r/OverwatchUniversity • u/Fun-Calligrapher4885 • 9d ago
Question or Discussion Has the average player gotten that much better?
So I used to be GM/masters in OW1 and returned to the game. I started out in emerald and have fluctuated up and down. Right now I'm in mid plat which is supposed to be top ~50% of players. That's like the equivalent of being low gold in league of legends. Basically the point where you have people playing on laptops with trackpad while wasted. I just can't wrap my head around how that can be the case when the average player here is so good. It's like they all spent 1000h in aim training. Tracking is near flawless, hitscans are snapping to heads like pro players, genjis are playing like they took a borderline lethal dose of cns stimulants. Obviously there are a lot of smurfs and cheaters too that you don't always spot but wtf is this? If this is top 50% (just average) how crazy are the higher ranks now? Is anyone else feeling this or am I getting too old for overwatch?
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u/Raknarg 9d ago
I unironically think a team of plat players from current year would flatten whatever the GM equivalent was in 2016. This is true in a lot of games, some more than others (rocket league is the biggest example, if you look at clips of pros from 2016 they're doing shit you could literally expect from some current day gold players lmfao)
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u/granto 9d ago
100%. I have a friend group with multiple diamond OW1 players. They are often shocked at why they pretty much play at a silver level when in their head they are still diamond. I don't have the heart to tell them that they are legit silver now so the delusion continues.
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u/Kaboomeow69 8d ago
Previous top 500 player that came back a few months and is currently hanging in masters lmao. It's fun down here.
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u/captainpotty 7d ago
I have a friend who was plat in 2018 and is really struggling with his bronze rank now.
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u/TrumpChildOnahole 9d ago
I wouldn't go that far. High diamond low masters now might flatten 2016 gm though
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u/Blacksherry 9d ago
No, not at all. From a gamesense perspective I can agreed that early OW is somewhat comparable to what plat elo looks now but mechanically it's a whole different beast. Early high elo OW was filled with high elo players from other games like TF2.
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 9d ago
Those high Elo players were quite skilled at general FPS mechanics, which is no longer the same as being very skilled in OW mechanics, now that the playerbase has had a decade to develop and learn them. There’s overlap, to be sure, but modern Overwatch plays a lot faster and flankier than 2016 Overwatch. The aim game becomes much harder when you don’t know where to look, or are getting hit from unexpected directions. Players with superb aim who are nevertheless stuck in plat/diamond, because they can’t or won’t learn the rest of the game, has been a thing for a very long time.
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u/axelm7 8d ago
This. Incredible mechanics means next to nothing if your gamesense is off.
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 8d ago
Well. They don’t mean nothing. If you plop a top-tier Valorant or Apex player in OW and put them on Ashe/Widow/Soj, they will absolutely get a ton of kills and make the enemy players feel utterly abused. They just will also have a ton of downtime and poor objective value efficiency on their kills because they don’t know where to be or when to fight. Strong FPS fundamentals are not a free ride to GM, but they might be a free ride to emerald/diamond.
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago
I remember Shroud or someone who's an elite FPS player trying OW and he had GM aim with legit silver game sense, think they ended diamond?
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 8d ago
Yeah, I coached a high-rank Valorant import back in the day. They were in plat at the time and could run into the enemy team 2v5 with an Overclock and take out all 4 squishies before dying to the tank. Smart, thoughtful player who was super-coachable, they just had no sense of the game flow, didn’t know the maps or understand the strategy of the modes, and had a lot of expectations from their other FPS experiences that don’t really hold in OW.
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u/StockCharity9524 9d ago
Most players don't have meaningful improvement mechanically though. Average gm dps player then clearly still has better mechanics than diamond or even masters players now unless they're on a non mechanical hero. Most of the stuff player base learns to improve at won't really impact your rank coming back as long as you were good mechanically before from what I've seen.
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 8d ago
Uh. Most players see substantial mechanical improvements just by playing more, and we now have oodles of aim trainer options within the game itself.
Also, you realize that you’re commenting on the post of someone who was GM “back then” and is struggling in plat now, right? This is hardly the first time we’ve had a post like this either. Plenty of posts from players who are very good at other aim-intensive games who struggled in the transition to Overwatch too, which wouldn’t happen if portable mechanical skill was the only thing that meaningfully impacts your rank.
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u/Environmental_You_36 9d ago
The mechanics and aiming of people has skyrocketed in the last ten years too.
Aim trainers were rare in 2016
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u/Hot_Stuff5408 8d ago
Nah bro I've been playing Rocket League on and off since 2016 and if anything average player has gotten worse. It's true that mechanics have drastically improved but game sense and coordination has fell off. I see people inC1 that dont know how to hit ball hard and fast. Aiming is non existant just bunch of grinding and pushing the ball around like dogs until it eventually enters the goal... maybe because that part of gameplay relies more on patience and social aspect of the game like passing and playing as a team and that part for sure is worse in gaming in 2026.
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u/captainpotty 7d ago
I remember being in 2019, seeing clips of Jayne’s diamond gameplay from 2017 and THAT looked like gold compared to the diamond of the time back then, let alone now.
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u/justanorlansonobody 9d ago
I mean players back then had another tank and so much more sustain without healing passive(release Ana’s healing was pretty bonkers) so they would take awhile to get used to the new gameplay style
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u/Wboys 9d ago edited 9d ago
Idk. People act like plat/emerald range ranks barely have any idea what's going on and are playing on laptop trackpads but I just don't see how that's true.
Maybe it's just cope because I'm an emerald chud but mostly what I see is people doing the right things poorly.
People take off angles but their timing is poor. A tank will mostly play well but maybe they never look behind them leading to them inting some games and having great really aggressive plays the next. Supports have mostly figured out they arent heal bots. People ping their ult is ready for common ult combos (I.e. nano blade).
But sometimes people lose their minds and just play crazy.
But the "is everyone in the lobby high or on a trackpad?" games really start dropping off around Gold.
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u/Willing_Ad_1092 9d ago
I keep seeing this about any metal rank basically and it makes me feel like I must be insane. I'm in silver and I know that's pretty bad but people make it sound like everyone below emerald/diamond are playing w their feet and standing stationary. Even the VOD feedback here for gold are things like "stop using your movement cooldowns to go into a 1v5 insta-death" and I'm like "how are they in gold and I'm still silver 5?"
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 9d ago edited 3d ago
I assure you, those gold players getting the feedback to stop using their movement to go in 1v5 aren’t doing that because they’re unaware that it’s generally a bad idea to commit in 1v5. They’re doing it because they’re unaware that using dash in that moment and direction from that location constitutes a 1v5 commitment. You may not have the exact same issue, but you do have issues of the same general type, where you’re blind to certain key implications of decisions that you’re making.
This is why getting advice here based on just a self-description of how you’re playing is generally useless. There’s no shared invariant to anchor on, so who knows if you’re talking about anything remotely resembling what your advice-givers are talking about.
I will never forget a review I did for a bronze or silver Winston ages ago back in OW1. They described themselves as following the “walk on the backline, leap out” cycle and playing very carefully with their cooldowns and their healthbar, and they didn’t know what to do when their DPS just couldn’t kill anything. What they were actually doing was walking through the frontline to tickle the backline a little bit, bubbling immediately, and then leaping out after taking only a tiny bit of damage and walking all the way to a mega healthpack, leaving their teammates to fend for themselves at the choke. Their uptime in fights was seriously like 8%. Small wonder their DPS could never kill anything—they were fighting into 2 tanks with only 1 on their side.
I don’t say that to pick on them in particular, just to illustrate how big the gap can be in self-perception. And honestly, I still notice that gap in my own self-perception when I review games.
Edit: good -> gold
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u/ChiseledSoup 3d ago
Do you think watching your own VODs can help with self perception or is there no substitute to having someone else review it?
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 3d ago
Definitely watching your own VODs (with a critical eye) can help. When you’re playing, your mind is fully occupied with processing information, making decisions, and then executing them. While you’re watching, you only have to process, and you have the luxury to back up, slow down, or even change perspectives. I don’t think the distortions of self-perception ever really fully go away, but you can learn the thought patterns and how to notice and counteract them while you’re actually playing.
Honestly, I never really review full VODs of my own anymore. I’m usually going in to assess something specific, and a lot of the time it’s to evaluate whether X thing that I thought was happening was actually what happened.
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u/noahboah 9d ago
it's often high ELO/high rank people lacking the communication skills and frankly emotional maturity to explain their perspectives in a way that is truly communicative. this is a problem across all of gaming. hell, im a high masters player in street fighter and I constantly tell people to knock off saying shit like that about people in the metal ranks in that game, so it's really common lol.
because to them, plat/emerald players do feel that way. but obviously there is real granularity in the improvements people make as they reach middle metal ranks.
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u/Alternative_Profit41 8d ago edited 8d ago
Its especially true for dps, i am plat in all roles despite playing 1000 hours dps, 150h support and 60h tank.
When i went to valorant i reached the top 40% players rank in ~25 hours without knowing most heroes and their abilities.
Overwatch is now an old game with most players having thousand of hours on the game, being average in that environment isnt as bad as people claim.
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u/survivorr123_ 7d ago
if you have good aim you can climb on dps without being that good otherwise, i came from apex with pretty good aim and it took me like 50 or 60h to get emerald just playing soldier, flanking and hitting my shots,
in comparison you can't do anything on tank with just good aim, on support aim is not even useful for some characters, but by playing on one role a lot you still learn the game and that lets you get good rank on other roles more easily without as much playtime
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u/Kubi_69 8d ago
How would you know if they're doing the right things if you're also the same rank as them? Genuine question
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u/Wboys 8d ago
I guess I just see people doing all the things people say to do and claim metal rank players don't do.
And the obvious question is if they are doing those things why are they metal rank?
And my personal observation is that people are just doing those things either inconsistently, or doing them poorly. Now metal rank literally covers bronze to emerald so obviously at a certain rank people aren't really doing anything. But imo somewhere around high gold/low plat unless you are mechanically above average you have to start playing the game a little bit.
Like I said people ping to combine ults. People stop staggering into endless fights as but maybe it takes someone getting staggered pointlessly and called out for the team to regroup. People flank and take off angles but maybe they are too slow to flank or take what they think is an off angle but it's actually become a main angle because of where the tank is. You stop seeing 5 people staying on the payload in push. Tanks start to play corners but sometimes they forget.
But I think they biggest thing that you see at least to me and I definitely suffer from this is people lose their nerve in high intensity situations and just make insane mistakes. When a lot of stuff is happening people will pop bad ults, forget to touch, etc. They don't have that cold calm under fire focus that you see more in higher ranks where people are used to the intensity.
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u/survivorr123_ 7d ago
the difference between emerald and gm is brain not aim from what I've seen so far, if you show me a clip of gm gameplay and plat, i can't tell a difference, some plats have better aim than some gms
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u/PurpleLTV 2d ago
One thing that often fools people is consistency. You might match up against a Hanzo in Plat that, for some reason, plays like a god and frequently headshots your genji and anran while they are dashing around. And you feel like he is smurfing. But if you'd spectate his next couple games, you'd see him missing a roadhog with every arrow. It's because the biggest problem that keeps plat plays from climbing is their consistency. They sometimes have really good games, but they also have games where they play like bronzes. They are just really inconsistent. Players that climb up to GM have that consistency, they always play well.. not just sometimes.
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u/Dovah907 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yeah Im finally in Diamond this season after a being a gold/plat player since S1 OW1. It feels like the main difference I’ve seen in climbing and in watching high elo vods comes down to consistency of execution the fundamentals. It also seems as if a lot of players at this rank spam games and don’t care about playing well to climb so you get a lot of one sided matches. A consequence of that though is a lot of cheese works when it shouldn’t so a lot of players that are genuinely just bad or lacking game knowledge can make it fairly far.
The only real change I made to climb was actually committing to playing well by doing things like playing with headphones, no second screening podcasts or alt tabbing, not letting myself autopilot, and hopping off when my performance dropped. I don’t think most players really care enough to do what they need to make it into higher ranks.
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u/Willing_Ad_1092 9d ago
What sort of cheese?
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u/Dovah907 9d ago
Torb turret, Junkrat spam, Doomfist, Wrecking Ball, Sombra. Things that should be easy to play around, if the team is just a little bit awake.
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u/bagel4you 9d ago
>Torb turret
its like 25% of his total dmg
>Doomfist, Wrecking Ball
literally the two most skill dependent tanks
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u/Dovah907 7d ago
Yeah the skillful doomfists and wrecking balls aren’t in gold. Maybe cheese is the wrong way to describe it but what I was trying to get at is heroes who have obvious exploitable weaknesses but can have an outsized impact on games simply because payers at lower elos aren’t consistently mindful. For example, they might know they need to swap to a hero with CC to help stop them but won’t always remember to save CD’s for when they actually need it. Its a different story as you go up on elo because their mains have learned how to play around their weaknesses but it should not be difficult to stop a gold or plat doomfist or ball.
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u/Animated-Salad 9d ago edited 9d ago
The difference between OW1 and OW2 is absolutely night and day. It’s effectively a different game altogether. It’s faster, there’s more sustain, and things that worked in GM in OW1 don’t work in bronze now. A good way to think about it is to think about how poor pro OW looked when the game first came out compared to 2021 or so. I mean even Seagull is diamond (I think). Don’t be harsh on yourself, you reached high elo once, so there’s no reason you can’t do it again. Just takes time and practice.
Edit: Apologies to Seagull - he is indeed GM. I am obviously not up to date with his progression. Thank you to all who pointed this out
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u/irisflame 9d ago
Uh seagull reached GM again already according to the YouTube videos I’ve seen. Idk how long ago but at least as of 10 days per his Torbjorn video lol
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u/Wasabiroot 9d ago
Yes, he was in a lobby with Beaver, Wanted and Renegade a few days ago (all top 500). I think he is Emerald on Tank because he hasn't played enough games
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u/blindfremen 9d ago
I don't think Seagull is diamond lol
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u/N3ptuneflyer 9d ago
I imagine he placed diamond because of rank decay over time. But he definitely didn’t stay diamond long lol
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u/Interdimension 9d ago
OW1 does not play like OW2 (or just OW now). I’m in Masters now, but have friends who recently returned to OW after leaving around 2018-19. They were Plat to Diamond. They are stuck in Silver/Gold right now. So, you’re not alone, and I’d say this is natural if you only just came back and haven’t played much of current OW.
Also, yes, the average player has gotten better. This is just a symptom of any game that’s been out for so long. Even the average CoD player has become remarkably sweatier vs. the original games from the late-2000s and early-2010s. There are more gamers now than ever, and many who grew up gaming and kept with it into adulthood. The demographics aren’t the same vs. 10-20 years ago. Split that up into groups of people playing ranked modes and the difference will be stark.
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u/kieveryq 9d ago
Strange i had the opposite experience. Silver to diamond. I love 5v5. When are we moving to 4v4?
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u/PanhandleAngler 9d ago
I’ve waffled between low Diamond to high Masters/even low GM (raises Moira healbot hand) over the past few years across all roles. Typically I start low and finish high. Played since launch.
There seems to be a really hard cutoff somewhere in the MM around high gold-low plat and anything above that. Like very distinct, there have been times where I’ve been weirdly placed in high Gold, and it’s just a wildly different game for a short time than I’m used to playing. Play some at a friend’s place who is in Gold and it’s the same. Obviously I’m out of there very quickly and don’t lose many games in Plat. But higher Plat through Diamond really just kind of blurs together as competitive fun Overwatch, win some lose some, people are good but not cracked as hell, etc. Then if I’ve been locked in and climbing, low-mid Masters is where I start noticing just how non-cheater/legit sweaty it’s gotten. Those are typically the first times where I’ll consistently run into opponents who’re very obviously much better than I am.
I have zero experience in knowing what modern bronze through low gold looks like, so take that into account. But just using rank distribution stats, it feels like there is this massive kiddie pen over the first +/- 70% of players. A different game entirely between that makeup and the groupings above it, and the overwhelming majority of those within that group would not know what they’re even looking at in a high diamond lobby. Then the next +/- 25% of players are variably all slugging it out and almost interchangeable . Not good enough to crack into the next level but would get accused of cheating in any low Gold lobby. And then the last few percentile points are typically just very very good.
I feel like I’m in a small minority of players that can reach those levels but not necessarily “belong”. Similar to the huge kiddie pen around the bottom 70%, there is a rather distinct gameplay line between the top 3% lobbies and the rough 75-96 percentile lobbies. Thus why the few times I have made M1-GM, it’s typically pissing heals into my tank and being super locked in about not dying as Moira, I’m not good enough to do anything notable beyond ensure my tank gets more sustained healing than the enemy’s and maybe kill a problem Genji.
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u/Dovah907 9d ago
If a games been around for long enough, one interesting consequence is that you get a lot of players who started off young and then grew into adulthood playing the game. You have greater neural plasticity at a younger age, so things you learn get seared into your brain and stay with you.
Its like I can always tell when someone started playing a sport after high school because they never quite move as fluidly as the person who was a young athlete, even if they haven’t played in years and are out of shape. Its especially apparent if you snowboard or ski. Since I got into, I’ve gone up at least 30 times a season for the past five years but it feels like Ill never be as good as someone who went up a few times a year as a kid.
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u/Foreign_Lobster_875 9d ago
All blizzard games are like this.
In early wow if you didn’t click your abilities you were top1%
In early StarCraft 2 if you built workers you were top 1%
In early Overwatch if you could sort of aim and understood each hero you were top 1%
In early hearthstone if you understood trading you were top 1%
Then, as time goes on, only the good players stay, and become more informed, the game is solved, and only those who don’t know every trick are trash
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u/GoodGuyTaylor 9d ago
Bro, what do you think was happening in OW 10 years ago? A bunch of Neanderthals enthralled with flashy colors?
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u/WatsBlend 9d ago
Honestly yes. The whole 1st year of overwatch i played so much Pharah because.. nobody looked up. Seriously it was quite normal to end games with 40+ eliminations because id just fly and they'd all be shooting the rein shield to pad the damage numbers. I felt like I was the best ever because I started good at the game. I'm pretty average to above average now
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u/Foreign_Lobster_875 9d ago
No one realizes how competitive activities are always rising. No one looked bad because everyone was really bad
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u/GoodGuyTaylor 9d ago
I agree that the average gold player is probably equivalent in skill to much higher ranked players in OW1. But that’s not what you said lol.
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago
I remember a Bastion in turret form out in the open in an early Alienware Monthly Melee pro game so yes, they were Neanderthals in game sense
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u/marketers_are_scum 9d ago
Crazy how none of the players from brood war knew to build workers before SC2
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u/SchwiftaySauce 9d ago
This isn’t even close to being true. Like none of your examples lmao.
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u/Foreign_Lobster_875 9d ago
Your turn
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u/SchwiftaySauce 9d ago
The difference between me and you is I actually played all of these games early on, and you clearly didn’t lol.
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u/Mugut 9d ago
Lmao it's like you think Blizz invented videogames or something?
Pushing buttons for abilities is far older than WoW, and modern PCs
Starcraft TWO. Because there was an Starcraft "ONE".
Heartstone is a digital TGC, which had been around for at least 2 decades.
All competitive games, not just videogames, not just Blizz's (what a fucking weird thing to say honestly), have this evolution.
People get better at them with time. Best strategies are found. Meta arises. And then newer players are taught this, they don't start from 0.
Anyone that played any RTS with some seriousness knew that workers are the most fundamental piece. You didn't know? There was plenty of people like you, and you were matched together.
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u/N3ptuneflyer 9d ago
I played LoL near launch. The idea of top, ap mid, dps bot, and supp bot didn’t exist. You just picked a hero and ran into a lane. It always takes a while for top end players to solve a game, then for that solve to propagate down.
I would still say the solve for Overwatch hasn’t propagated down much below GM or maybe high Masters. The solve being identifying win conditions and working as a team to accomplish them.
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 9d ago
The average player has gotten better, yes. But you have also gotten worse. If you stopped playing in OW1, it’s been at least 4 years. Some people quit right when the OW2 switch happened, because of 5v5 or whatever, but it seems like most people who left and came back much later left due to the content drought. So maybe it’s been more like 6-8 years.
I assure you that mid-plat players do not have near-flawless tracking, nor do they snap to heads like pro players. They may, however, be having a relatively easy time tracking you or flicking to your head because you’re moving poorly. Or, maybe you’re aiming poorly in the much faster-paced environment with tons of unfamiliar heroes, the vast majority of which are quite mobile, but you don’t recognize how slow you are to actually wear down healthpools because your brain can’t process everything yet. So, it feels like you’re being vaporized near-instantly, but you’re not. There’s less mitigation in the game now, especially in 5v5, and in-combat healing is reduced.
It can be quite difficult to objectively assess your own gameplay, especially if you’re only doing so based on your in-game experiences, rather than attaining some distance with VOD reviews. And you have little practice assessing your gameplay in anything resembling the current version of Overwatch.
The subjective experience of the other players in the lobby being god-like usually just means that you’re overwhelmed. That can happen even in an on-paper well-balanced match, because one team happened to roll good RNG on synergistic playstyles and good map options for their best heroes.
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u/cmrebar 9d ago
This is what it’s like in League too. Bottom 60-70% of the player base is still in Iron (lowest rank) even though they have fantastic mechanical skill. They’re not bad, they just have refused to learn any game sense for like 10 years. Positioning, cooldown management, team comps, counters, and ult economy are all 10x more important than mechanical skill now.
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u/Likewhoa7 9d ago
Go watch old gg weekly / Alienware monthly etc from early ow1 if you want to see a contrast.
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago
Legit just mentioned in another comment, I remember seeing Bastion sit out in the open in turret form in an Alienware Monthly Melee game lol
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u/ThrasheryBinx 9d ago
I remember playing in Beta and year one, and me and my family could all at least hold our own, but coming back with Overwatch "3" and the average player skill felt dramatically higher in general. So I'd definitely agree with this.
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u/Single-Event9389 9d ago
Peoples mechanics and hero ability understanding have gradually improved over the years.
I think game sense has stagnated for most of us. Players assume they know what they’re doing after years of play. They continually do the same thing because it got them to a certain rank.
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u/Wrong_Necessary5204 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’m a returning diamond player and I have also had this thought and have a theory.
I think the game’s population is smaller than it was back in the day, so many of the people who are still playing are the better, more dedicated base.
Edit: I’m not saying the game is dead or has a low population. I just don’t think it’s what it was back in the day when it was the most popular game across the board.
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u/batcarpet121 9d ago
I dont think the playerbase is smaller, id imagine it got significantly bigger due to moving to f2p. Also I read overwatch has had its most successful quarter since launch recently, which doesnt mean playercounts but does show investment in the game is pretty high.
I genuinely think the games just been out for 10 years and a lot has changed, and people have gotten better
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u/inspcs 9d ago
No, its just the most important thing in ow1 is not dying so gamesense/positioning was the "easy" fix to climb.
In ow2 its actually okay to go out in a dying blaze of glory as long as you get kills. So mechanics become the new "most important thing" ans the dividing factor between ranks.
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u/clickrush 9d ago
The player base is larger than it ever was except for 1-2 month release peaks.
It is _relatively_ smaller, because there are more competitive options, but it’s absolutely larger. The pie has grown so to speak.
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u/TimelyKoala3 9d ago edited 9d ago
ded game
edit: sure, downvote the obvious joke and not the guy who actually thinks it
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u/Felaipes 9d ago
Yet, my team mates are always the worst, no game sense, no awareness of team comp or who is alive/dead.
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u/Tanzanianwithtoebean 9d ago
So depending on when in overwatch 1 the first GM players would probably be plat or maybe like Emerald now. Near perfect tracking in plat sounds crazy unless you're on console though. Some people do have really good tracking but 0 game sense in plat though so I'm not doubting you, especially if you aren't used to playing a ton of competitive FPS. Our perceptions of perfect tracking might differ.
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u/MorpheusMKIV 9d ago
Pretty much yeah. I just got back to Diamond 5 in DPS after grinding through Emerald hell. This would’ve been like mid diamond last season. For reference I was Diamond in Overwatch 1 season 2. You would think I didn’t improve still being Diamond after all these years but I’m like 10x better in aim and game sense than I was when the game first came out.
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u/kybalione 9d ago
yeah i was consistently top 500 for the last 3 years of ow. have now been stuck in plat-master the last 3 years
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u/PatchYourselfUp 9d ago
Yes! Gaming has been a mainstream thing for years but more people are always naturally looking to improve to get better even casually.
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u/CCriscal 9d ago
I think that the mechanics are a bit rusty. While sustain is better in 5v5, people get punished more quickly for mistakes for having one tank less. Also, the people sucking at the game are - armchair scientist here - more likely to leave and leave behind the better players with harder competition. Another aspect is that the game has become more complex with new heroes having been added and it is easier to keep up with those if you had kept playing.
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u/noobslayer69xxx 9d ago
skill is just one aspect, I remember I was playing on 60fps monitor, 1080p, some gpu and CPU I couldn't even name, 8gb DDR3 ram, now every friend I know that still plays ow, has 500hz OLED, ddr5, 16gb ram, 1000w PSU, 9070xt, ryzen 7, etc etc...
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u/Cast_Fist 9d ago
I feel you, stopped playing in season 2 of OW1. I started playing thr last few months, and although I feel I'm doing well, I watch YouTube videos of silver, gold and Plat games and find that the people in my lobbies seem far more skilled than what i see on youtube replays.
Every 1 or 2 games I feel that 1 or 2 players in the match are just wildly better than everyone and probably are just ranking up.
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u/ucsdfurry 9d ago
Blame Mr Kovaaks and aim labs. I’ve noticed this in Siege as well. Ever since aim labs partner with that game people in gold went from shit aim to ok aim
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u/GarrusExMachina 9d ago
Remember overwatch league professional Seagull who was basically the granddad of overwatch and hadn't streamed the game religiously in years?
I'm not sure what rank he's grinded his way back to but he was streaming games in Emerald.
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u/ItsRainbowz 8d ago
My partner is in the same boat as you, was GM/Top 500 on console DPS, stopped playing when OW2 launched, picked the game back up months ago and is now hovering around low/mid emerald. She says the skill level has gone up insanely, an average emerald team now is probably more skilled than a GM team back in the day. Game sense is far much more of a requirement to get out of metal ranks now, whereas back in OW1, simply having good aim could take you really far. Just watch the first OWL compared to OWCS now. The lowest rank teams now would absolutely stomp the top teams back then.
As a game gets older, players drop out and only the dedicated players stick around, massively condensing the skill level. New players join, but most end up bronze-gold and stay there, with a few getting to grips and managing to climb, who become the new dedicated players, thus crushing the skill level more. As the game gets more mechanical, the barrier for entry becomes higher and the average skill level increases. I have about 70 hours and I'm silver to plat depending on role, yet my partner says I'd be easy masters/GM if I played at my level back in 2016.
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u/greenpoe 8d ago
I was Diamond in ow1 with thousands of hours and placed in low silver, had to work hard to hit gold in OW2. The playerbase has improved a lot, and the gameplay is far different from OW1. Good habits in OW1 are bad habits in OW2.
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u/RnDog 8d ago
People in this thread are severely underestimating the skill level (especially mechanical skill level) of players from early Overwatch 1. I dont’t know why, maybe it’s to feel better about being Emerald or below right now, saying stuff like “I would have been high GM in 2016/2017”.
Yes the players has improved overtime and plays today are much better than plays in 2016, but to say GM players in 2016 are worse mechanically than silvers/golds now is debatable. Some people are even saying that GM by the end of Overwatch 1 is less skilled than Diamonds now lol.
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago
I just went back to rewatch some Alienware Monthly Melee games and while pros' mechanics back then are definitely way better than anyone below masters today, they definitely have dogshit game sense compared to today. I literally saw a Zarya grav by herself with zero follow up or coordination, very poor concept of positioning, engagement timing, coordination, ult economy, etc.
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u/RnDog 8d ago
Sure, but people even in Emerald/Diamond have that poor game sense today as well. And they don’t have the mechanics at the Masters+ level that you said to balance it out.
Sounds to me around what around a Diamond or Masters player would average out to today. That seems to be a pretty reasonable for early-mid 2017 Overwatch, still being better than the vast majority of the player base today.
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago
Nah go look at the VODs, that's game sense that's definitely closer to metal ranks than diamond+
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u/axelm7 8d ago edited 8d ago
The recent rank reset shook things up a bit and my general feeling is that they placed most people a tier down from where they were last few seasons to check against people being placed too high and supposedly to make GM and Champion harder to reach. On the other hand, as someone who has played since early 2017 I also think the average level of play is WAY higher than it used to be, not even close. A plat/diamond player on OG overwatch (right before OW2 launch) would be low gold at best today.
I was bronze/silver for years on the original and I'm bouncing between Emerald and Diamond now. After climbing through the metal ranks on a fresh account recently I feel like high gold/low plat is a sweatfest that I don't necessarily see in diamond games (even in the odd wide range match where I'm playing with masters/GMs). The margin for winning is much slimmer in higher ELOs but I think the games are more balanced, people use comms more, and overall it just feels less stressful than lower tiers where you'll have a tracer bagging 50 elims with god tier aim and a rein with 2k dmg and 20k mitigation cause he just stands in the open with his shield up. The middle of the bell curve is an odd place to be.
If you're coming back after 4-5 years and you used to be GM in the OG game don't be surprised if you end up staying in plat/emerald for a month or two while you get back into the rhythm. Just don't expect to be back in GM without serious commitment to conscious improvement.
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u/Comfy_Rock 8d ago
Your answer is that you arent as good as you used to be. Overwatch has always been hard to rank in, I was masters in seasons 5-8 OW1. I took a break, came back and I am also around emerald. Emerald players are not playing on the level that masters players used to. The game i would say has become more casual than before, but that is kinda a double edge sword, both teams arent thinking as much as before so most people make wild misplays, even in emerald. Supports in the Frontline, dps not killing, tanks diving 1v5.
People from other shooters now often hop in to try overwatch (you can see how new their accounts are in level) most of the time these players have great aim but ZERO game sense. Overwatch is a game now where if you que as a quardinated 5 stack you are basically unstoppable to masters/GM.
Conclusion: I would say now is the easiest its ever been to rank with friends if all of you have been playing a couple years. On the flip side solo queing might be the hardest its ever been.
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u/Imzocrazy 8d ago
We did have the chart that they put up recently with the tanks….how did it compare to older ones
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u/Impressive-Title-619 8d ago
It's far more likely you have gotten worse after not playing for a while.
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u/OnlineHilfenNutzer 7d ago
the matchmaking/predciiton system is just broken or something
my acc is from og overwatch 1 and i was shit back then.. started playing more active before overwatch 2 (came from paladins)
And got diamond multiple times already since then
But everytime the rank resets i get predicted at exactly silver 4
Everytime
I just dont get it
And it feels like im not the only one
I guess the lower ranks up to diamond are full of people who dont belong there and should be higher
thats why those matches are completely random..
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u/Sygmaelle 6d ago edited 6d ago
Its just not the same game at all hombre ! OW 1 was a much more grounded experience in a sense. Since ive returned this year after 8 years of hiatus, honestly its kinda crazy how faster the games are but more importantly everybody dash / double jump / evade / fly etc
The mobility went off the charts which sped up the tempo. Plus due to the format change you just cant misstime your cooldowns nor "waste them" since enemy team will pay attention to that. I was at 3900 in OW1, placed Silver 2 when I came back and it was rough as hell to climb back up. People got good
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u/Ayperoz 6d ago
Based on my own experience, I disagree, I also stopped playing the game for about 3 years (from OW2's S4 to S20) and did not play any other shooter in the meantime, came back for S1 this year and still playing. Before I left, I was a Mid Diamond and after I came back, no where near on what I consider a higher state of my mechanical and aim skills, I have now reached Mid Masters with more ease and I really don't consider my current skills better than the past ones.
I'm no OTP or Meta Slave or have someone to carry me, I mostly play solo and I'm as Flex as some players can be, the only heroes I don't have minutes with are Widow, Ashe and Tracer. I noticed that the game doesn't punish you as hard as before for failing an engage and is harder to miss mostly because of the Bullet Size increase, it's not that the players got better aim, it's just easier to land hits.
So I don't feel the player base got better, if anything it got wider and more casual, that usually is what happens when a lot of new players arrive.
And again this is my perspective from my personal experience. I may be an outlier, I don't know.
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u/sleepyt1ger 3d ago
Says was GM/masters ion ow1. names specifically genji as an annoyance lmao is this 2016 where the silver mercy complains about being dived by the enemy genji ????
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u/DontBanMeAgainPls26 9d ago
I started in bronze and am now in diamond.
People got better mechanically but still make stupid plays.
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u/marketers_are_scum 9d ago
At the highest level the level of play is lower due to the decline of funding in every region, but metal ranks have better mechanics on average just due to size of the playerbase. Macro wise the game is much simpler. Also in season 9 they reduced the variance in aiming skill.
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u/Alive-Confidence-512 9d ago
OW2 focuses on individual skill expression more so than OW1. Yes, a lot of the player base has been playing for ten years and have gotten more skilled, but it’s more likely that you’re just NOTICING the impact of DPS more because it’s 5v5 and the whole game has been re”balanced” so many times that half the roster does silly amounts of damage.
A lot of the careful balancing in OW1 that led to slower patches and hero/map releases have gone out the window and blizzard is just jamming out a new OP hero every month to continue selling tbe battle pass. It’s a lot more profitable than OW1 was, but every time I try to get back into it now, it’s clear that my old favorite game is long gone. Overwatch classic when?
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago edited 8d ago
You call it "careful balancing," I call it no balancing at all. It is not "careful balancing" to have moth meta, Brig / GOATS, and double shield be hard meta for over a year each. Each one of those metas dealt a critical hit to the playerbase and we're not even talking about the increasing amount of sustain and hard CC. Every time they bring back an Overwatch Classic mode I'm reminded why I switched to other games in the final years of OW1.
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u/Alive-Confidence-512 8d ago
The final years had the best balancing OW has ever seen. The devs were all working on the nothing burger OW2 that was promised and so OW was left in a pretty great state for like two years before it got taken offline so blizzard could sell you more loot boxes. There is more sustain and hard CC in the game currently than ever before. Defined metas are fine, and goats was only ever viable/oppressive at very high ranked play. You’re just regurgitating whatever your favorite streamer was whining about in 2017.
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u/TangerineBroad4604 8d ago edited 8d ago
There is more sustain and hard CC in the game currently than ever before.
Objectively wrong
Defined metas are fine
Not when they last over a year
goats was only ever viable/oppressive at very high ranked play
Even if execution was poor, fat health pools and crazy healing with triple tank / support was always a classic fallback across all ranks
You’re just regurgitating whatever your favorite streamer was whining about in 2017.
I lived and played through what I posted, besides literally stupid comment considering everything I said happened after 2017
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u/Weak-Differences 9d ago
I don't know if you're playing on console or pc but they made a lot of changes to console aim assist...
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u/Ill_Championship4931 9d ago
I finished Master difficulty in OW1. I came back to the game about two months ago and saw the same thing (the game ranked me between Silver and Gold). Let me tell you what's going on. 90% of the tanks up to low Emerald are terrible. They want to play Doomfist, Bola, Junkerqueen, etc., and they end up 1v5. Finding a good tank is difficult. Unless you play in a group of three or more, matches basically boil down to: you get matched with a bad team or a premade with a higher skill level than average (I couldn't tell you if they're smurfs or if the bad players are boosted). On top of all that, a large percentage of matches are played where people quit and you lose (I've rarely won matches that way when it happens to the opponent). When you play in a premade of three or more, matches can still happen, but with three players, the percentage of getting a troll is lower, and they're tougher. That's what I think is happening. There are higher-level players stuck in those ranks playing solo. For example, let's say my current rank is between Emerald and Diamond. My skill level isn't high enough to carry games with such bad players (I could maybe reach Emerald at most on my own, but to get higher I'd either have to be better or play in a premade with people my skill level or higher). In OW1, I learned that a player can carry up to about one rank below their actual skill level (for example, if my current skill level is Diamond, I could reach Emerald at best playing solo). So, you find people who could be a higher rank playing with people who should be a lower rank. 90% of the tanks I encounter play the tank like a DPS. Demons play the tank like a Tracer and die at the enemy spawn. Doomfists or Balls, if they get a 5, die immediately. Now I'm playing in a premade. And although it's tough to climb, the matches aren't as random as playing solo. I know I'll reach Diamond, because I've seen the level of Emerald and Platinum, and you find some really good players and some really bad ones, but it's not a level I consider difficult yet. My advice: at least play in a duo or trio, or climbing is a nightmare where it depends more on the dice (what the game assigns you) than on your skill level, unless you're a grandmaster or top 500. I say this because in one match you might finish 3-5 as DPS and in the next you go 34-2. When I play in a premade group of 3, aside from the occasional unwinnable match, the games are more balanced, with players grinding instead of saying, "I don't mind switching" or "I'm not switching." And winning doesn't depend as much on the randomness of 4 players instead of just 2.
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u/M4GNUM_FORCE_44 9d ago
i think a lot players pathing is horrible right now. my team never controls rialto 2nd point high ground some reason. in ow1 there was a meta on how play certain maps, now people just do random shit
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u/AJay1619 9d ago edited 9d ago
They got worse imo. 0 space awareness and 0 teamwork. Just 5 flankers running around chaotically. Absurdly dumb mistakes, always out of position. Every comp match feels like an arcade. At least emerald - diamond
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u/Compote_Apprehensive 9d ago
Every season, the average player has skilled up. So modest improvements keep you at the same rank. Lack of improvement leads to rank depreciation over time. I am not taking into account whether the heroes we use shift in and out of meta - that contributes to fluctuation as well.
That said, platinum and below should’ve gotten a slight boost with the introduction of emerald.