If that is truly the case, then I do recommend taking an extended break. I myself went a whole 3-month Competitive season (back when they ran 3 month seasons) doing only the placement matches. I played Quick Play or Arcade modes a bit, but most of my free time in that time went into… Minecraft… of all games. And I had fun for a while. I have had several other times taking extended breaks from Overwatch.
Yeah it would be nice if it didn’t take days, weeks, and months of grinding, but truth be told there are signicant skill gaps in every rank. I myself don’t think will ever reach Masters rank in any role, but I still have fun playing.
I don’t want to tell you to stop playing if you are not having fun, but it still comes down to the choices that you make for yourself that determines of your career of any game you play.
The general rule is that groups of equal size are paired against each other. 6-stacks versus 6-stacks, 2 to 2, etc. Grouping up does give advantages such have having consistently reliable teammates, but that is also it’s biggest drawback because most likely the enemy team will be the same so it makes the game far more competitive and difficult.
truth be told, I sat in plat for a long time… my friend did as well, but he moved up to diamond briefly one season… then the next season started… we dropped to gold… the next season, we both dropped to silver… and stayed there for four seasons… we are just now getting to low gold, but we miss the games in plat and (for him) diamond… those felt like a different caliber of people who were actually making me happy at how they were playing. the games felt more comfortable… i actually began learning things… right now, we feel like we are back to where we were before we ever climbed… years ago… not learning anything. I’ve taken many many extended breaks, but now I just log on briefly to either play whilst drunk in order to enjoy it, or for the few moments of fun I can have if I really don’t know what to do. I just know for the past week, we’ve played comp, and I just felt like now was the time for me to make a video and just raise my voice to say “hey, I think we should tackle our ranking problems differently at blizzard, because there is a real problem here in ranking” I’ve got ideas, and I don’t want to list them, because we all have ideas, but blizzard, I’m sure are well-capable at coming up with new and unorthodox ways to rank players so long as the developing leaders get the teams focused on improving this aspect of the game play. We all feel this frustration.
You heard wrong… if you group up with 1 other person, normally the game gives you 4 braindead teammates that you have to HARD carry if you want to win.
I have several games worth of experience queuing with my brother who is a high plat level tank, while im a diamond dps. We played with our alts that were both in gold (dont ask why ) and lost most of our games, even the ones we won were ridiculously hard. One game, i got potg on koth where i killed 4 (including both healers) enemies and brought the other 2 enemies to low hp before dying. While watching the play, my groupmate said “i dont think we even capped the point after that play, did we?”. Funnily enough, no, we didnt, no idea how, but our teammates were just that bad. We were basically playing 2v6 every game. Keep in mind, this is when we were playing way below our solo queue ranks.
Also played some games with a groupmate who was a master level tank that had fallen to high plat (he has since gotten back to master) on my low plat alt. Once again, game gives us teammates that were basically NA the whole game, giving us seriously tough games that we mostly lost, despite once again being way below our solo queue elo. My groupmate kept saying over mic “why are we the only ones on the team doing anything?” In a tone of bewilderment (we were in group chat as there is normally no need to interact with randos in this game.
Admittedly these anecdotes are from about half a year ago (i have since sworn off grouping up with other players in competitive), but i doubt much has changed in this regard
Pardon me for tangenting here, but I would assume that u agree that this statement being true means the rank system is barely accurate since the possible deviation is 2 ranks?
Blizzard is working on ways to improve Competitive. In fact something supposably “big” is coming next week. See this post from Game Director Jeff Kaplan for details:
Yes and no. Technically you climb if you are just a pinch better than the average player of your rank, but how much better determines how fast you climb. Remember Overwatch (and ALL team based online games) is going to have one-sided matches where you instantly win or instantly lose (or at least feels like it), but there will be a percentage of your games that are truly competitive and those are the ones where it is important to win.
I thought about this part before, in this case, do u agree that the implement of 2-2-2 inhibited the extent of what a single player can and cannot affect, and therefore decreased the speed of a player climbing the ranks? Since now they have to grind more for the team member variance.
Yes, I would agree, but that is why our skill ratings are separated from each other with the introduction of role queue. It is more difficult to have an impact in roles like Tank and Support, but it is still possible to some extent. For example, I mentioned I am a Silver Tank. Well when Role Queue first started I dropped to high bronze in that role, but I am slowly climbing out because I am looking for impactful ways to deal more damage and work to open up space for my teammates to do their roles appropriately. Its tough and as I mentioned, I think I have really bad positioning as a tank player in many of my matches. So I think there is windows of opportunity to improve my game and start to climb faster. This of course is only my own perception.
This is definitely underrated advice. I don’t believe in “elo hell”, but I do believe that performing at any given rank and climbing out of any given rank, are two very different tasks.
I’ve seen it with a lot of my friends. They perform just fine against higher rated opponents, but they struggle and get stuck in games against lower ranked players. They just aren’t the “carry” type of person. They generally know the motions, what to do, where to be, but they don’t know the clutch things like when to flank and go for solo kills and whatnot.
Climbing is definitely a lot harder than maintaining.
It really depends how you look at what an accurate reflection of your skill is. To a lot of people, the competitive ladder shouldn’t even be considered “Overwatch” because it incentivizes things that cause you to lose games in truly competitive environments like scrims. The number on your profile is a reflection of how well you can overcome problems that are exclusive to ranked matchmaking. Examples:
Bad chemistry with teammates
Smurfs, Hackers
Not being the “playmaker”
Incompatible hero pools
Uncooperative teammates/trolls
People who can overcome those issues by being largely independant from their team, e.g. a good constant between matches, they tend to climb faster and have more consistent ratings (if they can do it consistently, at least).
However that’s not a reflection of how good of a player they are. Most pro players if you ask them will tell you that your SR means almost nothing when it comes to playing in a “real” game of overwatch, like in a scrim or a tournament. All of what are “secondary” skills on ladder like communication, teamwork, synergy, group rotations and team rollouts, that stuff becomes the primary skillset. Your ability to get picks and beat someone in a 1v1 tend to matter less. Those skills are still important, but you’ll lose to a team with better coordination almost every time.
So if you’re not that type of consistent solocarry person and you find you’re very regularly being “sabotaged” by bad teammates or other things outside of your control, it’s probably better to look at your competitive SR as a range. For example, you’re a 3500sr player give or take 300sr, not a 3200 player or a 3800 player.
A lot of people tend to fixate on that higher amount and then it feels really bad when they end up on the lower end of their range. They think “ this, I’m a 3800 player, why am I losing at 3200!?!?!?”
It’s all important but it’s not mandatory. There are quite a few players who’ve gotten to GM without being in comms or without coordinating with their team. Chro is a good example of it. Dude was never in voice and consistently top 500 on junkrat. That wouldn’t fly in a coordinated game.
On the first point I’m not sure if your team agreed in VC to get the zarya/bap left behind, yea they abandoned you but at the same time your team was getting an easy 5v2 to get their zarya and bap which wasn’t the worst trade. Your mercy friend should have stuck with the team and should have been more aware of where your team was. She then started to hop around infront of the choke by herself while the moira was ulting her and the rein was coming at her. You and your mercy killed yourselves and lost that point.
Your mei did that wall to stop the moira ult from damaging everyone. You might say well it still stopped everyone from getting on point, okay but they were not even at a 1st tick yet, the trade off is you give them that first tick and maybe you have 1 less person that didn’t die and you would have a numbers advantage.
As far as the genji ult, you all still would have funneled into that choke then with the moira ult hitting you all AND the genji blade at the same time if the mei didn’t wall. Technically it was better with the mei wall so that 4-5 of you can face one genji and get what should have been a free kill (he wasn’t even nano’d) but your team was just bad in general. The mei shouldn’t have been letting the moira ult on her through that small LOS with the wall up and should have healed up, that’s what allowed the genji to 1 shot the mei.
The mei also should have immediately turned around after that genji dash before he ulted to start freezing him, that would have screwed his entire ult.
Your Orisa player had terrible reaction getting pinned by that rein to not immune herself too that was a big whiff.
Your mercy just started hopping around in front of the choke with the ulting moira like a derp.
Yeah, 2bh I would presume their not being in comms would hold them back from being even better, but what could that be when their being held back is t500 lul.
Then they need to fix that. Maybe use heavier PBSR so players who are at least TRYING aren’t constantly losing SR due to throwers, leavers, opposing smurfs, etc.
I feel like when i play, i have very little control over my rank. All day today i’ve tried to remain positive and do my best. And i often do very well, personally. But it’s a team game, and my team keeps throwing. Leaving. It’s getting ridiculous.
If, in order to simply reach the next rank, you have to play TWO RANKS BETTER. Then something is very wrong with the system, and it’s no wonder players are frustrated.
I think it’s Blizzard’s fault that their players are so frustrated.
Queue gets fast. If you manage to get a 6 man team it gets disturbingly fast. As in, “Is this game even going to be balanced???”, fast. Queue time with six people is about as fast as before rolequeue.
If you synergize with anyone in your game invite them in your group and go back into queue, keep repeating until you’re in a six man team steamrolling everyone and rapid firing through half a minute queue times.
That was fun.
I would guess you would have the opposite experience in Competitive.
I honestly gave up on competitive once role queue went out. You guys completely turned your back on your mission goal for the game – no classes, switch to win. Plus trying to climb if you have a season 1 account is basically impossible, but smurfing isn’t allowed.
It’s disheartening as someone who wants to go into the games industry to see developers sacrificing so much integrity for greed. You would have had less people playing, sure, but I think a dedicated fanbase that is overall happy is more important in the long run. (I don’t even blame that completely on you guys. We know how Activision rolls.) Especially in this industry where every game counts in keeping a company afloat.
Not sure about 6-stacking in comp, but grouping with a shield tank who actually walks forward after I McHeadshot both supports would be really helpful.