I honestly never knew why. I think it is really silly to have a feature that puts a player in a position where they “have” to play the game in order to not derank.
What if I’m on vacation for a week or two and I don’t have my computer/console? What if I just want to take a break from OW for a while because I’m burnt out from the game?
Because gittin guud isn’t stayin guud.
It should only exist for top 500. Any other rank and it’s just annoying imo.
just one of many terrible decisions by blizzard, there is zero reason to have rank decay in any rank except gm. the whole point of rank decay is not to allow people to ‘camp’ top 500 spots.
Your SR change with decay, but your internal MMR don’t. So, if you go back to playing regularly after your break, you’ll be back to your proper rank very quickly.
This is mostly to ensure that the top tier players are also active players, instead of someone that got boosted into top tier, and sit there forever. Back in the initial seasons, there were a large number of people who got into a Top 500, GM or Master rank, and simply never played comp again from fear of losing their ranks.
it was mostly to keep people from hogging top 500 spots, it really shouldn’t exist below top 500 tbh
It was mostly to prevent top500 camping if i remember correctly
Being 3000 sr isn’t “top tier” and can’t have the same penalty as a top 500.
If you have 3000+ SR, you are top 14% of the playerbase. That’s top tier for me.
Which is “only” 1200 sr away from Top 500 that has the same decay rate, and top 500 actually is a reason to keep decay only in that rank.
And who is top 500 plays mostly because is their job. Playing the game is what they do for living, while a Diamond can be a random guy that has a life outside Overwatch and shouldn’t be forced to play this game everyday.
You don’t need to play every day. You need seven matches per week. This can be one competitive match per day, or a 2-hour session in the weekend. Or any split in between.
It’s really not that hard to avoid decay, unless you have to manage multiple alt accounts.
I know that but again, what if I’m on vacation or I just don’t have access to a computer/console? I was actually in the hospital recently for surgery and I lost 100 SR because of decay. Why should my SR be determined by my ability to even touch the game?
SR and MMR are two different things. If you are a regular players, they will be somewhere similar most of the time, and if you decay, you will get more SR than average until they match again.
Also, once you are at diamond and above, your matchmaking is no longer made based on your SR, but on your MMR. We’ve seen plenty of streamers switching to an alt account that was months on reserve, just for them to be matched with other master and GM players.
If you care about the SR number in your profile, then keep up playing to prevent it from decaying. If you care about finding enjoyable and balanced matches, SR decay don’t affect that.