Why would a hard reset of SR be a bad thing?

Competitive Discussion
1

So let me paint a picture of what Bronze and Silver can be for a lot of players.

I have one account. One copy of this game. I will never purchase a second one so I can manipulate a broken system.

I’ve played the game for a decent amount of time and it has been sporadic. I came into the game I think the second year it was around. I’ve watched a lot of Youtube vids, I’ve adjusted my DPI, etc and have gotten used to it. I don’t one trick, but flex enough to be a viable tank/dps/healer.

My first placements long ago where in high Silver. I didn’t really play that often that first competitive season. Then I started falling and fell into Bronze. I did a lot of quick play and learned my characters. When I came to a new season, I assumed that the placement matches were exactly that - placement and I would earn a new rank based on my improvement.

I was wrong.

So now each season I carry the weight of learning to play this game and each match that I win, I gain about 20 SR. I have less than a 50% win rate. So “climbing” out of Bronze is virtually impossible.

NOW please do not just blindly assume that “you are the rank you deserve to be” because that is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FALSE. People learn, people grow. The SR system doesn’t grow with them or reward that improvement. I do not think I deserve to be any higher than maybe high Silver or maybe even a touch of Gold.

I make mistakes, for sure. But they are slight. I either get matched with a team that all has a fair understanding of this game and plays moderately well. Which results in a quick and easy win. The very-next-game I get paired with people that have zero idea how to play, leave matches or just general screw off and I lose that match horribly.

I am so disappointed in the SR system and simply do not understand WHY they won’t allow each season to be a hard reset of your rank. Do your placements and let that be the first pass at assessing your learned/improved skills at this game then let the rise/fall of your ranks be the outcome of your hard work.

Right now as it stands (and as I understand it) because I carry with me a year or so of low SR while I learned to play, I will FOREVER be punished by it.

Finding a group is not an option as most are DPS one tricks that started it and have zero desire for things like, I don’t know, coms or shot calling. They just want to flank and die over and over. Oh and the Smurf accounts at Bronze level are just out of control. Yes - they are legit Smurfs selling accounts or leveling their 50th alt account.

I will never buy another copy of this game, just so I can erase a crappy design choice. I also realize that Blizz may like things EXACTLY where they are, because it seems like the average player has more than one account, which for them is dollars in the bank.

So tell me why a hard reset would be bad?

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2

My account was in Silver at one point but it’s Diamond now. Yes, it would’ve been easier to buy a new account, but I grinded my way up through the ranks anyway. Point is that you’re not locked into a rank.

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3

It would be bad.

You are the rank you deserve to be. If you deserved to be higher, you would be.

I started in Gold, fell to Silver, climbed to Gold again, climbed to high Gold, Climbed to Plat, Climbed to high Plat and climbed to Diamond. It’s not impossible.

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4

Firstly, you are correct that people learn and grow. However, every player is learning and growing, so you have to learn and grow at a quicker rate and more so than other players.

What is your reasoning for this? My irrational brain tells me I should be in diamond, but I’ve only been close a few times.

Climbing is not impossible. It is very difficult though. I started out in silver and have climbed to high plat. The journey has been horrible because I don’t remember climbing, I simply see that my rank is not higher than it is. I will never be satisfied.

A hard reset would do nothing but anger millions of players who think they are better than they are. (I’m not saying this is you.). Hypothetically, if a reset happened, what happens when players place right where they were? What would be their motivation to play the game if they don’t think they can climb?

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5

The fact you have a winrate <50% is actually very relevant to your post. You’ve played a lot of games, and thus any random factors should have cancelled out.

In order to be considered better than any set of players, you should be able to win more than 50% of your games against these players. You have not proven yourself capable of doing this (your winrate is 46%), so you do not deserve a higher rank. So you really don’t deserve anywhere near high silver, or silver at all because you cannot even beat bronze players.

It’s also key to note that if you have a winrate of exactly 50%, then it’s safe to say that you are being equally matched, as there is no favor for either side to win.

The SR system will always follow a player’s performance. That’s why you get sr for winning a game and losing sr for losing a game. If you play it will continually update your SR.

I initially started Season 3 of competitive at 2100SR. Now I’m sitting at around 3500SR. I got better and the SR system followed me.

So you only made slight mistakes? Yet you lose to objectively some of the worse players in this game?

A rank reset would result in players eventually getting the same rank. The proof is as follows:

After a reset, each player would have the same rank initially. However, given how skill is distributed in a bell curve, most of the playerbase would be approximately at the median (which is gold). This means that initially the average game would be of players around the median rank (as players would be randomly selected).

Let’s say you are a GM level player… You would crush most of your games due to the fact that you’re mostly playing against golds. So this player would gain a lot of SR pretty fast.
Let’s say you’re just a good player. You wouldn’t win as much as the GM player, but you’d certainly win more than 50% of your games. So you’d gain rank.

The opposite applies for worse players. They’d lose more, and have a < 50% winrate, and how much they lost would depend on how bad they are.

So eventually the ranks would sort themselves out.

You could use this logic to say that even now the ranks would sort themselves out. Better players will win more, and rise. Worse players lose more and will fall.

But what makes you think you’ll get a better rank playing against gold players if you cannot even beat bronze players?

I’ve not seen proof to back that up. In fact you’ve given proof otherwise (your winrate).

Because it’d be a lot of random games that would result in you just getting back to where you started, and thus would waste everyone’s time.

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6

I’m sorry but that is 100% true. The only 100% false thing is thinking you deserve a higher rank. If you did, you would rank up. But you aren’t, so you don’t.

7

Everyone below diamond would hate it. Probably diamond and masters too.

8

Contrary to popular belief, a hard reset would make climbing out of low ranks even harder as smurfs get a free pass to not only screw with your initial placements, but a free pass to jump straight to low ranks themselves to keep you there.

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9

I climbed nearly 2000 SR from season 2 to 3. Its about the grind and looking at your own mistakes. The climb from gold to GM was by playing tanks and supports and it was over the time off 100s of matches. It takes time but the game will pick up fast on when you need to move up.

A hard SR reset WOULD howerer create a real elo-hell where GMs whould have to que and fight bronze players and the time it would take to figure out who gets what rank people whould be so sick of rolling or being rolled.

11

If the matchmaking algorithm is as good as everybody makes it out to me, they would have players back in the matches they deserve to be in no time, right?

Meanwhile, Blizzard would lose their revenue from people purchasing multiple accounts.

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12

First off thank you (truly) for your reply and the critical thoughts/points you’ve made.

Two things that I would like your input on. First, win rate is based on my TEAM winning a match, correct? So when you are playing with (to use your words) the worse players in the game, it is conceivable that a player who considers their skill in Silver, hoping for Gold would not be able to carry a team like GM or higher does. Also consider the characters I play - none are the type to completely carry a team. If I can’t carry, does that mean I’m a bad player? No. Because I am a decent player and when matched with decent players, I tend to win games. When I am matched with bad players, I lose games. I keep trading the same 200SR each season.

Second - a lot of folks talk about how they started in Silver and they climbed, therefore I should be able to climb and since I can’t, I belong in Bronze. However most tend to mention they started in Season 3 or 4. Arguably the game, the player community, etc is much larger now, several Seasons later. With that mind set and the conundrum of being “stuck” because I keep trading the same SR, how can they be in touch with what it’s like at Bronze now?

EDIT: The age of the game and the community also includes a LOT of Smurf/Alt accounts where they are climbing fast and destroying a team that is struggling. This happens so much that it is laughable. This is a factor in understanding what the game is now for the low level players. I can set a clock to playing against a Genji or having one on my team that face rolls the match.

I think too many folks haven’t been in Bronze for a long time, especially with the player community as it is now.

Also - final thought/question. I gain/lose 20ish SR each match. Others who are new or streamers that show their alt accounts, when they hit 25 and start comp, they are gaining/losing SR at a much higher number. So when they have a streak of winning, lets say 5 games in a row and then lose one, they have a pretty optimum gain and therefore, climb. I’ve had good streaks and climbed 200ish SR. Then I lose five games in a row to the “worst” players in this game and I am back where I started.

I make mistakes. Just as anyone does, even at high levels of rank. It isn’t my mistakes or the bad players I make them against. It’s the fact that in Bronze, at this state of the game, at least 2 to 3 players on any given match are new and then it becomes a 3 against 6.

13

Winrates are not actually entirely team dependent. Let’s say we had a real SR value for each player in a match. Let’s say the rank you are at is 2500SR, which means everyone’s SR in that rank will be around 2500SR.

But let’s say your real SR is just 2800SR. Well, the team averages would approximately be:

Your team:
(5 teammates * 2500 + 2800) / 6 = 2550

Enemy team:
2500

While not a very large difference, you would be putting the odds of you winning a game in your favor almost every game. So while you wouldn’t be able to win all of your games, you’d certainly win more than 50% given you have placed the advantage on your team. And thus, you would gain SR until you reached 2800SR.
(Personally I’ve found a 300SR difference to be noticeable, unlike the team averages have indicated).

Yes you are correct in that a GM player will definitely carry more bronze games than a silver or gold player, or at least win them faster, or better.

Well, you really don’t need to be able to carry a team to rank up. You just need to have a net win of games.

I wouldn’t see how more players could negatively impact the ranking system. You get random teammates anyways, so why would it matter how large the pool of random teammates is?

(As a sidenote significantly less players does impact matchmaking, see ranks like T500 where those players are always playing against lower GMs).

Considering everyone has to deal with these players, and that smurf players are actually a really small proportion of any rank, you should still rise above your teammates/enemies if you’re better.

The reason you observe this is because that is literally one of the most likely outcomes. Luckily winning five games should generally be followed by loses, as winning more becomes exponentially unlikely (think of it as flipping a coin).

I’ve not seen a compelling argument for this other than “isn’t this the case?”

14

2 things

  1. Did you say that you’re in bronze with a less than 50% win rate? How do you expect that win rate to go up playing against silver or gold players. How do you disagree that you deserve your rank when you’re already in the lowest rank in the game and still losing over half of your matches?

  2. You said you only make slight mistakes and maybe deserve to touch gold, but gold is filled with players who have no idea what they are doing. Gold is a mess. If your best play could maybe get you to touch gold then you have huge, HUGE, flaws in how you play.

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15

You would be back where you started in 10ish games. Why create so much chaos in ranked for an inevitable outcome?

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16

(copypasted from another topic I posted this in)

Imagine the very first game in a hard-reset season, and the teams end up looking like the following:

(All listed ranks would be from the previous season)
3400-2250-4670-1310-3300-3750
vs
<500-1560-3800-1800-2200-2860

This can happen because Comp never actually took ANY other game modes’ MMRs into account, even though a lot of people keep saying that they do.

https://clips.twitch.tv/SecretiveHeadstrongWaspOSfrog - OWL Pro Player from the Houston Outlaws JAKE taking a fresh account, where he was playing against GMs and Masters in QP as he hit Lvl 25 on that account
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20760837867#post-3 - Jeff saying that Comp MMR is separate
Also, you could get to Lvl 25 and become Comp-eligible without ever having played QP, so Arcade-only or even Practice vs AI-only.

Now, with that all being said, since everyone is hard-reset, literally the entire playerbase starts at the same point. As a result, sorting the ranks out would take a VERY long time.

Think Seasons 1 and 2 (3-month seasons at the time). Obviously, everyone started at the same place in Season 1 because Season 1. It took the great majority of Season 1 to get some kind of sorting out since matchmaker was also really loose at the time, not to mention even looser grouping rules (Under the SR1-100 format, a 50SR difference between the lowest and highest SRs on the team was allowed, translating to basically a GM-low Silver allowed grouping).

And then came Season 2, where the ranking system was changed from SR1-100 to SR1-5000. What happened in this season was that it was not quite a full-reset, but the ranks were very compressed.

https://clips.twitch.tv/GiftedShortLEDHeyGuys (Mercer said only a little bit, but the ranks actually ended up more than “a little bit” compressed than he expressed)

Took nearly the entirety of Season 2 to sort out the ranks again as a result, and so many games were so bad for everyone. And THAT is why they don’t want to full-reset, ever. You could make the argument that maybe once every 5 seasons to something like once every 2 years would be ok, but not EVERY season, especially when seasons now are only 2 months.

19

You’re all fundamentally wrong. The better team wins. If you get put in the worse team, you lose, no matter how good you are. Realistically playing solo que is worthless, and trying to find competent players is virtually impossible at low rank.

So you’re stuck with luck unless you’re capable of 1v6ing. That’s very simple math. The basic fact is if you play comp before you’re really reaching your potential, then you’re setting the odds against you. Period.

20

Its acutally more like 1v12’ing in the REALLY low ranks. The enemy is a 5stack in discord with your teams 5stack, and they are all out to get you. The other dude on their team is random but after a W, and you have no one to blame but your own self so its a fight that way.

1v12. Simple math.

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21

I felt stuck in bronze for the longest time until I really started to improve. Worked on aim, positioning, choosing counters, use unorthodox techniques. Watch the pros and streamers as well.

It was a grueling few months to climb to the next tier, but in the end, that was my reward for improving.

You’ll have to learn to admit how good you actually and acknowledge what could be done better. With that mentality, you will climb.

Even with trolls and leavers, you can prevent sr loss by being productive even when you’re losing. You can lose as little as under 10 sr if you stay alive and try to drag the enemy. Which gives you a fighting chance to win more sr in the next match.

Obviously winning a game where the enemy team leaves nets you less sr.

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22

This aged well with role queue. Not.

So I’m a healer main - high gold, normally (was just about finally climb out and into plat) because I don’t play comp a ton but I at least do placements every season because why not. After role queue was introduced and they did the SR reset, I came in towards the end of that season and had REALLY bad placements. It was only people in my group that were bronze and silver so I lost like all but one of the 5 matches so it put me in high silver. I was so pissed, I skipped the rest of the season. The next season I hopped in a won every game and I was averaging probably 25k in healing through all of them, kicking a** imo. It placed me in high silver 1900 ish. But it’s still silver with maybe a gold or two in there from time to time. So naturally all of my matches were basically silver. You know… lots of feeding. People not responding to counters. No comms. People generally just going full retard. So now I’m falling into uppser 1700s. PISSED. It used to be that if the effed up SR system put me in silver, I could dig myself out of silver fairly easily just by carrying as DPS until I got back into mid gold and then switch back to healing but that’s a non-option in role queue.

So now open queue is back and I have yet to establish my SR so I have a fairly clean slate right. Ok so I hop in because why not and heal the whole time. My first game had me in there with golds and plats. The next few had me in with silvers and golds (I can see the rating system trying to figure me out), then it eventually put me back into golds and plats. Big surprise, it places me in high gold (where I feel I belong despite the ‘it’ll put you in the rank you deserve’ cop out response), and I’ve held there pretty solid. So my role queue is essentially broken because I can’t opt into a hard SR reset. I’m stuck in elo hell.

I think the point is that elo is real in the lower ranks and even more so for support mains. If you’re a god, you may slowly crawl out, but if you’re average, you’re going to have a bad time. It’s hard to perform well when your team is scattered all over the map. I can’t remember which streamer proved this fact, but he was T500 and tried to a bronze to gm series as support and he raged out so many times and finally admitted elo hell might be real at least for supports.

I also have a friend who is boosted into high plat (she got sick of being stuck in silver). Since she got boosted out, she has been able to hold low plat very consistently, so while she didn’t earn that plat on her own, she’s holding it on her own and that means the system agrees she belongs there. It’s not always as simple as ‘you are the rank you deserve to be’.

24

I don’t think a hard reset would be bad at all. I’m a bronze player so it wouldn’t affect me at all. However it would shake the tree and likely drop some players who got a boost to ranks they don’t deserve or maybe get some players who have extremely bad luck with match maker get ahead.