What's the problem with Bronze in my opinion

Competitive Discussion
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Hi there,

I’ve played in Bronze/Silver for 12 seasons now. I know the game inside and out, I know the maps inside and out , I’ve studied it for 3 years and yet according to the system I am unbelievably bad. The worst, actually.

Every season it’s the same - every game has a leaver or two, every game has a smurf, and this season absolutely every game has a player that openly admits he is deranking. Oh, joy. Before you ask - yes, sometimes it’s enemy team, sometimes it’s my team, this doesn’t make it any more fun and makes it even more based on luck of drawing the short straw, rather than anything else.

Everyone who is not in bronze is relatively (not entirely) happy and doesn’t admit there’s a problem. Everyone up there is “You are in bronze, because you belong there, I got out, because I am awesome.”. This leaves impression that the system is working and not that people would say anything from their high horse to make themselves feel better about their rank. Which is fine and I respect that, I promise.

It’s just … not helpful to us and it’s breaking the communication.

So … let me tell you why is it so hard to come out of bronze, more than any other rank. Sad thing is - it’s not a problem, it’s a feature. Ergo it can’t be solved.

Where do you land if you’re a not-so-good player with not perfect aim and not perfect map awareness. I’ll give you a hint - same place where I landed back in the day. Bronze.

Now here’s the kicker.

a. Where do you land if you’re a leaver? Constantly just leaving without caring?

b. Where do you land if you’re a troll that doesn’t want to play and just has fun running around and laughing in the microphone while stoned?

c. Where do you land if you, say, play Overwatch with your monitor turned off?

d. Honestly, please answer me, where would your grandmother land if you forced her to sit in front of the PC and you fired up OW Comp?

That’s right - bronze.

In Platinum there are Platinum players and maybe couple of better ones, couple of worse ones. Every rank has it’s players.

While in Bronze there is such a huge enormous gigantic span of skill that you can’t even begin to imagine. I really can’t believe that people are denying that.

Yes, this can’t be solved, but just acknowledge it and stop thinking everyone who is in bronze is less of a human or is the worst player on the planet.

If you really read so much - thank you, maybe you really are awesome. Peace.

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So I assume that you are not content with the fact that you have been in bronze all this time?

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Oh, I don’t mind. I would prefer if matches were not “I stomp, or they stomp”, but other than that I don’t see rank so life-changing as people show it.

Competitive is not fun, that’s true, but there’s Arcade and Quick Play and they are.

Was just trying to point out the weirdness of people thinking that bronze has one and the same level or kind of players.

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Everyone being bad doesn’t make bronze hard to escape, that’s what makes it easy to escape. Just don’t be that bad.

But the really high variability is a problem. This happens because the Sr system is naturally based around the community average. This means that your rank has more to do with you percentage skill kill compared to the community than how your skill exactly compares to others (so being a 1k player doesn’t mean you are half as valuable as a 2k player, it means you are in a certain percentage range on the bell curve). If they started allowing players of any skill range to play together then people would all collectively move up and down until their sr is actually representative of skill. This would mean that someone half as good as most 1k players would actually drop to 500 mmr instead of simply dropping out of 1k into 900 mmr and then being compared only to that range. This would fix all the problems of Sr ranges getting harder all at once (like at diamond and masters) and ranks with large ranges of skill in them like bronze.

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@Redkite, you are like an icon for what I’ve written. The high horse “I’m amazing, you’re just bad” “nice and helpful” people. Okay, I’ll admit it - you’re the G.O.A.T. You are an amazing, wonderful player that has no equal. There. You post helped me become a better player, thanks! <3 (and btw - lol)

@Brooster: Yes, now that I think about it isn’t it exactly the same in Masters? Aren’t there people who’re just better than Diamond along with people who are Godlike?

The problem (or my problem) is that a lot of people are trying to lose for one reason or another. After I wrote the post I played a game in which I had a person admitting in the beginning that he was deranking, so I thought - oh, well, another loss.

Couple of minutes later turned out the enemy has two premade trolls that were writing “Come kill me” in the chat. So when we take the first point another guy rage quit. So we were “deranker vs two trolls and a leaver”. We stomped them. But that’s every game. Everything is based on luck which team has the more of those guys.

I was playing with my dad’s Platinum account (which I placed there and he hasn’t moved since season 3), 3 or 4 season ago when I visited him and I moved it 400 SR up.

On my account I started 1490 and now I’m around 1000.

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If you’re still in bronze after 12 seasons It seems you have reached your maximum skillwise or you didn’t tried to actually improve yourself and just played the game. Wich isn’t bad in any way, you don’t need a competive mind to have fun in this game. Every gold player here could easily climb out with your account believe it or not.
Rethink your gameplay check out your stats at overbuff to see in what percentile they are, like are you bottom 20% with aim at a certain hero or 99% percentile and I bet you will see how bad these stats really are. People tend to think their gameplay is good until they see in what percentile your stats are. Same happened to me until I discovered overbuff and now I’m working on those lacking stats + I watched every „how to improve gamesense“ „how to learn gamesense“ „how to position“ Blabla video on YouTube, I think I watched over 50 + another 100s of guides and gameplay videos to get an idea how and the most important WHY are people doing what they do. I can recommend kabaji he explains everything while doing it and his best advice is: talk with yourself what you’re currently doing and why you’re doing it because it’s hard to do stupid things if you speak it out load before doing it like. „2 of my team died recently now I engage the enemies and walk forward while trying to shoot anything in sight and now I took dmg because my healers are dead so yolo the sht out of them and die“ it sounds stupid and you won’t do it if you say it out loud lol but you’ll do it because you don’t think about it

The biggest mistake people have is doing things without having a plan what and why they are doing what they do, why don’t you back up, why don’t you see when a team fight is lost, why using an ultimate if the fight I won already, WHEN is the fight won, why is the team not pushing if you get a pick or 2

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bronze I am sure still has a serious leaver problem it always did when I was there way back when.

In terms of skill variance I cant comment on that although it wouldnt suprise me if it were a problem as it’s a problem ladder wide.

High silver… ROFL that is some serious skill variance but a lot of that is due to the ridiculous amount of plat smurfs there.

If you want out of bronze play easy heroes. MOIRA is hands down the best carry support down there. Stay away from Ana down there.

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@Beshi thanks for your input, man! I’ve watched every video there is to watch. While team fight is going I can tell you what and why every hero on my team is doing.

Problem is - I don’t feel even in the slightest that my actions are relevant to the match outcome. I know you can’t believe that, but I really wonder why people think I am point blank lying when I’m saying how matches go.

You go in a match and you pray enemy has more leavers/trolls. Because, God knows, every match I’ve played this season is either their team can’t leave their base or we can’t. It’s all about luck of matchmaking.

Sometimes I have 5 wins in a row. Because 5 games in a row were 6vs4. That’s not skill, that’s pure luck. Next 10 games are reversed, so I drop down. Still not skill.

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Lookie i’ve been in bronze and no one is saying they’re less of humans infact a lot of the people I met when i first started the game were awesome people and those were bronze… the thing about bronze players is that they refuse to learn… not all of them ofcourse… there’s so many smurfs down there literally if you ask anyone for tips they’ll give them to you but they’re busy spamming cheater in chat to actually learn something.

Lavk of knowledge of the game… 4 tanks and 2 healers is fine! 3 tanks and 2 healers and 1 dps is fine!.. I’ve been reported so many times just cause i didn’t do a 2-2-2 let people play what they’re good at it’s bronze perfect comp doesn’t matter… and those two comps i listed are probably the best comps to escape bronze.

Any who good luck and for any bronze player out there ask for tips, it’s fine… if a master players comes up to me and offers some tips I’ll gladly take them.

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@Kiwi I try to learn. I have two masters degrees and run a business since 2015, I am not that bad at learning. :slight_smile:

Read my response above you - I don’t think, I’ve seen for a fact for 12 seasons that my gameplay doesn’t affect the game outcome. Unless I somehow do a constant solo team kill and complete objectives on my own, which sadly, I can’t.

The comps you said are barely visible in Bronze. Most of the games people choose 5 DPSs and I pick a tank or Moira/Brigitte. Then at the end of the game I have gold eliminations, damage and objective time. When I was Brigitte with 5 DPS in my team. I have that screenshot.

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I still know how bronze is it’s not always or most of the time 5 dps… there’s actually a lot of healer mains down there, also you can group up with them… I don’t know what you play honestly since your profile is private also post some game play so we can see if you’re doing anything wrong.

Is your hardware good? I’ve also noticed a lot of bronze players have bad hardware.

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First thing is medals are meaningless, check your overbuff stats like I mentioned in my post above.
Check the hero you play the most and check on what percentile your Dmg/aim/deaths/elims etc are than you know exactly why you don’t see impact on your game, you can carry games easily if you stats are in the top 20%

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Lower elo usually has a “carrier” in it. It’s not necessarily a person that dont belong there. It’s just an easy hero that gets a lot of value due to poor game sense, or is harder to counter 1v1.

Usually that carrier in high bronze to low gold will be

Brig
Pharah
Junkrat

Brig is actually pretty tough to counter ladder wide as she is sort of like bastion without the absurd damage. You need a team to counter her cause fighting her head on is suicide she is a really bad hero design I dont care what any Brig main says.

If enemy team has a carrying brig go junkrat/pharah/brig on your team and murder her she probably wont switch and you will win.

Junkrat just go pharah/mercyh

Pharah counter her with dva/winston/zen dont bother with a hitscan mechanics probably wont be good enough.

Now if there are 2 dps doing work or their tanks are actually decent it will probably be a loss. You are going to have to live with that.

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@Kiwi, sorry about that, will open up my profile in couple of hours! I play mostly Brig this season, because I feel I’m making the most difference with her as a healer. Also Moira.

As a DPS I play Pharah/Junkrat.

My hardware is top of the line, that’s not a problem. Yeah, not a bad idea to start a channel with bronze games. Win-win, people will see what Bronze is and I will get some real advice.

Will take those into consideration and start recording some games.

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Deal you know a guy named walmart? He’s in bronze.

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I agree with the OP.
My fiance played and placed bronze her first go of it.
Since then she has not had a single game without one of the aforementioned afflictions.
I even played a game on her account as my main. I was a diamond pharah at the time.
At the end of that match, i had 5 golds. Not 4. 5. I carried them as hard as a team could be carried and she unbelievably gained 1 sr. A single SR point. After she watched that, Blizzard lost a player.

This story is 1 person…but it isn’t though. And they should be concerned about the enjoyment of their game for everyone.

She was more excited than I was to play this game. And it’s not that she’s bad. We play battlefield together and she regularly is in the top spots with me. We play other shooters together. We play other games together. She’s not terrible at games. She did place bronze, but I know that if the system soft reset every season like it should, she would place gold.
When we play premade skirmishes with other players she keeps up.
But no one admits there is a problem.

Honestly everyone who took time tp read this and THEN still just said “you are bad, get gud” why are you even here? What is the benefit of you chiming into the conversation to say this? You are the awful toxic community that gets the game laughed at.

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Not gonna lie. I convinced a smurf to carry me out of Bronze. After that I climbed myself because the teams weren’t throwing every game so I could actually improve. Now I’m higher ranked than the person who carried me’s main. Full circle lol

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That is a single game. Everyone can have those games at much higher ranks than Bronze.

Anyone who is Gold or above can easily climb out of Bronze if they get there, the games are not all luck, you just need to play more games.

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i am middle bronze RN, was high Bronze yesterday and lost 5 games due to leavers…

Here is my problem I am hasty, too hasty… I am tracer Main and i can go out of bronze Everytime i go Tracer and go back in High Silver cuz i cant carry Silvers…

For me it is easy to Wipe out a team with tracer in bronze, my problem is when I face a team that works as team, i cant win against it cuz i am hasty.

A)How to go out by yourself?, Make friends that thinks same as you. team up with them.

B) learn your rank of effectiviness, Learn to fight your counters.

C) get better Aiming, practice headshot.

D) get better, You need to identify who is the man in the enemy team… For example when i do play Mercy (i am so good with her) enemy team realizes that they have to kill me first or nobody in my side is going to die. Most mercy are unawereness of the team or enemy 's position. (and yes Mercy requieres a lot skills to survive and to keep the team alives).

Lastly practice a lot. Ask yourself Why i was kill… Where i should have been in this or that situation, learn all maps and health packs.

I repeat: I can go out of bronze very easy unless enemy has an Smurf. If your are bronze dont face alone someone with Gold weapons… they have a lot experience and are better than you. And golden rule: play several characters and you gonna see the difference. Middle Bronze here…

I am mastering Hanzo and Widow now to kill Silvers…
I start on PC a weeka ago and ppl laught at me until i make the kills with lv 20 Widow, it is easier to aim on pc…

And learn to deny all bronze Strategy:usually Turrets, Bastion, etc and never chase Sym…

I forrgot this… When i perform out of my mind… the System team me up with Plat and Golds and i Win anyways… maybe the system thinks i am smurf… lol

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I just got out of 2 back to back low gold games with leavers on my team. It’s not just a bronze problem. It is a weekend problem

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