Top500 player in bronze 5 “to prove a point"

General Discussion
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Everything written down here is my opinion, feel free to disagree.

I saw a video from 2 weeks ago, a player nicknamed Awkward released a video about playing in Bronze 5. Just so you understand, the power difference between a bronze 5 player and top500 player is the same as if Cortez invaded Aztecs with helicopters.

The main premise of the video is “to prove that you are stuck in bronze cuz of your low skill.” Then he claims that “he is not against bronze 5, he is against those who blame teammates.” And he proceeds to ruin games for people who did not claim that, and for people who entered a ranked match expecting an average game session. I would understand if he made a separate lobby with 5 bronzes who claim that they are stuck in elo hell, but no, he joins an average lobby with people who didn’t do anything wrong, mocks them, makes fun of them, cuz he wants to “educate them.”

Here some potential excuses I saw in the comments and from Awkward himself.

  1. “I want to prove a point.” Dude, you don’t have to. Bronze 5 is bronze 5. No need to go and make fun of them, mock bronze players while being top 500. We know it, they also know it. They didn’t ask you to go there and prove a point. Make a separate lobby.

  2. “He was handicapping himself” He played entire matches without any handicapping, then he proceeds to promise some handicapping, like rarely shooting with lucio (every 10 seconds) and does not follow his own limit. Promises to not shoot with ball, then shoots all the time. Promises to not shoot with hog, starts shooting all the time. That’s just ridiculous. It’s like the same helicopter promises Aztecs to not bomb them, and then proceeds to use the machine gun.

  3. “Bronze players need to know their place.” Dude, they know it. You are not batman. Smurfing is already a problem, and you are encouraging it. And btw, where did top500 player get bronze 5 account? Blatant account sharing or buying maybe. Let’s break the game rules cuz we want to make fun of bronze 5 players, cuz we can.

If anyone claims that they are not in the correct rank, it’s not your “job” to go there and start “proving points.” Who do you think you are lol. It’s such a huge ego thing, like he goes and makes fun of these bronze players, like dude, you are top500, and they are probably playing with 30 fps with vertical sync on on a 2011 laptop. Like cmon. Make a separate lobby and prove your points.

Overall, I find “unranked to gm educational” very cringe. Because you are top500, we know it, you will get there no matter what. If you want to educate people, let them play and you can watch the video and coach them, cuz nobody has your overwatchology degree or your mechanics. People don’t have your mechanics and your 360herz monitor and $700 mouse.

All these excuses for this top level smurfing is super cringe, again, in my personal opinion.

P.S want to add an edit here, I am criticizing his actions, not attacking him directly. He may be a great person, IDK. This thread criticizes his specific actions in 1 video, nothing more.

P.S.S to all the questions about “what do you suggest doing then,” here’s my thought on it How to "unranked to gm" without smurfing

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Do not take Overwatch content creators seriously, fam. Most of them would never make it in another game where you have to actually be entertaining to get people to watch your videos. Almost all the good ones, such as my boi Redshell, already left.

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My wife is a bronze-silver player, and cuz I am gm on the tank, I coach her, sitting next to her sometimes. And I see smurfs on daily basis, from diamonds, plats, masters, I can see they are smurfs, it’s very easy to notice. And it’s so annoying.

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I totally understand, I wish those people would just stay in their lane. It is almost as if they get off on ruining the experience for others and it is just lame. I have been to lower ranks because my Genji was so bad that it genuinely deranked me toward silver as a, at the time, usually diamond player. I felt like an absolute monster in those lobbies. It was not fair, it was not fun, and I felt bad about making the game worse for everyone.

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honestly giving the situation, I’d blame my teammates

you wanna know why?

if we use his logic,

I could easily blame my team for the very clear fact that,

neither of them were a T500 smurf

and against a T500 smurf, that is a reasonable thing to blame your teammates for at least one of them not playing like T500 smurf…

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no, it’s promising not to use bomb on them, then proceeding to use the bomb

this guy is like:

bronze: is bronze
he: “HOW DARE YOU, YOU SHOULD BE BRONZE”
bronze: visible confusion

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The only thing I enjoy about these type of runs is showing to people that is possible to get out if you truly are the best player in the lobby. The larger your delta from those around you, the easier it will be.

These exist on support, dps, tank and pretty much every character.

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Yeh I dunno, blizzard continually disappoint me on this front. That’s pretty much all I have :man_shrugging:t2:

That’s a… controversial figure… :eyes:

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His content is not for everyone, but you cannot deny that he can actually play other games while maintaining viewership. XQC was basically the only other one that I can think of.

If Flats tried to stream anything but Overwatch, well… Let’s just say there is a reason he keeps making content for Overwatch when he was supposed to quit.

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I’m kinda conflicted on Awkward because he’s undoubtedly a very skilled player who has good advice, but sometimes the things he says read as very holier-than-thou, which is a trait that gets under my skin like hell.

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If Blizzard doesn’t do anything against it, it’s not wrong for him to do.

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Blizzard is not a moral authority. If people want to criticize him for being childish, people are going to do that. These streamers just do it for the views. They know people love watching them stomp, and that people who dislike smurfs hate watch it.

That being said, if we just focus on your logic, you genuinely believe that I can go online, throw games and be toxic to everyone and it is “fine” as long as Blizzard does not address me? Nah. Nobody in their right mind would want to play with me and Blizzard has nothing to do with it. It is still “wrong.”

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So my question is what is his MMR compared to everyone else if hes the best player in the lobby compared to everyone else? Is it far higher than the MMR he was actually assigned. Also hes trying to throw off the MMR by intentionally keeping his stats deflated. If he didnt, his MMR would be skyrocketed and be be a Bronze player in a match of other Top 500s.

Trying to prove the system works as intended while gaming the system yourself doesnt prove anything other then the matchmaker isnt working because their is a top 500 player in a bronze lobby

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Is this a joke lol? Or desperation from a creator who has nothing else to put on youtube?

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Sounds like a bit of a loser.

Whose job exactly would it be to do this? There isn’t some committee at Blizzard that watches content creators, looking for ban-worthy behavior. That means an individual employee, who happened to see the video themselves, needs to decide to take on the extra work of actioning an account that wasn’t reported.

Realistically, this isn’t something people do. They complete the tasks assigned to them and move on with their lives.

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Oh I was more thinking of the underage allegations :sweat_smile: unless that all bs of course…

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kinda understandable, when everyone keeps blaming their teammates instead of themselves.

Given many of bronze players keep saying its not their fault its their team holding them back and the mm being rigged against them forcing a 50% winrate while others just fly past that rank with 100% winrate easily.

i love the part where he isn’t even shooting but simply sheer positioning wins him games.

People calling the new hero broken op while not even checking that they walk alone in the open half hp…

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I believe a lot of the self responsibility sorts tend to blame their teammates as well. It is not exactly exclusive to bronze and nor is it objectively wrong at any given rank. Sometimes a team is underperforming relative to an individual. It has been known to happen even at an OWL level…

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I finished my OW1 on around 3800 mmr, but before I was 4000 mmr+ player. I came back to OW2, and the game puts me in diamond lobbies, I win them all, get placed bronze 3 (don’t ask me, ask blizzard). I ranked up from bronze to diamond in a half week at start, and I had to stomp these poor sivlers who didn’t do anything wrong. The power difference is massive, even for such a retired player like myself.

But there’s an issue that sometimes we can’t be sure if the guy is smurfing, or the ranked game is stretched and a masters guy is playing in a plat lobby against his will.

including that one

:rofl:

I very much agree with you, and it would be possible to prove in separate lobbies, like Jay3 does.

That’s a fair point, but we can still call him out.

Seems like they run out of content ideas.

Let’s say, the method is wrong. Could have been done in a separate lobby.

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How I feel: If a top 500 finds a way to play in Bronze they should be banned.
If a streamer does it they should be banned on all there accounts.

Blizzard shouldn’t allow people to profit off breaking ToS. It hurts the IP and the game.

I also feel “unranked to GM” should be disallowed. I understand alt accounts are allowed but using an alt account to make content should be against ToS simple as.

Blizzard should release a statement on what alt accounts should and shouldn’t be used for.
To me, it’s fine to have an alt account for learning a new hero, for playing in a group, for playing solo. Maybe an account for playing less seriously like a warm-up account or a drunk account.

Now sure a lot of this isn’t really policeable but at least a statement would make things more clear for players.

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