Overwatch - The Elo Hell Problem

Playing Overwatch's competitive mode rarely feels competitive. It usually feels like a blowout win or a crushing defeat. The usual suspects are your terrible teammates. It is incredibly common for members of the losing team to lash out at each other for any and every perceived fault of their brothers- and sisters-in-arms while concluding that they themselves are the sole redeeming factors for team performance.

The tweaked Elo system used in Overwatch is designed to make teams relatively evenly matched in terms of skill level based on skill ratings assigned to each player and then averaged out for each team with a number of other individual performance factors thrown in the mix for good measure.

As game designer David Sirlin notes in his blog post on the ratings system, it is not necessarily a good idea to provide individual performance measures because it warps a player's incentives. Sirlin writes:

If we try to address this by rewarding you for your good individual performance and to get you to your "rightful" rank, we run into a couple problems. As stated earlier, if we reward you for number of kills, or K:D ratio, or damage done, we also introduce warped incentives. Now your incentive is something OTHER than just winning. Now you're fighting with teammates for kills, etc. So even if we wanted to help you out here, it's dangerous to do so.
But even beyond that, SHOULD we help you out? If we do, the result is that you are going to gain rank for doing things that...didn't help your team win? Yeah it SHOULD have helped your team win, but it didn't. It's a bit weird that you'll then keep playing the same, keep not actually making your team win (even though it's their fault), and we reward you.

While I agree with the points he makes here, it is his solution to Elo Hell that I have a problem with. He suggests that the way out of the lower ranks as a player who is over-skilled for their current ranking level is to adjust play style to match the needs of his teammates. Specifically, he states:

Here's the real truth about this Elo hell stuff I think. The example Reaper situation above really is good play, it really is something that should help the team win...if you were a higher rank. The higher rank all the players involved, the more easily your teammates can convert advantage you provide into a win. If your teammates are so bad that they can't convert the advantage you gave into a win, then you should do some completely different things. Yeah it sucks that the thing you did SHOULD help, but in truth, it didn't. Work with what you have. Work with your generally uncoordinated or lower-skilled teammates and provide them whatever they actually DO need to win.

In Overwatch, I think what players generally need in these situations is "babysitting." What I mean is, it's probably more important to have few deaths and to generally be on the payload than it is to achieve impressive stats that "in theory" allow your teammates to be on the payload. You have to carry them, so you'll have to refrain from strategies that, at higher rank, are very good, so that you can provide for the most basic needs of your team. You don't have to do that in the exact way I said, but the point is if you play in the (sometimes pathetic) way that your team needs, you can contribute more to your team's win rate than if you play in an incredibly impressive way that they are unable to capitalize on, because they suck. Yeah that's frustrating, but THAT is the way out of Elo hell.

I would argue that changing play style in the way he suggests could actually lower win rates by making your individual skill contribution count for far less. By deliberately harmonizing yourself with an inferior play style, you are lowering yourself to the level you wish to escape. In my opinion, Elo Hell is not so easily escaped.

The easiest solution, of course, is playing more and winning more. Essentially, get out of the lower ranks by investing more time. As I wrote in this reddit post, the time necessary to rank up can be substantial:

Now, a more realistic scenario for our all gold medals all the time candidate is if they have 30 or 40% more skill than their teammates. They are better and should probably be at a higher ELO, but aren't. Why? Taking 30 as an example - 6 players with 5 having skill of 1 and you having skill of 1.3. Enemy team has average skill of 1, you have average skill of 6.3 skill / 6 players = 1.05. That is 5% better than the other team or 5% better win rate than default - 1.05 x 50 = 52.5% win rate. Now factor in team dynamics problems, loss streaks, the fact that all other players are unlikely to have the exact same skill level 30% below your own and any other intangibles and you have an even lower win rate than 52.5%, or rather a high variance around said win rate. Any positive win rate is enough to climb, but it can be frustratingly slow. If you are placed lower than where you are "supposed to be" getting back up there will eventually happen, but the key word here is 'eventually'. With an adjusted win rate where you just can't get the lucky breaks going your way somewhere between 50 and 52.5%, it can take hundreds of games to climb to anywhere near where you are supposed to be (30% higher than where you are now).

In addition to this, remember that Overwatch's matchmaking system is trying to narrow skill rating points gained and lost the closer your win rate becomes to 50%. This means that in the absence of a substantial win streak, the Elo system makes your upward progress slow by design.

Sirlin claims that the way out of Elo hell means adjusting one's play style to "provide them whatever they actually DO need to win". Usually what this requires in my experience is to "kill kill kill" (to borrow a reaper meme). Is it any wonder then that people at lower ranks are more inflexible in what role they want to play and the vast majority of wannabes choose to be DPS instalocks? This mindset at lower ranks contributes to dysfunctional team compositions. Add to this that people do not coordinate, that toxic individuals demoralize the team, that team members will often refuse to change heroes even when faced with hard counters on the enemy team and that voice communication is often met with silence, complaining or trolling and it is easy to see why playing at lower ranks can be frustrating.

I was placed in silver and have clawed my way up to the mid range of platinum. It took me a month to get to 2300 skill from 1996. It took me 2 days to get from 2300 to 2650. The increased game awareness, coordination, communication and better team composition made all the difference in the speed of my climb when I began playing with more platinum level players. While toxicity is still an issue, I imagine it contributes to losses at all ranks. My point is that the way out of Elo Hell is not so simple as adjusting one's play style. I tried all sorts of different approaches - babysitting the payload and the team, flanking and killing, playing tank, playing support and none of it made a dent in my rate of progress until I hit 2300 skill. I am not sure if I have hit my skill cap yet at 2650 (I still think I can go higher), but the only real way out of Elo Hell in my opinion is, unfortunately, time played.

Hearthstone - Blast from the Past VLPS's Handlock 2.0 (fun deck)

Let me say from the outset that this deck totally destroys control variants of Warrior decks and potentially control druid decks as well, but does poorly against most other decks that run hard removal or finish games by turn 7. Still, it's extremely satisfying to play a deck that runs huge taunt minions until the enemy runs out of removal. The game plan, as always for handlock, is to tap early and often to get a big hand, then slam down your big minions and put up taunts via Faceless Shambler, Sunfury Protector and Defender of Argus. Twilight Drake is an automatic keep in your starting hand as it should usually be the first minion you play. Against aggro it is also advisable to look for your Hellfire early on and Sylvanas with Shadowflame for later in the game. Otherwise, good value comes from Mountain Giant with taunt minions and Twilight Drake with taunt minions. Refreshment Vendor and Earthen Ring Farseer provide some healing (though not as well as Antique Healbot, R.I.P. because of Standard format) while the long term plan is to use Lord Jaraxxus to finish off your opponent. Note that Emperor Thaurissan is often used to reduce the cost of Lord Jaraxxus, so keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to play the Emperor. A combo deck variant of this list takes out Sylvanas, one Shadowflame, and one Defender of Argus to be replaced with Leeroy Jenkins, Faceless Manipulator and Power Overwhelming. Your mileage may vary if you are relying on the 20 damage burst from this combo because even though you are tapping often, you may not get all the pieces you need before these combo cards become dead weights in your hand.

Sorry for the poor quality deck image below the cut, it was taken directly from VLPS's stream, which you may find here. Decklist: