Top 500 Thoughts on Low Ranks General Uncooperativeness

I’ve noticed that low ranks are very uncooperative. In high rank you can call a strategy or ask for a mercy pocket to counter an enemy dps being pocketed and people will generally cooperate and give it a try.

I find it hilarious how low ranks get so defensive about playing “what they want” and instantly get angry when asked to do basic tasks conducive to an effective strategy.

I believe that 90% of what separates a low rank player from a high rank is the attitude, pride in not contributing, refusal to cooperate.

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Correct. Most players are there to grind the Battle Pass, not win.

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Reminds me of retired people at the casino.

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Partially disagree. What separates a low rank player from a high rank one is their ego. While it might seem to some like a lot of high ranked players have egos; it’s actually just confidence. A low ranked player will sit and make any excuse to get away from the fact that they aren’t good. A high rank player will make a mistake, acknowledge it, and try to never do it again.

That difference in mindset is why low ranks don’t swap. They see that as a failure, but they can’t acknowledge themself failing.

Inb4 anyone says it, YES this is a generalization. Not every low ranked player is like this. However, the vast majority are, and that’s why they’re stuck.

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This is a very good point, it seems like they refuse to learn anything, their minds produce no reaction to basic visual stimulus.

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na all of them are like that, its a basic function of being low ranked.

a person that can properly accept fault will eventually improve, low rank players will sometimes accept fault but its always half way “i could of done better BUUUUT” kinda thing.

this is pretty accurate. no matter what happens is never their fault, its always someone elses.

the other angle as to why ow elo players dont swap is because of people like awkward, hes right one tricking is the best way to improve but if you mix a person that cant accept they are making mistakes with them being told to keep playing a hero even into counters, and you get a not so fun mix of toxicity and a useless teammate.

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Many players have a small hero pool. How they express that varies from player to player.

Positioning, gamesense and consistency is mainly what separates the bulk from the high ranks.

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I am not sure about the excuses thing, pretty universal in my experience. No one blames others, the game, lag etc more than people who consider themself “the best”. After all they can’t lose right? It has to be that Widow one trick on the enemy team cheating or something.

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Tbf,Low elo players can just not play a lot of what you would ask for.

What use is it if the hardstuck Junkrat who never plays hitscan suddenly takes soldier because the opponents have pharah.

Low elo often concentrates on a maximum of two heroes and tries to learn as much as possible with these heroes. If low elo players had an answer for every situation, it wouldn’t be low elo.

I disagree with this honestly. The most obvious difference between rank has always been raw mechanics, speed, reaction, following by fundamental understanding of the game.

No one in GM is slow. No one in Bronze is fast. And its INCREDIBLY noticeable. Even when I play support in plat (I’m Masters DPS) the different in speed and reaction is incredible. And I’ve noticed this over the years from everything I’ve seen.

I think the refusal to cooperate is just a symptom of bad players, not so much that its a requirement. It helps, certainly, but its not the definer as there are extremely uncooperative players at high ranks.

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There is also a lot of people in low Elo who love to talk like they know every thing. People get used to idiots demanding every thing of others, often giving bad advice or what ever. You can’t expect 5 randoms to work together like an OWL team that practices together for months.

Plus unless the low ELO people some how know your “real rank” they have zero reason to trust you. But honestly I think it’s just mostly because they can’t hear you. 99% of my matches there isn’t a single person in voice chat, and if you try to type out anything complex in text, well your basically throwing by spending so much time typing imo.

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Lot of the best are always lone wolves, a lot of the time because they are streaming and talking to their chat and/or hiding their real identity so they don’t talk in game.

It’s because we don’t care that much about video games buddy, lol (well I can only speak for myself). Has nothing to do with my “pride in not contributing though.” I’m just trying to have fun when I am playing a video game.

If your fun is “pocket me so we definitely win,” and mine is, “I think we can probably win without me pocketing you,” well, sorry. Go play high rank.

wtf are you even making this thread for? Madbecausenotpocketed? rofl

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Well it’s not really that surprising. at the highest level if a dps player ask for a mercy, you can expect stuff to die on a regular basis because they wouldn’t be at that rank if they couldn’t.

If you are a silver support player and you get some random silver dps writing in chat. “Just swap to mercy and we win” or whatever. Yeeeah, support player is going to doubt it because dps at that rank aren’t gonna be clicking heads reliably, unless smurfing.

That and low rank players might just not be as flexible in their hero pool, so just calling out “just swap x hero to x hero” isn’t viable if the player doesn’t feel confident on that hero.

Then of course that low rank players often don’t take competitive mode as seriously.

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Hard disagree. As a teacher, I’ve always seen Overwatch as a subject. In the same way that not everyone will get English, despite my best efforts, not everyone will get OW. People have different levels of aptitude for learning, and that changes based on the subject.

As a student, I was always very attentive and happy to be at school. I wanted to learn. And guess what? I still suck at math. I tried my absolute hardest, and never blamed anything else. I just wasn’t good enough at math to learn it well.

This is true, but improve does not mean rank up. The thing about OW is that catching mistakes isn’t always enough. You have to catch the right ones and you have to understand why they’re mistakes. This is like trying to learn a complex subject without a teacher. You might learn it, but you are much more likely to flop.

If someone is actively teaching you, then it’s a different story. Then you actually will find the right mistakes and be told why they’re mistakes. But someone that isn’t getting coached or watching educational content is essentially making guesses until something clicks, which absolutely could take years. Though if you view not seeking help as a form of ego/stubbornness, I can see where you’re coming from.

Definitely true. Awkward seems to give a lot of advice that lacks actual context. It’s one of the reasons I don’t really watch him for educational content. I prefer Spilo and A10 because they’ll give the context and explain why you need to have a good mindset. A10 in particular makes videos about this stuff, and they’re very useful for me, even now. Sometimes I’ll go back and rewatch them, just to make sure I’m applying everything I’ve learned.

Tbh, I find it to be the opposite. Most low ranked players try to play everyone and flop miserably because they’re not learning enough on a specific hero.

I’ve seen Siege Champs in low ranks. While you’re correct that no one is slow in GM, it’s also a threshold sort of thing. You can be fast and in Bronze if you have the awareness of a monkey.

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just keep in mind that not learning math is alot different then walking in a straight line infront of a widow and getting mad at your teammates for not killing her. (random example ive seen in match chat).

alot of the mistakes ppl make in overwatch ‘should’ be obvious, like stayin near cover, backing out when your team is down members or not walking infront of a scoped widow but they arnt.

because no matter how many times they die to that widow, they cant accept fault that THEY are why the widow got the kill on them.

i do agree some ppl might not blame others and they still dont climb, but these in my eyes are an exception to the rule. some people are just bottlenecked physically or mentally within certain things

in the really low ranks it actually does, the bar for plat is so low that if you arnt running in 1v5 and can deal some dmg you’ll eventually hit plat.

as someone who was stuck in silver years ago and had to reclimb back up twice at the start of ow2 (the game has a sick sense of humor) i can promise you it takes so little to actually climb that if they simply improved their aim or awareness…or positioning (any thing really) by 1% alot of em would climb.

i think its perfectly fine too want to figure things out on your own the issue is that most ppl arnt trying to figure it out.

the main 2 reason ppl end up not climbing is either ego or indifference (meaning they only play ranked to farm golden weapons).

with ego being the one you’ll notice the most because these ppl are the loud ones that yell at people over anything.

he actually doesnt most of the time, for instance he might say something like “i keep my team above critical and i deal dmg” when talking about playing support…but the average viewer hears “and i deal dmg” and nothing else. he even corrected people in twitter about that

his whole thing about not swapping isnt that you shouldnt have more heroes in your hero pool, its that counters arnt an excuse as to why someone isnt climbing. and that playing a hero in those situations is when you really improve

all of which i think we both would agree with.

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Ok, I have literally no arguments here. You’re right, slope has nothing on this.

I think they’re pretty obvious for the most part. The issue is that there are so many mistakes, and you have to catch the right ones. I think the Widow one, for example, is them assuming the Widow will miss. It’s an educated guess, given their rank, but a stupid risk. When you say it like this, it makes it seem like every mistake that is game changing is super obvious. But when we factor in things like risk, this gets finicky af. Risk is something that you have to take in this game, I’m sure we agree there. But you have to take the right ones, or you’ll probably feed. While a low rank is taking the risk that the Widow they can’t contest will miss them when they’re in los, a high rank is taking the risk that she’ll miss them when they’re Blinking around in her face and dealing a ton of damage. It’s still risky, but it’s a more calculated risk that makes sense to take.

Maybe I’m overthinking how much low ranks need to worry about the small stuff, but idk.

They are. I fully agree. Most low ranks have an ego and it isn’t close either.

I think low ranks need to improve more than you think. People in general do. Let’s say you’re Silver. Silver opponents, Silver teammates. What’s the lowest rank that can carry a Silver game? I don’t think that’s Gold; I’d say Plat. Meaning that the Silver needs to be two ranks in skill above where they are to climb fast. Which is hard to achieve when you’re constantly around mistakes being made and people being confidently wrong in chat (Ever had a bad player try to coach you when you were smurfing? I have lmao. "You should get off Tracer and go Junkrat to counter the Bastion":skull:)

If you’ve climbed up from Silver before, you definitely know more about this than me. These are just my opinions without any real proof other than playing down there while being much better. I never got stuck, because I treated this game like a college class and outright studied it for hundreds of hours when not playing.

I can agree with that

“SWAP OFF ANA YOU’RE DOING NOTHING” -5/15 Soldier to 20/1 Ana

That Ana wasn’t me either. She was just cracked out of her mind and getting all the kills. And she even had like 8k healing when the other Support had 10k. Crazy how loud these people will be when screaming at a better player.

Maybe with the damage/heal thing, sure. But I’ve seen his Tracer UR2GM. The context given is pretty much zero. He plays Tracer well, but doesn’t really explain what he’s doing further than “Off angle+constantly shoot,” which isn’t even really correct if we’re getting into actual detail.

On the other hand, A10 not only explains his reasoning for literally everything, he literally comes out and says first thing: Mechanics affect TTK. You can’t play the exact same as me unless you have good aim. You can do the right thing but you have to hit enough shots.

He then went into detail on how he aims, looking for movement patterns and the like on his opponents, engaging from the side so they can’t strafe immediately and aren’t aware of him, etc.

Awkward, from what I’ve seen, gives very basic ideas that are easy to take the wrong way. I don’t know if he always does this, but his entire Tracer and Echo UR2GMS were like that.

Like, I agree with his overall points that you brought up. But I still think that we understand the basic things he says more than most because we were both already applying them or at least had the idea in our heads. If he says a basic sentence like “Off angle and constantly shoot,” we’re gonna get much more out of that than a low rank. A low rank thinks “Off angle and shoot at whatever.” A high rank thinks “Split attention by off angling and draw cooldowns and resources by constantly shooting the weakest target.” We get more out of what he says.

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for us (now) but i can say from experience if you dont already know it, it would make no sense to you for these ideas to even come across your mind.

the low elo mentally is that, you should have a barrier to block dmg, any dmg you take should be instantly healed by your seemingly smurfing supports and if they have something like widow, pharah or whatever: its everyone elses job but yours to deal with it.

its not even that they think the widow will miss, its that they genuinely dont think they should have to worry about it. its someone elses problem in their mind so if they die to widow “teams throwing GG” in chat instantly.

when i was climbing back up at the start of ow2 the FIRST match put me on circuit royal (as i said before the game has a sick sense of humor), you probably see where this is going, but i came back with the expectation to play my old mains of widow, cass and a lil ashe and so im on this sniper map in a silver lobby about 3-4 weeks into season 1 (after weeks aim training in qp) and the enemy team is raging in chat understandably because a moderately washed masters widow is dominating a silver lobby.

the first few messages were “gg dps cant kill the widow”, thats why i use the example. that is a real person i played into over a year ago. they were walking in a straight line (or standing still) a mile from cover and id quickly tap em and they’d rage in chat.

this isnt a one and done thing, ive played games recently when practicing heroes where something like a lucio or moira would complain the enemy is running pharah mercy and we dont have a hitscan meanwhile they dont want to swap to bap or illari.

this is to say nothing of the “im tryin to get coached not because i wanna improve but because i want validation that im already good enough” type of people.

id say yes, climbing into plat is literally just landing a few shots and not dying all the time.

they arnt going to be thinkin about the risk/reward of peaking a widow, because they dont need too. more often then not the widow is goin to be useless so they dont think at all, they auto pilot everything. (and get mad when it isnt working)

this is why i can farm plat so easily with torb. ill spam an angle for 20 seconds killing 3 ppl, and a 4th person will walk in and die after having seen the first 3 fall over. because they are autopiloting. for them this usually works… right up until they meet someone that knows how to abuse it (like me)

(this part was goin to be alot longer but ive cut it down for your sanity, hopefully it still flows)

its very easy to hit diamond (if you arnt one tricking a difficult hero).

i can hit diamond on torb with literally no effort, i cant aim his projectile and im not familiar with his kit but i have really good crosshair placement and positioning (and ult timing) so i get so much value for nothing.

what it takes to hit diamond, generally speaking, is not feeding and being able to land some shots. weather that means you have great hitscan aim or can do a line up on a projectile hero and have ppl walk into your shots, its fine and will work.

the reason so many fail at this is because things like “not dying” or “get kills” are really hard when you have no understanding of the fundamentals, which is what all low rank players skip over.

they’ll memorize a counter chart or learn weird tech for a hero but they wont train those fundamentals and so they fall short.

the moment someone starts to train those they climb to diamond pretty quickly.

the reason this matters is because, if its this easy to hit diamond…what does it really take to hit gold or plat? how much “skill” does a metal rank player really have, the gap between a gold and plat feels big to the gold or plat but to masters+ player they are the same rank (metal rank to be exact).

kephrii once made a joke (many years ago) when making an alt he saw the plat icon and said “oh im in a match with silvers”, someone corrected him that it was plat and he said “plat, silver? all the same to me”

(this is why its so easy to say that it takes so little to climb through the metal ranks)

ye i also used to coach these ppl back in the day (USED TOO, never again lol), and its fairly common for people to overestimate what metal rank players are doin match to match.

the main difference in my experience between the metal ranks are mechanical skill and awareness. not much else

this is why its always been a lil sad that in ow1 (according to officially released statistics in like 2019) only 14% of players ever hit diamond or higher. meaning 86% of all players were in plat and lower

when its this easy to hit diamond, it really makes you wonder why they are stuck.

which brings us back to: EGO (and poor mental)

the reason you never got stuck isnt even because you studied its because you had those fundamentals

maybe you learned it from a video or something but most of what needed to be learned to hit diamond isnt…special.

the fundamentals to be clear are: mechanical skill (pew pew and movement), awareness, positioning and crosshair placement. (i might be missing one, its 3am my brain fried)

you could know nothing of the game, but have these universal fps fundamentals down to a decent level and hit at minimum diamond on a hitscan hero (any role).

i wouldnt say its not correct, its more a different playstyle that is really hard to make work when your not someone like him. but ye he doesnt explain dps much more then “off angle and deal dmg to get kills”.

his echo one was kinda helpful, but i learned literally nothing and am still terrible at echo.

his support ones were decent, it boiled down to “dmg dmg dmg” and “if they go forward you go back, if they go back you go forward”.

i actually did learn alot from his ana and zen ones because it taught me to basically play support like a dps that can heal.

favorite line “best part about bap is he can also heal”

i think some of it is because he is teaching metal rank players so he dumbs it down to be as simple as possible.

because he does coach, his unranked to gm’s are basically an advertisement for his coaching from what i know atleast. (he’s even coached gm/ top 500 streamers)

a10’s tracer one is really useful for ppl that know how to track resources, but for a gold tracer they are struggling to keep track of whose alive on either team let alone what hero is low on resources.

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Mercy mains with level 5 endorsement when you ask them to swap :

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?! MERCY IS FINE YOU ****!”