A typical example of "Elo Hell" experience

Competitive Discussion
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Elo Hell - Does it exist?
Well, the experience of it exists for sure, but technically, we will never know.

When it comes to the experience of Elo Hell, here’s a typical OW2 example:

I’m high silver support, and I just want to reach gold before the season ends. (diamond top rank)

Game 1: A Zen player who is being biblically trashed due to his/her mindless positioning. Refusing to change and doesn’t realise the negative impact it has on the game, the player just continues the kamikaze adventure, giving us way more ultimate to deal with, than we should have to.

Game 2: Another kamikaze hero, this time in the form of a Doomfist, not so skilled in basic mathematics, charging 1v5 over, and over, and over, and over, just to instantly die. Resulting in a tsunami of ultimates that we had to deal with, without any tank. The player also leaves in the second round.

Game 3: A Venture player that also spoon feed the other team, refusing to change or listen to advice, and ending the fairly short game with 1500 damage, compared to our other dps player and the enemy dps players pushing around 7000.

This can go on for many games in a row, where one or more players in your team, have a huge negative impact on the game, or no impact whatsoever, and is alone, the reason for the loss, and the decrease in ranking points for the rest of the team.

The interesting thing with t his, and why it gives an Elo Hell experience, is that there are no players like that in the enemy team.

On top of this, you get random leavers and AFK players in between these games.

Me, I’m totally sweating, having to counter flankers, while trying to heal the team at the same time. I end up top healer in lots of these games, and I even have more elims and higher damage than some “normal performing” dps in some of them. I also rarely die more than 3-5 times per game.
I simply can’t do more, but it’s not enough when you are 4v5 team players, having a fifth just feeding the other team, making it even stronger.

This can make the game extremely frustrating because I’m forced to lose rank because of other players and other aspects of the game that are out of my control.

Before you comment, there are two things you can’t deny and question.

  1. That the scenario is a fact for some players.
  2. That it is out of my control, and that games like these can’t be carried unless you are a Grand Master.
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No. No it does not exist.

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As was stated in the post itself

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You guys who are such great self claimed experts, that questioned and corrected other players in over a thousand why don’t you contribute with something constructive instead of 3-5 words pointless nonsense.

So, please, if you don’t mind, explain how come me and so many other players are getting these players in our teams, over and over, until we have a loss streak

It happened tonight again, and in one of the games, I actually had the worst dps player in my team, that I’ve ever seen, pushing less than 800 damage in an entire game.

The other team even had smurfs.

I expect constructive answers from you know. Show that you are more than a couple of moderator wannabes.

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Correction of misinformation is constructive.

Stop blaming others.

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I just replied to roku to point out that what he replied to, you had already addressed in your post.

Sometimes you get players that are on their way up the mmr, but the system tries to put them too high thus making them under perform. We just get unlucky tohave them.

I’ve had games where i out heal a mercy on Zenyatta, and she was attempting to healbot.
It’s just clear that the mmr system boosted their mmr too much due to a possible double victory.

I feel like it happens to me at times. I get two difficult matches that my team somehow wins, so the mmr system adjusts me upwards too much, thus landing me into a game where i don’t belong in. Making the experience of my team worse.

Personally i would prefer it if the mmr numbers didn’t adjust this fast, but if they don’t adjust fast we end up with diamond people playing in bronze for far too long.

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I know what you are and what you are doing, but I’ll ask you this anyway, to see how you will try to slip out of it.

Do you really, honestly, truly, believe, that what you just said makes sense?

You are saying, that if I can’t compensate for a completely useless player, doing nothing but feeding or standing in a corner, being AFK, then I deserve drop in rank?

Do you really believe that a silver player should have to pull a magic wand out of his rear, and win games 4 vs 5 against platinum players and above?

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What I said was pretty clear. Stop blaming others.

You can’t win every game. Just worry about what you could have done better.

Occasionally that will be needed. But if you’re silver gold you are a very inconsistent play. So maybe just focus on being more consistent, then you’ll climb a little. Then you can work on some of the glaring holes in the game play.

The bad elements you encounter in games will ruin matches. They won’t ruin your ability to climb over time. At worst, they’ll just slow you down slightly.

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How about you ask questions before you assume things?
You don’t know why I ended up in silver.
You don’t know that I have experimented with another account, and what data I have gathered.

And we are not talking about MY performance, which is irrelevant in the scenarios that I’m talking about.

No one, literally NO ONE, even if your skill is on diamond level, can save a game against a premade smurf team, when having silvers on your team.

How could that even be a fair thing? Even if I’m diamond skilled, how can you expect me to win games against 5 other diamond+ players, and carry 4 others, while one of them being AFK or on total feeding kamikaze mode?

You either love being obstinate and don’t care if you make a clown out of yourself, or you are one of the “not so official moderators”.

Discuss the real issue or get out of this thread and annoy someone else with your nonsense.

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What exactly did your comment bring to the discussion?
Am I supposed to believe that, just out of the blue? With no explanation or source of proof whatsoever?
The players that write completely pointless, cocky comments like that, are all under 15 years old. And I’m not very interested in discussing something with someone who is completely lost in the head, that doesn’t even have basic social skills.

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To correctly tell you “elo hell” isn’t a thing. It is just something people perceive.

Anyways good luck out there.

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I think elo hell kind of exists.

I’ve been high diamonda few times and it’s a lot easier to play around 3200 than it is in gold/plat, simply because everyone is highly likely to play “properly”.

Metal ranks are full of players that have climbed to master and GM so its actually worse than OP realises.

I think the secret MMR should be removed and they just use your rank with a Few tweaks to stop those that have ranked highly from mixing with lower ranks. Nothing special needed.

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It is a common perception. But it doesn’t actually exist.
In SBMM systems ou will at some point hit your peak, and without significant changes you’ll end up being “stuck” there.

It’s the same point people falsely believe “forced” results of some kind to be a thing and all those theories.

In reality, the natural conclusion (assuming you don’t change skill) to SBMM is that you’ll climb and when you’re at your level you’ll end up winning around 50%

And the only way to change that is to significantly increase or decrease your skill.

That’s, to a point, what they have now. MMR tracks close to rank, and to make sure it stays close the use the modifiers.

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Then I guess not too bad, but without a public algorithm I’m not going to have too much faith. I mean they do whatever will make the most money for the company. So it’s hard to believe they have competitive integrity as the cornerstone of the games mechanics. I could be wrong though, hopefully I am.

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You’ll never get them to release it publicly. That would be the end of the game as we know it.

That’s why they went F2P with Battlepass and shop. It’s easy cash.

If there’s none, I believe the players themselves have done far more damage to that than anything blizzard have done sadly.

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This all makes sense , thanks for the helpful replies.

I guess I have this romantic view of gaming as i come from the doom/quake days where things were simpler and more trustworthy in that sense.

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Is OW was purely a death match game, it would feel more balanced. Even when the 10 players are the same 10 people.

OW as a game is no inherently snowbally it can feel like match making has done something. When in reality, it’s just a few poor (in hindsight) decisions have stacked up and caused mayhem.

Had a game of push yesterday where the enemy scream match making… Yet everyone was the same rank. We just won the first fight and I didn’t give them room to breathe until we were nearly at the end, when their spawn advantage took over. Nothing match making about it. I just punished people for staggering themselves and not grouping.

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The misconception is that it doesn’t exist.

Elo hell exist, and not only in this game.

It is also possible to get stuck in elo hell in most ranks, but mostly in the lower 3 rank brackets in this game due to a few reasons.

1: Smurfs on the enemy team.
2: Cheaters on the enemy team.
3: Throwers on your own team.
4: Leavers on your own team.

You can still hit your peak and be stuck in elo hell, because of the reasons mentioned.

This is yet another misconception, just like the regurgitated and over used ‘git gud’ argument.

You cannot change the random members on your team. If one or two players on your team is throwing, you can’t win.

If the enemy team has a t500 smurf or two, while you’re in bronze-gold, you cannot win.

If the enemy team has a cheater who’s also good with positioning, you cannot win.

This game calculates ranks based solely on wins. Personal performance is not used when calculating progress whatsoever, and if you don’t win, you won’t climb. It’s that simple.

But they’re not correct. That’s the thing here.

Anyone who tell you that you’ll climb if you get better, are wrong. You can’t get better when playing against smurfs and cheaters or if your team is constantly being filled with throwers and people with zero clue of what they’re doing, because you won’t learn anything from being utterly stomped besides humiliation.

You can’t carry a team with throwers etc, let alone against t500 smurfs and/or cheaters on the enemy team.

There’s a reason boosting and buying high ranked accounts is so popular in this game.

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:rofl::rofl:

The weak mindset.

I got better by playing against smurfs, cheaters, and scrimming with and against players far better than I’ll ever be.

I climbed from my lowest rank to my highest by working on what I can improve.

Yes, the factors you mentioned, if they didn’t exist I’d of possibly climbed faster. But they were merely bumps in the road.

I just asked, out of curiosity, for ChatGPT to summaries “elo hell”

“Elo hell” is a term used primarily in the context of competitive gaming, especially in games like League of Legends and Overwatch, to describe the situation where a player feels they are stuck at a lower skill rating or rank than they believe they deserve. The concept hinges on the belief that despite their own skill level, they are unable to advance due to factors outside their control, such as unskilled teammates or poor matchmaking.

The existence of “elo hell” is a topic of debate. Here are the main perspectives:

  1. Psychological Perspective: Some argue that “elo hell” is largely a psychological phenomenon. Players may overestimate their own skills and underestimate the impact of their mistakes. Confirmation bias can lead them to notice and remember unskilled teammates more than their own errors or the times they had good teammates.

  2. Statistical Perspective: Over a large number of games, the impact of random factors like teammates’ skill should even out. If a player is consistently performing above the average skill level of their current rank, they should theoretically climb over time due to their higher win rate.

  3. System Flaws: Some players believe that flaws in the matchmaking system, such as smurf accounts (high-skill players on new accounts) or uneven team compositions, contribute to the feeling of being stuck. However, most modern competitive games continuously update their matchmaking algorithms to minimize such issues.

  4. Behavioral Issues: Negative player behavior, like toxicity or intentional throwing, can indeed affect individual games, but whether this consistently impacts a player’s ability to climb is debatable.

In summary, while “elo hell” may feel very real to those experiencing it, evidence suggests that most players who consistently play better than their rank will eventually climb. However, short-term frustrations and the perception of being unfairly held back are common, and they contribute to the ongoing debate.

(So no, it isn’t real)

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It’s got nothing to do with having any sort of mindset. It’s a fact. You either deal with it or you don’t, then move along.

Yeah i’m gonna call hogwash on that claim right there.

I’ve been a team captain in multiple games as well as a former pro gamer. I can tell you from experiene that you will never get better when you only go through humiliating matches where you get your rear end handed to you non-stop.

If you’re climbing versus cheaters and smurfs, you’re being carried, nothing more.

Yeah, people use ChatGPT but that doesn’t mean ChatGPT have all the right answers. Using AI is the last thing people should be using to validate their arguments.

It is very real. Stop gaslighting.

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