So how are your games going lately? [megathread]

[Samuraijake]

I leave the voice chat as soon as I hear people speaking anything other than english. Often it's a premade with people speaking tamil or mandarin and refusing to speak english, sometimes thai, tagalog or vietnamese.

i immediately turn off comms the moment i hear people prove they dont have an IQ, scream for attention for no reason etc.. or anything that reveals the fact they eat tide pods.... chat menu >> comm button >> off ... play the rest of the game

[Gandrake]

ive been giving her a go lately and i just know to turn voice off

i havent been doing too bad with about 60% scoped accuracy, but it's just so annoying when there is a shield everywhere, it makes her impossible to play. it gets even worse when you go into quick play =/ more like snowballed by press Q to win play rofl. people just give up halfway through the match, it's astonishing blizzard still has done nothing to address how shitty the quality of quickplay matchmaking is... it just makes me feel like if it's 6v6 and not competitive, it's a waste of time

[Jessicka]

People tilt when they see widow because all good widows are high diamond / masters+.

There is a better chance of a gold reaper being an effective teammate than a gold widow.

That is not to say this is the case for every widow.

Stats show that's true for Tracer and McCree though as well, but they don't have this visceral negativity thrown at them.

[Gandrake]

well nobody tells me they are going to come to my house and rape me or tells me to kill myself but i'm all the time being asked to switch as Tracer lol

i feel like somewhere between the end of season 7 and the start of season 8 all these people complaining about tracer inspired a lot of people to start playing her because i swear lol like every other game i have a 30-200hr tracer main when i played her almost exclusively in previous seasons.



i love effect lol

[Speaknoevil]

Stats show that's true for Tracer and McCree though as well, but they don't have this visceral negativity thrown at them.

You are not wrong, but there are a bunch of reasons why they don't notice tracer and mccree underperformance.

Also blaming widow is a bit of a meme, like blaming a sombra, or how people used to react to hanzo.

What ever is perceived a certain way as being a fault hero is going ot get more hate for the pick. How about when Doomfist was super bugged after his nerfs.

[Gandrake]

Stats show that's true for Tracer and McCree though as well, but they don't have this visceral negativity thrown at them.

it is pretty bad

but i wanted to know if you have ever been suspended over playing widowmaker? i just ask because i was just in a match where like my whole team started throwing lmao they told me they were going to report me for throwing.

[Klingers]

People tilt when they see widow because all good widows are high diamond / masters+.

There is a better chance of a gold reaper being an effective teammate than a gold widow.

That is not to say this is the case for every widow.

I've had a few silver/gold comp games where I've seen Widow and Hanzo be insta-locked and stay insta-locked. My main question to these people, is why? They have so little desire to win and so little respect for their team mates that they pull this crap in comp.

As you said, they're not high diamond players. They should keep that crap to quickplay until they're better skilled.

[Eapoe]

I really enjoy the games that give you a clear view to the enemy setup at the choke and I pick Widow and immediately tell my team "I'm going to change, I just want to see the enemy comp." Within about 5-6 seconds there's someone saying "I like this comp, but we don't need Widow," "Widow, can you change?" "Welp, gg we have Widow."
Usually I follow up with something snarky like "do people ever fucking listen anymore," or "we're gonna do great if you're able to ignore voice chat that much."
The toxicity to her is very real. I'm not saying she is a bad pick, but much like Torb, she is usually used by people that are not skilled enough to hit anything, she's usually never at the Payload to move it or helping on point, and there are so many counters to her (easy to play counters that don't require the skill Widow does to be effective), that people just expect to lose when they see her. I won't lie, usually when I see someone pick her, Torb, or Mei, I think it's going to go horrible; but, I keep that to myself and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.
I think part of the reason people don't mind others as much as her is strictly visual, in your face issues. Even if Tracer is terrible, you almost always see her running around trying to kill things. The same with McCree. Players see this in your face player running around and they think "well at least they are trying." With Widow, people rarely see her and that equates to not doing anything. So few people actually look at kill feeds. I actually have had god games as Tracer (they are few I admit) where I'm constantly 1 clipping support, getting finishing blows on people running away while they try to regroup, and land pulse bombs that stop an enemy push. These are the same games where I'm almost never with my team and flanking effectively and they bitch that I need to switch because I'm not helping, even though if they looked at the kill feed they'd see I'm helping much more than they know.
Same with Widow. I've defended them before when someone on my team says they are shit and need to change, even though if you look at the feed the Widow is getting all the actual kills.

[Gandrake]

I've had a few silver/gold comp games where I've seen Widow and Hanzo be insta-locked and stay insta-locked. My main question to these people, is why? They have so little desire to win and so little respect for their team mates that they pull this crap in comp.

As you said, they're not high diamond players. They should keep that crap to quickplay until they're better skilled.

honestly hanzo players get way too much shit. he is such a cheesy hero that by the time you are gold people are consistent w/ him. widowmaker players on the other hand, it's like you have to carry your team or they will accuse you of throwing. sometimes there is just a lot of barrier play that your team is not ballsy enough to push out of the way and legit makes her very hard to play, but there is just as much blame to attribute to a team that cannot make widowmaker work.

its like, you could have a decent widowmaker player. not godlike, but definitely in your rank's skill level and the reason you will never be able to see it is because of how you let the enemy play

i.e, today i was playing a game where i kept killing pharah, mercy and moria. initially they swapped for DVA, but it still wasn't enough to stop me so they had a Winston and DVA dive me. my team literally fell apart lol, it was pathetic. we should have won before the enemy reached the second point, but no one would do anything about the winston and get told I should have swapped after losing the control point lmao.

on some maps i can concede she is just plain bad and can agree she shouldn't be your first option, but the problem isn't players wanting to play these heroes... it's wanting to play them at the wrong time.

These players are also going to come to comp, play in comp and practice in comp because people just give up in quickplay. if you wanted to practice a hero, you would be better off in the arcade. but consider this: if you want to improve and to make a hero a part of your skillset, why would you want to practice vs people who aren't trying to win - in what way could that possibly make you better at playing that hero in the environment that you want to play it in?

you have to learn the maps, you have to learn good positioning, you have to know what angles you have to work with, you have to learn behavioral tendencies etc. 6v6 is very different from DM or 3v3. If you learn how to play a hero in the wrong environment then you will not be able to tell when it will be useful to switch to in the middle of a match.

At the end of the day, I know it is very upsetting for people who really want to turn it up to 11 and find their ceiling... But there are just so many people who do not give a shit about winning. Try not to expect too much or you will just burn out and not have fun playing the game. It seems counter intuitive and insulting, but many can attest to the wishy-washy matchmaking of Overwatch and Blizzard has done nothing with the feedback they have been given over the last 2 years so people are fed up.

Besides... Jumping from mid-gold to platinum, consistency is cranked up pretty dramatically. Once you get to diamond & masters, it's even worse. playing low ELO, it's a completely different game; there are so many mistakes players are not punished for. it's like, i don't want to make people who play ranked to climb feel bad or anything but at the end of the day when a lot of those people ask themselves why they want to rank up so badly, a lot of us who have been playing the game for 2 years can tell you how we thought the same thing too until we'd discovered how the truth was not hidden from us but was not presented clearly.

If you want better teammates, it's not going to happen until masters. if you want to challenge yourself to achieve your true rank, just forget about it unless you stack and are very dedicated to winning. I mean you could always just try to brute force your way out, but a lot of people need to understand they are playing for the chase... and that they are not going to find what they want at the end of that chase.

[ThatsOurEric]

I love it when I'm only less then 10 pts away from another set of 100,
only for the game to fuck me over with incompetent fuckwits that make
me lose just enough games in a row for me to slowly crawl my way back
up again.

Fucking ping pong bullshit is bullshit.

[Jessicka]

it is pretty bad

but i wanted to know if you have ever been suspended over playing widowmaker? i just ask because i was just in a match where like my whole team started throwing lmao they told me they were going to report me for throwing.

No suspensions or warnings. Yet. That said the bulk of my time is spent between DVa and Orisa, some Mercy and Ana too. Even a cursory check of stats would show I’m not throwing.

- - - Updated - - -

I've had a few silver/gold comp games where I've seen Widow and Hanzo be insta-locked and stay insta-locked. My main question to these people, is why? They have so little desire to win and so little respect for their team mates that they pull this crap in comp.

As you said, they're not high diamond players. They should keep that crap to quickplay until they're better skilled.

I’ve seen this combo actually win a number of times, the madenning thing about all this is a lot of players simply don’t know how to play against them.

[Speaknoevil]

No suspensions or warnings. Yet. That said the bulk of my time is spent between DVa and Orisa, some Mercy and Ana too. Even a cursory check of stats would show I’m not throwing.

- - - Updated - - -


I’ve seen this combo actually win a number of times, the madenning thing about all this is a lot of players simply don’t know how to play against them.

Just OOC if you want to seriously devote yourself to widow: how much time do you spend with headshots only games to practice your aim, or see how prowidows position, what are your sens settings and how many frames per second do you have?

[Jessicka]

Just OOC if you want to seriously devote yourself to widow: how much time do you spend with headshots only games to practice your aim, or see how prowidows position, what are your sens settings and how many frames per second do you have?

Having spent nearly 200 hours on her before custom games even came out, I've not invested much time in headshot only games. They did help for specific certain heroes like Ana and Hanzo who have weird hitboxes though. I prefer FFA DM for warm ups, much more dealing with the crappy things than getting too comfortable on a high perch. And I literally mean comfortable, you relax, slow down and can't hit shit. A few times I've had mediocre games, only to really turn it on (and surprise myself) by clearing a point/payload in OT when it felt important!

Razer Naga 800 DPI, 500 Polling on the mouse.

10 Sensitivity, 38 Scope for Widow and Ana (think actually might be down to 8 but that's what it was last I wrote it down), it seems fairly average but I know of people who go much lower but my hand injury just means I simply can't.
15 Sensitivity for everyone else.

Given how much D.Va I also play, I spend a lot of time countering Widows so I learn a lot from watching others from both sides of that conflict and how to fight from both sides, what to expect and how to deal with being countered myself. Less so much from pros as I just find watching others play games tedious, but I've seen some nice highlights and like to pick up tips and tricks; it's hard to apply them outside of those rare lovely games where you're left in peace to just shoot faces though. QP MMR as it is, there's often a Masters+ player in there to learn from as well.

FPS is between 80-120 usually. Thinking I'll upgrade the card in about May time, biggest help to my play was getting the 144Hz monitor and making space for lower sensitivity, I don't think anyone can really argue against doing those things anymore. Also the Steelseries Qck Mousepad that was recommended to me is pretty nice too.

Thinking of investing in a new keyboard as well.

- - - Updated - - -

All that said, I wouldn't want to one-trick her, I enjoy playing D.Va and Orisa and if I could break down the 'time I spent tanking that I didn't really want to be tanking' onto other heroes, I'd probably put more time Pharah, Sombra and Tracer's way.

[Freighter]

Starting to wonder what the point is of even having a rating system when there's little to no difference between people at 3200 compared to those I played with/against when I was gold...

[Kelimbror]

*snip*.

Does the Naga go up higher? I mean, I get that you like what you like, but you will gain increased accuracy if you use higher mouse DPI and lower in game settings. You can look at the pro settings to see what I mean, but I was making the mistake of having a higher than needed sens in OW and now I have mouse DPI high and OW all the way down to 1 on most hitscan, 1.5 or 2 on 'area/beam' healers/tanks/damage. --Also, windows mouse setting on the 6/11 sweet spot and turning off acceleration. There's even hidden acceleration to disable via editing the registry.

I'm finally playing McRee and Widow regularly after not really having much luck with them before. Also, Ctrl+shift+N and look at your Sim numbers. If the max is going higher than 5-7, input delay is really affecting your aim. I followed the various threads and guides to reduce the shit out of my game settings so that there is as low input delay as possible. It's crazy, but my Sim was fluctuating between 35 and 70. That's why I could never play hitscan or really kill as well as I thought I was playing.

Now that it's down to 5, I'm fairly accurate and get a lot more crits. Game looks like shit, but I don't even notice anymore. Even with my geforce 970 and a beast rig that can run it at 200FPS on max settings, the huge hit is on input delay which most people don't even know exists. Now I have it capped to 175 and all my settings are basement low.

[rarhyx]

Starting to wonder what the point is of even having a rating system when there's little to no difference between people at 3200 compared to those I played with/against when I was gold...

yeah played in high gold and almost everyone played like silver or bronze I mean not ~800 bronze (have been here in s2 due the shittiest luck I ever experianced) but like 1200 bronze
and if you're the only one from your team with a brain and atleast two of you opponents have a brain it's almost an automatic loss.

[Jessicka]

Does the Naga go up higher? I mean, I get that you like what you like, but you will gain increased accuracy if you use higher mouse DPI and lower in game settings. You can look at the pro settings to see what I mean, but I was making the mistake of having a higher than needed sens in OW and now I have mouse DPI high and OW all the way down to 1 on most hitscan, 1.5 or 2 on 'area/beam' healers/tanks/damage. --Also, windows mouse setting on the 6/11 sweet spot and turning off acceleration. There's even hidden acceleration to disable via editing the registry.

I'm finally playing McRee and Widow regularly after not really having much luck with them before. Also, Ctrl+shift+N and look at your Sim numbers. If the max is going higher than 5-7, input delay is really affecting your aim. I followed the various threads and guides to reduce the shit out of my game settings so that there is as low input delay as possible. It's crazy, but my Sim was fluctuating between 35 and 70. That's why I could never play hitscan or really kill as well as I thought I was playing.

Now that it's down to 5, I'm fairly accurate and get a lot more crits. Game looks like shit, but I don't even notice anymore. Even with my geforce 970 and a beast rig that can run it at 200FPS on max settings, the huge hit is on input delay which most people don't even know exists. Now I have it capped to 175 and all my settings are basement low.

For sure, the Naga will go all the way up to 5600 but you have to dick about with the polling rate at that kind of level and that does start to hurt performance. Ultimately I just copied what I saw a lot of people doing, but I guess I can try this.

I'd actually brought the sensitivity down to 7.5 so I guess I can give 1600 and 3.25 a go, not much room to go below that. Sim is no more than 20 max. I already did a lot of messing with graphics settings a long time ago, and they are pretty low and couldn't really do any more that actually effected performance.

[Gandrake]

yeah played in high gold and almost everyone played like silver or bronze I mean not ~800 bronze (have been here in s2 due the shittiest luck I ever experianced) but like 1200 bronze
and if you're the only one from your team with a brain and atleast two of you opponents have a brain it's almost an automatic loss.

Well man the next time you load into a match, look at your teammates: 3 of you will be high level and 3 of you will be low level. I also played World of Warcraft for 10 years and there are people who have been playing since vanilla and still suck at the game, so you also have to consider that
high level =! experience.

This source of inconsistency was attempted to be accounted for by mixing and matching presumably experienced players with inexperienced players, but with the number of high level accounts that do not take the game seriously being matched with clueless new players, it creates pretty imbalanced matchmaking where the exact opposite of that bad hand is that the enemy team has 3 new smurf accounts and 3 experienced/dedicated players has an even more devastating effect.

People buy the game, play it for the first time, they end up in Diamond and it is totally feasible that they have no idea how to play the game on a competitive level but are just sick of people dicking around in Quick Play and feeling like they are fighting for nothing. I'd say that it would be pretty rare for a legitimately new player to place in masters, but everywhere below is where new players pop up, which is why they are trying W/L in Diamond+.

Many lower rated players complain about W/L not being given to their ranks, but I just do not see it improving the game for them. I don't feel like W/L will discourage players who are not confident enough to climb with W/L in lower ELO because people already don't care if they win or lose and the last thing I want is to be punished for a loss as much as someone who was not pulling their weight.

Just for fun, go ahead and throw in the fact that stacked players are assumed to be more coordinated than soloQs when in reality most of them are just dicking around with a friend vs a team with a stack that is in it to win it and further exacerbates the issue. When flip flopped (casual stack + hardcore solos+smurfs or hardcore stack+casuals & newbies), makes the game experience incredibly frustrating for the stack and soloQs alike.

I know it's frustrating to people that they are not climbing and to tell them to stop looking at their SR but with the direction the game is heading in, comp isn't meant to be competitive (in the hardcore sense of the word) and people need to accept that. I mean the game's ladder is designed to reward consistency and punish inconsistency so I think early on when the game was much more balanced, the mode was intended to be a lot more serious becaise a good number of these issues were attempted to be accounted for.

However, as time has passed the Overwatch team has created a highly variable issue that has been causing damage to the system for a while now as a result of sheer negligence of player feedback in regards to competitive play. By proclaiming Quick Play is "do whatever you want" mode and that comp is "do whatever you want as long as you're trying to win" mode with their stance on one-tricking, they have given the A-OK on low effort in the game. Players do not feel like putting their best effort forward if they do not get the impression others are doing the same.

If you ask me, I think the biggest problems the mode is facing are:
Poor game/hero education
Players obssessed with "mains"
Non-flanker stack moving at their own pace rather than the rhythm of the team
Heroes like Junkrat who perpetuate one-trick culture and damage system values with skill inflation
negativity (the unreasonable kind)
player mentality

And last, but not least: the fact that the game is marketed as a shooter. As a result of that, players only want to play DPS heroes because Supports and Tanks don't have that fps feel to them. But even if they did, players would not be playing them like they should - we can already see this happening with Moira as they chase Genji players like collecting their tears is their purpose in life; this behavior is also a byproduct of skill inflation.

[Kelimbror]

For sure, the Naga will go all the way up to 5600 but you have to dick about with the polling rate at that kind of level and that does start to hurt performance. Ultimately I just copied what I saw a lot of people doing, but I guess I can try this.

I'd actually brought the sensitivity down to 7.5 so I guess I can give 1600 and 3.25 a go, not much room to go below that. Sim is no more than 20 max. I already did a lot of messing with graphics settings a long time ago, and they are pretty low and couldn't really do any more that actually effected performance.

You'd be surprised about the sim. Changing the game to high priority in task manager, making sure everything that can be closed is, and optimizing your frame rate lock to as high as possible but it can NEVER dip. Here are mine, not counting what you have to do in geforce settings if you have an nvidia card:


I would wait until season ends, then for that week or two in between change the settings and give it a try. You have to commit to using the settings for more than a week to really get used to it. There's also this really complicated method to finding your 'perfect' sens settings based on amount of space, how you personally aim, etc, etc.

It's all out there if you look. I just know that I felt crazy b/c what I was seeing on my screen and what was happening when I played hitscan/snipers was not what played out. Also, if you have hand problems you may benefit from a weirdly low sensitivity. You lose the 180 speed, but gain a lot of precision. For widow it's easier to not sacrifice b/c you can have her normal sens a lot higher for turns, but have the scope very low. Idk. I spent hours looking this stuff up before returning to this season b/c I was tired of carrying heals and tanks and no dps winning the game.

Last, I gave a real hard look at how I used reticles on each hero, changing to crosshair with circle for both mcree and widow. Relatively small crosshair length, 15-20 gap, 40 opacity crosshair, 50 opacity outline, like 65-90 dot opacity, plus yellow instead of green. Basically I just put their shoulders in the fuzzy circle and fire when I can't see their head (if that makes sense). Most people use normal crosshairs or whatever, but it's just not how my brain works.

Sorry for the weird rant out of nowhere, but knowing that you are stuck in lower ranks and seeing some of your plays hits home for me b/c I kept getting dropped down to gold out of plat. I didn't rocket up to GM or anything, but now I'm a large game changer.

[Eapoe]

Blizzqrd's matchmaking system is fucking terrible. I know some people defend it with "well, if you get 1 bad the chances are they also have a bad," etc. Today definitely throws that out the window. First 4 games are decently matched, start climbing SR again. Next 2 games we spawn camp the enemy. Next game, we get spawncamped. Next game, not as bad as a spawncamp, but never step foot on the cap point. Next game, back to an even match. Spawncamping should not happen, ever. If Blizzard could build a good system the this shouldn't happen. I got the same person on my team 4 games in a row also. This is the same guy that threw a game as Hog and waved hello to the enemy team instead of trying to kill them.
I also really hate the pirate ship thing. So tired of getting teams that want to run it and can't vs teams that do it and my team (who just fucking got owned trying it) has no idea how to counter it. Seriously, you just watched 1 team successfully tear it down but you have no idea how to counter it yourself? Come on.
Also has a 3 stack talk shit to the team all last night. Insulted me as 76 since I couldn't solo a Pharmercy. Asked for help, refused and said it's all my job. He picked 76 on defense, died instantly Pharmercy appeared. At the end of the game I told him o thought he was going to show me how it was done and all he could say was "at least I was shooting at her!" Guess he never saw me aiming and hitting her all of round 1.
And fuck these god damn support lately. So tired of seeing Moira's that just hold RMB and then press LMB after the teammate next to them is dead. No wonder people don't want to help and protect the support in mid to low ranks, they leave you to die 1/2 the time with no awareness.
Alright, that's enough ranting today.