hard to win as plat games, that is an indictment to your own skill level not the game’s SR system. I’ve played in both and it is hard for me to lose in silver even if I try to. Plat on the other hand I can actually lose even if I try-hard. But I will still win the majority of the time such that I would never be stuck there unless I want to be there.
All you have ‘summarized’ is that those things are possible. Of course they are, everyone knows that because nothing on paper says it can’t theoretically occur. Doesn’t make the system ‘correct’.
Exactly. Someone who more or less gets it.
Someone who doesn’t get it. What would all the bronze/silver players think? Why would the opinion of a Diamond/GM matter any more/less than anywhere else on the ladder? The answer: they don’t because all are subjective. What is objective and factual? Ladder algorithms and data, which we unfortunately don’t have strong results for. But some of us - the ones who don’t bother with personal anecdotes - are trying to reason about what the ranked system ought to provide. We need to stop regurgitating the same old ‘if you try you can rank up because i did’ and ‘just git gud 4head’).
My biggest criticisms are the ladder mobility w.r.t. effort/reward ratio, player metrics, and skill indicators.
If me and all the players you’re matching me with are correctly ‘classified’ as 700sr (bottom 3% or w/e), there should be no resemblance of actual game knowledge - essentially we should be playing worse than easy ai. There should be a nearly complete and total lack of understanding about even basic game trivia - bottom 4% means you probably can’t name 4-5 heroes and have no idea what an ultimate is. There should be almost no map knowledge or some maps literally never before played on, and there should be some attrocious positioning and cooldown management across the board.
What you get instead is far from that - advanced game sense and flank awareness, peripheral rotations (requires knowledge), high % aim (requires skill), cheese comps (requires knowledge), ultimate combos (requires knowledge), OWL trivia (they know about comp names and where they came from and who plays them, requires knowledge), etc etc…
So how can the same people in 700sr buy new accounts and teleport to platinum like its ezland. Something is horribly wrong in that case.
If ya go 5-5 in fresh account placements, you get placed around plat. Very possible to get lucky for a few games and get carried to a few dubs.
Really? You’re getting all that at 700 SR? Thats real odd lmao. Im GM and that stuff barely comes into play. My aim is dogsh*t, i rarely combo ults, use cheese comps, study OWL, or do “peripheral rotations”
EDIT: I now see that you’re an actual >800 SR player. Would you like me to coach you and help you improve? My discord is Nickdarick#7021 if you’re interested.