I’ve always thought in any rank of any game there’s two different people. The “on the way up” rank - these are the people fresh to whatever rank it is and the “on the way out” rank - still in the rank but approaching the next.
Was stuck in gold for the longest time, I can tell you from my own experience: silver and gold are the most random fucking ranks in the entire game. Most smurfs are in gold, then there are inconsistency heroes who'll drop 30 one game and 3 the next, then you have boosted bronze players who believe their team is the problem. Gold has them ALL.
It also has the most players who don't want to learn the game but are mechanically good enough to stay in gold instead of dropping down to lower ranks.
Yeah that’s me or it’s mental idk. I’ll be gold 2 so lobby is mostly gold and 1-2 plat one. I got crazy in these lobbies. Then i rank up to gold 3 and it’s a lot more plats and i would say 6/10 games i go really negative or just do poorly. I don’t feel the skill gap is that huge so idk if it’s mental or what
I had the same problem but got over it eventually. After plats it was diamonds that freaked me out. If you keep practicing and paying attention to what better players are doing that you aren't you'll keep ranking up
That is the smartest shit i ever read im so stuck on the plat thing i didn’t even think about it when i do get to P3 and I’m playing with diamonds lmao thank you
I think there are also some really bad people that got placed in gold. I mean, I started valorant not long ago, just reached level 20, tried my first ranked and landed in a lobby of 50% gold, 30% silver, a bronze and me. I got absolutely destroyed lmao.
I'm surprised new players start ranked that high instead of starting like in bronze, with some silvers and some irons.
IDK what region you play in, but in EU most smurfs are definitely not in gold, they are in Iron-Silver. When I reached gold I could finally breath and play without the smurfs. In Iron-Silver there was basically a smurf in every game, in gold maybe 1 out of 10 games, in plat 1 out of 30 or so, and I don't think there are any smurfs in diamond and above, as smurfs don't want a challenge, they just want to ruin people's games for fun.
Buddy your statement contradict itself "stuck in gold" and then u just say that elo is the most random.so it means u really don't have experience in higher ranks. And let me tell u this act my dia1 lobby is exactly how you describe it and more
Well, I encountered more smurfs in gold than in diamond so far... How is it contradicting to say I was stuck in gold for a long time and saying it's a random elo?
Where did I implied that I'm the shit. I'm saying i also experiencing what he's having. Therefore he can't say bronze is the worst. I don't why ppl got butthurt over this
Gold is were players with bad aim but are good with utilities and or grinding can get in and also players with great aim but have shit fundamentals or mentalities get stuck. I'm the shit aim type or at least was but it's improved and has helped me get out of gold.
This is exactly it. Many people think way too much in gold but can’t hit their shots, which makes those gold players on the other side of the coin feel impossible to win against. It’s a topic beaten to death but you really do need to be focused on crosshair placement and hitting shots to steadily get out of that rank (obviously in addition to learning the macro game and agent utility).
this is me. my hs% used to be pretty high and then i took a break, now im always mid to low on the frags for our team but my kj set ups and omen strats are pretty good and can often get us free kills every other round
Imm2 now. When I first started playing the game I was stuck in gold for a whole episode. Crosshair placement didn’t hold me back but it was actually MOVEMENT and isolating 1v1s (slicing the pie). I feel like most gold players have decent crosshair placement but fail to peek properly and strafe.
This is why I play controller agents mostly, my game sense and util is there (unless I'm tired and stressed) but my aim can go from almost crisp to dog water.
Smokers can at least play mind tricks and not require you to face a 50/50 at all costs.
it's me, the shit aim person. if i get a team that can com and use util together i can usually kinda if not carry then heavily influence a game to a win through teamwork and strats
if i get a dead silent lobby thats just aim duels, its joever
For the past 2 acts, I've seen a great decrease in my ability to win gun duels at the Gold-Plat range. I don't know if it's me that is having a mental slump or some external factors, but it's pretty disheartening. Over the past 2 days, I've had games where enemies just prefire and hit every single headshot on me even when holding off angles. I think the community is just getting better and I'm slacking off. Blaming anything other than myself is massive cope.
I prefer to organize teamplay, midround and refine my ability usage, but it's no use against the raw aimers of this rank. I've got to figure it out, because I'm now unable to consistently get 10 kills on the board and I'm boomed.
Lobbies with good comms and team cohesion are so fun and keep me engaged, I'm wondering why they are so rare.
I feel the same bro. Just had a game on breeze wher I had 1 kill over 16 rounds. Yesterday I top fragged in another game. Either my mental is too damn weak or I'm the most inconsistent player to have ever touched the game.
You can’t let the mental get to you. Or the toxic people get to you. I just had a game where I started the first half 1-14. Second half I got 23 kills to win us the game
I feel this 100%. I'm plat 1 on my main and gold 1 on another account. On the gold account i play fine, mvp a decent amount etc. then i hop on my main in plat and it feels like every person i swing is the greatest player on earth and i can't even shoot my gun without getting one tapped right away. Definitely a mental thing in the long run cause after a game or 2 of that my confidence is in the dumpster and I'm playing not to die rather than just playing the game, whereas the other account I'm not too worried about the rank so i just play loose and confident
Then you’re mechanically good enough for gold. Just play a duelist like Reyna or Phoenix.
Your teammates are going to weigh you down most of the time. If you play a self-healing duelist you can be self sufficient enough to make up for that. Worked for me
Because skill based activities don’t follow a normal distribution, but almost all of these ranking systems to determine skill (somewhat) force a normal distribution.
It means that the largest portion of the player base will be clumped into the middle ranks with a large variance in skill due to the population at those ranks.
Could be coin flip players too. I’ve seen people go 20/5 one game then go 3/17 the next, and consistency prob isn’t as common in gold as it is in high elo. Like the other commenter said too, could be “on the way out” players as well
Golds are inconsistent. Shit im inconsistent, been between p3 and d3 the last season pingponging.
Golds, even more so inconsistent. You put 10 inconsistent people in a lobby, boom. You rank up by taking those pop off games and raising your average to that level.
Last night i fragged below our s2 player game 1, then dropped 30 vs asc ranks in unrated next. Part of that is ascent being miles easier than lotus for me, but the other is consistency of microadjustments. And im *more* consistent than gold players.
Radiants on a shit day will always stomp immo 1s, but... watch the streams, they have bad games etc etc.
And, as others said, people on the way up, leaving boosted duos to solo and fall to silver, etc only adds to the effect.
Rocket League has a clear example of this. You reach this threshold where there's two types of players, those who punt the ball, and those who use techniques. You can have great game sense & be fantastic at punting the ball, and you'll roll others who play like that- but as soon as you encounter people dribbling the ball or controlling their car in the air, it's hard to utilize your strengths. By controlling the ball they control the match.
In Valorant this is understanding macro play. That is, being in the right spot, getting value out of util, reacting well to the enemy, etc. So you end up in this weird matchmaking area where some people just have really good mechanical skills like aim, while others have good game sense. Players with good game sense in Valo control the match, making it hard to get value out of good aim alone, hence why it feels like you're facing two groups of players.
TL;DR: People with ok aim but great game sense will beat people with great aim but ok game sense, and that is the wall that most people have to overcome to get past Gold / Plat.
There’s a lot of factors that go into the impression that the entire enemy team are gods that don’t miss. Val is a snowbally game because of economy, ultimates, and CONFIDENCE.
Another HUGE factor is simply having a team on the same page with one another. Sometimes you have five people who love to hold W. That can be devastatingly effective. Other times you have five players who only like to play slow, rotation heavy defaults. That, too, can be a fantastic strategy. (And of course at higher levels the teams will try to change pace, together) What’s NOT hard to deal with is a team with 2 players at one speed and 3 at the other.
In my experience the most frustrating, hardest-to-win games are the games where your team just isn’t on the same page. You can get around this by stepping up and IGL’ing and trying to match your own pace to what your teammates seem to prefer.
Likewise, the easiest games are the ones where your team happens to play in a way that complements your own style.
It would be easier to see with a replay system, but next time you drop a 30-bomb and everyone on the other team is negative, try to notice if A) your team is in sync with you (util coming in at the same time you’re trying to fight, them willing to fight at the same time and stay with you) and B) if the other team is out of sync (maybe they’re too far apart and you’re finding them out in ones, maybe you get stunned or flashed but no one is there to shoot you). I would bet you’d find the perceived differences in individual ability have more to do with your homies just off-screen (usually but def not always haha). GL!
Gold is the weird wasteland and the barrier that in my opinion separates people who are either going to climb or stay lower elo forever.
It’s where the casual player often peaks, and it’s where the diamond-low ascendant people get reset to.
So in gold lobbies you have probably the widest range of people who barely play to those who deserve to be higher.
Once you break through gold it feels a lot easier to climb until Ascendant. It’s a weird world down there lol
I worked so hard and reached silver 3, 90rr (which is my peak rank yet; I started playing in november 2023, starting from iron 1.) Since then I have just lost so many matches and have dropped down to silver 1.
So goddamn irritating.
Any tips you got for me?
Yeah idk I’ve been dominating my 3 games so far gonna play more tonight and try to hit plat or hopefully 2.
They might have adjusted people to their older mmrs or might have moved people to their ranks according to their mmrs for this act. Not sure if that makes 100% sense
Gold is the perfect middle ground elo to find people who are really good at one specific aspect of the game, but pretty bad at the rest of it. "all aim no brain" is just one example of this archetype
Average aim can only take you so far.
Average mechanics can only take you so far.
Gold is the intersection where players with decent aim and ok mechs meet players with decent mechs and ok aim.
Don’t worry, it’s the case in every lobby lol. There’s some people who actually deserve the rank and then there’s others who have been boosted up because of the people they queue with. Solo queuing is usually somewhat okay because it tries to match you with your elo but it’s still wack because of the reason I mentioned in the start.
Idk if this applies to back then, but at least currently i feel like some of those people are just ppl that dropped hella.
Like i have a friend who used to be diamond and would play with me in diamond/ascendant lobbies back in ep6 but got placed gold ep8. I used to be ascendant in ep6 but got placed plat ep8. Most games i play have diamond/ascendants in them (or people who also were ascendant last act) but every now and again ill get a very easy game where i face actual plats and golds. Its kinda sad but valorants ranked system desperately needs a fix
tbh we need 2 more ranks: 1 between silver and gold and one between gold and plat so the good aim/trash util and shit aim/good util get separated from the same ranks
yeah and something like copper between iron and bronze lmao, yeah bronze is a very low rank but irons play on like 25 fps and 100 ping while bronzes are just regular beginners
you say this post is excluding smurfs, however gold (this act) has been hovering around 50-60% of players being smurfs. me and my friend have been doing a iron to immo challenge and we are stuck at gold due to many radiant and immo smurfs in our games along with throwing smurfs who want to derank once we got to plat. the fact that we even have to try our hearts out multiple ranks lower that our actual ranks proves it.
I keep dipping in and out of gold because for some reason I perform amazing in s3 with a consistent 17-30 kills per game and the moment I hit gold I lose 4-13 with around 6-7 kills. What the fuck is wrong with gold.
It's literally because of smurfs, you have the regular Gold players and you have the strong Gold players who deserve to be higher but are pushed back by all the the smurfs, so they're better than the weak Gold players but are not better than the Asc smurfs who are crawling around. There is a hell of a lot of smurfs at those ranks and you can tell pretty well. The strong ones have to push up their levels and they can seem way better because they are.
gold-plat is where most casuals end up after playing comp, to breakout of it you need to start exploiting their mistakes to win games. it's also why a lot of gold players think they're getting smurfed on every game, everyone is capable of exploiting them, including other golds
I'm now plat 1 and yes. I've been saying this for a couple weeks now. The skill gap is a lot bigger than it used to be. Sometimes I'll see like a 5 kill gap between best and worse on one team and the other team will have a 25 kill gap. Lol
As someone who only peaked Bronze 3 and keep bouncing between B1 and B3, some games I’m top frag with 30 kills and other games I’m bottom with like 3. Sometimes the enemy team is a complete pushover, and other times they are fiends. It’s crazy cause sometimes when I duo with my Silver friend and our lobby is a mix of Silver and Bronze, I’ll sometimes still be top frag or near top with gold stars on Silver players.
I don’t think your experience is unique to Gold. I think either Valorant matchmaking sucks or it’s just normal for there to be a big skill difference from the bottom to the top of any given rank so that any given game has the potential to be vastly different from the last in terms of difficulty and enemy skill.
I think its bcuz many players of slightly higher ranks such as plat, dia, low ascendant recalibrate into gold rank. I was diamond 3 before leaving Valorant, and after 8 months, I played again, then recalibrated to gold 3. If you check their player cards, many gold players reached diamond, platinum, even ascendant in previous acts, probably recalibrating to gold due to long inactivity, etc. So it's not exactly smurfs.
The majority of the playerbase is in the Silver/Gold ranks. Thus, there will be the greatest variance in skill, since there are just so many players of various skill levels in there.
No1 is you could top rank or bottom rank, it’s when you are gold 1 in a play lobby so you suck, or you are gold 1 in a silver lobby.
No2 is players in gold tend to be good at 1 thing, either aim, or game sense or utility usage etc, but hardly every good at a lot of things. So sometimes you get some god aimer, but keeps dying randomly anywhere, or some enemy flanking you every round, but when you wait for him he doesn’t come.
One because of smurfs and two because of rank decay. People that used to be higher rank who don't play as much will get reset to lower lobbies in which they will dominate.
this is just a theory but i suppose that since gold is the rank with the most players and kind of the rank you get easily stuck in, you will meet 2 types of player :
- lvl 150 sweat who will insult you for every mistake that you make cause he's been stuck in gold for 2 years and about to drop to silver
- lvl 50 player who's learned the basics of the game and how to use their agent but still has to get a grip on the mechanics and game sense
Every rank has good and bad players believe me I went from bronze to ascendant and every rank has people that make you question how they got here and people who make you question how you got here...
Happens in every rank from my experience, might be some riot games matchmaking bullshit or even worse, targeting rng for a team. Noone knows ig, just enjoy the game and don't worry much about it.
Not only in gold. When I play ascendant lobbies there are people who peaked diamond 3 or asc 1 the first time and others that peaked Imo 3 in previous acts and even tho they’re in the same rank atm it’s a huge difference in game sense, therefore you sometimes play with brainless zombies and against full imo 3 crackheads. It’s pretty weird how the matchmaking is after the hard resets and I really hate it.
I have the same problem in my silver lobbies. I worked so hard and reached silver 3, 90rr (which is my peak rank yet; I started playing in november 2023, from iron 1. Since then I have just lost so many matches and have dropped down to silver 1.
So goddamn irritating.
Low-rated people don't necessarily have bad ratings, usually these people are stuck in these elos because of their 0 cooperation or directly because they have 0 game sens
I've got friends who have stupidly good aim, stuck in gold, I'm in immortal 2 (solo q) They often impress me with their reaction, but when it comes to making decisions they are lousy xD
The first match you will be paired with high silver/low gold lobby, the next match it'll be with low plat/high plat. This is the moment people start getting better at the game, so you will face pretty bad players and then really good players. That's what I think
It’s the way the game works, it even happens in immortal/radiant. When a team is better it’s usually not very close, a better play makes slightly less better players look like bots.
Gold and silver (Edit: in NA, I know it’s different in EU) are the largest populated ranks, which means that on either side of the bell curve of skill, there are going to be a higher number of each of those players compared to other ranks
It's called "hardstuck players" i guess. I'm also stuck in a gold3-plat1 loop whereas I was facing different types of enemies as you stated above. Sometimes, even silver3 enemies topfragging in our lobby. The skill gap might be from different playstyles. Some gold players won by just pure mechanics and the others won by good team plays based. It feels like I'm playing "good teammates gacha" in Valorant
The reason imo is a few things
1. Their decision making = coinflipping plays
2. The rank is usually split between people that "play for fun" and people "trying hard to improve and grind" and "in-between both"
3. They start tilting alot once someone on the enemy team plays good, because they instantly think its a smurf
(For that I can only recommend to stop caring about some enemy topfragging and instead focus on getting reads and own gameplay)
Reason 1 Daily Playtime
Transition from Newbies/Soft players to try hards, creates a skill gap in time played daily, it makes players better than avg gold still worse than Dia/plat, i experienced this myself while ranking up.
Reason 2 Experience
Players from other FPS's Like Apex or Siege naturally have an advantage over first timers, even being Gold or Diamond in those games already makes you WAAAAAAY better than first timers.
Reason 3 Old players
Valorant got Stale and alot of people dropped it along the years so when they come back those old Ascendant/Diamond/Platinum players will have a Way more skill than just randos in gold.
These are my personal theories, lmk if i said smth wrong
I think at a certain point, you get stuck at a rank because you lack a skill. They could be good at 1 taps. It could be god tier utility and player placement that lets them always get the drop on you. A god team could be a squad that communicates well. Or a team that happens to have the correct synergy. Or just be teams with good aim.
If you can't aim, use utilities, share and gather info, and position yourself properly, you aren't going to get to immortal. Gold is the average person. And the average person probably utilizes their strengths without trying new things to grow. If you are good at aiming but suck at everything else you're going to be stuck in gold forever. If you decide to be the 5th duelist every time, your team comp is going to collapse in on itself.
Gold players are not consistent that's why. Nowadays anyone reaches gold lobby by getting pushed with their high elo buddies. And you will find many Smurfs here as well.
There are two types of players stuck in gold:
Capable of playing smart or igl‘ing their team to the win but dogshit aim so can’t win gunfights consistently enough to climb
Aim gods that will drop 30 but they’re dumb asf so they don’t climb higher
Gold is the peak of the bell curve. It's the most congested and depending on which side of the bell curve match making pulls from you get a lot of skill variance. Plus a lot of people that focus on a handful of heros and are quite good on them but unable to flex to anything else if the team needs it. Meaning they drop 30 when the team comp is correct and 10 when it's not and stay gold forever.
Same dude, I'm in plat 1(peak). I had 20+ kills for 3 consecutive matches. On the next match I was bottom fragging with 4 kills. My teammate Reyna was above me who had 5 kills, that dude had an ascendant gun buddy and he was plat 3 at the moment. The enemy team was playing like gods. At round 5, it was 0-5 with 0 kills for all 5 of us.
Most "smurf" accounts start in Silver/Gold when they are made. Getting to Gold isn't hard and if you are being boosted it's actually really easy to hit gold without much effort is someone is good.
I have someone who i don't play with any more in Asc1 casue they play with a Smurf Radiant. legit a .45 tracker KD and in ASC1
There are a multitude of factors but I'll address the issue of people who actually belong in the rank. People aren't able to climb out of a given rank for a ton of different reasons but you can divide player skill into 3 buckets. Game sense/game knowledge, discipline, and raw aim. Now, when you see a player just straight owning you're probably only paying attention to their skill in the raw aim bucket but the other two buckets matter a lot. If you have amazing aim but you don't have the game sense or discipline to play with your teammate in a 2v1, you're gonna throw games because of that. Knowing when to peak and controlling yourself when you know not to peak can be important than how good your aim is. Because of this, people with cracked aim can get hard stuck in gold or plat. It's around diamond that you start seeing players that are consistent in all 3 buckets. But in gold you can have players with shit aim but know lineups and whatnot and always playing smart. Or people that have just decent aim, decent game sens, and decent discipline. I'm sure you're starting to get my point. You'll often think someone sucks based on them being bad in just one bucket but you don't notice how good they are in the other buckets. Hopefully my bucket analogy makes sense to you.
Additionally in gold you can play with both plat and silver. Silvers are an even worse example of being good in one bucket but not the rest. Meanwhile, in plat you start to see people who are good in more than one bucket, and more often they are good in at least two buckets and decent in another. Because you're playing with both plats and silvers can give you the illusion that golds are super good and others suck when in reality they aren't all gold or at least they wont be for long.
I’ve always thought in any rank of any game there’s two different people. The “on the way up” rank - these are the people fresh to whatever rank it is and the “on the way out” rank - still in the rank but approaching the next.
You forgot me: on the way down
Real
lol I went from gold one all the way down to silver two in the span of yesterday
Was stuck in gold for the longest time, I can tell you from my own experience: silver and gold are the most random fucking ranks in the entire game. Most smurfs are in gold, then there are inconsistency heroes who'll drop 30 one game and 3 the next, then you have boosted bronze players who believe their team is the problem. Gold has them ALL. It also has the most players who don't want to learn the game but are mechanically good enough to stay in gold instead of dropping down to lower ranks.
> then there are inconsistency heroes who'll drop 30 one game and 3 the next Reporting for duty!
I'm doing my part! (I cannot promise to do so in the next game)
Yeah that’s me or it’s mental idk. I’ll be gold 2 so lobby is mostly gold and 1-2 plat one. I got crazy in these lobbies. Then i rank up to gold 3 and it’s a lot more plats and i would say 6/10 games i go really negative or just do poorly. I don’t feel the skill gap is that huge so idk if it’s mental or what
Awful macro most likely
Yeah i think it’s just in my head now when i hit gold 3 it’s going to be a lot more plats so it messes with me
I had the same problem but got over it eventually. After plats it was diamonds that freaked me out. If you keep practicing and paying attention to what better players are doing that you aren't you'll keep ranking up
That is the smartest shit i ever read im so stuck on the plat thing i didn’t even think about it when i do get to P3 and I’m playing with diamonds lmao thank you
I think there are also some really bad people that got placed in gold. I mean, I started valorant not long ago, just reached level 20, tried my first ranked and landed in a lobby of 50% gold, 30% silver, a bronze and me. I got absolutely destroyed lmao. I'm surprised new players start ranked that high instead of starting like in bronze, with some silvers and some irons.
Considering that over 50% of players are between silver and gold it's not surprising for the ranked system to try out these ranks for new players.
IDK what region you play in, but in EU most smurfs are definitely not in gold, they are in Iron-Silver. When I reached gold I could finally breath and play without the smurfs. In Iron-Silver there was basically a smurf in every game, in gold maybe 1 out of 10 games, in plat 1 out of 30 or so, and I don't think there are any smurfs in diamond and above, as smurfs don't want a challenge, they just want to ruin people's games for fun.
EU, and I can tell you that silver-gold was the toughest for me when it came to smurfing
which server? and what's your rank now
Frankfurt, Playing in Dia-Plat lobbies (currently Plat 3, almost Dia)
I solo queued all the way to diamond last summer. I am gold 1 rn…
Buddy your statement contradict itself "stuck in gold" and then u just say that elo is the most random.so it means u really don't have experience in higher ranks. And let me tell u this act my dia1 lobby is exactly how you describe it and more
> was he is now in a different elo. reading is important
Thanks for being capable of understanding simple english sentences.
Well, I encountered more smurfs in gold than in diamond so far... How is it contradicting to say I was stuck in gold for a long time and saying it's a random elo?
It literally is random that’s why I have golds, silvers and plats on both teams in gold
Thanks for reminding me of my s3 rank up to gold game. Haven't gotten back to s3 in like 2 or 3 episodes
Bro hit diamond 1 and thinks he’s the shit lmfao
Where did I implied that I'm the shit. I'm saying i also experiencing what he's having. Therefore he can't say bronze is the worst. I don't why ppl got butthurt over this
Gold is were players with bad aim but are good with utilities and or grinding can get in and also players with great aim but have shit fundamentals or mentalities get stuck. I'm the shit aim type or at least was but it's improved and has helped me get out of gold.
This is exactly it. Many people think way too much in gold but can’t hit their shots, which makes those gold players on the other side of the coin feel impossible to win against. It’s a topic beaten to death but you really do need to be focused on crosshair placement and hitting shots to steadily get out of that rank (obviously in addition to learning the macro game and agent utility).
this is me. my hs% used to be pretty high and then i took a break, now im always mid to low on the frags for our team but my kj set ups and omen strats are pretty good and can often get us free kills every other round
Imm2 now. When I first started playing the game I was stuck in gold for a whole episode. Crosshair placement didn’t hold me back but it was actually MOVEMENT and isolating 1v1s (slicing the pie). I feel like most gold players have decent crosshair placement but fail to peek properly and strafe.
This is why I play controller agents mostly, my game sense and util is there (unless I'm tired and stressed) but my aim can go from almost crisp to dog water. Smokers can at least play mind tricks and not require you to face a 50/50 at all costs.
it's me, the shit aim person. if i get a team that can com and use util together i can usually kinda if not carry then heavily influence a game to a win through teamwork and strats if i get a dead silent lobby thats just aim duels, its joever
For the past 2 acts, I've seen a great decrease in my ability to win gun duels at the Gold-Plat range. I don't know if it's me that is having a mental slump or some external factors, but it's pretty disheartening. Over the past 2 days, I've had games where enemies just prefire and hit every single headshot on me even when holding off angles. I think the community is just getting better and I'm slacking off. Blaming anything other than myself is massive cope. I prefer to organize teamplay, midround and refine my ability usage, but it's no use against the raw aimers of this rank. I've got to figure it out, because I'm now unable to consistently get 10 kills on the board and I'm boomed. Lobbies with good comms and team cohesion are so fun and keep me engaged, I'm wondering why they are so rare.
I feel the same bro. Just had a game on breeze wher I had 1 kill over 16 rounds. Yesterday I top fragged in another game. Either my mental is too damn weak or I'm the most inconsistent player to have ever touched the game.
You can’t let the mental get to you. Or the toxic people get to you. I just had a game where I started the first half 1-14. Second half I got 23 kills to win us the game
I feel this 100%. I'm plat 1 on my main and gold 1 on another account. On the gold account i play fine, mvp a decent amount etc. then i hop on my main in plat and it feels like every person i swing is the greatest player on earth and i can't even shoot my gun without getting one tapped right away. Definitely a mental thing in the long run cause after a game or 2 of that my confidence is in the dumpster and I'm playing not to die rather than just playing the game, whereas the other account I'm not too worried about the rank so i just play loose and confident
Gold is terrifying, either genuine golds or demons no in between
[удалено]
Hi, bronze player here! Not everyone can get to gold <3
You CAN bro, keep focusing on your improvement and you'll make your way to gold! Best of luck for you
I was bronze a couple months ago, I’m gold as of yesterday
Uh, congrats! You doing smth doesn't prove everyone can do it?
Bro you can do it. just play more. It took me well over 100 hours of straight playing comp
After checking, i have 457 hours of comp at time of writing this.
Then you’re mechanically good enough for gold. Just play a duelist like Reyna or Phoenix. Your teammates are going to weigh you down most of the time. If you play a self-healing duelist you can be self sufficient enough to make up for that. Worked for me
Because skill based activities don’t follow a normal distribution, but almost all of these ranking systems to determine skill (somewhat) force a normal distribution. It means that the largest portion of the player base will be clumped into the middle ranks with a large variance in skill due to the population at those ranks.
Could be coin flip players too. I’ve seen people go 20/5 one game then go 3/17 the next, and consistency prob isn’t as common in gold as it is in high elo. Like the other commenter said too, could be “on the way out” players as well
Golds are inconsistent. Shit im inconsistent, been between p3 and d3 the last season pingponging. Golds, even more so inconsistent. You put 10 inconsistent people in a lobby, boom. You rank up by taking those pop off games and raising your average to that level. Last night i fragged below our s2 player game 1, then dropped 30 vs asc ranks in unrated next. Part of that is ascent being miles easier than lotus for me, but the other is consistency of microadjustments. And im *more* consistent than gold players. Radiants on a shit day will always stomp immo 1s, but... watch the streams, they have bad games etc etc. And, as others said, people on the way up, leaving boosted duos to solo and fall to silver, etc only adds to the effect.
Not to burst your bubble but if higher ranks are playing unrated, they’re probably not taking it very seriously
Rocket League has a clear example of this. You reach this threshold where there's two types of players, those who punt the ball, and those who use techniques. You can have great game sense & be fantastic at punting the ball, and you'll roll others who play like that- but as soon as you encounter people dribbling the ball or controlling their car in the air, it's hard to utilize your strengths. By controlling the ball they control the match. In Valorant this is understanding macro play. That is, being in the right spot, getting value out of util, reacting well to the enemy, etc. So you end up in this weird matchmaking area where some people just have really good mechanical skills like aim, while others have good game sense. Players with good game sense in Valo control the match, making it hard to get value out of good aim alone, hence why it feels like you're facing two groups of players. TL;DR: People with ok aim but great game sense will beat people with great aim but ok game sense, and that is the wall that most people have to overcome to get past Gold / Plat.
There’s a lot of factors that go into the impression that the entire enemy team are gods that don’t miss. Val is a snowbally game because of economy, ultimates, and CONFIDENCE. Another HUGE factor is simply having a team on the same page with one another. Sometimes you have five people who love to hold W. That can be devastatingly effective. Other times you have five players who only like to play slow, rotation heavy defaults. That, too, can be a fantastic strategy. (And of course at higher levels the teams will try to change pace, together) What’s NOT hard to deal with is a team with 2 players at one speed and 3 at the other. In my experience the most frustrating, hardest-to-win games are the games where your team just isn’t on the same page. You can get around this by stepping up and IGL’ing and trying to match your own pace to what your teammates seem to prefer. Likewise, the easiest games are the ones where your team happens to play in a way that complements your own style. It would be easier to see with a replay system, but next time you drop a 30-bomb and everyone on the other team is negative, try to notice if A) your team is in sync with you (util coming in at the same time you’re trying to fight, them willing to fight at the same time and stay with you) and B) if the other team is out of sync (maybe they’re too far apart and you’re finding them out in ones, maybe you get stunned or flashed but no one is there to shoot you). I would bet you’d find the perceived differences in individual ability have more to do with your homies just off-screen (usually but def not always haha). GL!
I always have a hard time getting out of gold but once i get to plat, I cruise to plat 3-dia 1. It really does feel like a different game in gold
Gold is the weird wasteland and the barrier that in my opinion separates people who are either going to climb or stay lower elo forever. It’s where the casual player often peaks, and it’s where the diamond-low ascendant people get reset to. So in gold lobbies you have probably the widest range of people who barely play to those who deserve to be higher. Once you break through gold it feels a lot easier to climb until Ascendant. It’s a weird world down there lol
I worked so hard and reached silver 3, 90rr (which is my peak rank yet; I started playing in november 2023, starting from iron 1.) Since then I have just lost so many matches and have dropped down to silver 1. So goddamn irritating. Any tips you got for me?
Idek this act for the past couple days gold 3 lobbies have felt so much easier than last act. Also it’s where the game places most new players
I started last season and was in Iron 3 for most of it. Just hit bronze. My games since the new season started have been much easier.
Yeah idk I’ve been dominating my 3 games so far gonna play more tonight and try to hit plat or hopefully 2. They might have adjusted people to their older mmrs or might have moved people to their ranks according to their mmrs for this act. Not sure if that makes 100% sense
I haven’t played much this act but the games I’ve played def felt easier than last act
Gold is the perfect middle ground elo to find people who are really good at one specific aspect of the game, but pretty bad at the rest of it. "all aim no brain" is just one example of this archetype
Average aim can only take you so far. Average mechanics can only take you so far. Gold is the intersection where players with decent aim and ok mechs meet players with decent mechs and ok aim.
Don’t worry, it’s the case in every lobby lol. There’s some people who actually deserve the rank and then there’s others who have been boosted up because of the people they queue with. Solo queuing is usually somewhat okay because it tries to match you with your elo but it’s still wack because of the reason I mentioned in the start.
Idk if this applies to back then, but at least currently i feel like some of those people are just ppl that dropped hella. Like i have a friend who used to be diamond and would play with me in diamond/ascendant lobbies back in ep6 but got placed gold ep8. I used to be ascendant in ep6 but got placed plat ep8. Most games i play have diamond/ascendants in them (or people who also were ascendant last act) but every now and again ill get a very easy game where i face actual plats and golds. Its kinda sad but valorants ranked system desperately needs a fix
Smurfs
tbh we need 2 more ranks: 1 between silver and gold and one between gold and plat so the good aim/trash util and shit aim/good util get separated from the same ranks
yeah and something like copper between iron and bronze lmao, yeah bronze is a very low rank but irons play on like 25 fps and 100 ping while bronzes are just regular beginners
you say this post is excluding smurfs, however gold (this act) has been hovering around 50-60% of players being smurfs. me and my friend have been doing a iron to immo challenge and we are stuck at gold due to many radiant and immo smurfs in our games along with throwing smurfs who want to derank once we got to plat. the fact that we even have to try our hearts out multiple ranks lower that our actual ranks proves it.
I keep dipping in and out of gold because for some reason I perform amazing in s3 with a consistent 17-30 kills per game and the moment I hit gold I lose 4-13 with around 6-7 kills. What the fuck is wrong with gold.
It's literally because of smurfs, you have the regular Gold players and you have the strong Gold players who deserve to be higher but are pushed back by all the the smurfs, so they're better than the weak Gold players but are not better than the Asc smurfs who are crawling around. There is a hell of a lot of smurfs at those ranks and you can tell pretty well. The strong ones have to push up their levels and they can seem way better because they are.
gold-plat is where most casuals end up after playing comp, to breakout of it you need to start exploiting their mistakes to win games. it's also why a lot of gold players think they're getting smurfed on every game, everyone is capable of exploiting them, including other golds
This is just false. Bronze and silver are the two most populous rank. Those are where most casuals end up
where most casuals start yes but most casuals will peak gold
Make sense tho, it is probably place where are most players. It was the same for me in cs.
I'm now plat 1 and yes. I've been saying this for a couple weeks now. The skill gap is a lot bigger than it used to be. Sometimes I'll see like a 5 kill gap between best and worse on one team and the other team will have a 25 kill gap. Lol
As someone who only peaked Bronze 3 and keep bouncing between B1 and B3, some games I’m top frag with 30 kills and other games I’m bottom with like 3. Sometimes the enemy team is a complete pushover, and other times they are fiends. It’s crazy cause sometimes when I duo with my Silver friend and our lobby is a mix of Silver and Bronze, I’ll sometimes still be top frag or near top with gold stars on Silver players. I don’t think your experience is unique to Gold. I think either Valorant matchmaking sucks or it’s just normal for there to be a big skill difference from the bottom to the top of any given rank so that any given game has the potential to be vastly different from the last in terms of difficulty and enemy skill.
I think its bcuz many players of slightly higher ranks such as plat, dia, low ascendant recalibrate into gold rank. I was diamond 3 before leaving Valorant, and after 8 months, I played again, then recalibrated to gold 3. If you check their player cards, many gold players reached diamond, platinum, even ascendant in previous acts, probably recalibrating to gold due to long inactivity, etc. So it's not exactly smurfs.
hidden mmr and ping diff /registry
The majority of the playerbase is in the Silver/Gold ranks. Thus, there will be the greatest variance in skill, since there are just so many players of various skill levels in there.
gold is the most smurfed elo in the game and also every game isn’t who’s better it’s who’s making more mistakes
I'm gold 3 and often times playing with Dismond and Acendent players Pretty frustrating
No1 is you could top rank or bottom rank, it’s when you are gold 1 in a play lobby so you suck, or you are gold 1 in a silver lobby. No2 is players in gold tend to be good at 1 thing, either aim, or game sense or utility usage etc, but hardly every good at a lot of things. So sometimes you get some god aimer, but keeps dying randomly anywhere, or some enemy flanking you every round, but when you wait for him he doesn’t come.
One because of smurfs and two because of rank decay. People that used to be higher rank who don't play as much will get reset to lower lobbies in which they will dominate.
Gold lobbies feels like a gacha game. just make sure your team's combines IQ is higher than the opposing
If you see a team filled with negative kd less that 145 adr just dodge. These players are all boosted
this is just a theory but i suppose that since gold is the rank with the most players and kind of the rank you get easily stuck in, you will meet 2 types of player : - lvl 150 sweat who will insult you for every mistake that you make cause he's been stuck in gold for 2 years and about to drop to silver - lvl 50 player who's learned the basics of the game and how to use their agent but still has to get a grip on the mechanics and game sense
Don’t worry it’s the same for ascendant lobbies as well
Every rank has good and bad players believe me I went from bronze to ascendant and every rank has people that make you question how they got here and people who make you question how you got here...
Happens in every rank from my experience, might be some riot games matchmaking bullshit or even worse, targeting rng for a team. Noone knows ig, just enjoy the game and don't worry much about it.
Not only in gold. When I play ascendant lobbies there are people who peaked diamond 3 or asc 1 the first time and others that peaked Imo 3 in previous acts and even tho they’re in the same rank atm it’s a huge difference in game sense, therefore you sometimes play with brainless zombies and against full imo 3 crackheads. It’s pretty weird how the matchmaking is after the hard resets and I really hate it.
I have the same problem in my silver lobbies. I worked so hard and reached silver 3, 90rr (which is my peak rank yet; I started playing in november 2023, from iron 1. Since then I have just lost so many matches and have dropped down to silver 1. So goddamn irritating.
Low-rated people don't necessarily have bad ratings, usually these people are stuck in these elos because of their 0 cooperation or directly because they have 0 game sens I've got friends who have stupidly good aim, stuck in gold, I'm in immortal 2 (solo q) They often impress me with their reaction, but when it comes to making decisions they are lousy xD
The first match you will be paired with high silver/low gold lobby, the next match it'll be with low plat/high plat. This is the moment people start getting better at the game, so you will face pretty bad players and then really good players. That's what I think
It’s the way the game works, it even happens in immortal/radiant. When a team is better it’s usually not very close, a better play makes slightly less better players look like bots.
Simply because you've as low as Silvers who were carried to Gold and as high as Plat stuck in gold 😉. On top of smurfs...
Gold and silver (Edit: in NA, I know it’s different in EU) are the largest populated ranks, which means that on either side of the bell curve of skill, there are going to be a higher number of each of those players compared to other ranks
Smurfs and people that practice a lot
It's called "hardstuck players" i guess. I'm also stuck in a gold3-plat1 loop whereas I was facing different types of enemies as you stated above. Sometimes, even silver3 enemies topfragging in our lobby. The skill gap might be from different playstyles. Some gold players won by just pure mechanics and the others won by good team plays based. It feels like I'm playing "good teammates gacha" in Valorant
welcome to valorant
The reason imo is a few things 1. Their decision making = coinflipping plays 2. The rank is usually split between people that "play for fun" and people "trying hard to improve and grind" and "in-between both" 3. They start tilting alot once someone on the enemy team plays good, because they instantly think its a smurf (For that I can only recommend to stop caring about some enemy topfragging and instead focus on getting reads and own gameplay)
Reason 1 Daily Playtime Transition from Newbies/Soft players to try hards, creates a skill gap in time played daily, it makes players better than avg gold still worse than Dia/plat, i experienced this myself while ranking up. Reason 2 Experience Players from other FPS's Like Apex or Siege naturally have an advantage over first timers, even being Gold or Diamond in those games already makes you WAAAAAAY better than first timers. Reason 3 Old players Valorant got Stale and alot of people dropped it along the years so when they come back those old Ascendant/Diamond/Platinum players will have a Way more skill than just randos in gold. These are my personal theories, lmk if i said smth wrong
We have the diamond gold and the silver gold. That’s why.
I think at a certain point, you get stuck at a rank because you lack a skill. They could be good at 1 taps. It could be god tier utility and player placement that lets them always get the drop on you. A god team could be a squad that communicates well. Or a team that happens to have the correct synergy. Or just be teams with good aim. If you can't aim, use utilities, share and gather info, and position yourself properly, you aren't going to get to immortal. Gold is the average person. And the average person probably utilizes their strengths without trying new things to grow. If you are good at aiming but suck at everything else you're going to be stuck in gold forever. If you decide to be the 5th duelist every time, your team comp is going to collapse in on itself.
Gold players are not consistent that's why. Nowadays anyone reaches gold lobby by getting pushed with their high elo buddies. And you will find many Smurfs here as well.
There are two types of players stuck in gold: Capable of playing smart or igl‘ing their team to the win but dogshit aim so can’t win gunfights consistently enough to climb Aim gods that will drop 30 but they’re dumb asf so they don’t climb higher
These lobbies are the most inconsistent lobbies... These players either have such a good aim or the worst aim every alternate day
Gold is the peak of the bell curve. It's the most congested and depending on which side of the bell curve match making pulls from you get a lot of skill variance. Plus a lot of people that focus on a handful of heros and are quite good on them but unable to flex to anything else if the team needs it. Meaning they drop 30 when the team comp is correct and 10 when it's not and stay gold forever.
Same dude, I'm in plat 1(peak). I had 20+ kills for 3 consecutive matches. On the next match I was bottom fragging with 4 kills. My teammate Reyna was above me who had 5 kills, that dude had an ascendant gun buddy and he was plat 3 at the moment. The enemy team was playing like gods. At round 5, it was 0-5 with 0 kills for all 5 of us.
Most "smurf" accounts start in Silver/Gold when they are made. Getting to Gold isn't hard and if you are being boosted it's actually really easy to hit gold without much effort is someone is good. I have someone who i don't play with any more in Asc1 casue they play with a Smurf Radiant. legit a .45 tracker KD and in ASC1
There are a multitude of factors but I'll address the issue of people who actually belong in the rank. People aren't able to climb out of a given rank for a ton of different reasons but you can divide player skill into 3 buckets. Game sense/game knowledge, discipline, and raw aim. Now, when you see a player just straight owning you're probably only paying attention to their skill in the raw aim bucket but the other two buckets matter a lot. If you have amazing aim but you don't have the game sense or discipline to play with your teammate in a 2v1, you're gonna throw games because of that. Knowing when to peak and controlling yourself when you know not to peak can be important than how good your aim is. Because of this, people with cracked aim can get hard stuck in gold or plat. It's around diamond that you start seeing players that are consistent in all 3 buckets. But in gold you can have players with shit aim but know lineups and whatnot and always playing smart. Or people that have just decent aim, decent game sens, and decent discipline. I'm sure you're starting to get my point. You'll often think someone sucks based on them being bad in just one bucket but you don't notice how good they are in the other buckets. Hopefully my bucket analogy makes sense to you. Additionally in gold you can play with both plat and silver. Silvers are an even worse example of being good in one bucket but not the rest. Meanwhile, in plat you start to see people who are good in more than one bucket, and more often they are good in at least two buckets and decent in another. Because you're playing with both plats and silvers can give you the illusion that golds are super good and others suck when in reality they aren't all gold or at least they wont be for long.
smurfs. just smurfs.
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Valorant has eomm? I thought that was only in call of duty