I was so happy to see the “avoid player on my team” functionality but it only lets you block 2 people at a time so it’s literally worthless.
EDIT: And they got rid of “prefer this player”. Fuck this.
Playing Talon Assault Tank in competitive
I think the avoid player feature is useful when you’re trying to climb in competitive and sincerely believe a certain teammate is holding you back. Theoretically if that were true, by the time the week ended, you might be in a different rank and never be matched with them again.
I think it’s also useful in the specific context of “there is a jerk playing RIGHT NOW, and due to the pool of players, they keep ending up on a team with me.”
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It’ll probably get more use because of the immediate feedback. As much as I liked it I always kinda assumed very few people used “prefer this player.” I do wonder what player profiles look like under the hood, clearly they track a lot of statistics and have a lot of dials that impact matchmaking.
Not having played, I would definitely make a lot of use of the prefer this player feature. I would in fact prefer any and every player who is obviously better than me. If they are on my team, that’s going to boost me up.
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Avoid player just seems to me like a placebo for me. I’m only gold/platinum and there’s so many players at any given hour that I hardly notice specific individuals carrying over. My win rate was 65% when I just turned off all communication, but I’ve been trying to communicate and play fill and it’s down to 52% now. I don’t really mind either way, but I definitely feel like most people at this level don’t use voice chat to win the game, they use it to make themselves feel better about losing. How many comments are constructive and not just empty attacks? How many people run with their friend groups so they can always fall back on their buddy to back them up about something? Occasionally you do run into nice people, but often that’s more circumstance (we’re winning!) than their natural disposition. The intensity and rage some of these people have at such a low level is mind boggling.
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Every time I get a bit of confidence to try comp again I hear someone refer to gold and platinum as low level aaaand there goes all my drive to play comp.
Gold has a LOT of people who join in groups of two, refuse to join the team chat, ignore all the text chat, pick two terrible characters, and proceed to bring the whole team down.
To me gold and plat are not high because that’s still in the realm of like… completely transferable skills from a completely different game like League of Legends. You don’t even need to be able to aim well so much as just execute basic strategies and look at improving your own play. For example I started reading this post without context and just assumed it was about Overwatch.
Not saying I absolutely agree with that post, but while we’re still in the ballpark of “you can continue to advance by just having common sense”, not even specific game knowledge or mechanical skill… then we’re still playing casual. There’s no reason to get red faced frothing mad over your insta-lock genji player or whatever.
Gold and somewhat Platnum is the average area of Overwatch matchmaking, that’s where most people are that’s what normal in Overwatch looks like and it’s fine to be there, it’s fine to be lower, it doesn’t actually matter. I really hate that in all games with some kind of ranked system big part of online discussion is this really harmful “if you are not at least high-diamond rank you should not be allowed to have any sense of self worth.” That’s just disgusting and can’t be good for the game, it’s community and the players who are not the top minority of players.
It’s good to try to improve in the game and it’s nice to see that improvement reflected as shiny things in game, but so much of discussion about any ranked system in any game is just filled with trash.
I can’t say if this transfers directly since the Overwatch team hasn’t said anything specific, but at least for Heroes of the Storm, the tiers break down like:
- Bronze - 7%
- Silver - 35%
- Gold - 35%
- Platinum - 15%
- Diamond - 7%
- Master + Grandmaster - 1%
I wouldn’t be surprised if Overwatch uses the same percentages or similar. If so, you can’t realistically argue that Plat is low skill. Gold, however, is pretty average.
I always assumed gold was right in the middle. I mean I’m not that good and I’m on the higher end of gold so it makes sense.
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What gets me is even GMs have to deal with non-communicating, toxic, insta-throw (you’re playing a hero I don’t want you to play, I will intentionally sabotage our team) BS. I don’t care about winning or losing, as much as I care about teamwork, being positive, & everyone doing their best and getting better together.
Wouldn’t it be nice if those attitudes were factored into rank!
I bought Overwatch. My Battlenet ID is ChuckSumner#1973 but I might change it later. If any hero has a cane as a weapon I’m fucked. What is it important that I know?
Inb4 D.Va never gets a set because she always gets fuckall for most promotions. Yeah I’m salty.
Don’t brawl with Brigitte.
Uninstalled it. Forgot I don’t like multiplayer games or FPSs.
I’ve been rocking the competitive deathmatch lately. Low gold unfortunately, but I’m winning consistently by playing to the meta now.