So there is this theory that ELO hell is nonexistent, however people fail to understand that ELO hell exists, not simply because of losing streaks, smurfs, or the other sundry of complaints, it exists because of the limited amount of SR rewarded for matches at lower ranks. That’s the real crux of why there is a lower level ELO hell compared to higher levels. It takes longer to climb these ranks compared to other ranks. In fact you need to win more games to climb from 1000 SR to Silver than you do from the bottom of Silver to Gold. This is the reason why ELO hell exists, because climbing takes so much longer. The fact is, even with outstanding performances, you will still climb more slowly at lower ELO’s than higher ones. This doesn’t even take into account the time it takes to play these matches and climb, compared to playing matches at later SRs. ELO hell exists, but not for the reasons people normally attribute to it. Can you climb, yes. But it’s going to be struggle and you have to feel it’s worth it. Having played in Gold and Bronze, I would much rather be in Bronze. And no I don’t smurf, I give it my all, it’s just much more enjoyable, less pressure, and more rewarding when you see a contribution made in bronze, compared to Gold where the skill plateau is pretty universal.
Your really taking about grinding.
If you don’t have the skill to climb its a mute point, you will likely settle down to a 50% win rate where your wins and losses have roughly the same SR and over the long haul you will sit where you are.
If you assume a GM plays at all levels they will have a higher win rate the lower the SR game they play in, hence they will actually climb faster in low SR games than in high SR games.
You MIGHT have a point with respect to performance based SR in low ELO games, however this isn’t an intrinsic attribute of the game, but rather its an attribute of the player, if a player has lower skill its unlikely they will demonstrate “godlike” skill in their game - so they will likely only get normal SR. The fact there are smurfs in lower games will mess up the averages giving credence to your point, however I will repeat this has nothing to do with the tier and 100% to do with player skill.
TLDR;
SR gains in low ELO’s have nothing to do with ELO hell.
That said, I would accept a different argument that in low SR games, in order to climb you have to be able to exploit the potatoes on both teams in order to be able to climb - this is not a useful skill at higher ELO - at least the exploits that work at the lower levels don’t work as you climb - so having to learn these pointless skills is its own form of ELO hell.
There is no elo hell, this is proven by the multiple people that have climbed out of bronze-gold elos and are now diamond-GM. The people who say elo hell exists are the people who do not make a conscious effort to improve their gameplay over all and thus don’t rank up.
Low gold is where most of the playerbase resides so therefore it will have the most of each variable, throwers, smurfs etc. But half of them are on the other team as well as on your team, so smurfs will carry you and throwers will also throw your enemy teams games. Blizzard doesn’t purposely give you pre determined throwers.
Thats another thing, a lot of people don’t understand that there actually aren’t that many throwers, but if you’re toxic and/or salty towards people (especially in lower ranks) they can sometimes be immature enough to just throw cause you were mean to them. Whether or not they were doing a crap job on their hero, being toxic towards team mates will not help.
grinding is bad and tim e consuming
I am not sure what your point is here, Grinding is in-effective as a stratergy to climb, you will only climb by getting better.
You will probably get better by grinding, but there are probably much quicker ways to get better than grinding (watching Jayne’s video’s for example).
PS Timmy, Timmy, Timmy… Timmy
So I’m a Symettra main in Bronze with a 60+ percent win average and if you check my overbuff stats for Sym, I probably rank at gold or higher for skill level, it is still hard for me to carry a game in bronze, not to mention incredibly tedious to play the same character every single match. Many of my losses also come from switching due to peer pressure from other teammates who fail to understand exactly what Symmetra is now and still see her as a defensive hero. “What are you playing Sym on attack for! I’m reporting you for throwing!” So, rather than be reported, I switch to something else. Maybe ELO hell is playing with people who fail to understand the mechanics of the game?
That is very dependent on the player. Firstly, the gradient of the SR cumulative distribution curve is shallower in Bronze than in Gold, so for the same number of players you overtake you actually gain a lot more SR. Secondly, PBSR should mean you gain more in Bronze than you would in Silver. I gurantee it would take me fewer games to climb from 1000 to 1500 than from 1500 to 2000. If this isn’t the case for you it’s because PBSR is working against you and you probably don’t actually deserve to climb.
You could say the lesson learned today is that there’s a little ELO Hell in all of us.
The only ELO hell that exists is the mindset.
ELO hell caused by the system does not exist.
The thing with people that are stuck at any ELO is that they think they are better than everyone at their rank, while in reality they aren’t. Because of this, instead of looking at what they can do better and improve on, they start focussing on what their team did wrong, how many leavers they had, trolls, throwers etc.
But when you actually look at them play, they make the same mistakes as the people at their rank.
ELO hell is a mindset. A mindset where people think they are better than they really are, and then start blaming everything but themselves.
It’s MOOT not MUTE.
I don’t play grammar police often, but when I do, I make sure it’s not a MOOT point.
That’s because the difference from bronze to plat isn’t that much compared to the other elo’s above.
A gold player won’t steamroll bronze people in this game. He will of course have a better winrate and stats, but that does not mean he steamrolls or carries alone. He will still lose a bunch of games.
That said, you hardly have gold stats, you have a lot of sentry kills that’s all. But that just shows us that the reason of your high winrate is the enemy teams in bronze failing to deal with Symmetra’s turrets. Then you have 30% winrate on other heroes, and way less play time.
If you still believe you are not climbing because of elo hell, I’m sorry to tell you, but you are 100% deluded, you have an average of 15% weapon accuracy on every hero, even if you had the game sense down, you wouldn’t climb just because of mechanical skill. You can test this, just spam your symmetra, ignore people that tell you to switch. You will climb, until you start facing opponent’s that can deal with the turrets, maybe then you’ll realize that you’re not as good as you think. And you can’t really switch to other dps, because let’s be real here, your accuracy sucks.
No, ELO hell being nonexistent is not “a theory”. It’s actually called the “default position”.
You don’t prove things don’t exist.
I can’t prove Santa isn’t real.
I can’t prove God isn’t real.
That doesn’t mean there is a good reason to believe either.
So, the default position on those claims are: Santa and God are nonexistent. I don’t have to prove this, it’s the default position.
The burden of proof is on the claimant. You claim that ELO hell exist. You have the burden of proof. Let us see if you meet it.
Ranks aren’t there for you to “climb” they are there to place you and encourage you to do better if you can. So, if you’re a gold, then you’re gold. If you’re winning a lot against golds and get into platinum, you’re probably still gold and will fall back into gold. (this happened to me many times before I stayed out of gold league)
I’d also like to see some evidence for this claim.
Can you back up this claim with anything except baseless assertions?
That’s the nature of a ranked, competitive, online video game.
So, what you’re saying is that you’re between Bronze and Gold.
Of course you prefer Bronze because you’re likely a lot better than the Bronze players. Of course you have more impact because the players there are worse.
You said it yourself: “The skill plateau is pretty universal”
Are you exempt from this “universal” plateau?
Gold league is (I think) near the top of the bellcurve of player-rank distribution. It is literally probable that you are simply a gold player. ELO hell isn’t keeping you from ranking up.
If you were truly a diamond player, let’s say, then you would easily carry yourself out of gold. Especially if you were DPS.
I don’t get how people think “ELO hell” exists when good players do bronze to gm streams all the time. Wouldn’t they get stuck in ELO hell too? Maybe they do, but I haven’t heard anything about it if that’s the case.
the game can force a loss no matter how good you are , thats MMR for you
in order for you the play with a top 500 on the oposite team his team needs to be crap , say your MMR wonky for your rank , thats when elo hell happens
You will get the where you belong eventually. That isn’t really what elo hell is to me. Elo hell to me is the what seems to be a never ending grind to get to where you belong. I started placing this account and I am curious to see where I get placed and how the games pan out.
You shouldn’t spend a ridiculous amount of time at say 1800 SR when you can perform just fine at say 2200 and have better teammates with something that resembles more like overwatch.
It shouldnt take 1-200 games of grinding to get to your true rank. It’s pointless and a waste of time.
You’re all partially right. Elo hell doesn’t exist in the strict sense of the definition, but it is a grind to rank up. The grind is what demoralizes so many people. It’s a grind in every rank to be sure, but playing below your true skill rank and having to hard carry games non-stop can burn people out, so they feel helpless in many ways.
So really, both sides of the argument are correct. The grind sucks, but it’s also proven that a person can rank up if they are good enough to do so. I don’t know what the solution is though besides just suck it up and keep playing. I understand why people become so demoralized about it, especially when games last so long and some are flat out unwinnable regardless of your personal performance. It can feel like a huge waste of time with little benefit, and playing OW non-stop to rank up is a good way to burn yourself out and hate playing it. Very few even have that kind of free time to dedicate to the game, and until they get to their true skill rank, games aren’t as fun as they would be otherwise. I understand the dilemma, even if many refuse to acknowledge it.
Lost everything I typed for some reason, so the short of it is, mechanical skill isn’t dramatically better between bronze and gold, however game sense is. Even at Silver people tend to have a better idea of what they need to do. Playing Gold is hectic and fast paced and really keeps you on your toes because you have to react faster. Bronze is slower, however people make a lot of mistakes, some of them big, and it may take two or three times in a match before they catch on to something like Reaper getting in and ulting… In Gold Reaper drops inside and more times than not he’s dead before he finishes his ult. The real issue in leveling out of Bronze is being able to get a team to think beyond their limited concept and trust that when you say “stay on the point” or “don’t chase him, he’s running back to his friends” that people will listen, however sadly most just want to find a reason to be salty or complain.
Luck is more required than anything,. Games rigged… System is broken and has been since this whole thing started… There is a video of a Blizzard conference that is both rare and really hard to find where the employees talk about this ranking system and how they can tweak it to make people win or lose at will, screw with latency and many other options. This system was never meant to be fair and it’s far from fair in any way… This system is designed to keep you playing loss after loss always chasing that carrot dangling on the string in front of you… Welcome to OW’s Competitive Mode… aka… The Depressing Casino…
The only other viable solution would be to not allow humans to play the game, because everything you describe here has everything to do with the human condition.
Yep, like the time we were attacking Hanamura, lost a team fight and I kept on mindlessly wading in 1v6, feeding enemy ults, ignoring 40+ calls to group up and losing us the game. Oh no, wait, that wasn’t me. That was my thick as two short planks team mates.
Or the time I decided to derank 700 SR in 3 days, sit in spawn just moving enough to avoid afk to ensure that my team loses. I knew that I could get away with it as reporting does nothing. Oh no wait, that wasn’t me. That was some scumbag on my team.
The time I was blaring pop music down comms and when a team mate complained screamed “Shut up mother f****r!”. Oh no wait, that was a scumbag on my team.
The time I was in an LFG group and just flamed everybody all game, and called a team mate a “n****r” when he suggested some strategy. Oh no, wait, that wasn’t me. That was some scumbag on my team.
Like the time we’re having a slightly hard time and lose the first team fight, so i just leave. Oh no, wait, that was some scumbag on my team.
Had 5 games lost this season alone due to leavers and throwers. Not won any games yet for similar reasons. Not counting games lost via morons feeding as I think some equally moronic enemies in some of my wins. My one foray into LFG was super toxic and a waste of time.
I have issues with accuracy and my reflexes, but I’m better than all of those numb nuts for sure.
I eagerly await guilds and clans as comp does rather feel like a roll of the dice at the moment.
I know which video you’re referring to, and your description of it is wildly inaccurate. So, speaking of the human condition I had just posted on, immaturity is also a part of it.