Hi,
I’ve been gold since a long time, for a few years now. I’ve always been in a toxic environment even if it’s low gold or high gold (I was at 2399), but since the new role queue my DPS was placed in silver. Which was logical since i am a Tank/Healer main.
I thought this was gonna suck and it was gonna be such a garbage time of grinding, but the moment i joined a few Silver gameplay i was actaully surprised. People were actaully nice! But the moment i reached back into low gold with my DPS (Around 2100) it just began back as old, screechers, people calling you all kinds of stuff i don’t dare to repeat, but why is this such a big difference? why is everyone so hateful towards each other in gold and so nice and calm in silver? Of course there are situation people get annoyed in silver, but atleast they don’t call you the N-word or the R-word or whatever if you make a mistake once or twice.
While i was thinking about this i thought i would share this and see other people’s experiences in gold or maybe higher.
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That is why you see people throwing matches on purpose. I don’t usually play tank so I was placed in bronze during the beta queue. Clearly there were players in bronze that should not be. Players even talked about throwing matches to lower their rank just to troll other players.
I even got a screenshot for my friends and I to laugh at in the looking for group tab. There was a full group formed of players with the sole purpose of throwing matches to drop their rank from plat to bronze.
Its weird i was in gold as tank and got terrible teams tbat never worked together so dropped down to silver.
They were honestly some if tbe best matches i have had. Everyine worked really well together and got back to gold in no time at all.
Now its all gone to pot again.
Tbh i don’t mind if it’s a six stack like free points for the other team. But if people like solo queue and then throw that’s just super toxic.
Because in silver, I generally think people know they’re not that good at the game and they’re all trying to improve.
Whereas in gold, you get a lot of the people complaining about ELO hell, people thinking they’re carrying when they nano blade into a grav, entitled DPS and a lot of the typical problems. These start to arise when you reach the average rank like 2200ish. Don’t know why but it just does.
It happens in plat aswell. I’ve won a game at 3200 playing Zarya and got 4 golds yet play Zarya in 2600 and lose miserably because you have people in that SR range that think they can carry with their ult when 5 of your team are already dead.
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THIS THIS SO MUCH. OH MY GOD! The suicidal Genji or the Solo Grav of a Zarya. It’s ridicilous!
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Sounds a bit extreme - but I’ve had terrible placements and ended up in silver - I climb immediately back out because silver players frequently listen to my call outs and recognise that I know what I am doing.
As soon as I get in gold players stop listening to me, they won’t offer any counter-plan, they just think they know everything and can win alone (this is a generalisation ofc).
Well, i wish it sounds too extreme but sometimes i have these games that little made me just quit the game for a looong time. Sometimes months that i stopped playing.
The most annoying part about gold players are is that they really dislike voicechat somehow. I had about 3 games where like either no-one is or everyone is in but they don’t talk or make call-outs and only flame other players
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Just placed gold in tank - generally good teams, but yeah, mostly silent. The one bad team had 2 constantly soloing suiciding dps and our Ana passive aggressively ‘flaming’ me, claiming I was toxic for telling them to team up (the worst it got was an annoyed ‘Where the hell are you? Will you stop killing yourselves and use our shields’ - if that’s ‘toxic’ then get to a hospital urgently for skin grafts).
But stick at it - just make solid position callouts, say when you are making a move/ult - even though people rarely respond in voice, they frequently give me a shot caller nod.
A lot of it is probably confirmation bias.
Apart from that I found that in silver, people just don’t communicate, so there is no chance for toxicity. In gold, people start to use voice so the toxicity is more visible (well, audible). I feel that to get good non-toxic games in gold, you have to take a firm positive grasp of the voice chat - be positive, be a cheerleader, be constructive. You as an individual have a surprisingly large impact on your team and their tendency to throw, leave or be toxic. Doesn’t mean that it’s your fault if they are, just that there are some instances where you can make your own destiny.
Silver is just a thin line between bronze and gold, with the right mentality you will be done with it in days. Didn’t hear anyone stuck in silver so long while you can stuck in gold or bronze forever. Gold is toxic because that is where most players are (whether justly or unjustly). The truth is that a lot of gold players don’t deserve to be in gold.
From plat you will see major improvements like everyone tries to do their best to win not just slackin’ around, quitting, zerging and feeding the enemy team. You will feel like arrived to heaven when you reach plat. OMG people are finally playing this game in a team with objectives, unbelievable.
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A person can dream 
Sadly I’ve not reached play…
To answer the topic question:
Silver are casuals who have accepted who they are and are just playing for fun. I have some friends in silver and thats exactly how they are.
Gold are players who are TRYING to get out of gold. With goal-orientation comes frustration, with frustration comes anger. We all deal with it a different way.
Lets not forget that Gold is the most common rank in overwatch. It houses wide variety of players.
I can second the lack of voice comms in gold. Personally I think its one of the easiest ways to improve your game: start using voice and making callouts.
Even if just one person makes callouts it makesca huge difference. But ppl dont even join team voice chat so they can hear it.
Easiest explanation - you are not good enough to be this high so you get flamed.
I’m not the one getting flamed. It’s most of the time one person getting angry at everyone since they’re the best or just overconfident
Every rank is toxic, you have to learn to deal with it as that’s a big part of the game. If you get triggered, go do something else, your performance will suffer and you will lose more if you play when triggered.
In my experience toxicity levels increase the higher up you go because people are more invested in the game.