Gaming Overwatch: Why can't I climb rank?

[Deleted User]

So, I've been playing Overwatch for a fairly decent time now. I took about a year away actually though, because i was stsrting to get angrier snd angrier with leavers and throwers.

Now I'm not much of an fps person, but I don't think I'm really this bad.

For those who know the system, my SR is, this season, peaked at 874, and currently 833, after a huge loss streak down to 699 and struggling to reclimb. Got back up to 870 and it's happening again, losing until my current 833 ranking.

Surely I should have climbed out of Bronze by now? It feels like I'm fighting the tide. Every other game has a leaver or two, the the rest no one wants to work together. And once in a bluemoon, I get a win and just barely manage to climb.

I've watched all the videos. I've learned heroes of each kind of role. But I just cannot climb, and it's coming to the point I think I'll need to uninstall it again to avoid these flares of anger I'm experiencing.

 

[AtsuNii]

I can't really say that I know how it goes over there, but I can tell you that around platinum/diamond level people still don't like to work together or people start leaving. Likely the thing that is holding you down will be both bad luck and that your own mechanical skills still need to grow more. But that will just come over time.

 

[FAST6191]

How are the ranking systems done in this game?

Some games will opt for something like chess scoring (ELO ranking if you want a search term). Counterstrike most famously here, though some others went before and plenty have gone after.

It will compare various stats against those you were playing against and rank accordingly, grinding then representing little in it. The chess version being made to solve such a problem -- I could beat 1000 12 year old just learned chess people over the next however long, not one loss in that. Compared to just one beating of a grand master or similar and that matters far more for said ranking, or alternatively if I had lost against said GM (because I would) then I can't claim a 1000:1 win-loss ratio as being worth anything.
What metrics they will use here I don't know but generally if you are dying more than you are killing or otherwise scoring in a game where the higher ranked people are at then it will count against you, and when you achieve about the same results as others in the match that are nominally the same rank as you then you will hit the ranking plateau as it were.

"I've watched all the videos"
Does that matter? Videos might give you the basics but the more advanced stuff you will either have to invent for yourself (plenty of examples of new strategies being made which are brutally effective) or learn some other way.

 

[AtsuNii]

How are the ranking systems done in this game?

Some games will opt for something like chess scoring (ELO ranking if you want a search term). Counterstrike most famously here, though some others went before and plenty have gone after.

It will compare various stats against those you were playing against and rank accordingly, grinding then representing little in it. The chess version being made to solve such a problem -- I could beat 1000 12 year old just learned chess people over the next however long, not one loss in that. Compared to just one beating of a grand master or similar and that matters far more for said ranking, or alternatively if I had lost against said GM (because I would) then I can't claim a 1000:1 win-loss ratio as being worth anything.
What metrics they will use here I don't know but generally if you are dying more than you are killing or otherwise scoring in a game where the higher ranked people are at then it will count against you, and when you achieve about the same results as others in the match that are nominally the same rank as you then you will hit the ranking plateau as it were.

"I've watched all the videos"
Does that matter? Videos might give you the basics but the more advanced stuff you will either have to invent for yourself (plenty of examples of new strategies being made which are brutally effective) or learn some other way.

As far as I've played the game, they have a SR score, which tries to take into account your personal performance. You lose less points if you did well but lost and win less points if you did bad but still won. However at the time I was playing which will be around 9 months ago there were still a lot of discussions about it being flawed.

Tanks and Supports supposedly get a lot less SR points then DPS which I experienced aswell with the group I used to play with. It seemed to mostly resolve around the damage done. Hence why I preferred to play D.va or Orisa instead of a Reinhardt as they can dish out some damage while protecting the team.

However I have no idea if they changed anything about it in the last 9 months.

 

[FAST6191]

I went and had a quick look around.
https://overwatch.gamepedia.com/Competitive_Play#Ranking

So yeah SR which on that says

After each match, players will gain or lose a certain amount of SR. The amount gained or lost depends on several factors, including the difference between each team's average SR, the win rates of heroes on a given map, and individual performance

Fairly basic there but of the style I mentioned above. I had a quick look around ( http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/05/15/blizzard-explains-how-overwatchs-skill-rating-works https://dotesports.com/overwatch/news/overwatch-sr-calculation-explained-16535 ) and much of it is secret sauce, ostensibly to avoid people gaming the system but with the added perk of it making it harder for people to complain about fairness.
Some did go further into the maths and underlying concepts ( https://towardsdatascience.com/the-math-behind-your-competitive-overwatch-match-a5184fc5a50f ) but in the end they are still guessing at the range of input variables. Also it seems https://towardsdatascience.com/tagged/gaming has given me some reading to do... didn't know there were that many people doing such stuff for games.

 

[Minox]

First off I need to make it clear that I haven't played Overwatch in a year and that even when I did I was pretty terrible at it, but basic FPS skills from my own experience can take you to about Gold/Platinum (at least that's as far as I got). After that it seems to be really reliant on being a good team player, working together in pushes and exploiting mistakes the other team makes.

Another thing that might be worth considering is if you adapt to your team's character composition? You might have one or two characters you absolutely love playing, but if you have too many of one kind of character you yourself might have to consider switching to a character you like less just so your team becomes more balanced.

 

[Joe88]

Been playing ow since last sept or so, more or less the system doesnt allow you cannot climb unless you can hard carry games (1v6 and winning fights ect)
I've been stuck in high silver (around 1850SR, and my career high was 2170), I simply cannot move up because of stuff outside of my control like throwers (either hard or soft throwing), smurfs, leavers, no comms, no one in voice chat, feeding, one tricking, ect...
It's just the whole problem with the SR system being on team performance rather than individual performance, I can pop off and get some crazy stats but if the team loses then I still lose the same amount of sr. I've mostly stopped comp and mainly do qp now.

Then there is the whole forced 50% win rate and handicapped SR ect.

 

[Brizas99]

https://www.eneba.com/blog/climb-the-ranks-overwatch-guide/ this may help you out, the purpose of the blog is to help you climb anyways