Why do you want to rank up?

Competitive Discussion
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Hi all,

lately I had this discussion with a friend of mine of why people want to rank up? He said that if you just have fun playing the game it doesn’t matter at which rank you are.

So my question to you is: for what reason do people (mostly men I guess) want so desperately to climb the SR ladder? Why would you want to become diamond if you are in gold for example? Is it to show off to friends? Or for self-validation?

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Well, that’s a question with many answers, some of them compatible with each other, some not so much. Ultimately, humans are wildly different from each other so they have different motivations overall.

The first one (not necessarily the most common one though) you already pointed out: it’s about envy, pride, the size of one’s Richard. Anyone you see saying anything along the lines of “At your rank, what do you know?”, is inherently driven by this. They think that high rank means more skill and more skill means you are allowed (in their twisted minds), to talk down to others. They think that they’re more knowledgable by the simple fact of them having a higher rank. I like to compare it to old-fashioned sports. I’d rather have an overweight football coach who may not have played a single professional game in his life, but studied a lot and knows what to do than Wayne Rooney or Cristiano Ronaldo, who may both play the game very well (at least at some point in their lives), but show everyone that the might find themselves in deep intellectual troubles if they’re ever in a position where they’re forced to tie their own shoe laces. In other words, if you are heavily reliant on your mechanical skill, you might get relatively far without having a clue about the game. Still, they seek validation by getting better, because getting better means to them that there will be fewer people who are allowed to talk down to them. Live by the sword, die by the sword - because most people won’t be the absolute number one in the world (and those that are usually don’t think that this means they know everything and everyone else knows less - because if they did think that, they wouldn’t have been able to get better and better to reach where they are).

A second option is progress. It’s a bit similar to our first answer, but this one is less toxic. You want to get better, because that’s how we’re supposed to life. You do something, you get better at it. And if you don’t get better, something is wrong. Imagine lifting weights every day and you realize that you can lift less and less each day - that’s problematic, isn’t it? Complacency isn’t healthy, at least not in real life. If you don’t get better at your job, soon you’ll get worse and you might not have it soon thereafter. If you don’t work out issues you have with your partner, because “eh, we’ve been together so long, they know”, it might get bad and the relationship might end. Climbing steadily does not equal “getting better”, but it is an expression of getting better. If you get better (and actually play more than 10 games per season^^), you will climb eventually. Not ever climbing despite trying probably feels bad (to be honest, I never actively tried to climb and failed doing so^^).

The third is the promise of better games. I can still remember low silver. Noone talks, everyone picks DPS, 2 people say they’ll throw if they don’t get Genji, everyone complains about not having healers or tanks but noone swaps, everyone “needs healing”, yet flanks somewhere out there - it can be mighty annoying. After doing the climb, I’m now between mid gold and low plat every season, where almost every time we’d get a healthy 2-2-2, where people are capable of flexing so we can counter stuff and we talk to each other, and almost always in a productive manner. It’s way more fun than silver.

The fourth is the false promise of better games. Climbing doesn’t mean you get fewer throwers, leavers, smurfs, DPS-onetricks, etc. It doesn’t mean that suddendly, everything is fine, but some people still believe. In fact, they believe it so much, it makes them toxic themselves. They’d blame their “silver team mates” instead of being proactive and reducing the chances of a leaver by simply being nice and communicative. They think that everyone else is to blame when things go wrong, because “it’s like that in this rank”. And whenever you blame others instead of yourself, you won’t get better.

The fifth and last I can think of is people who want to play with their friends that are at a higher rank.

Overall, that should cover most bases. Personally, I wanted to climb out of silver and I’m happier for it. Now I’d rather play good games with loads of variety (meaning no comp for the most part), and don’t really feel like climbing much further. As you insinuate: what’s the point, really? I don’t want to stagnate, but I rather get better at my depth than focusing on a specific hero to climb with.

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Wow, man. That’s the question I’ve been asking since I got to Competitive back in October. Still questioning and making few of my Overwatch-familiar pals burn with my apparently “dumb” reason for touching this mode and absolutely failing at it being “simply better than Quick Plays”.

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Simple answer to a somewhat complicated question : Improving.

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For me first is that i am improving. Second one just gonna be stupied but I want gold gun on every charter and it takes a lot of time in bronze :stuck_out_tongue:

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I used to not care and just play QP, but I kinda have started to play competive over the last2 seasons to just try and prove to myself that I’m getting better.

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I guess because in the 17 or so years that I’ve been playing games, I’ve actually progressed in them as I got better. Not in Overwatch though.

This game is frustration personified.

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Funny it’s the opposite for me, been gaming for 27 years and OW is the first FPS I truly take time to learn all the intricacies about.

Played Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake 3, UT, CS 1.1 to 1.5, Battlefields, CODs, etc, never bothered to really learn because back then my mechanical skill was good enough to get me to the top 5% of the players but now that I’m older my aim has gotten worse.

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I find this so funny, because it’s the only FPS I actually ever cared about. I remember playing CS1.6 with my mates - because that was our game. I never liked it. I never learned about it. I never cared for it. I played it, because the others were playing it. Then CSS came along and was incredibly boring and just the same thing a bit prettier. Didn’t play FPS for a solid 10-12 years, then OW came, and it was finally so much more than the usual “I get turned on by guns” allure that seems to get the little boys.

I guess what the two of us enjoy about the game is that it’s multidimensional - you don’t get better by being a tiny bit faster or more precise. You can get better with comms, with knowledge, with your hero pool. You - and this ties so beautifully with the OP - decide for yourself how and where to progress. I like to go deeper and improve my Mystery Heroes win rate (last 74 games I had 54 wins). Some people want to just play Torb and climb with him. Some people want to ignore everything but mechanics and some want to succeed almost without mechanics. It’s all possible, which is what makes it unique. At least when it’s at it’s best…

3 Likes
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This. Also I’m in gold

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Ok, but why do you want to improve? For what reason? Assuming you don’t want to become pro and earn some money with it…

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Why does a person who goes to the gym want to lift heavier weights?
Why does an amateur runner like to run faster and further?
Why does a person who likes to play chess or tennis with his friends want win more often?
Why do people want to improve themselves and succeed in general?

Because succeeding and improving in something gives us pleasure. It’s in our nature to be competitive and try to “climb up the evolutionary ladder”.
Evolution has programmed our brains to give us pleasure when we improve our social status by being better at something than others.
Being good at an amateur level game isn’t obviously much of a social status symbol but our basic instincts don’t know that.

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I actually think for most people on this forum, the problem is that not enough players give a crap about rank hence playing for fun, trying out characters, no voice, no chat, no bulls***, no religious engagement, you lose a few, win a few, meh. At the end of the day, i think people that care about rank are a minority.

And QP is unplayable as you can’t experience any hero synergies or structure or anything really. QP in overwatch is just a really bad and unbalanced fps.

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These + CS 1.0, Quake 1-2, Duke Nukem and Serious Sam :slight_smile:

This was until i got sucked into WOW, at which point i stopped all FPS games and started mainly playing MMORPG’s and MOBA’s.
This turned into a 6 year break from FPS games, but then came Overwatch. Basically a mix of everything I enjoyed in previous games combined into one :+1:

As for OP’s question.
I kinda just want to improve at whatever I do.

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self improvment. not enought characters gota type some more

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Im gonna be honest with you, I am 35 years old so i will never be come pro, but getting to silver and above get me faster to getting my gold guns ( i like to complete the things so i have everything for every charter out there). I play for fun not to be the best cos i am told old to have the same reaction as young kids :slight_smile:

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For the few who’s been mentioning their age :slight_smile:

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Because people dont want to bad or just average, its achievement. But yes you should play to have fun in general.

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Thanks for your responses!

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Why someone want to rank up? well… why not?