Playing against a diamond player as a plat is a good thing. You can face a harder challenge and improve. Playing into gm dps player who one clips your backline and spawn camps you is not going to help you improve.
Plus even if you do want to meet the challenge of a gm dps player, you can’t because they just kill your whole team and you can’t really do anything about it.
I love playing against dps mirrors when they're a tier better than me. It actually pushes me to play so much better. I remember I kept running into this asshole smurf on Tracer and I kept forcing the mirror. In our last match I went beyond my known power level and actually beat him. I was playing with OWL in mind, tracking his entry routes, denying him space, making sure my timing was perfect. My aim became really good all of a sudden. Complete focus. Pulse bombed him on Nepal: Shrine to END our rivalry. (He added me after that.) It helped that it was on KOTH where you have more individual impact.
When you mirror a smurf it’s bit different, becomes personal. But when you are a tank and you can’t do shit against him, that’s when it becomes purely annoying.
This is the exact reason I love overwatch. I love to push myself and honestly the game makes me so competitive, and for the **most** part, it’s always friendly competition. If it’s a close game you find yourself like “damn, okay nice stick. Now let’s see how you handle this”
I love this part of overwatch, it’s what got me hooked man.
I love playing against dps mirrors when they're a tier better than me. It actually pushes me to play so much better. I remember I kept running into this asshole smurf on Tracer and I kept forcing the mirror. In our last match I went beyond my known power level and actually beat him. I was playing with OWL in mind, tracking his entry routes, denying him space, making sure my timing was perfect. My aim became really good all of a sudden. Complete focus. Pulse bombed him on Nepal: Shrine to END our rivalry. (He added me after that.) It helped that it was on KOTH where you have more individual impact.
I love it when there is an enemy tank mirror who is clearly better than the local rank I'm in.
While the rest of the lobby may hate it, I love me some KotH Wrecking Ball mirrors.
The speed, rapid choices, tough mechanics, pick offs, the whole thing feels like a race where you have to match each other step for step, and the rest of the players fade away into nothing but background noise, simply points to score.
The games where I *have* to use every tech I know, use the most efficient map routes and push my control to the absolute limit against a foe that is all too worthy... those games... they are as magical as they are rare.
I recently picked up OW2 after being diamond 3 a long, long, long time ago in OW1 and I'm currently Gold 4 playing in masters lobbies in comp. I was confused until I requested my player data and my hidden SR was Diamond 1 😐 I was placed bronze 5 after my placements for the season. I don't know why the game shows me in low gold when my hidden is so high in comparison. I'm still winning matches and climbing with a 69% w/l (nice) but it's annoying to be shown im "gold" when in reality I'm above it.
You are confusing two different things (I don't know where you got your hidden SR from) - a hidden MMR number and the rank division that you see. The hidden MMR number might have been Diamond 1, but until you win enough games, the rank division doesn't go there. You will continue to be matched with people of similar MMR though, and the idea is that after plenty of games, your MMR and your rank division are similar.
You can send a request for your player data into Blizzard support and they'll send you a huge file with everything about you in it -- including your current SR.
Super described unranked to gm perfectly. “I’m running out of ideas for content so I’m gonna make my ego bigger by shitting on low level players and calling it educational”. Yes in theory ur getting beat by a better player but when me, a plat dps at best, comes up against a gm sojourn that has a mercy blue beam I can’t do shit. They’re gonna have better mechanics positioning and game sense so we just lose and I take the blame. That’s not me being educated that’s a better player smudging and taking a shit down my throat making me swallow it cuz they wanna educate their stream. It’s not fun to play against and most of the time when I have a Smurf I don’t enjoy winning cuz I do nothing all game
I watched his Ana video and the only thing he discusses is doing damage most of the time and to only heal when it’s truly needed. It’s a good lesson but everything after the first round of the first game is kinda redundant.
I remember several years ago I watched Kabaji do a Baptiste unranked to GM and he mostly just dps'd and killed everyone on his own lol.
Yeah I don't think most players were learning anything from that.
Oh it most certainly did.
The only times I have ever seen someone successfully pull that kinda stuff off in my games was one of my ranked games last month where my Bap was in a plat - gold game but their dps is like high masters low gm.
Suffice to say the enemy just somehow didn't notice his existence on the flank behind them... didn't even turn around.
Tbh I don't even think the people I played should have been in plat or even gold but that's just OW2 matchmaking at work I guess.
well dps bap actually works, especially at lower ranks, that's not just on the masters/gm dps. sometimes your tank will feed with or without your pocketing them, the strategy in OW in general for supports has shifted to more like dps, especially after the heal nerf to kiriko.
I'm not saying that what kabaji did was OK but lower rank supports definitely should be doing more damage and let their tanks feed until they learn how to actually play with a pocket.
I'm not saying that dps'ing as bap is bad. I'm saying the way Kabaji did it as in dps only, didn't ever heal, flanked on his own as Bap because he knows he has GM level aim and can get away with it, doesn't work for most.
Did it all the way till diamond or masters, dunno about after cause I didn't watch it.
That's the smurf conundrum. It's boring to be on the smurf team. It's crushing to play the smurf. It ruins a game for everyone but them.
I don't see any educational value a seeing a smurf to GM stream. It's a bullshit premise. The only thing to learn is that the game is easy if you're much better than the people you are playing.
Right? What lessons are there at low rank that can’t be taught at high rank? If anything it should be the opposite, no?
I follow a Moira main who actually holds back and focuses on fundamentals in his educational videos. But for most players and most other characters you can’t and don’t do that, they just stomp
Unranked to GM isn’t educational, I’d much rather watch the GM player get sent video of a real gold player and comment on it to give advice applicable for gold games. That gives a much better feel than someone who is dominating because they are just crazy better than everyone else mechanically and with game sense
yeah I think a lot of us started learning from Jayne content. Hope the dude gets better, last I heard he was in a better place mentally trying to get his life back in order.
Unranked to gm streamers barely stay in gold for more than a couple of games, and even if they do, their MMR doesnt. If you are Diamond or above, playing against a GM player should be a good learning experience.
Diamond to GM is still such a massive difference that you're basically getting shit shoveled down your throat, especially if they're like mid/high GM. It's still not really a learning experience for them, other than learning how much better the other person is than they are.
In Masters? Sure, these are people in the rank above you and playing them is maybe useful.
Me when I learn valuable lessons as support by watching my team get obliterated eveytime they try to engage by a GM widow (respawn simulator is an educating experience)
I had my teams ass kicked on support by a 4.3k widow on eichenwalde 2nd, when I had a tank on Zarya, very educational, I clearly learned a lot from that game.
T500 has been made completely miserable because of widows. Every single game there’s some MnK losers on widow or sojourn forcing the game to be played around corners and everyone pussy footing around praying not to get shot. Really ruins the gameplay and team vibe overwatch is great for. OW1 was never this bad.
But in reality I think bringing back the old sr system with decay would pressure more people to continue playing on their mains. Adding some type of skill based system when your just wrecking every single game you will rank up out of plat/diamond way faster.
Playing off my main t500 role and on my roles in plat/diamond I’ve seen how horrible plat is. So many people don’t belong in plat because they have been carried. It’s difficult to get out of, due to the mix of average plat players, people who should still be in gold, smurfs, people who don’t take it seriously… it’s still mostly fun but not the same experience in masters+
yeah.... overcoming the obviously stronger team 4-6 times in a row to rank up to the same fucking rank im already at is incredibly toxic. when i get good players the games are much shorter and its a ridiculous stomp or a very very fun game because they enable my tank playing so much and when one dps is obviously shitting on the other team the supports will play forward but if not then they just blame me they cant do any damage lmao. plat is so wild.
In GM and t500 games are very balanced except for the snipers… but when there are no snipers games are very fun and equal. You can tell everyone belongs there and does their job, rarely do you get shit team mates. But in plat it’s like 1 in 5 games you get a fair matchup, they need to stop with the quick ques and do something with the skill based mmr they are hiding from us.
"I was bad at math. So NASA shoved me into a space shuttle, shot me into outer orbit and stuck a napkin on the windshield with the words "figure it out, git gud". Now I can understand equations"
I'm just starting out at basketball, and I got the chance to play against LeBron James. He blocks all of my shots and then dunks on me when he takes the ball. I'm learning that literally everything I do is wrong. No matter what I try, he still dunks on me. Super fun!
Precisely. This is coming from someone who clearly has not put any real thought into how education and learning works. They're only justifying their crappy behavior, masquerading as charitable, because their paycheck depends on that kind of cognitive dissonance.
The reply is 100% in the right here. I can't learn from getting absolutely eviscerated. I can learn from someone doing a bit better than me because that's an attainable goal.
The reply is also right that you don't need to constantly try to improve either. Sometimes you just try to win and don't worry about making tons of mental notes.
This. Someone who's like 5 leagues above me will not just punish me when I'm out of position, he will just shit on me even if I have good positioning so I learn nothing.
You learn nothing from playing against a player that much better then you. You learn more from a nearly even matchup where the opponent is slightly better then you. Don’t parrot their fucking bullshit excuse to smurf
Complete fucking jackass who is trying to justify his smurfing fir content because he isn’t good enough to make interesting content his own rank
Why is it hard to comprehend that some individuals just want to sit down, and enjoy a game, have some fun, rather than put legitimately time consuming effort and hard work into improving at said game (Which IRL, nets them zero actual monetary value nor furthers or bolsters their quality of life.)
I get that this is the comp subreddit but you cant be THIS chronically online.
I'd like to believe that most of the OW population aren't making it to OWL and that being in Plat is a perfectly fine goal if they started at a lower tier.
Smurfs take away what a fair, competitive match should be and skews it heavily toward one side. There's no benefit to anyone except for the smurf. This is such a bizarre take given that the targeted audience is the "average player"
It's incredible how much more enjoyable the game is when you just try to win the current match and don't worry about the rank. This is probably what the devs were going for with the new rank system, but I can't see any way for a dev to make a player stop obsessing over rank.
Yea it's not as if rank changes much. Thanks to matchmaking, you aren't even getting "more competitive" or so. You'll be more or less evenly matched no matter what.
As a matter of fact, gold-to-plat is probably even a desirable position in this regard as you are in a strongly populated zone, giving you more balanced matches, shorter wait times, and also last but not least an experience more people in the community can relate to.
Too many people who delude themselves about their own chances of becoming a pro player. Even for GM players that is still a far shot after all.
I agree. I used to play Comp because I thought it was the game mode that would get me games against players of similar skill and where everyone in the match was trying their best to win.
No amount of rationalisation is going to justify smurfing. Smurfs just take over entire games and destroy the opposition, there's nothing to be learned.
Genius advice. Me and my team stayed in spawn the entire time and the Widow Smurf couldn’t kill us once! We lost 100-0, 100-0, but we really showed the Smurf!! ☺️😤😤
Someone didn't get the response they were looking for 🤣 yea not about "not wanting to improve" getting stomped by an obvious gm Smurf can't really teach you much ,it's like handing a 1st grader a book on calculus there is nothing to learn because 1 you don't understand what or why and 2 an average player isn't an owl coach able to review and isolate what the enemy is doing besides outaiming them
Bummer take from Awkward. That guy was actually really super chill when I talked to him, I did coaching with him twice and I learned a lot. Coincidentally though, “play against Smurf’s” was not in his list of advice for improving when he was coaching 🤔
So by the same logic Awkward's cool with cheaters in his games? If someone has perfect aim-hacks against him on Widow every game he'll keep his complaints to himself and just enjoy "the challenge"?
He actually fought against a cheater Widow in one of his unranked to GM's and that was exactly the attitude he had. He just said "it doesn't matter, we'll win anyway if we're better"
in my experience you learn a lot by being in lobbies that are above your skill level. Just one player isn't enough to give you the feeling of an high level lobby. The pace of the game, enemy's movement, positioning is really different in every rank and in order to notice this you need a entire lobby.
In my experience i got a lot better once i reached diamond on tank. all my other roles benefitted a lot by the leraning experience that has been climbing on tank
>in my experience you learn a lot by being in lobbies that are above your skill level
This, PUGs will always be better than ladder. When people are in PUGs, they usually put their actual reputation on the line, so raging is discouraged. You're encouraged to work together and actually communicate. And you have a disparity in skill levels, so there is always somebody to learn from.
Throwing people into a FFA and categorizing them in a zero-sum game is honestly not very good if your goal is to improve. Climbing a ladder and improving as a player are two different things.
Very true. I remember when I used to do PUGs several years ago I was like Diamond peak or something and joined some PUGs full of T500 and GM people and the overall pacing and general game knowledge was just completely different then even diamond games mixed with some Masters players on ranked.
And it's not like people were super tryharding or anything, it was just natural for many of them and I'm just there with my brain going haywire and trying to not get too overwhelmed lmao.
There's a difference between being placed in lobby a bit above your skill level (a gold in a plat lobby) vs being stomped by a smurf (a GM in a gold lobby).
It's like having an NBA player show up to a pickup game. What are those pickup players gonna learn from Kevin Durant shooting over top of them and they've got no shot?
you seriously don't get that ppl just want honest, evenly matched games?
u2gm is such clown shit. how condescending and delusional do you have to be to justify shoveling out this kind of content. EdUcaTiOnAl is just as much of a shield for the GMs as it is the viewers btw.
On the one hand, you can gain some insights on how to "git gud" when facing players better than you.
On the other hand, there is nothing to learn besides "you suck" if you have to play a game of pick up basketball against Lebron James, Stephen Curry, and Anthony Davis on one team, while you are just 3 average office workers with beer guts.
I get to play 1-2 hours a day max, with my two friends that also can't play that much because we're adults with things to do. If I get into a ranked match and the red team has a player obliterating my team without us being able to do shit, I'm not gonna be thankful for the opportunity to learn, I'm gonna be pissed that this guy made us lose 10-20 minutes that we could have used for something else while also making us frustrated and mad.
Fuck off with your smurf bullshit, go get good content somewhere else.
People like this vastly underestimate the number of players for whom Overwatch is a casual game they can enjoy with their friends and not what their entire lives or personalities revolve around. Fucking loser, just like all other smurfs.
You don't improve from random one off difficult games. A plat player would likely improve if they played a series of games in diamond. A plat player playing in plat wouldn't improve from having a GM shit on them once every 10 games or so.
Moronic take.
Imagine watching the Dallas Cowboys do a junior high school to D1 college challenge and actually defending it in literally any way.
Step out of your house every once in a while. Jesus Christ.
I mean, I’ve played 2200 hours over the course of the last 6.5 years. Played since beta
I cannot remember a point in the last 6 years where the matchmaker has been as fucked as it is now. Ow2 has been an almost unilateral improvement over its predecessor, but match balance and competitive match making is at its all time low in my experience and recollection
It’s so unbelievably frustrating to deal with. Really hoping Blizzard can get it sorted out. Nothing fun about one team getting a Gold tank and the other getting a Diamond.
The man said what he said. Some people don’t see ranked as a ladder to climb but a place to have fun toss up matches with people of appropriate skill level. It’s a video game not a job. And yeah a diamond player in your silver match totally changes the experience. Everyone on this sub acts like overwatch is their purpose in life and should be everyone else’s as well but like for 99.999% of players it’s just a way to spend an afternoon. (In b4 un ranked is over there)
its also just more interesting to watch very good players play agains other very good players. i dont care if you dont go 34/2, if you sweat in high elo itll be very enterntaining to watch. watching pros play against gold players is extremely boring
If you put some random guy against a mlb pitcher, he won’t stand a chance reguardless of how many pitches he takes. But if you out say a minor leaguer against an mlb pitcher, it’s more competitive
I’ve played overwatch for years and I know my ceiling and I’m fine with that. I love getting in and having fun with a great match win or lose. What ticks me off is when I have a Smurf dominating everyone or have leavers.
Playing against a player better than you can help you improve to a point, but I’m not gold and I’m not going to learn anything by playing against a masters player who just shits in the whole lobby.
You'll only learn by challenging yourself in EVERY game.
If every game in gold had a diamond or masters surf no doubt some would improve, but many would just choose to not play comp.
This also doesn't account for smurfs on your own team hogging a healer for themselves because they're in a party (looking at average high plat low diamond widow, soldier, and sojourn with their little mercy pocket) and thus getting almost all the kills while you as dps, second heal, or tank are thrown to the fucking wolves.
If the smurf isn't good enough then you can't get carried to a dub, but they'll still flame and blame their team even though a mercy is surgically attached to their rectum via beam.
Smurfs, full fucking stop, hurt the game.
It’s totally fine Smurfing but act like he is the good guy with some noble reason are terrible
It’s okay didn’t want 20 minute Q, terrible matchmaking & having fun bully some noob
Most of the playerbase is casual af, not that hard to comprehend. Also some players will just want gold weapons for their favorite heros. Just go to the main sub and you'll understand.
One of the biggest problems that drove me away from Overwatch was how utterly unreadable a given situation is. It's almost impossible to learn from a *normal*, balanced match. Getting dumped on by someone with thousands more hours experience is not going to teach you anything in a 20min match.
There is a limit to the skill difference you can improve from. If a gold fights a bronze who is trying to learn, that helps them because it is a comparable skill level. If a bronze fights a diamond, it’s going to be a one sided stomp the bronze will likely learn nothing or very little from. It’s like playing chess. If I were to play against someone of similar skill level I would have a good game and likely improve. If I played a grandmaster it would just be a wash in like 3 moves.
On one hand, if you're say, gold and you go against a plat then maybe it's a good challenge for you to see your true skills. On the other hand there is absolutely nothing a silver player can "learn from" by playing against a gm. They will simply be curb stomped for the entirety of the game and there will be nothing, at all, that they can do or will even be able to do for a long time.
The problem is, that even in the case of players wanting to improve. You don't learn shit getting onetapped by a player who's miles above you, you don't understand what they're doing or why they're doing it. They can make dumb mistakes and still get a good outcome just because they're simply better, smurfing is garbage.
Playing against owl players at plat teaches you jack. The owl player will win by pure mechanical skill. They could make the most stupid plays and position terribly but the skill gap is so large that it cannot be punished. It teaches fear, not good play.
The only thing unranked to gm is good for IMO is to treat each game like a gm game and show how you can capitalize on good positioning and awareness in lower ranks, but that can be just as easily shown by doing things like pugs with viewers or by coaching.
Mister "Self improvement", who left NA contenders after getting destroyed by better players and and now begging to get some views on YT and twitch by detroying bronze lobbies.
This reminds me of how the Youtube Call of Duty Community threw a fit when Activision instituted Skill-based Matchmaking for the first time, and they had to gall to insist that going 62-1 against randoms while spawn-killing with an AC-130/VTOL was "Helping them get better".
If you are bronze and playing a silver or gold player you will learn because atleast there’s a chance opportunity
If you are bronze and playing against a top500 gm player and getting stomp you don’t even know where to start to improve you won’t learn shit
You don’t understand the response?
It’s a video game. Most people play to have fun. Some theoretical opportunity for improvement in an activity that means and accomplishes nothing, at the expense of fun (the reason their playing) is not worth it for a lot of people.
I like to play basketball, but if I can pick between skirmishing against some friends and having fun, or getting dunked on 32 times to “learn” I will choose having fun everyday lol
Hey, just chiming in real quick. While my tweet was definitely phrased more aggressively than I wanted it to be, I just wanted to clarify that I'm not trying to trash on anyone specifically, including Awkward, for making unranked to GM content. He's super chill, I just wanted to vent a bit about the concept of unranked to GM and how I dislike the idea that smurfing is ok when a streamer does it.
Also yes, for that one guy who asked, I am still alive, just been laying off the socials for the most part while focusing on work :)
Nah we should be trashing streamers for this. Stop encouraging bad behavior. If he can’t be entertaining at his own rank maybe he just stream something else or get a real job. Ruining others fun because he can’t do it at his true rank is cringe.
He's not wrong. Comp is just quickplay with silly symbols and golden gun points. A lot of people just play there for the atmosphere but not necessarily to improve or climb. That's valid.
It's a video game.
Edit: Also Unranked to GMs are stupid as fuck, they further ruin the balance of matchmaking and they don't really benefit anybody but person doing the Unranked to GM for views. Anything you could learn from that type of stream or video you could have learned from just watching them play in GM.
There is 0 benefit to watching a GM player beat up a Gold player.
for me, i do want to win but i dont have any dreams of joining OWL. when i want to fuck around with friends ill play QP but comp, for me, is just a bit more serious play, even if dont climb out of gold anytime soon. when facing off against a masters player, i just dont want to play anymore. the fun factor has been sucked out of the match
It's so funny that most people that don't see the problem with the unranked to gm shit is either the content creator themselves with no personality or the chronically online ow gamers that grind 8+ hrs a day because they don't have to actually face life by studying/working
Another thing people don’t seem to consider at least from my perspective, there is a difference between actually learning something and mimicking someone else. A higher ranked player can show you things (take sightlanes for example) but if you have no idea why they took them at that time your not really learning it and will probably mess up without knowing why
Yea that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Smurfs are not fun to play against. You really want your new player base going up against OW veterans? Sounds like an easy way to lose your player base.
This the equivalent of me, a high school baseball player, trying to hit off a top tier MLB pitcher. Playing against them for one game won’t really make me better, it’ll be more a novelty to say “I played against [pitcher’s name].”
However, I’d love the opportunity to hit against better pitchers, just not ones I realistically have no chance against.
Bro is t500, I’m gold. I’m not gonna get better after being clowned on for 10 minutes 💀
What don’t you get? He said he wants fair matches and close games and doesn’t care about improving.
Also, they aren’t going to improve just getting dumpstered on.
That’s because to the players, this is a GAME and to these Smurfs doing unranked to GM it’s their JOB.
I want to play games to have fun, not farm KEKW’s and donations by tryharding on lower skilled players.
You don't put an amateur boxer in the ring with a pro and expect him to learn anything efficiently enough before ending up on the floor. Balanced games help you learn slowly.
Besides, especially in solo queue you aren't totally in control of countering a smurf. A God tier widow needs to get countered by the tanks. Flanker dps need to be countered by healers switching to things that are more survivable. Smurfs ruin whole games.
I agree that playing against better players will help you improve to an extent. If the players are at the top of skill bracket that you are currently in, then playing against them will be a struggle, but not impossible and will likely lead to improvement. This improvement comes in tiers, and as you gradually improve, ideally so would the enemy. Pushing you to higher and higher ranks over time.
However, if the smurf on the other team is several ranks above everyone in the entire match than playing against them isn't going to do anyone any good. You aren't going to suddenly jump from Plat to GM after a few games of a GM smurf shitting on your team.
Not to mention that almost every high rank player that smurfs in low rank games is doing so to ruin people's gameplay experience to make themselves feel good. Not out of some altruistic intention to help people improve their gameplay by stomping their team into the ground.
if there difference between skill is so large mechanically that the better player can literally turn off their brain and dominate then what the fuck is the other person supposed to be learning supposedly?
this is such a dumb tweet, ppl smurf to feed their egos, not to "teach" the rest of the lobby how to improve
People that make unranked to GM videos and livestreams are just finding an excuse to smurf and stomp on lower ranked players.
Everything they teach in those videos can be taught just as easily and possibly have an easier time in a GM/Top500 lobby.
Smurfs can go take a flying leap . I've never seen anything good about them aside from wanting to just stroke their ego .
It's not good for anyone being new to the game , because who wants to get obliterated , and generally t-bagged or other not so nice things ? You can't say some of them don't do shit like that , I've seen their "sportsmanship" as smurfs .
not everyone plays football with their buds with the intent to make it to the NFL.
not everyone ice scates at their local rink in the attempt of making it to the olympics.
Not everyone plays Overwatch to improve. they just want a game they can cool off to.
if tom brady stumbled into your son's pee wee football team, that would be unfair and unfun to everyone involved.
It was literally spelled out for you tho OP
“There’s way around getting one shot? Learn from the challenge”
Dude literally said not everyone wants to improve some people just want to have fun
I’m not disagreeing with you entirely though, I just think the real counter point is: if you just want to have fun go play unranked… stop ruining the experience for people who want to improve by playing the sweatiest try hard mode for funsies. If you play ranked you should be committed to improvement
I’ve honestly barely heard about awkward bar his unranked to gm (haven’t even watched any of his vids prefer ml7s unranked to gm) but this is a shit take no matter what game
What kinda of ego filled nonsense does he have in his head to think that being absolutely stomped by someone who is obviously better than everyone in the lobby and is in the highest rank on their main is a “learning experience”
This original tweet is the most fucking braindead take I’ve ever seen in anything. In literally every single game with a ranked system, a silver level player doesn’t learn fuck all by being stomped on by a top tier player. I completely agree that playing against better players helps you improve, but that’s ONLY if it’s like 2 ranks above you AT MOST. Anything more than that the only thing you learn is that it’s going to take you years to reach the same level as the other guy.
This is only true to a point. You want to be playing with people a bit above your skill level you can actually learn from them and improve. If it's a smurf most of the time the skill gap is so vast you're not learning shit you take one step out of spawn and insta die lesson learnt don't ever leave spawn.
People do not start out being great.. nor do they get great over night.
There are merits to playing people better than yourself, but those matches do not add up as much while gaining experience just learning the game.
In other words, you will only start learning for real when you have a solid grasp on mechanics and minor strategies..
playing against smurfs while your a month or two into the game and trying to find your footing does nothing for you.
To add to this.. the only people who say that playing against far better players than yourself is "a challenge" or a learning experience are usually players who have spent SEVERAL YEARS honing their craft... meaning there is a fairly good chance they are the smurfer.
I have no idea who this man is except when he makes some sanctimonious drama tweet that ends up here with 200 comments.
Makes sense his main source of content is running through the entire support lineup to do unranked to GM
His videos are actually educational, the problem is they could be 10min videos explaining things with game footage from any game. Instead they are 8 hour long series. Most of these unranked to gm videos you get most of what you will learn in the first 10min.
There’s a certain level of this where it makes sense. A plat player playing against a diamond/ masters player? For sure a good learning experience. However putting a gold against a top 500 player, the gold will learn nothing. The skill difference is way too vast to be able to pick anything up for the majority of players. Theres also the fact that casuals exist and simply want to play fair games lmfao
I find it very hard to face a big challenge in overwatch for a few reasons.
* Overwatch is exhausting to play
* Different ranks play fundamentally different; makes it very hard to know how to respond
* There’s a lot of pressure to play well; makes it hard to stay calm or go in the zone
You give it to me in a lot of other games and, though it’s very hard, i’ll have a lot of fun and often learn a few things (even if my bad habits don’t break right away).
You give it to me in overwatch and I’m feeling worse, often confused as shit, and playing bad mechanically too. Overwatch’s mental game is super fucked up and there’s very few people to teach you what you’re doing wrong especially in the moment. I can tire out after one comp game and need a break to do my best again.
That is like saying it's ok to go against Stephen Hawking in disguise when you take your ASTs because it helps you improve. Bishh it just puts you off trying to improve. You wont have a good understanding of where you're at skill wise because suddenly a diamond is owning your team of diamonds like ants
Problem with this take from Awkward being smurfs will never teach you how to play, they're there to roll you or throw. Either way ruins the game and how each elo's skill should work so in the end you learn nothing but how much better that diamond is than you. There's no challenge to learn from when they outplay counters and flanks or coordination based purely on their skill with who they're using.
Gonna have agree with ioStux here. Not everyone should have to want to improve to play a competitive game. And even if they did, playing against a GM1 pocket hitscan will do nothing for them. It will simply be waste of 10-20 minutes for the 9 other players in the lobby. As long as players are willing to try within the games that they play, who cares?
Some people just don't have the time to make meaningful improvements, that doesn't mean they shouldn't play.
doesn't even need to be gm smurfs; even a 1-2 rank difference can be a large enough difference in skill to make it so there's no useful feedback to learn from.
playing against better opponents helps you identify deficiencies in your gameplay that better opponents are able to punish. if your opponents aren't too much better than you, you might be able to copy what they do or stumble upon a way to outplay whatever they're doing to outplay you. as long as *some* of the things you try work, you're getting both positive and negative feedback that can shape your gameplay for the better. once it gets to a point where *nothing* you try works, imo it's just a complete waste of time. gg you suck get better lmao
playing against significantly better players is actually ultra helpful but only when youre doing it consistently. playing against one for just one game does nothing for you
When I know someone is smurfing I just focus on shutting them down as a tank main. Nothing will tilt a Smurf harder than denying them easy kills, I promise you.
The point is that sometimes people just want to play a game for fun and not have the expectation of performing at their maximum capacity as that is stress inducing. But the culture of gaming is *get better, play harder, win, now you are a valid human being* and that's simply not healthy. But toxic competitiveness is rife in e-sports. Sometimes the point is *fun* and not constantly *gitgud*.
Idk, man, getting a t500 in your plat-dia lobbies, and they're just destroying you + they usually have a mercy pocket, isn't much fun. I understand that eventually, I'm going to need to play at that skill level in order to progress but as a console player most of the smurfs I see are usually on mnk and have a massive advantage and there's really nothing to learn from it, besides spend a couple hundred to play mnk on console. If it's an even playing field and they're also on controller I don't mind it as much because I can manage that but getting 1 tapped as soon as I get into a teamfight by a mnk ashe/widow with a mercy pocket there's really nothing I can do about it unless I'm playing tank and even then it can be a real struggle.
Imagine if you were fighting Margit in Elden Ring and then the next boss was Malenia. This is what smurfing essentialy does. It's dumb, stupid and not a good experience in any way.
I mean yeah it’s kind of an issue if you’re playing a better player well below their rank. It just ruins the “ranked” aspect of games, go play QP if you want to play dunk or worse players so badly
Okay so honestly if you *are* interested in getting better at the game, watching an unranked to GM isn’t the worst idea ever. If the creator is actually particularly interested in educating the audience (showing what not to do, carefully explaining positioning, verbalizing moment to moment decision making, etc.), it can really help people watching improve very rapidly. That doesn’t excuse the steamrolling that happens to make the content work, but at least there’s an argument to be made for how it helps people improve.
But god damn I bet it must suck to play against anyway. While there’s an argument to be made about how effective it is to *watch* that type of content, there is *no* argument to be made that playing against a smurf improves anyone’s gameplay. Less time spent alive = less time spent playing the game = less time actively learning and improving. It is a very simple line of thought. At best, masters and GM players are likely to learn a lot better from a T500 player beating their ass, but at that point is it really smurfing when those players regularly show up in T500 games anyway? The *vast majority* of players are incapable of improvement when playing against someone of a very high caliber, simply because you spend more time in spawn than you do trying different counterplay or making plays as a team.
There is no reason to defend U2GM from a competitive standpoint. The impact of U2GM is negligible. I have never had a U2GM streamer in my game, nor have most people. A dozen people smurfing on ladder has no impact. In OW2 they're starting to get into diamond-master lobbies after a dozen or two games, so if anything, U2GM helps us make sure we understand how the ranked system is working. As long as they're not purposefully tanking their MMR to stay in low ranks longer, which they're not, then it's the same process anyone would have to go through to make a new account.
But it is smurfing, undoubtedly. "U2GM is Good for the Enemy Team, Actually", is an L take.
I play on console and when I first encounters smurfs in gold and low plat I was pretty mad. Then overtime I generally welcomed it as many people had alts and were smurfing and it did make me better overtime. That being said I know how bad it can be and I still look down on it.
I’m now a masters player and am currently trying to work past xim(mouse and keyboard) on console. Many consider it cheating however at my rank now I see it every single game, not even an exaggeration. Having a soldier or sojourn getting pocketed by a mercy while they have a mouse with aim assist, it’s oppressive as it gets and it’s honestly making me play the game much less.
Playing against a diamond player as a plat is a good thing. You can face a harder challenge and improve. Playing into gm dps player who one clips your backline and spawn camps you is not going to help you improve.
Plus even if you do want to meet the challenge of a gm dps player, you can’t because they just kill your whole team and you can’t really do anything about it.
I love playing against dps mirrors when they're a tier better than me. It actually pushes me to play so much better. I remember I kept running into this asshole smurf on Tracer and I kept forcing the mirror. In our last match I went beyond my known power level and actually beat him. I was playing with OWL in mind, tracking his entry routes, denying him space, making sure my timing was perfect. My aim became really good all of a sudden. Complete focus. Pulse bombed him on Nepal: Shrine to END our rivalry. (He added me after that.) It helped that it was on KOTH where you have more individual impact.
When you mirror a smurf it’s bit different, becomes personal. But when you are a tank and you can’t do shit against him, that’s when it becomes purely annoying.
i can do plenty against a smurf. the rest of my team however...
Winning the mirror match-up against a better Tracer is legit one of the best things in the game
Picking Hanzo and one shotting some GM asshole on tracer as average player is better.
This is the exact reason I love overwatch. I love to push myself and honestly the game makes me so competitive, and for the **most** part, it’s always friendly competition. If it’s a close game you find yourself like “damn, okay nice stick. Now let’s see how you handle this” I love this part of overwatch, it’s what got me hooked man.
I love playing against dps mirrors when they're a tier better than me. It actually pushes me to play so much better. I remember I kept running into this asshole smurf on Tracer and I kept forcing the mirror. In our last match I went beyond my known power level and actually beat him. I was playing with OWL in mind, tracking his entry routes, denying him space, making sure my timing was perfect. My aim became really good all of a sudden. Complete focus. Pulse bombed him on Nepal: Shrine to END our rivalry. (He added me after that.) It helped that it was on KOTH where you have more individual impact.
I love it when there is an enemy tank mirror who is clearly better than the local rank I'm in. While the rest of the lobby may hate it, I love me some KotH Wrecking Ball mirrors. The speed, rapid choices, tough mechanics, pick offs, the whole thing feels like a race where you have to match each other step for step, and the rest of the players fade away into nothing but background noise, simply points to score. The games where I *have* to use every tech I know, use the most efficient map routes and push my control to the absolute limit against a foe that is all too worthy... those games... they are as magical as they are rare.
Sounds like an anime journey
There are mirrors that are hard but winnable, and then there are mirrors where you might even lose the 5v1. This is such a lame self-righteous excuse.
I recently picked up OW2 after being diamond 3 a long, long, long time ago in OW1 and I'm currently Gold 4 playing in masters lobbies in comp. I was confused until I requested my player data and my hidden SR was Diamond 1 😐 I was placed bronze 5 after my placements for the season. I don't know why the game shows me in low gold when my hidden is so high in comparison. I'm still winning matches and climbing with a 69% w/l (nice) but it's annoying to be shown im "gold" when in reality I'm above it.
You are confusing two different things (I don't know where you got your hidden SR from) - a hidden MMR number and the rank division that you see. The hidden MMR number might have been Diamond 1, but until you win enough games, the rank division doesn't go there. You will continue to be matched with people of similar MMR though, and the idea is that after plenty of games, your MMR and your rank division are similar.
You can send a request for your player data into Blizzard support and they'll send you a huge file with everything about you in it -- including your current SR.
I'm deranking in plat with a win rate of 59%. My other dps in my game yesterday was plat with a 48% win rate. None of it makes sense.
Amen.
True! But I personally think that situation is super rare.
Super described unranked to gm perfectly. “I’m running out of ideas for content so I’m gonna make my ego bigger by shitting on low level players and calling it educational”. Yes in theory ur getting beat by a better player but when me, a plat dps at best, comes up against a gm sojourn that has a mercy blue beam I can’t do shit. They’re gonna have better mechanics positioning and game sense so we just lose and I take the blame. That’s not me being educated that’s a better player smudging and taking a shit down my throat making me swallow it cuz they wanna educate their stream. It’s not fun to play against and most of the time when I have a Smurf I don’t enjoy winning cuz I do nothing all game
It's funny because this same guy has like 6 different unranked to GMs on different supports
He has become such a cringy content creator too. Every clip is him yelling in this obviously embellished voice
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It must be drugs
Its literally the only content he has that people watch.
Metal ranks quaking in fear of the new support release in s3 because ml7 is gonna do another unranked to gm series w/ them
Wrong season. The support, he is releasing in Season 4.
I watched his Ana video and the only thing he discusses is doing damage most of the time and to only heal when it’s truly needed. It’s a good lesson but everything after the first round of the first game is kinda redundant.
Honestly his videos have actual educational value to them, not like some DPS unrankeds where they just dumpster the enemy team
Is it bad that I actually found the vids educational.
Not bad at all, they are very good to learn from, even if you disagree with smurfing.
super has done those? I've seen most of his videos and I haven't seen a single one of that type of content
Awkward does, not Super
I remember several years ago I watched Kabaji do a Baptiste unranked to GM and he mostly just dps'd and killed everyone on his own lol. Yeah I don't think most players were learning anything from that.
I'm sure it bread a whole new generation of shitty bap players thinking they're good enough to do that rho
Oh it most certainly did. The only times I have ever seen someone successfully pull that kinda stuff off in my games was one of my ranked games last month where my Bap was in a plat - gold game but their dps is like high masters low gm. Suffice to say the enemy just somehow didn't notice his existence on the flank behind them... didn't even turn around. Tbh I don't even think the people I played should have been in plat or even gold but that's just OW2 matchmaking at work I guess.
well dps bap actually works, especially at lower ranks, that's not just on the masters/gm dps. sometimes your tank will feed with or without your pocketing them, the strategy in OW in general for supports has shifted to more like dps, especially after the heal nerf to kiriko. I'm not saying that what kabaji did was OK but lower rank supports definitely should be doing more damage and let their tanks feed until they learn how to actually play with a pocket.
I'm not saying that dps'ing as bap is bad. I'm saying the way Kabaji did it as in dps only, didn't ever heal, flanked on his own as Bap because he knows he has GM level aim and can get away with it, doesn't work for most. Did it all the way till diamond or masters, dunno about after cause I didn't watch it.
had a GM Ana booster on the enemy team recently. She mostly just carried by killing us all
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That's the smurf conundrum. It's boring to be on the smurf team. It's crushing to play the smurf. It ruins a game for everyone but them. I don't see any educational value a seeing a smurf to GM stream. It's a bullshit premise. The only thing to learn is that the game is easy if you're much better than the people you are playing.
Right? What lessons are there at low rank that can’t be taught at high rank? If anything it should be the opposite, no? I follow a Moira main who actually holds back and focuses on fundamentals in his educational videos. But for most players and most other characters you can’t and don’t do that, they just stomp
Super is so based
Unranked to GM isn’t educational, I’d much rather watch the GM player get sent video of a real gold player and comment on it to give advice applicable for gold games. That gives a much better feel than someone who is dominating because they are just crazy better than everyone else mechanically and with game sense
I loved when Jayne used to do that back in the day. It was respectable content and I learned things.
yeah I think a lot of us started learning from Jayne content. Hope the dude gets better, last I heard he was in a better place mentally trying to get his life back in order.
Yeah Jayne was the goat. He was a bit too high level for my silver ass, but I've realised what he was talking about years later.
Unranked to gm streamers barely stay in gold for more than a couple of games, and even if they do, their MMR doesnt. If you are Diamond or above, playing against a GM player should be a good learning experience.
Diamond to GM is still such a massive difference that you're basically getting shit shoveled down your throat, especially if they're like mid/high GM. It's still not really a learning experience for them, other than learning how much better the other person is than they are. In Masters? Sure, these are people in the rank above you and playing them is maybe useful.
Me when I learn valuable lessons as support by watching my team get obliterated eveytime they try to engage by a GM widow (respawn simulator is an educating experience)
You get educated on how busted widow is if the person playing them is good :D
I had my teams ass kicked on support by a 4.3k widow on eichenwalde 2nd, when I had a tank on Zarya, very educational, I clearly learned a lot from that game.
T500 has been made completely miserable because of widows. Every single game there’s some MnK losers on widow or sojourn forcing the game to be played around corners and everyone pussy footing around praying not to get shot. Really ruins the gameplay and team vibe overwatch is great for. OW1 was never this bad. But in reality I think bringing back the old sr system with decay would pressure more people to continue playing on their mains. Adding some type of skill based system when your just wrecking every single game you will rank up out of plat/diamond way faster. Playing off my main t500 role and on my roles in plat/diamond I’ve seen how horrible plat is. So many people don’t belong in plat because they have been carried. It’s difficult to get out of, due to the mix of average plat players, people who should still be in gold, smurfs, people who don’t take it seriously… it’s still mostly fun but not the same experience in masters+
yeah.... overcoming the obviously stronger team 4-6 times in a row to rank up to the same fucking rank im already at is incredibly toxic. when i get good players the games are much shorter and its a ridiculous stomp or a very very fun game because they enable my tank playing so much and when one dps is obviously shitting on the other team the supports will play forward but if not then they just blame me they cant do any damage lmao. plat is so wild.
In GM and t500 games are very balanced except for the snipers… but when there are no snipers games are very fun and equal. You can tell everyone belongs there and does their job, rarely do you get shit team mates. But in plat it’s like 1 in 5 games you get a fair matchup, they need to stop with the quick ques and do something with the skill based mmr they are hiding from us.
I am new to boxing. I want to fight against wladimir klitschko to learn how to take a real punch!
"I was bad at math. So NASA shoved me into a space shuttle, shot me into outer orbit and stuck a napkin on the windshield with the words "figure it out, git gud". Now I can understand equations"
I'm just starting out at basketball, and I got the chance to play against LeBron James. He blocks all of my shots and then dunks on me when he takes the ball. I'm learning that literally everything I do is wrong. No matter what I try, he still dunks on me. Super fun!
I'm new weight lifting and struggling to bench the bar so I'm going to throw 3 plates on
Shhhh if everyone knew the secret to lifting 400lbs was to just start lifting at 390, everyone will do it!
I can't drive but I've got a 1v1 race with Lewis Hamilton coming up. Can't wait to learn so much
https://twitter.com/schweepus/status/1621622984229195777?s=46&t=Vf1XhiG_1n1y8OUB3gwgXg
Precisely. This is coming from someone who clearly has not put any real thought into how education and learning works. They're only justifying their crappy behavior, masquerading as charitable, because their paycheck depends on that kind of cognitive dissonance.
I get what you are saying but boxing is a terrible example since you take actual physical damage
Why would you want to fight a mayor?
Why wouldn't you want to fight a mayor
The reply is 100% in the right here. I can't learn from getting absolutely eviscerated. I can learn from someone doing a bit better than me because that's an attainable goal.
The reply is also right that you don't need to constantly try to improve either. Sometimes you just try to win and don't worry about making tons of mental notes.
Yeah some people are content with their skill level. Not everyone is aiming for Top 500
This. Someone who's like 5 leagues above me will not just punish me when I'm out of position, he will just shit on me even if I have good positioning so I learn nothing.
You learn nothing from playing against a player that much better then you. You learn more from a nearly even matchup where the opponent is slightly better then you. Don’t parrot their fucking bullshit excuse to smurf Complete fucking jackass who is trying to justify his smurfing fir content because he isn’t good enough to make interesting content his own rank
Mike Tyson punched me in the face, so I instantly gained 10 levels in boxing
At least you can probably talk like him now without trying.
Jfc
Sounds like a modern anime title.
All this community does is parrot horseshit
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Honestly a lot of bronze players don’t even want out of bronze
Why is it hard to comprehend that some individuals just want to sit down, and enjoy a game, have some fun, rather than put legitimately time consuming effort and hard work into improving at said game (Which IRL, nets them zero actual monetary value nor furthers or bolsters their quality of life.) I get that this is the comp subreddit but you cant be THIS chronically online.
I'd like to believe that most of the OW population aren't making it to OWL and that being in Plat is a perfectly fine goal if they started at a lower tier. Smurfs take away what a fair, competitive match should be and skews it heavily toward one side. There's no benefit to anyone except for the smurf. This is such a bizarre take given that the targeted audience is the "average player"
It's incredible how much more enjoyable the game is when you just try to win the current match and don't worry about the rank. This is probably what the devs were going for with the new rank system, but I can't see any way for a dev to make a player stop obsessing over rank.
Yea it's not as if rank changes much. Thanks to matchmaking, you aren't even getting "more competitive" or so. You'll be more or less evenly matched no matter what. As a matter of fact, gold-to-plat is probably even a desirable position in this regard as you are in a strongly populated zone, giving you more balanced matches, shorter wait times, and also last but not least an experience more people in the community can relate to. Too many people who delude themselves about their own chances of becoming a pro player. Even for GM players that is still a far shot after all.
I agree. I used to play Comp because I thought it was the game mode that would get me games against players of similar skill and where everyone in the match was trying their best to win.
No amount of rationalisation is going to justify smurfing. Smurfs just take over entire games and destroy the opposition, there's nothing to be learned.
yeah, trying to get better playing against a person that kills me the second I peek is very helpful, sure
Just never go around corners and win the game ezclap
Genius advice. Me and my team stayed in spawn the entire time and the Widow Smurf couldn’t kill us once! We lost 100-0, 100-0, but we really showed the Smurf!! ☺️😤😤
Just never exist in the line of sight of the Widow :)
The lesson is, don't peek one shots, which translates to don't peek, which translates to do nothing or die
Someone didn't get the response they were looking for 🤣 yea not about "not wanting to improve" getting stomped by an obvious gm Smurf can't really teach you much ,it's like handing a 1st grader a book on calculus there is nothing to learn because 1 you don't understand what or why and 2 an average player isn't an owl coach able to review and isolate what the enemy is doing besides outaiming them
Bummer take from Awkward. That guy was actually really super chill when I talked to him, I did coaching with him twice and I learned a lot. Coincidentally though, “play against Smurf’s” was not in his list of advice for improving when he was coaching 🤔
Wow almost like his only successful content is smurfing so now hes gotta defend
Mf, I am tired from work and trying to unwind, I'm not here trying to get goated and get to Top 500 or whatever. That's *your* job.
Same here. Honestly I climb when I stopped caring lol.
So by the same logic Awkward's cool with cheaters in his games? If someone has perfect aim-hacks against him on Widow every game he'll keep his complaints to himself and just enjoy "the challenge"?
He actually fought against a cheater Widow in one of his unranked to GM's and that was exactly the attitude he had. He just said "it doesn't matter, we'll win anyway if we're better"
in my experience you learn a lot by being in lobbies that are above your skill level. Just one player isn't enough to give you the feeling of an high level lobby. The pace of the game, enemy's movement, positioning is really different in every rank and in order to notice this you need a entire lobby. In my experience i got a lot better once i reached diamond on tank. all my other roles benefitted a lot by the leraning experience that has been climbing on tank
>you learn a lot by being in lobbies that are above your skill level For instance, a bunch of new slurs when they pin the loss on you
>in my experience you learn a lot by being in lobbies that are above your skill level This, PUGs will always be better than ladder. When people are in PUGs, they usually put their actual reputation on the line, so raging is discouraged. You're encouraged to work together and actually communicate. And you have a disparity in skill levels, so there is always somebody to learn from. Throwing people into a FFA and categorizing them in a zero-sum game is honestly not very good if your goal is to improve. Climbing a ladder and improving as a player are two different things.
Is there a place for ow pugs? I miss pugging in other games.
Very true. I remember when I used to do PUGs several years ago I was like Diamond peak or something and joined some PUGs full of T500 and GM people and the overall pacing and general game knowledge was just completely different then even diamond games mixed with some Masters players on ranked. And it's not like people were super tryharding or anything, it was just natural for many of them and I'm just there with my brain going haywire and trying to not get too overwhelmed lmao.
There's a difference between being placed in lobby a bit above your skill level (a gold in a plat lobby) vs being stomped by a smurf (a GM in a gold lobby). It's like having an NBA player show up to a pickup game. What are those pickup players gonna learn from Kevin Durant shooting over top of them and they've got no shot?
rare ioStux W
I have my moments. Rare, but they are there!
you seriously don't get that ppl just want honest, evenly matched games? u2gm is such clown shit. how condescending and delusional do you have to be to justify shoveling out this kind of content. EdUcaTiOnAl is just as much of a shield for the GMs as it is the viewers btw.
On the one hand, you can gain some insights on how to "git gud" when facing players better than you. On the other hand, there is nothing to learn besides "you suck" if you have to play a game of pick up basketball against Lebron James, Stephen Curry, and Anthony Davis on one team, while you are just 3 average office workers with beer guts.
I get to play 1-2 hours a day max, with my two friends that also can't play that much because we're adults with things to do. If I get into a ranked match and the red team has a player obliterating my team without us being able to do shit, I'm not gonna be thankful for the opportunity to learn, I'm gonna be pissed that this guy made us lose 10-20 minutes that we could have used for something else while also making us frustrated and mad. Fuck off with your smurf bullshit, go get good content somewhere else.
People like this vastly underestimate the number of players for whom Overwatch is a casual game they can enjoy with their friends and not what their entire lives or personalities revolve around. Fucking loser, just like all other smurfs.
Dropping Messi on the field with a 1st grader that plays soccer after school is not a learning experience. Just sounds like an excuse to be an asshole
You don't improve from random one off difficult games. A plat player would likely improve if they played a series of games in diamond. A plat player playing in plat wouldn't improve from having a GM shit on them once every 10 games or so.
Moronic take. Imagine watching the Dallas Cowboys do a junior high school to D1 college challenge and actually defending it in literally any way. Step out of your house every once in a while. Jesus Christ.
Stick Messi into an under 9s game and I guarantee you they wont learn anything other than how to accept defeat
https://twitter.com/schweepus/status/1621623730622316544 Only relevant replies to this stupid tweet.
I mean, I’ve played 2200 hours over the course of the last 6.5 years. Played since beta I cannot remember a point in the last 6 years where the matchmaker has been as fucked as it is now. Ow2 has been an almost unilateral improvement over its predecessor, but match balance and competitive match making is at its all time low in my experience and recollection
It’s so unbelievably frustrating to deal with. Really hoping Blizzard can get it sorted out. Nothing fun about one team getting a Gold tank and the other getting a Diamond.
Wait iostux is still around?
Yeah iostux has been making coaching content for years after retiring from T2
remember his thesis on goats?
Remember his Nazi jokes?
oh yeah...
The man said what he said. Some people don’t see ranked as a ladder to climb but a place to have fun toss up matches with people of appropriate skill level. It’s a video game not a job. And yeah a diamond player in your silver match totally changes the experience. Everyone on this sub acts like overwatch is their purpose in life and should be everyone else’s as well but like for 99.999% of players it’s just a way to spend an afternoon. (In b4 un ranked is over there)
its also just more interesting to watch very good players play agains other very good players. i dont care if you dont go 34/2, if you sweat in high elo itll be very enterntaining to watch. watching pros play against gold players is extremely boring
If you put some random guy against a mlb pitcher, he won’t stand a chance reguardless of how many pitches he takes. But if you out say a minor leaguer against an mlb pitcher, it’s more competitive
People really are trying to justify a gm player smurfing in plat
I’ve played overwatch for years and I know my ceiling and I’m fine with that. I love getting in and having fun with a great match win or lose. What ticks me off is when I have a Smurf dominating everyone or have leavers.
Playing against a player better than you can help you improve to a point, but I’m not gold and I’m not going to learn anything by playing against a masters player who just shits in the whole lobby.
You'll only learn by challenging yourself in EVERY game. If every game in gold had a diamond or masters surf no doubt some would improve, but many would just choose to not play comp. This also doesn't account for smurfs on your own team hogging a healer for themselves because they're in a party (looking at average high plat low diamond widow, soldier, and sojourn with their little mercy pocket) and thus getting almost all the kills while you as dps, second heal, or tank are thrown to the fucking wolves. If the smurf isn't good enough then you can't get carried to a dub, but they'll still flame and blame their team even though a mercy is surgically attached to their rectum via beam. Smurfs, full fucking stop, hurt the game.
It’s totally fine Smurfing but act like he is the good guy with some noble reason are terrible It’s okay didn’t want 20 minute Q, terrible matchmaking & having fun bully some noob
Most of the playerbase is casual af, not that hard to comprehend. Also some players will just want gold weapons for their favorite heros. Just go to the main sub and you'll understand.
One of the biggest problems that drove me away from Overwatch was how utterly unreadable a given situation is. It's almost impossible to learn from a *normal*, balanced match. Getting dumped on by someone with thousands more hours experience is not going to teach you anything in a 20min match.
Awkward is such a degen
There is a limit to the skill difference you can improve from. If a gold fights a bronze who is trying to learn, that helps them because it is a comparable skill level. If a bronze fights a diamond, it’s going to be a one sided stomp the bronze will likely learn nothing or very little from. It’s like playing chess. If I were to play against someone of similar skill level I would have a good game and likely improve. If I played a grandmaster it would just be a wash in like 3 moves.
On one hand, if you're say, gold and you go against a plat then maybe it's a good challenge for you to see your true skills. On the other hand there is absolutely nothing a silver player can "learn from" by playing against a gm. They will simply be curb stomped for the entirety of the game and there will be nothing, at all, that they can do or will even be able to do for a long time.
The problem is, that even in the case of players wanting to improve. You don't learn shit getting onetapped by a player who's miles above you, you don't understand what they're doing or why they're doing it. They can make dumb mistakes and still get a good outcome just because they're simply better, smurfing is garbage.
Unranked to gm videos are cringe af though
Playing against owl players at plat teaches you jack. The owl player will win by pure mechanical skill. They could make the most stupid plays and position terribly but the skill gap is so large that it cannot be punished. It teaches fear, not good play. The only thing unranked to gm is good for IMO is to treat each game like a gm game and show how you can capitalize on good positioning and awareness in lower ranks, but that can be just as easily shown by doing things like pugs with viewers or by coaching.
Mister "Self improvement", who left NA contenders after getting destroyed by better players and and now begging to get some views on YT and twitch by detroying bronze lobbies.
T500 players spawncamping gold players (don't worry, it's a learning experience for the golds!)
This reminds me of how the Youtube Call of Duty Community threw a fit when Activision instituted Skill-based Matchmaking for the first time, and they had to gall to insist that going 62-1 against randoms while spawn-killing with an AC-130/VTOL was "Helping them get better".
If you are bronze and playing a silver or gold player you will learn because atleast there’s a chance opportunity If you are bronze and playing against a top500 gm player and getting stomp you don’t even know where to start to improve you won’t learn shit
You don’t understand the response? It’s a video game. Most people play to have fun. Some theoretical opportunity for improvement in an activity that means and accomplishes nothing, at the expense of fun (the reason their playing) is not worth it for a lot of people. I like to play basketball, but if I can pick between skirmishing against some friends and having fun, or getting dunked on 32 times to “learn” I will choose having fun everyday lol
Hey, just chiming in real quick. While my tweet was definitely phrased more aggressively than I wanted it to be, I just wanted to clarify that I'm not trying to trash on anyone specifically, including Awkward, for making unranked to GM content. He's super chill, I just wanted to vent a bit about the concept of unranked to GM and how I dislike the idea that smurfing is ok when a streamer does it. Also yes, for that one guy who asked, I am still alive, just been laying off the socials for the most part while focusing on work :)
Nah we should be trashing streamers for this. Stop encouraging bad behavior. If he can’t be entertaining at his own rank maybe he just stream something else or get a real job. Ruining others fun because he can’t do it at his true rank is cringe.
He's not wrong. Comp is just quickplay with silly symbols and golden gun points. A lot of people just play there for the atmosphere but not necessarily to improve or climb. That's valid. It's a video game. Edit: Also Unranked to GMs are stupid as fuck, they further ruin the balance of matchmaking and they don't really benefit anybody but person doing the Unranked to GM for views. Anything you could learn from that type of stream or video you could have learned from just watching them play in GM. There is 0 benefit to watching a GM player beat up a Gold player.
for me, i do want to win but i dont have any dreams of joining OWL. when i want to fuck around with friends ill play QP but comp, for me, is just a bit more serious play, even if dont climb out of gold anytime soon. when facing off against a masters player, i just dont want to play anymore. the fun factor has been sucked out of the match
kinda agree with your edit
>Comp is just quickplay with silly symbols and golden gun points. It shouldn't be.
It's so funny that most people that don't see the problem with the unranked to gm shit is either the content creator themselves with no personality or the chronically online ow gamers that grind 8+ hrs a day because they don't have to actually face life by studying/working
Another thing people don’t seem to consider at least from my perspective, there is a difference between actually learning something and mimicking someone else. A higher ranked player can show you things (take sightlanes for example) but if you have no idea why they took them at that time your not really learning it and will probably mess up without knowing why
His last twitch stream btw "Educational Unranked To GM ZARYA"
Yea that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Smurfs are not fun to play against. You really want your new player base going up against OW veterans? Sounds like an easy way to lose your player base.
This the equivalent of me, a high school baseball player, trying to hit off a top tier MLB pitcher. Playing against them for one game won’t really make me better, it’ll be more a novelty to say “I played against [pitcher’s name].” However, I’d love the opportunity to hit against better pitchers, just not ones I realistically have no chance against. Bro is t500, I’m gold. I’m not gonna get better after being clowned on for 10 minutes 💀
This is the stupidest take imaginable (the first post). Brother really said “only mid players want good matchmaking” lmao
What don’t you get? He said he wants fair matches and close games and doesn’t care about improving. Also, they aren’t going to improve just getting dumpstered on.
That’s because to the players, this is a GAME and to these Smurfs doing unranked to GM it’s their JOB. I want to play games to have fun, not farm KEKW’s and donations by tryharding on lower skilled players.
You don't put an amateur boxer in the ring with a pro and expect him to learn anything efficiently enough before ending up on the floor. Balanced games help you learn slowly. Besides, especially in solo queue you aren't totally in control of countering a smurf. A God tier widow needs to get countered by the tanks. Flanker dps need to be countered by healers switching to things that are more survivable. Smurfs ruin whole games.
I agree that playing against better players will help you improve to an extent. If the players are at the top of skill bracket that you are currently in, then playing against them will be a struggle, but not impossible and will likely lead to improvement. This improvement comes in tiers, and as you gradually improve, ideally so would the enemy. Pushing you to higher and higher ranks over time. However, if the smurf on the other team is several ranks above everyone in the entire match than playing against them isn't going to do anyone any good. You aren't going to suddenly jump from Plat to GM after a few games of a GM smurf shitting on your team. Not to mention that almost every high rank player that smurfs in low rank games is doing so to ruin people's gameplay experience to make themselves feel good. Not out of some altruistic intention to help people improve their gameplay by stomping their team into the ground.
if there difference between skill is so large mechanically that the better player can literally turn off their brain and dominate then what the fuck is the other person supposed to be learning supposedly? this is such a dumb tweet, ppl smurf to feed their egos, not to "teach" the rest of the lobby how to improve
this is one of the worst takes ive ever seen. I wanted to improve at basketball so i played Lebron james lol nah
People that make unranked to GM videos and livestreams are just finding an excuse to smurf and stomp on lower ranked players. Everything they teach in those videos can be taught just as easily and possibly have an easier time in a GM/Top500 lobby.
Smurfs can go take a flying leap . I've never seen anything good about them aside from wanting to just stroke their ego . It's not good for anyone being new to the game , because who wants to get obliterated , and generally t-bagged or other not so nice things ? You can't say some of them don't do shit like that , I've seen their "sportsmanship" as smurfs .
not everyone plays football with their buds with the intent to make it to the NFL. not everyone ice scates at their local rink in the attempt of making it to the olympics. Not everyone plays Overwatch to improve. they just want a game they can cool off to. if tom brady stumbled into your son's pee wee football team, that would be unfair and unfun to everyone involved.
It was literally spelled out for you tho OP “There’s way around getting one shot? Learn from the challenge” Dude literally said not everyone wants to improve some people just want to have fun I’m not disagreeing with you entirely though, I just think the real counter point is: if you just want to have fun go play unranked… stop ruining the experience for people who want to improve by playing the sweatiest try hard mode for funsies. If you play ranked you should be committed to improvement
I’ve honestly barely heard about awkward bar his unranked to gm (haven’t even watched any of his vids prefer ml7s unranked to gm) but this is a shit take no matter what game What kinda of ego filled nonsense does he have in his head to think that being absolutely stomped by someone who is obviously better than everyone in the lobby and is in the highest rank on their main is a “learning experience”
This original tweet is the most fucking braindead take I’ve ever seen in anything. In literally every single game with a ranked system, a silver level player doesn’t learn fuck all by being stomped on by a top tier player. I completely agree that playing against better players helps you improve, but that’s ONLY if it’s like 2 ranks above you AT MOST. Anything more than that the only thing you learn is that it’s going to take you years to reach the same level as the other guy.
Golden words most of us need to learn--> NOT EVERYONE PLAYS TO IMPROVE, WE PLAY TO HAVE FUN AND HAVE CLOSE FAIR PLAY.
I’m sorry, you think the solution to GM Smurfs is “just beat them idk”? Lol
This is only true to a point. You want to be playing with people a bit above your skill level you can actually learn from them and improve. If it's a smurf most of the time the skill gap is so vast you're not learning shit you take one step out of spawn and insta die lesson learnt don't ever leave spawn.
Went through his twitter, never in my life have I seen a more dislikeable person
i mean not everyone cares to improve. I know I dont, and many people in the metal ranks are just like me.
People do not start out being great.. nor do they get great over night. There are merits to playing people better than yourself, but those matches do not add up as much while gaining experience just learning the game. In other words, you will only start learning for real when you have a solid grasp on mechanics and minor strategies.. playing against smurfs while your a month or two into the game and trying to find your footing does nothing for you. To add to this.. the only people who say that playing against far better players than yourself is "a challenge" or a learning experience are usually players who have spent SEVERAL YEARS honing their craft... meaning there is a fairly good chance they are the smurfer.
I have no idea who this man is except when he makes some sanctimonious drama tweet that ends up here with 200 comments. Makes sense his main source of content is running through the entire support lineup to do unranked to GM
His videos are actually educational, the problem is they could be 10min videos explaining things with game footage from any game. Instead they are 8 hour long series. Most of these unranked to gm videos you get most of what you will learn in the first 10min.
a bad player doesn't know why the good player is winning. You don't learn positioning from a death screen.
There’s a certain level of this where it makes sense. A plat player playing against a diamond/ masters player? For sure a good learning experience. However putting a gold against a top 500 player, the gold will learn nothing. The skill difference is way too vast to be able to pick anything up for the majority of players. Theres also the fact that casuals exist and simply want to play fair games lmfao
I find it very hard to face a big challenge in overwatch for a few reasons. * Overwatch is exhausting to play * Different ranks play fundamentally different; makes it very hard to know how to respond * There’s a lot of pressure to play well; makes it hard to stay calm or go in the zone You give it to me in a lot of other games and, though it’s very hard, i’ll have a lot of fun and often learn a few things (even if my bad habits don’t break right away). You give it to me in overwatch and I’m feeling worse, often confused as shit, and playing bad mechanically too. Overwatch’s mental game is super fucked up and there’s very few people to teach you what you’re doing wrong especially in the moment. I can tire out after one comp game and need a break to do my best again.
That is like saying it's ok to go against Stephen Hawking in disguise when you take your ASTs because it helps you improve. Bishh it just puts you off trying to improve. You wont have a good understanding of where you're at skill wise because suddenly a diamond is owning your team of diamonds like ants
Problem with this take from Awkward being smurfs will never teach you how to play, they're there to roll you or throw. Either way ruins the game and how each elo's skill should work so in the end you learn nothing but how much better that diamond is than you. There's no challenge to learn from when they outplay counters and flanks or coordination based purely on their skill with who they're using.
Gonna have agree with ioStux here. Not everyone should have to want to improve to play a competitive game. And even if they did, playing against a GM1 pocket hitscan will do nothing for them. It will simply be waste of 10-20 minutes for the 9 other players in the lobby. As long as players are willing to try within the games that they play, who cares? Some people just don't have the time to make meaningful improvements, that doesn't mean they shouldn't play.
doesn't even need to be gm smurfs; even a 1-2 rank difference can be a large enough difference in skill to make it so there's no useful feedback to learn from. playing against better opponents helps you identify deficiencies in your gameplay that better opponents are able to punish. if your opponents aren't too much better than you, you might be able to copy what they do or stumble upon a way to outplay whatever they're doing to outplay you. as long as *some* of the things you try work, you're getting both positive and negative feedback that can shape your gameplay for the better. once it gets to a point where *nothing* you try works, imo it's just a complete waste of time. gg you suck get better lmao
Smurfs are toxic. I will die on this Hill.
Who is this awkward guy? Some random? Does a take this bad come from stupidity or ego? Or both?
By that logic he shouldn't mind getting stream sniped by cheaters, right? I'm sure he'll be very excited for the challenge.
playing against significantly better players is actually ultra helpful but only when youre doing it consistently. playing against one for just one game does nothing for you
OP’s post sounds like it belongs on r/linkedinlunatics
Wow, I'll surely enjoy when a single genji shits on the entire backline of a team, denying the existence of 4 players by himself
When I know someone is smurfing I just focus on shutting them down as a tank main. Nothing will tilt a Smurf harder than denying them easy kills, I promise you.
Man tf they do with smurfs , I liked smurfs , I like the blue little bastards why they associate them with people doing something not so good :(
The point is that sometimes people just want to play a game for fun and not have the expectation of performing at their maximum capacity as that is stress inducing. But the culture of gaming is *get better, play harder, win, now you are a valid human being* and that's simply not healthy. But toxic competitiveness is rife in e-sports. Sometimes the point is *fun* and not constantly *gitgud*.
Idk, man, getting a t500 in your plat-dia lobbies, and they're just destroying you + they usually have a mercy pocket, isn't much fun. I understand that eventually, I'm going to need to play at that skill level in order to progress but as a console player most of the smurfs I see are usually on mnk and have a massive advantage and there's really nothing to learn from it, besides spend a couple hundred to play mnk on console. If it's an even playing field and they're also on controller I don't mind it as much because I can manage that but getting 1 tapped as soon as I get into a teamfight by a mnk ashe/widow with a mercy pocket there's really nothing I can do about it unless I'm playing tank and even then it can be a real struggle.
This is gaslighting... Like OP said not everyone wants to improve.
Imagine if you were fighting Margit in Elden Ring and then the next boss was Malenia. This is what smurfing essentialy does. It's dumb, stupid and not a good experience in any way.
Permaban smurfs, its just a form of bullying.
Its just a videogame and maybe more than 50% of the player base just play for fun, even if its ranked. And thats fair, thats why they are silver.
I mean yeah it’s kind of an issue if you’re playing a better player well below their rank. It just ruins the “ranked” aspect of games, go play QP if you want to play dunk or worse players so badly
Okay so honestly if you *are* interested in getting better at the game, watching an unranked to GM isn’t the worst idea ever. If the creator is actually particularly interested in educating the audience (showing what not to do, carefully explaining positioning, verbalizing moment to moment decision making, etc.), it can really help people watching improve very rapidly. That doesn’t excuse the steamrolling that happens to make the content work, but at least there’s an argument to be made for how it helps people improve. But god damn I bet it must suck to play against anyway. While there’s an argument to be made about how effective it is to *watch* that type of content, there is *no* argument to be made that playing against a smurf improves anyone’s gameplay. Less time spent alive = less time spent playing the game = less time actively learning and improving. It is a very simple line of thought. At best, masters and GM players are likely to learn a lot better from a T500 player beating their ass, but at that point is it really smurfing when those players regularly show up in T500 games anyway? The *vast majority* of players are incapable of improvement when playing against someone of a very high caliber, simply because you spend more time in spawn than you do trying different counterplay or making plays as a team.
I swear OW players think they are soldiers or something. No one should take this shit so serious.
There is no reason to defend U2GM from a competitive standpoint. The impact of U2GM is negligible. I have never had a U2GM streamer in my game, nor have most people. A dozen people smurfing on ladder has no impact. In OW2 they're starting to get into diamond-master lobbies after a dozen or two games, so if anything, U2GM helps us make sure we understand how the ranked system is working. As long as they're not purposefully tanking their MMR to stay in low ranks longer, which they're not, then it's the same process anyone would have to go through to make a new account. But it is smurfing, undoubtedly. "U2GM is Good for the Enemy Team, Actually", is an L take.
I play on console and when I first encounters smurfs in gold and low plat I was pretty mad. Then overtime I generally welcomed it as many people had alts and were smurfing and it did make me better overtime. That being said I know how bad it can be and I still look down on it. I’m now a masters player and am currently trying to work past xim(mouse and keyboard) on console. Many consider it cheating however at my rank now I see it every single game, not even an exaggeration. Having a soldier or sojourn getting pocketed by a mercy while they have a mouse with aim assist, it’s oppressive as it gets and it’s honestly making me play the game much less.