The unfair obstacles of climbing in ranked

Competitive Discussion
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This is my first thread I ever start in regards to a MOBA that I like. I started playing MOBA’s when I was about 12-13 and now I’m 27 and have always played at least one every year during this time.

Ever since I started playing Overwatch I have enjoyed it, up until this point. Because regardless of which game I’m currently playing, I always set my aim towards ranking.

Currently I’m around rank 1300+ and I would say that it’s nearly impossible to achieve any form of flow when it comes to ranking up.

The two problems I see are the following, peoples total unwillingness to co-operate and take in what other teammates bring up, and how that in turn creates frustration amongst players who are actually trying to rank up since they have to feel how it literally is to be dragged down by someone else.

What I’m talking about, and what I desire Blizzard to adress for the problem that I see it as - if you are playing comp, your team should be allowed to come with demands for the sake of the team.

There have been so many games which I have lost due to one person refusing to switch roles even though they are clearly not performing as they should. If you aren’t good enough with a certain hero or role, it should not be considered “toxic” to state that after say the first round. I want to be able to rank up, not “have fun” with a person that doesn’t care about rank. Why is that person entitled to destroy my experience in ranked, but I’m powerless as a player who tries to play well, not saying that I do it every game but I strive for it.

Therefor, I honestly wish that Blizzard would add the option of creating team votes that prohibit a certain player from playing a certain role if 4 or more people vote against them. This would be a democratic solution, based on performance, and in this scenario it would only be possible to start a vote after the first round has passed, and not during.

This would make a statement that comp is made for ranking, and not for having fun. Because there are tons of modes for people who don’t want to be serious, or act as a team, or pick certain roles. Therefor they should have no right to disrupt the comp-side of the game. It’s simply unfair.
We who wish to make an effort, we should be given options to make that happen. Because in this current state, people who wish to ruin the game have all the tools necessary to do so.

Second, why am I constantly being punished for a player leaving on my team? Why do I have to lose rank due to Ashe #4259 has 4-19 in stats and therefor rage quits? WHY?! What have I done wrong in that situation? I only joined a game that I was hoping to play, but instead I lose rank because of someone else?!

As a frame of reference I would suggest looking at Vainglory, which in my opinion is an underused source of balance solutions that work. For one, if a player leaves on one team and doesn’t come back, no one in that team loses point except the leaver. Why? Because it’s not fair to use collective punishment.

That is what dictators use to control the population, and would therefor like for it to be removed from Overwatch which I see as a form of community, and in a community based in democracy only that one who has done wrong should be blamed and punished, i.e., the leaver. This would make it possible for players that stay to still stay on rank, and it would still give the opposing team points, without getting them under unfair circumstances.

If these things aren’t adjusted in game, I honestly don’t know how I’m going to motivate myself to play Overwatch for much longer since this destroys games and my rank every single day.

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I just want to share this pic of my first comp match of the day. Due to a long series of games like this during placements and afterwards I find myself at low gold.

This is what its like here.
´https://imgur.com/xNLgVFm´

Thank you BLizzard for promoting such an enjoyable game experience.

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  1. you are not supposed to climb infinitely. You stop climbing where you belong rank wise.
  2. stop blaming other people. Its mainly your fault to not do the best from what you got.
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There is one constant in your games: you. Remember, the opponent has 6 people that might leave, throw, not cooperate or be bad. Your team only has 5. And yourself. Does that mean you’re the problem? Not entirely, but you could and should be part of the solution:
-) Use voice chat. Even if others in your team don’t, most will at least listen to you. Tell them how they can join voice chat to at least hear you. If you’re actually good, you will make good callouts, good suggestions and above all you will be a decent human being when doing so. I barely get any leavers, and big part of that is me just being positive and constructive in voice chat. When people start bickering, I step in and try to sort it out (without ganking up on one of the bickerers). Make your team calm and they won’t leave. Give them information and they will play better.
-) Don’t play Rein. As strong as Rein is, he has to be able to trust his team mates, and in solo Q bronze (or silver), you probably can’t. I play off tank (which is a lot better to solo-queue), and I often get Reins who friend me and want to group up, because it’s so important to either have that D.Va/Zarya on your side to protect you when you go aggro or dive that nasty Widow with the annoying angle, or get a decent Ana that knows how important it is to keep tanks alive. Just remember, bubbles and healing don’t mean you can charge all 6 players at once, you still gotta manage your aggression.
-) At your rank, 6-queueing might actually be a good idea. On higher levels you might expect your 6-stack to match up against a well-oiled machine that plays together regularly, but in bronze that’s rather unlikely. Use LFG, use the option to friend people when you meet players that play their roles well - in short: control your environment.
-) Lowest I’ve ever been was 1496 or something, so I know where you are and that it’s possible to get out of there. I climbed with Lucio (back when he wasn’t meta) and Zen to 2k and with D.Va to 2.5k, obviously flexing all the while. But to be honest: first you have to get better, then you can make a concerted effort to climb. Just thinking you can spam ranked and will float upwards will work for DPS who can more easily get carried, but as a tank or support, you have to reflect upon your play in order to get better - and while you fully concentrate on winning, you can’t concentrate on reflection and improvement.

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How am I to blame for someone leaving or refusing to adapt to the rest of the team? In what way could I possibly balance someone elses choice which in turn affects me and the rest of the team?

My blame is justified and I’m open for the same critique if I do any of the things I said in my OP.

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You are not to blame for other peoples inabilities directly. However, I would first ask myself: did I everything possible to maximize my team’s chances to win? To be exact: am I on comms and talking? Am I filling roles? Am I counterpicking properly? All these aspects (or failure of) have nothing to do with other peoples gameplay directly, could be factors for them to bail the game frustrated or to tilt and throw, which immediately affects your rating too.
In other words: you have no direct control over other people, all you can do is maximizing your chances to win, with what you have (work around idiots).
Do your best with respect to other (uncooperative) members of your team, that’s it. And keep in mind: truculence and stubborness are last things which will make you climb - at contrary, they’re a sloppy path down ranks.

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If you can’t climb out of bronze on your own, even with a leaver once in a while, then you are where you’re supposed to be.

Bronze players lack mechanical skill, awareness, game sense, positionning, etc. Work on these aspects and you’ll climb.

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Just read my previous reply. It’s all laid out there…

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The replies that you people are coming with are so besides my point that i don’t know where to start. I’m talking about human behaviour and you are all talking about performance.
If I wanted to talk about performance I would have started a thread about that instead.
This is a thread on how people are acting as of now in the game, and how I feel that behaviour should be constricted by implementing changes to the game that prevent people from being able to act like assholes without being stopped.

Stop changing the topic and start talking about how people act towards each other in game or be quiet. I don’t care what your explanations are because they are separate points from what I brought up.

By the way, the whole thing about a player leaving from your own team. Look at any sports team and ask them the same question. Would a hockey team still be balanced without a goalie? Would a bobsleigh be efficient with less people? No.

Overwatch is a game that is meant to be 6 versus 6 as of now in the current comp-mode, and any deviation from that balance is a loss for one team or the other. If you can’t acknowledge that, then you are either ignorant or the people who are acting like this.

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You still didn’t read my first reply in this thread, it seems.
When you’re in a team - say, football - and not a professional one, obviously. And you’re mean to everyone in the locker room, you blame them, you abuse them, etc. You think they’ll play at their best? What if it’s half time and you step up and give them a rousing speech, boost their morale?
Obviously, your defensive midfielder won’t just go home if you bully him, but he might play a lot worse, which is pretty much equivalent to going home. I mean, that’s how humans work. Sure, they want to win, but the other side wants to win as well. The question is, how much do they want to win - and you. Yes, you, as a single person can have an effect on how much your team wants to win this - for themselves and for you.

You can influence behaviour, and if you consistantly get presented with team mates that show bad behaviour, well. Think about that one.

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Seems like you misread what I meant.

I wasn’t trying to excuse people being toxic or leaving, my point was you can’t realistically expect players in Bronze to cooperate when even at higher ranks people often don’t and that the only real obstacle in Bronze when you want to climb is yourself, not your teammates.

What would be interesting is if we had the stats to see what’s the average number of players leaving games. In a vacuum it’s a coin flip, could be in the enemy team, could be in your team so it shouldn’t be a factor that prevents you from climbing.

For the record I was in bronze at 510SR recently on a smurf, I know I’m a bad person for doing that but I climbed back to 1800sr in less than a day, had 2 leavers during that playtime, one for me and one for the enemy team and most people didn’t play a real composition, even won as 5 dps and one healer. Not saying you can do the same thing but clearly there’s room for improvement if you can’t climb at all.

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People aren’t going to listen to accurate descriptions of your experience in ranked. They’ll tell you that “blaming others prevents you from ranking up” and “you deserve your rank”…

SR system is fundamentally broken, I’d say don’t bother with comp since it’s far less enjoyable than the rest of the game.

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I have read your first post a couple of times and the reason I’m ignoring it due to you derailing my point. My thread is based on the fact that i’m tired of selfish people who refuse to communicate, and your solution to that is that i’m supposed to communicate with people that don’t want to communicate? Where did I write that I don’t communicate with my team? Where? That’s your own view on the subject based on your own thoughts in which you have clearly added personal factors about me that i have not written about. People in general are not by definition reasonable so it doesn’t exactly help when you talk like that’s the case.

How hard is it to grasp that most people are unwilling to communicate and that is the whole reason I started this discussion?

What I have been saying from the start is that people who are not performing their part, and refuse to accept that, they are the ones who are acting selfish in refusing to switch. Being unable to grasp the fact that you are underperforming, and not being able to adjust to that in a grown up way. That’s toxic if anything. When not just me, but two other strangers in the team all feel that one player by sticking to their current hero is dragging down the team, and we can’t vote them out of that position - That’s just not fair if you aspire to climb in rank.

Saying that I need to change my behaviour in order to nullify other peoples selfish decisions is like saying that someone should apologize to their own bully after being beaten in order not to get beaten again. I refuse to accept peoples behaviour when there is are solutions to nullify them if Blizzard would just adress the issue and for once ignore the casual players when balancing comp.

It’s not my job to change how people are, it’s Blizzards job as a game developer to give us the tools when we go into the game to make it possible to push out bad behaviour with game mechanics. Because I accept the fact that people are a-holes in most cases and that is why we can’t have the current system as is, imo.

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Again, you don’t need any teamwork or specific comp to climb in bronze.

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you can whine about other people being toxic as much as you want, this wont help you. If you desire to climb you gotta deal with that in a way or just quit the game. Simple as that.

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Well that is only a part of the problem. People at low ranks (up to gold) have such a poor gamesense, positioning and understanding of the game, that communication doesn’t really achieve much when these people cannot adequately comprehend what is being said to them. Or: They refuse to do what is being suggested. You cannot succeed if you have to teach how the game works to these people while a comp match is ongoing.

As an example a game I had couple days back. Escort, enemy used bastion strat. I was trying to tell the team we need to gather at a corner, speed on top of the payload and focus down the bastion. Some of the team argued against it. End result: half a team went in, half a team stayed back, everyone died. It doesn’t help if we communicate if the team doesn’t understand the game, or does opposite of what is told.

Its very common for people not being on voice chat either, or being so dumb they don’t understand to switch from group voice to team voice (yes, Ive met people who dont understand whats the difference).

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Ye, that i agree with. To be honest I would say that it should be standard to be in the voice channel from the get go. The option in that scenario could instead be to mute individual players but set it to a maximum of like two. That way you can still mute rude or toxic people but won’t be able to ignore people totally except by turning off the sound. At least not in comp, other modes don’t need this of course.

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Up to master (on EU), barely anyone uses voice, you can’t force people to learn english or just speak if they don’t want to and you can win without voice.

You can see some diamond and plat players trying but the vast majority of players below master lacks game sense.

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In my opinion what I’m suggesting is not about forcing people. It’s about Enforcing the games fundamental aspects in what defines its competitive mode.

What I’m asking for is comp to become an actual tactical FPS-MOBA that rewards how players utilize the given format. I don’t think that I’m alone with the opinion of being tired of COD-isch-games. Overwatch is fun and fresh, but as of now it’s more like a free for all on De_Dust2 with a bunch of AWP-camps.

Like how am I supposed to for example get anything done if everyone leaves because of one leaver, in what way is that not a game that should be marked as invalid for the people that stay til’ the end?

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Stop focusing on irrelevant aspects on which you have no control over like leavers, your team can have a leaver, the enemy team can, you don’t know, don’t think about it, play the game.

Your team doesn’t want to work together? Excuse my french but screw them, play your best pick, do your best, try to improve, learn from your mistakes, plan what you’re going to do before you actually do something and eventually, you’ll climb.

I was stuck in mid / high plat for a year, blaming my teammates, I improved a bit, was stuck for a few season in diamond, improved a bit more and now I’m in high master and I should be able to touch GM this season. I’m not an FPS god, I just use my brain more than I previously did.

You should go on youtube and watch some general guides about the game and then guides for specific heroes you’re interested to play, being able to play 3-4 characters at a certain level is a must if you want to climb.