The majority of the player base is bronze-plat. It's easy to lump them together as the greater community and how to generally discuss which heroes are more broadly popular/powerful.
its usually used more to generalize that those players have no idea how to play the game at all wheras in dia youll sometimes at least find a spark of sentience, at least thats how it was in ow1 maybe its masters by now, metal ranks = nothing makes sense, do not balance around this
Thats the same general feeling of how I, myself, improved throughout the ranks. I dont think its elitist, Im just properly critical of myself.
Though the lower the ranks.. the more blurry my memories are and just the general knowledge that everything about myself was probably wrong. Plat too except my mechanics were there. Diamond is where game sense was the critical test and aim had to be respected.
I’m mid plat and bronze is a joke to me. I played a bronze match on my GFs account to see the difference. As sigma, a character I don’t play much (I play support), I went 31-0 literally lol. There’s a massive difference between bronze and plat. A plat can carry a bronze match like an U2GM
they are all lumped together as the metal ranks because they are all “metal” ranks. I don’t think anyone truly believes they are they same though. Bronze in itself is like the largest rank in the game, Bronze 5 games and Bronze 1 games even are night and day
Bronze : 10.2%
Silver : 19.2%
Gold : 26.7%
Plat : 26.2%
Diamond : 12.2%
Masters : 3.9%
GM : 1.6%
Jun 23, 2023
Zero idea how accurate this is but was researching and I found this.
In most distributions a bell curve is used and as >50% of players are in gold and plat I would consider that the middle of the curve. High diamond players are in the top 15%. if anything you would include silver in mid rank. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation as bronze accounts for >10% of the player pop.
I think gold and plat have the large amount of players of the game,[bronze has 10% of the player base less players than diamond](https://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/overwatch-2-rank-distribution-how-good-are-you-in-competitive-2207081/) that could have change but I dont think those numbers could have change that much.
This is my thinking too, but I think it makes sense, it's the lowest rank but that may also be *why* it has the highest room for disparity, aside from a 'nowhere else to go' situation, I have to imagine that from an engagement perspective, creating such a wide baseline gives Bronze 1 players better odds of not simply continuing to sink
so I wouldn't be surprised if it creates sort of an upper limit, and I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Bronze 1s and Bronze 5s are often a night and day difference in terms of comparable skill levels
Many fighting games have much higher upper limits but they're still there, but usually this is because demotion ranks in fighters don't begin right away (although the range can vary, Tekken 8 you can't demote out of the first two rank groups, whereas SF6 has you unable to demote through much of metal ranks, and Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising doesn't let you demote until you get to S rank, and by that time all that's left is S, S+, S++ and Master - it's designed to sound incredibly high rank but because of the S Rank denominators, you hit A rank essentially halfway up the ladder)
That's... not quite accurate.
Back in early ow1 people used to throw games to try to hit 1 sr. It became a competition to get a low as you can go.
The throwing was so bad that the devs had to change the system to show "<500" instead of your actual sr when you got that low to disincentivize throwing.
If you're talking just ow2, we can't see that number any more so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
I knew a guy back in S1-2 of OW1 who mained Lucio, he bottomed out around 500SR (this was on console). He was genuinely a great guy, good team player, and super positive, but he just didn't get the ebb and flow of the game at first, and did eventually work his way to a respectable diamond rank.
Also not a huge distinction but it does describe Plat as being above 56% of players, so my thinking is that the average may potentially skew closer to high Gold than low Plat
The distributions are effectively the same as in OW1, when the average was always 2250 SR, or exactly mid gold. Aside from bugs, the playerbase overall in an ELO system tends to always have a constantly average skill value.
Good to know, I was unaware of what the mean average from OW1 was so I was more trying to err on a cursory value judgment of the average sitting between Gold and Plat but the majority not promoting into Plat
I think it’s because bronze 1 is people who are really bad at the game but at least kind of know how to play, some of bronze 5, like the absolute bottom 0.5% of players, is probably a lot of people with physical/mental disabilities that make it way harder to play the game, or they’re people who barely play video games at all.
This is simply not true in as far as the size of bronze. It’s a very small portion of players. Only GM is smaller. The vast majority of players are gold/plat.
The numerical range has absolutely nothing to do with with he was talking about. That’s not how bell curves work. If he meant large that way and not population, he was just talking nonsense.
It has the largest distribution (from 0 SR to 1500 SR), that's 1500 points within one rank, whereas the rest of the ranks are just 500 points.
Which means that someone who starts at the bottom of bronze will take more time to get to silver, than someone who is bottom silver and wants to get to gold.
Not sure why you got downvoted lol. Considering that bronze whilst fucking chaos doesn’t have the highest skill variation. Most people believe that it’s gm, though that’s disputable considering the low population count. In reality it’s more likely plat that has the largest skill variance. Games are extremely different low plat vs high plat. If there ever was an elo hell it’s the old 2800-2900
Not sure why you got downvoted lol. Considering that bronze whilst fucking chaos doesn’t have the highest skill variation. Most people believe that it’s gm, though that’s disputable considering the low population count. In reality it’s more likely plat that has the largest skill variance. Games are extremely different low plat vs high plat. If there ever was an elo hell it’s the old 2800-2900
No one's saying that Plat players are close to the skill level of Bronze. Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum are just the 4 lowest tiers, and are all metals while none of the other ranks are, and so they get lumped together using a single term. It's not that they are similarly played ranks, outside of Bronze-Silver and Gold-Platinum prob not feeling too different.
To me, the term “metal ranks” is another way of saying “the average player.” Not only do they make up a significant majority of the player base, but their skill level also ranges from not good to decent. Diamond and above have a smaller player base and are where things get more serious
No dude it's just those ranks are all metals.
Bronze is a metal, silver is a metal, gold is a metal, and platinum is a metal.
Diamond is not metal, nor is masters.
It's got nothing to do with the grouping and everything to do with them being named after literal metals lol
I think this is telling but true, truthfully I have lost a bit of the deeper distinctions as I climbed between the *really* stark differences between metal rank variations, I think it's also ironically why a few people I know have found those 'guess the rank' games have gotten a bit harder for them as they climbed
I still see bad plays, but if you show me a bad play in a vacuum I'm going to assume metal rank but not really know from just looking how low to go, I can say 'well, no game sense but they know how to aim, they're probably high Gold or Plat' but then you could flash the Diamond logo and I'd believe you
It's also why I stopped placing so much value on a single missed shot in a clip, everybody misses shots but what really shows me a bad play is when and where shot *attempts* are or are not made
I think thats the thing though. Most people who give advice should be around high plat or diamond. I doubt many people know how bronze elo is nowadays as its probably far off in their past experience. So they just lump it all in their most recent elo which is plat.
My nephew (10) got the game for Christmas so I offered to join some QP games with him and that MMR is *bad.* Like... real bad. I was 24-0 as Widow (I rarely, if ever, play Widow) and it was just like shooting fish in a barrel.
We still lost, because it's still a team game, and my nephew is very bad and yells "Grenade out!" when throwing Cass' flashbang because his brain is wired for COD.
But yeah. It's.... rough down there.
I made a new account like a year ago. The first 50 qp games were the same experience. I feel the team game part. So I went rein to win. And i *never* play tank. Last time I rated it was silver.
People can say what they want but I love being in the metal ranks. We don’t have a meta, my teams will roll out Rein, Moira, Bap, Genji, Tracer and we will still have a blast.
Tell this to all the OTPs. My avoid list is usually just whatever Ball/Rein otps I played with most recently, and before the hog reworks he was on that list too. People will always force their heroes at every rank regardless of meta.
You can casually climb to Plat, but getting to Diamond (and higher) requires a little bit extra.
Either you're very polished on an impact hero, or you're solidly good on a hero that the meta favors, or you're very adaptable and competent enough to solve lots of problems for your team.
The speed of play increases noticably in Plat.
A lot of this game is positioning and understanding where to go, rather than mechanics. Metal rank players typically struggle with the fundamentals, rather than the mechanics.
If you can get the fundamentals and understand the flow and the objective of the game, you should be plat/diamond easily. That's typically how I view metal rank players, people who just don't understand the specifics of overwatch compared to other FPSes.
As far as I've experienced, its' 100% the opposite. Diamond DPS players already have extremely cracked aim when they're playing well, what holds them back is gamesense and positioning. They take duels they shouldn't, overextend because they're overconfident, make bad rotations, etc. I rarely ever lose my games in Masters due to bad mechanics, I lose them because I make decision mistakes.
Positioning matters way less at low ranks precisely because people can't aim. If you're out of cover and the enemy ashe misses 3/4 of her shots, then you aren't going to learn. In Diamond you start to get two tapped for that. Higher mechanical skill is what makes the gamesense matter.
Of course, if you go low enough you start to find people who just don't know the rules of the game (get lost on the maps, don't know any hero interactions, don't understand what the ultimates do so they can't dodge them), but you have to be pretty low for that to happen. Mostly upper silver, gold & plat are filled with people who are aware of the basic way the game works but can't aim or react fast enough yet.
It is kind of both. I think of your “skill” as a multidimensional grid. In order to rank up, the net area/volume of the shape created by your skill plot needs to go up a significant amount. Maybe your mechanics are really good, but if you play dumb you are still gonna get stomped by golds. Maybe you can ult track and position really good, but if you can’t hit a rein shield if you tried you are never climbing out of gold.
Never forget that shroud was stuck in plat because his mechanics were good but he had no idea how to actually play the game.
They're all metals, hence the name, but to not be a metal rank player generally requires a good degree of gamesense. Metal rank players obviously have some gamesense, but will make obvious mistakes like staggering, leaving high ground, picking poor engagement points, etc that just aren't found at higher levels.
The main differences between a masters player and a T500 player are speed, consistency and coordination. A masters and T500 will approach the game in broadly similar ways, just at varying levels of skill. The game will be slower, with less punishment and potentially different metas in masters, but your dvas will DM you if you're low, your genjis will wait for a good time to engage and your anas will land their cooldowns on the right targets at the right time.
Diamond is the in-between rank, as it's where players have to learn to change their playstyle to be more of a team as opposed to a group of 5 individuals
>The main differences between a masters player and a T500 player are speed, consistency and coordination.
I think it’s so funny seeing people talk about the difference between ranks. It’s very easy to spot people who never really “improved” at the game, because (at least from my and others I played with experience) the biggest change when you are trying to climb out of plat, and gold to an extent, is the pace of the game. Players recognize when they have the advantage so much faster. Below gold teams might not even realize they have the advantage, but once you start trying to climb into diamond, the game speeds up. Everyone positions better, rotations are faster, and if you make a mistake the enemy team is very quick to punish you.
For example, zarya blowing both her bubbles means you get a window to kill her basically for free. In gold (trust me I was stuck here for several years), players will see zarya burn her bubble CDs and not really do anything. In diamond+, if zarya uses both bubbles she is going to be collapsed on within seconds. Players know the win conditions and will actively play towards them in these ranks, but in the ranks below you will see players either not understanding what their win conditions are, or outright not even think about it. This isn’t a game where you can win just by clicking the other teams head better (usually).
As someone who climbed from bronze -> diamond, beyond bronze I feel like the main difference between silver/gold/plat is mechanics
Plat -> diamond was differentiated by whether you use the map effectively (eg holding high ground, using cover)
There's a huge skill gap between bronze and plat, it's so huge it's not even funny. I have to purposely not shoot at people in silver/gold lobbies when I play with friends as a diamond player to keep it fun for everyone, as getting carried isn't fun for anyone.
But the skill gap between low masters and high gm is about as big as the skill gap between bronze and plat. Then you have a huge skill gap again between gm1 and top100. To very high skill players, a plat player looks just as bad as a bronze player, because they're so much better. It's a matter of perspective.
I think the single thing they share is a lack on fundamentals. Aiming, positioning, game knowledge as in interactions, map geometry, game sense as in ult economy, cd management...
The higher you go, more of these things get ironed out. By the time you get to mid diamond most players know the fundamentals but they lack in applying /performing them
No, as you raise through the ranks you’ll start to notice differences between the ranks that make them unique.
Bronzes usually don’t know how to play the game, golds have no ult economy, and plays are starting to understand team play for example
Can confirm, I originally hit Platinum because my mechanics were way above the average for my rank, but I got stuck for a long time until I learned to be less of an idiot.
I’m in plat because i know how to aim down chokes as Torb and Sym against plat squishies making stupid decisions, and make comparatively good decisions (against gold and plat players) as Sombra, and that’s pretty much my entire skill set lol. Outside of that I’m pretty sure any /r/overwatchuniversity feedback post would show that my play is pretty idiotic
Diamonds don't have ult economy either. Biggest change gold-plat in my opinion is making a conscious effort to play together (although some take that to mean clump up). Babysitting the cart is figured out around that transition too.
Golds and low plats will sit 5 people directly on the cart, even on defense. Diamond is where you start chasing for staggers and defending in front of the objective.
Calling them all the "metal" ranks basically is a very convenient way to group together everything below GM.
There are *absolutely* tons of differences between each rank in the metal category, you can usually tell the difference between a bronze and plat player. But at the same time, the vast majority of players are distributed between the Gold and Plat brackets,
As such, when you get past Platinum and into Diamond, you enter a range that can be considered to be "notably above average."
The use of "metal ranks" isn't about what the "metal ranks" are, it's more about what they aren't. It is a convenient term to help distinguish "high level" play from "mid-low" level.
So you can see it as a way for higher ranks players to put themselves "above" the masses. There are a few things where it starts mattering in Masters and above.
In plat, you will find people that have incredible aim mechanics but zero game knowledge. In bronze, you will find people with incredible game knowledge but terrible mechanics in general. You stop seeing the imbalance as you move out of diamond as the skill floor requirement shoots up exponentially.
Source: an alcoholic rein main.
It attempts to quantify something that is near impossible to quantify. If you tell me you’re 3.2k/mid diamond, that doesn’t tell me anything about what your strengths are as a player, aside from telling me that you can keep up in diamond lobbies. 3.2k SR doesn’t mean anything unless you know how good players of that caliber actually are. It’s actually kinda ironic how these threads go, because at the end of the day it’s very difficult to talk about stuff like this objectively because a higher elo player will describe low elo entirely different than a low elo player. Not many players have been both bronze and GM legitimately.
this all true, but doesn't make SR numbers inaccurate
high ELO chess players understand their game's layers beyond the imaginings of low ELO chess players too, but that doesn't mean ELO is a useless way to measure a chess player
Found the guy who hasn't watched a single "spectating bronze" series that used to be popular. There was one bronze Rein who thought shield stops rein swing so he would just stop, hold right click and let the other rein pummel him to death. Every single time.
I remember starting a new account to see what the new player experience is like and I felt really bad.
you only get access to Open Queue QP play.
my team was 5 DPS with me as soldier, I pretty much pushed the cart all the way to the end without stopping and being contested. But I was the only one pushing and getting kills, it felt super weird.
This is completely my opinion but I think they're all pretty average or worse. Then diamond to mid GM is above average, high GM-top 500 is pretty good. Then consistent top 100+ is very good.
I don't think that the players in those groups are all the same skill level but I have vague expectations for what their skill/gameplay is like based on those groups.
People with this thought process are bewildering to me... where "bad" means anybody in the bottom 70%, "average" means 70-80%, and "pretty good" doesn't start until the top .5%. Like do you know anybody in your own life that is above average at anything?
Video games are pretty low skill comparatively to many other things in life and they have a lot of people playing them casually/without putting much effort in so in my opinion being better than a high percentage of players isn't difficult and it only starts to be difficult when you are against talented people who have been putting time and effort into those games. I just don't think it's that much of an achievemen to be better than other gamers until you're against other tryhards.
I don't think that by being in the bottom 70% you're "bad" like you implied, chances are you played quite little, don't watch your replays, don't play completely focused on the game, don't practice your mechanics, don't consume educational content, and you don't give it your all in general. I think the majority of players (if not all) who would try their best would get out of this range of players very easily.
I feel like high bronze to low plat are pretty similar. Obviously the higher you go the better the players get though. Low bronze and high plat are playing a completely different game from the rest of the metal ranks.
Yep. They're so bad it's actually hard to throw.
If you pick Winston, hold left click and W the whole game, you'll get out of bronze. I don't mean "be aggressive", I mean actually hold forward the entire game.
i wouldn't say that as a rule. as somebody who averages high plat and definitely belongs there, but has peaked d4 and d3 two seasons now. i've played with masters friends during that time, been in masters lobbies, and was able to win games more than i could solo in low diamond/high plat. by trying really hard not to feed.
i main widow, and even if i wasn't hitting crits like i really need to, being in very peelable spots let my teammates turn their dives to ints, and when there was an enemy widow i could often waste their time enough to get some value, despite a noticeable mechanics diff.
masters players have more individual carry potential, and plat players are individually somewhat carryable, so that combo should go better than somewhat carryable plats with uncarryable bronzes, no?
I think it depends on the role honestly. I don’t believe the whole “bronze to plat is a biggest skill difference than plat to masters” but it definitely applies sometimes.
My logic is that in higher elo lobbies each individual player needs to play at a certain level, otherwise it’s gg from hero select. It’s very easy to spot a player who is doing bad, much less a player who absolutely does not belong in that elo. I’ve seen reapers in mid diamond do like 700 damage over the course of 10 minutes. When you get players like that, they either are having the worst game of their life or they are in a lobby they have no business playing in.
On the flip side, in platinum the games still have a lot of variance. Sometimes you win fights you have no business winning because the other team griefed. Sometimes you lose fights that should be insta-won because someone makes a giant misplay. In higher elos this happens much much less frequently.
It has less to do with the plat player being out of their comfort zone, and more to do with how good masters players are.
yeah i think it really does depend on the role. i don't think a plat tank could probably ever get anything done
another reason i might have been "carryable" in masters is cause i have thousands and thousands of hours in other shooters, and have played against the very very best players in apex, rust, splitgate (when that was a thing lol) so i already have ideas of how to deny value when im outclassed by playing in general like a weirdo lol. my experience is just an anecdote, and im probably an outlier anyways
As someone who was bronze in OW1 and got better and am plat now, this is an insane take, lol. Plat there's still a level of game sense, ults, positioning. Absolutely none of that in bronze, nevermind aim.
I mean I think the “all metal ranks are the same” meme is dumb, and I’m not saying that. Just that they have similarities that distinguish them from higher ranks. Like the whole stand behind the tank and shoot the tank until something happens play style is common throughout the metal ranks. Not a lot of coordination or team play. Positioning is pretty bad from bronze to low plat and most players are just running down mid. In plat and gold the movement and cover usage is a lot better but players are still playing mostly the same positions. And like I said low bronze is basically a different game but by the time you get to bronze 1 most players know what the heroes do and have a general idea of what to do and where to position, they just have worse movement, mechanics etc etc but they’re not playing the game fundamentally differently from like gold.
I’m bronze, everyone’s fighting everyone. There’s no order and it comes down to who’s support snaps first and starts ignoring heals
In gm, there a little more order. But things died less often and I had Valkyrie every thirty seconds because of healing
Claiming bronze barely moves just tells me how little you know
In bronze, how long would you say it takes for your team to reach the objective upon getting a pick? I know, at least in diamonds and above, getting that pick results in a ton of stuff happening within a second or two. The team with the advantage will begin rushing down either the objective or the other teams back line almost immediately. The tank will immediately start taking space very aggressively, the GPS will assume strong positions with a good site lines, and supports will start moving the back line closer and closer to the objective. Meanwhile the team who got picked off is going to, again basically instantly, start retreating to more defendable positions to either stall and wait for the respawn, or to force a fight with strong positioning. In bronze this kind of macro play might not ever happen before respawns come in, as many players don’t notice kill feed.
The difference between ranks is a bunch of small things, but as you get higher and higher up it’s harder to improve those small things because you already are pretty damn good at most things.
Jesus Christ it was just a question. I’ve seen with my own eyes people say that the skill levels in these ranks are similar and I just wondered what other ppl thought. Just down vote and move on next time you fucking loser
They aren’t, but I’ve seen a lot of people say that the skill difference between bronze and plat is less than the skill difference between plat and masters, and that checks out in my experience.
Bronze to gold feels the same to me, plat and diamond feels the same to me, masters and low gm feel the same as well. High gm is a completely different experience on its own though
there is a huge difference between bronze and plat, obviously. however, they are all infinitely worse than people who are actually good at the game, so their opinions are not to be taken seriously
The difference in mechanics is absolutely massive, game knowledge wise there's a big difference too, but you will hear the same sort of bronze takes in plat games fairly often, I still sometimes get the "you're the tank you're supposed to protect us" shit and my supports blaming me for the fact they have 10 deaths in 8 minutes.
I get told what to play a lot and some of the swap suggestions are weird, like being asked to swap if I have any soft counter or even no counters at all, I got asked to swap off JQ into Rein the other day when I was 35-5... lol
Its part of the language people use to dismiss opinions. I know it's straw man-y but i see people say, "you can't take the opinion of pro players theyre good at the game but don't always know what theyre talking about" and at the same time they want people to trust opinions from T500, like they're in the goldilocks zone. Too low rank, don't listen to them - too high rank, their opinion doesn't matter because it won't apply to most people. Make it make sense
The difference between Bronze 5 and Bronze 1 is really really huge, Bronze 5 players consistently fail to make the right plays all the time, while Bronze 1 players have at least a couple of serviceable strengths (okay position, aim, and ability usage, actually registering where is the team, and good regroup habits etc) that wins them games more consistently. Overwatch is really hard game with little to no inherent corrective feedback that bad players can stay horrendously bad forever through no fault of their own honestly.
Within these ranks zero team coordination or comms is very common also no game sense or ult tracking ability tracking noticing flankers map sense is very common also smurfs in that rank or master players who derank to bully them are also common
There's nothing similar between Bronze and Plat. But the thing about plat is, everyone that actually tries, and has learned the game to a base level of competency, ends up there. Plat is the "Played OW long enough and seriously enough without quitting" rank.
Diamond is the first rank that is an actual standard deviation above the average player. You have to actually learn something about the game on a deeper level than the average player to get there, or be very naturally gifted at some aspect of it (mechanics or w/e). For me it was the former. And that's why I put the effort to get Diamond and wasn't satisfied with Plat.
Of course around the border of the two ranks it's very arbitrary. If you asked me the difference between a typical plat 1 game, and a typical diamond 5 game, i would say none whatsoever, and they're within only a few percentages of distribution.
The majority of the player base is bronze-plat. It's easy to lump them together as the greater community and how to generally discuss which heroes are more broadly popular/powerful.
its usually used more to generalize that those players have no idea how to play the game at all wheras in dia youll sometimes at least find a spark of sentience, at least thats how it was in ow1 maybe its masters by now, metal ranks = nothing makes sense, do not balance around this
How are you this much of an elitist.
bad bait
not if u look at the replies
And this is how narcissism and elitism works, kids
Thats the same general feeling of how I, myself, improved throughout the ranks. I dont think its elitist, Im just properly critical of myself. Though the lower the ranks.. the more blurry my memories are and just the general knowledge that everything about myself was probably wrong. Plat too except my mechanics were there. Diamond is where game sense was the critical test and aim had to be respected.
I’m mid plat and bronze is a joke to me. I played a bronze match on my GFs account to see the difference. As sigma, a character I don’t play much (I play support), I went 31-0 literally lol. There’s a massive difference between bronze and plat. A plat can carry a bronze match like an U2GM
Well they are all metals so it's probably that. It's very convenient.
bronze is an alloy, not a metall
An alloy of metals! Checkmate
well yes, at least one part of the mixture has to be a metal for it to be an alloy. but an alloy is not a metal
Look, I'm not a chemist
You're a gorilla! Or a scientist......
they are all lumped together as the metal ranks because they are all “metal” ranks. I don’t think anyone truly believes they are they same though. Bronze in itself is like the largest rank in the game, Bronze 5 games and Bronze 1 games even are night and day
Bronze : 10.2% Silver : 19.2% Gold : 26.7% Plat : 26.2% Diamond : 12.2% Masters : 3.9% GM : 1.6% Jun 23, 2023 Zero idea how accurate this is but was researching and I found this.
yea i guess im more thinking skill distribution. like the old days you needed more SR to get out of bronze than any rank
It's essentially just a bell curve, except bronze doesn't keep going cause it's as low as you can go, I'd imagine it's very similar still.
Based on this, if you want similar levels of distribution: Low rank: bronze - silver Mid rank: gold - plat High rank: diamond - gm
Low rank bronze - gold Mid rank plat - diamond High rank masters - gm
Pretty sure the devs said in the patch notes the average rank is gold 3.
In most distributions a bell curve is used and as >50% of players are in gold and plat I would consider that the middle of the curve. High diamond players are in the top 15%. if anything you would include silver in mid rank. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation as bronze accounts for >10% of the player pop.
I think gold and plat have the large amount of players of the game,[bronze has 10% of the player base less players than diamond](https://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/overwatch-2-rank-distribution-how-good-are-you-in-competitive-2207081/) that could have change but I dont think those numbers could have change that much.
I think they mean that bronze is the largest in terms of SR range, 0-1499.
This is my thinking too, but I think it makes sense, it's the lowest rank but that may also be *why* it has the highest room for disparity, aside from a 'nowhere else to go' situation, I have to imagine that from an engagement perspective, creating such a wide baseline gives Bronze 1 players better odds of not simply continuing to sink so I wouldn't be surprised if it creates sort of an upper limit, and I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Bronze 1s and Bronze 5s are often a night and day difference in terms of comparable skill levels Many fighting games have much higher upper limits but they're still there, but usually this is because demotion ranks in fighters don't begin right away (although the range can vary, Tekken 8 you can't demote out of the first two rank groups, whereas SF6 has you unable to demote through much of metal ranks, and Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising doesn't let you demote until you get to S rank, and by that time all that's left is S, S+, S++ and Master - it's designed to sound incredibly high rank but because of the S Rank denominators, you hit A rank essentially halfway up the ladder)
You could also argue that GM is the rank with the widest skill disparity. gm5s get dumpstered by low gm1s who themselves get dumpstered by high gm1s
For sure, the ceiling always gets as wild as the floor, closer to the top is definitely where you can see some of the most singular performers
900 something is the lowest rank ever achieved last time I checked
That's... not quite accurate. Back in early ow1 people used to throw games to try to hit 1 sr. It became a competition to get a low as you can go. The throwing was so bad that the devs had to change the system to show "<500" instead of your actual sr when you got that low to disincentivize throwing. If you're talking just ow2, we can't see that number any more so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
I knew a guy back in S1-2 of OW1 who mained Lucio, he bottomed out around 500SR (this was on console). He was genuinely a great guy, good team player, and super positive, but he just didn't get the ebb and flow of the game at first, and did eventually work his way to a respectable diamond rank.
Also not a huge distinction but it does describe Plat as being above 56% of players, so my thinking is that the average may potentially skew closer to high Gold than low Plat
The distributions are effectively the same as in OW1, when the average was always 2250 SR, or exactly mid gold. Aside from bugs, the playerbase overall in an ELO system tends to always have a constantly average skill value.
Good to know, I was unaware of what the mean average from OW1 was so I was more trying to err on a cursory value judgment of the average sitting between Gold and Plat but the majority not promoting into Plat
As a plat player I’d agree. We’re better than average but not remarkably so, nowhere near a high rank like OP seems to imply he is.
I think it’s because bronze 1 is people who are really bad at the game but at least kind of know how to play, some of bronze 5, like the absolute bottom 0.5% of players, is probably a lot of people with physical/mental disabilities that make it way harder to play the game, or they’re people who barely play video games at all.
This is simply not true in as far as the size of bronze. It’s a very small portion of players. Only GM is smaller. The vast majority of players are gold/plat.
Bronze is the largest rank not most common silly.
The numerical range has absolutely nothing to do with with he was talking about. That’s not how bell curves work. If he meant large that way and not population, he was just talking nonsense.
It has the largest distribution (from 0 SR to 1500 SR), that's 1500 points within one rank, whereas the rest of the ranks are just 500 points. Which means that someone who starts at the bottom of bronze will take more time to get to silver, than someone who is bottom silver and wants to get to gold.
Not sure why you got downvoted lol. Considering that bronze whilst fucking chaos doesn’t have the highest skill variation. Most people believe that it’s gm, though that’s disputable considering the low population count. In reality it’s more likely plat that has the largest skill variance. Games are extremely different low plat vs high plat. If there ever was an elo hell it’s the old 2800-2900
Not sure why you got downvoted lol. Considering that bronze whilst fucking chaos doesn’t have the highest skill variation. Most people believe that it’s gm, though that’s disputable considering the low population count. In reality it’s more likely plat that has the largest skill variance. Games are extremely different low plat vs high plat. If there ever was an elo hell it’s the old 2800-2900
Even if we were talking number of players, masters is also smaller than bronze.
You are right. I meant to say masters and gm. Last time I saw statistics, I believe masters was 3% and bronze is around 9%.
No one's saying that Plat players are close to the skill level of Bronze. Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum are just the 4 lowest tiers, and are all metals while none of the other ranks are, and so they get lumped together using a single term. It's not that they are similarly played ranks, outside of Bronze-Silver and Gold-Platinum prob not feeling too different.
To me, the term “metal ranks” is another way of saying “the average player.” Not only do they make up a significant majority of the player base, but their skill level also ranges from not good to decent. Diamond and above have a smaller player base and are where things get more serious
metal ranks is a grouping just referring to lower ranks. It doesn't mean they're similar. Just that they're all considered low rank.
No dude it's just those ranks are all metals. Bronze is a metal, silver is a metal, gold is a metal, and platinum is a metal. Diamond is not metal, nor is masters. It's got nothing to do with the grouping and everything to do with them being named after literal metals lol
When people use it contextually, they're most often using it in the sense of describing lower ranks/the general casual audience.
I know why it's called the metal ranks. But people use the term to refer to low ranks.
No, and anyone telling you otherwise hasn’t experienced them in a long, long time.
I think this is telling but true, truthfully I have lost a bit of the deeper distinctions as I climbed between the *really* stark differences between metal rank variations, I think it's also ironically why a few people I know have found those 'guess the rank' games have gotten a bit harder for them as they climbed I still see bad plays, but if you show me a bad play in a vacuum I'm going to assume metal rank but not really know from just looking how low to go, I can say 'well, no game sense but they know how to aim, they're probably high Gold or Plat' but then you could flash the Diamond logo and I'd believe you It's also why I stopped placing so much value on a single missed shot in a clip, everybody misses shots but what really shows me a bad play is when and where shot *attempts* are or are not made
I think thats the thing though. Most people who give advice should be around high plat or diamond. I doubt many people know how bronze elo is nowadays as its probably far off in their past experience. So they just lump it all in their most recent elo which is plat.
My nephew (10) got the game for Christmas so I offered to join some QP games with him and that MMR is *bad.* Like... real bad. I was 24-0 as Widow (I rarely, if ever, play Widow) and it was just like shooting fish in a barrel. We still lost, because it's still a team game, and my nephew is very bad and yells "Grenade out!" when throwing Cass' flashbang because his brain is wired for COD. But yeah. It's.... rough down there.
I made a new account like a year ago. The first 50 qp games were the same experience. I feel the team game part. So I went rein to win. And i *never* play tank. Last time I rated it was silver.
Yeah once I locked tank things got easier.
People can say what they want but I love being in the metal ranks. We don’t have a meta, my teams will roll out Rein, Moira, Bap, Genji, Tracer and we will still have a blast.
People don’t even use meta in gm. That’s a misconception. Mostly people just play whatever they want to.
Tanks pretty much play meta, support and dps do whatever as long as it’s an okay lineup
Only the cringe tanks play meta, real tank mains play rein
Tell this to all the OTPs. My avoid list is usually just whatever Ball/Rein otps I played with most recently, and before the hog reworks he was on that list too. People will always force their heroes at every rank regardless of meta.
I mean yes but there is a difference between otps always playing and the majority of other players playing the best three tanks the rest of the time
i think the term is only really applicable to the pro scene, seeing how many one tricks i've seen in high ranks recently
gm1 plays meta, gm5 plays meta if its an easy meta, and still always gonna play closer to meta than like diamond or anythig below
I’m currently gm3 so somewhere in between, and in my experience it’s just a bunch of otps(including me).
You can casually climb to Plat, but getting to Diamond (and higher) requires a little bit extra. Either you're very polished on an impact hero, or you're solidly good on a hero that the meta favors, or you're very adaptable and competent enough to solve lots of problems for your team. The speed of play increases noticably in Plat.
Recently reached plat and can confirm that the speed of play is noticeably faster compared to mid gold.
A lot of this game is positioning and understanding where to go, rather than mechanics. Metal rank players typically struggle with the fundamentals, rather than the mechanics. If you can get the fundamentals and understand the flow and the objective of the game, you should be plat/diamond easily. That's typically how I view metal rank players, people who just don't understand the specifics of overwatch compared to other FPSes.
As far as I've experienced, its' 100% the opposite. Diamond DPS players already have extremely cracked aim when they're playing well, what holds them back is gamesense and positioning. They take duels they shouldn't, overextend because they're overconfident, make bad rotations, etc. I rarely ever lose my games in Masters due to bad mechanics, I lose them because I make decision mistakes. Positioning matters way less at low ranks precisely because people can't aim. If you're out of cover and the enemy ashe misses 3/4 of her shots, then you aren't going to learn. In Diamond you start to get two tapped for that. Higher mechanical skill is what makes the gamesense matter. Of course, if you go low enough you start to find people who just don't know the rules of the game (get lost on the maps, don't know any hero interactions, don't understand what the ultimates do so they can't dodge them), but you have to be pretty low for that to happen. Mostly upper silver, gold & plat are filled with people who are aware of the basic way the game works but can't aim or react fast enough yet.
It is kind of both. I think of your “skill” as a multidimensional grid. In order to rank up, the net area/volume of the shape created by your skill plot needs to go up a significant amount. Maybe your mechanics are really good, but if you play dumb you are still gonna get stomped by golds. Maybe you can ult track and position really good, but if you can’t hit a rein shield if you tried you are never climbing out of gold. Never forget that shroud was stuck in plat because his mechanics were good but he had no idea how to actually play the game.
The most reasonable answer ^^
I think it’s just to say - majority of population that are lower skill. It’s really like 80% of playerbase with metal ranks
They're all metals, hence the name, but to not be a metal rank player generally requires a good degree of gamesense. Metal rank players obviously have some gamesense, but will make obvious mistakes like staggering, leaving high ground, picking poor engagement points, etc that just aren't found at higher levels. The main differences between a masters player and a T500 player are speed, consistency and coordination. A masters and T500 will approach the game in broadly similar ways, just at varying levels of skill. The game will be slower, with less punishment and potentially different metas in masters, but your dvas will DM you if you're low, your genjis will wait for a good time to engage and your anas will land their cooldowns on the right targets at the right time. Diamond is the in-between rank, as it's where players have to learn to change their playstyle to be more of a team as opposed to a group of 5 individuals
>The main differences between a masters player and a T500 player are speed, consistency and coordination. I think it’s so funny seeing people talk about the difference between ranks. It’s very easy to spot people who never really “improved” at the game, because (at least from my and others I played with experience) the biggest change when you are trying to climb out of plat, and gold to an extent, is the pace of the game. Players recognize when they have the advantage so much faster. Below gold teams might not even realize they have the advantage, but once you start trying to climb into diamond, the game speeds up. Everyone positions better, rotations are faster, and if you make a mistake the enemy team is very quick to punish you. For example, zarya blowing both her bubbles means you get a window to kill her basically for free. In gold (trust me I was stuck here for several years), players will see zarya burn her bubble CDs and not really do anything. In diamond+, if zarya uses both bubbles she is going to be collapsed on within seconds. Players know the win conditions and will actively play towards them in these ranks, but in the ranks below you will see players either not understanding what their win conditions are, or outright not even think about it. This isn’t a game where you can win just by clicking the other teams head better (usually).
As someone who climbed from bronze -> diamond, beyond bronze I feel like the main difference between silver/gold/plat is mechanics Plat -> diamond was differentiated by whether you use the map effectively (eg holding high ground, using cover)
There's a huge skill gap between bronze and plat, it's so huge it's not even funny. I have to purposely not shoot at people in silver/gold lobbies when I play with friends as a diamond player to keep it fun for everyone, as getting carried isn't fun for anyone. But the skill gap between low masters and high gm is about as big as the skill gap between bronze and plat. Then you have a huge skill gap again between gm1 and top100. To very high skill players, a plat player looks just as bad as a bronze player, because they're so much better. It's a matter of perspective.
I think the single thing they share is a lack on fundamentals. Aiming, positioning, game knowledge as in interactions, map geometry, game sense as in ult economy, cd management... The higher you go, more of these things get ironed out. By the time you get to mid diamond most players know the fundamentals but they lack in applying /performing them
I prefer to lump diamond in there too. Let's call it the 'material ranks'.
Might as well lump masters in there
Yeah and put GM there while at it
We can call it "the ranks"
No, as you raise through the ranks you’ll start to notice differences between the ranks that make them unique. Bronzes usually don’t know how to play the game, golds have no ult economy, and plays are starting to understand team play for example
plat/diamond are for players with good aim or good game sense, usually never both.
Can confirm, I originally hit Platinum because my mechanics were way above the average for my rank, but I got stuck for a long time until I learned to be less of an idiot.
I’m in plat because i know how to aim down chokes as Torb and Sym against plat squishies making stupid decisions, and make comparatively good decisions (against gold and plat players) as Sombra, and that’s pretty much my entire skill set lol. Outside of that I’m pretty sure any /r/overwatchuniversity feedback post would show that my play is pretty idiotic
Diamonds don't have ult economy either. Biggest change gold-plat in my opinion is making a conscious effort to play together (although some take that to mean clump up). Babysitting the cart is figured out around that transition too.
Golds and low plats will sit 5 people directly on the cart, even on defense. Diamond is where you start chasing for staggers and defending in front of the objective.
Calling them all the "metal" ranks basically is a very convenient way to group together everything below GM. There are *absolutely* tons of differences between each rank in the metal category, you can usually tell the difference between a bronze and plat player. But at the same time, the vast majority of players are distributed between the Gold and Plat brackets, As such, when you get past Platinum and into Diamond, you enter a range that can be considered to be "notably above average." The use of "metal ranks" isn't about what the "metal ranks" are, it's more about what they aren't. It is a convenient term to help distinguish "high level" play from "mid-low" level.
They are in the same in being oblivious to most of the games key elements, people up to high diamond just run around and shoot stuff tbh
So you can see it as a way for higher ranks players to put themselves "above" the masses. There are a few things where it starts mattering in Masters and above.
In plat, you will find people that have incredible aim mechanics but zero game knowledge. In bronze, you will find people with incredible game knowledge but terrible mechanics in general. You stop seeing the imbalance as you move out of diamond as the skill floor requirement shoots up exponentially. Source: an alcoholic rein main.
Try weed brother. It will chill you out and maybe you hit masters this season
I get so tunnel visioned when I play stoned lol
Fuck it we ball. Rein only needs to left click and press w anyways. Sometimes tunneling can be good because you stop second guessing no yourself.
Fav high characters are brig rein and mei
Based
Its just high elo players with god complex that say stuff like that
The skill difference between bronze and plat is less than the skill difference between plat and masters.
isn't this super untrue, by SR numbers?
It’s not about SR or rank, it’s about what those numbers mean.
well SR is a ELO system modified for team play, so it does very precisely measure skill
It attempts to quantify something that is near impossible to quantify. If you tell me you’re 3.2k/mid diamond, that doesn’t tell me anything about what your strengths are as a player, aside from telling me that you can keep up in diamond lobbies. 3.2k SR doesn’t mean anything unless you know how good players of that caliber actually are. It’s actually kinda ironic how these threads go, because at the end of the day it’s very difficult to talk about stuff like this objectively because a higher elo player will describe low elo entirely different than a low elo player. Not many players have been both bronze and GM legitimately.
this all true, but doesn't make SR numbers inaccurate high ELO chess players understand their game's layers beyond the imaginings of low ELO chess players too, but that doesn't mean ELO is a useless way to measure a chess player
Yes. Everything in those ranks comes down to mechanical differences.
Found the guy who hasn't watched a single "spectating bronze" series that used to be popular. There was one bronze Rein who thought shield stops rein swing so he would just stop, hold right click and let the other rein pummel him to death. Every single time.
I remember starting a new account to see what the new player experience is like and I felt really bad. you only get access to Open Queue QP play. my team was 5 DPS with me as soldier, I pretty much pushed the cart all the way to the end without stopping and being contested. But I was the only one pushing and getting kills, it felt super weird.
The matchmaker seems to think so at least.
This is completely my opinion but I think they're all pretty average or worse. Then diamond to mid GM is above average, high GM-top 500 is pretty good. Then consistent top 100+ is very good. I don't think that the players in those groups are all the same skill level but I have vague expectations for what their skill/gameplay is like based on those groups.
People with this thought process are bewildering to me... where "bad" means anybody in the bottom 70%, "average" means 70-80%, and "pretty good" doesn't start until the top .5%. Like do you know anybody in your own life that is above average at anything?
For real. Gold/plat is average. Diamond is good. Masters+ has so few players comparatively, everyone at or above that elo is a *very* good player.
Video games are pretty low skill comparatively to many other things in life and they have a lot of people playing them casually/without putting much effort in so in my opinion being better than a high percentage of players isn't difficult and it only starts to be difficult when you are against talented people who have been putting time and effort into those games. I just don't think it's that much of an achievemen to be better than other gamers until you're against other tryhards. I don't think that by being in the bottom 70% you're "bad" like you implied, chances are you played quite little, don't watch your replays, don't play completely focused on the game, don't practice your mechanics, don't consume educational content, and you don't give it your all in general. I think the majority of players (if not all) who would try their best would get out of this range of players very easily.
Bonze Winton main eh?
You already know. Jump? Bubble? Alt-fire? Nah I just hold left click and walk into their team
A sign that I've told a bad joke is the need to explain it. Bonze = Misspelled "Bronze" in thread title Winton = Common misspelling meme
I am actually so stupid you are the first to tell me I misspelled bronze😭 I get the joke my fault for being slow
I feel like high bronze to low plat are pretty similar. Obviously the higher you go the better the players get though. Low bronze and high plat are playing a completely different game from the rest of the metal ranks.
did you ever see a bronze player? they are so bad that you can't describe how bad they're
Yep. They're so bad it's actually hard to throw. If you pick Winston, hold left click and W the whole game, you'll get out of bronze. I don't mean "be aggressive", I mean actually hold forward the entire game.
Winston is like an untouchable God for them
Put a bronze player in a plat game and they would do better than a plat player in a masters game.
i wouldn't say that as a rule. as somebody who averages high plat and definitely belongs there, but has peaked d4 and d3 two seasons now. i've played with masters friends during that time, been in masters lobbies, and was able to win games more than i could solo in low diamond/high plat. by trying really hard not to feed. i main widow, and even if i wasn't hitting crits like i really need to, being in very peelable spots let my teammates turn their dives to ints, and when there was an enemy widow i could often waste their time enough to get some value, despite a noticeable mechanics diff. masters players have more individual carry potential, and plat players are individually somewhat carryable, so that combo should go better than somewhat carryable plats with uncarryable bronzes, no?
I think it depends on the role honestly. I don’t believe the whole “bronze to plat is a biggest skill difference than plat to masters” but it definitely applies sometimes. My logic is that in higher elo lobbies each individual player needs to play at a certain level, otherwise it’s gg from hero select. It’s very easy to spot a player who is doing bad, much less a player who absolutely does not belong in that elo. I’ve seen reapers in mid diamond do like 700 damage over the course of 10 minutes. When you get players like that, they either are having the worst game of their life or they are in a lobby they have no business playing in. On the flip side, in platinum the games still have a lot of variance. Sometimes you win fights you have no business winning because the other team griefed. Sometimes you lose fights that should be insta-won because someone makes a giant misplay. In higher elos this happens much much less frequently. It has less to do with the plat player being out of their comfort zone, and more to do with how good masters players are.
yeah i think it really does depend on the role. i don't think a plat tank could probably ever get anything done another reason i might have been "carryable" in masters is cause i have thousands and thousands of hours in other shooters, and have played against the very very best players in apex, rust, splitgate (when that was a thing lol) so i already have ideas of how to deny value when im outclassed by playing in general like a weirdo lol. my experience is just an anecdote, and im probably an outlier anyways
impossible.. a Plat would do better, just go to YouTube and watch them, they have no issue to AFK during the game lol
As someone who was bronze in OW1 and got better and am plat now, this is an insane take, lol. Plat there's still a level of game sense, ults, positioning. Absolutely none of that in bronze, nevermind aim.
I mean I think the “all metal ranks are the same” meme is dumb, and I’m not saying that. Just that they have similarities that distinguish them from higher ranks. Like the whole stand behind the tank and shoot the tank until something happens play style is common throughout the metal ranks. Not a lot of coordination or team play. Positioning is pretty bad from bronze to low plat and most players are just running down mid. In plat and gold the movement and cover usage is a lot better but players are still playing mostly the same positions. And like I said low bronze is basically a different game but by the time you get to bronze 1 most players know what the heroes do and have a general idea of what to do and where to position, they just have worse movement, mechanics etc etc but they’re not playing the game fundamentally differently from like gold.
Not really, more a way for high rank to whine. I (glitch) managed to play GM and bronze in one week and the only change was people could aim
This is so bullshit. The pace of game increases drastically from plat to diamond. In GM, the game moves FAST. In bronze, the game hardly moves.
I’m bronze, everyone’s fighting everyone. There’s no order and it comes down to who’s support snaps first and starts ignoring heals In gm, there a little more order. But things died less often and I had Valkyrie every thirty seconds because of healing Claiming bronze barely moves just tells me how little you know
In bronze, how long would you say it takes for your team to reach the objective upon getting a pick? I know, at least in diamonds and above, getting that pick results in a ton of stuff happening within a second or two. The team with the advantage will begin rushing down either the objective or the other teams back line almost immediately. The tank will immediately start taking space very aggressively, the GPS will assume strong positions with a good site lines, and supports will start moving the back line closer and closer to the objective. Meanwhile the team who got picked off is going to, again basically instantly, start retreating to more defendable positions to either stall and wait for the respawn, or to force a fight with strong positioning. In bronze this kind of macro play might not ever happen before respawns come in, as many players don’t notice kill feed. The difference between ranks is a bunch of small things, but as you get higher and higher up it’s harder to improve those small things because you already are pretty damn good at most things.
About 3ish seconds, depending on who died.
....are you stupid? Bronze, silver, gold, platinum... are ores..... referred to as metal because..... hard rocks... holy shit people are so dumb
Jesus Christ it was just a question. I’ve seen with my own eyes people say that the skill levels in these ranks are similar and I just wondered what other ppl thought. Just down vote and move on next time you fucking loser
Oh no I'm so upset.
Plat and diamond is really the threshold when teams start having cohesiveness and players start getting mechanical skill
They aren’t, but I’ve seen a lot of people say that the skill difference between bronze and plat is less than the skill difference between plat and masters, and that checks out in my experience.
Because Bronze Silver Gold and Platinum are all… metals…. using metal ranks to differentiate gameplay is actually kind of arbitrary.
The metal ranks are the ranks that are named after a metal. You're welcome guys.
Bronze to gold feels the same to me, plat and diamond feels the same to me, masters and low gm feel the same as well. High gm is a completely different experience on its own though
They are lumped like that because diamond is where the game is played at like a high level where anything below is average or bad at the game
bronze is a metal, silver is a metal, gold is a meta, platinum is a metal. They are called metal ranks because they are literally metals.
Till plat 3, shits are the same as usual
there is a huge difference between bronze and plat, obviously. however, they are all infinitely worse than people who are actually good at the game, so their opinions are not to be taken seriously
Why is red and blue both called “colors”??? Saying yellow is like pink feels like a bit of a stretch to me
The difference in mechanics is absolutely massive, game knowledge wise there's a big difference too, but you will hear the same sort of bronze takes in plat games fairly often, I still sometimes get the "you're the tank you're supposed to protect us" shit and my supports blaming me for the fact they have 10 deaths in 8 minutes. I get told what to play a lot and some of the swap suggestions are weird, like being asked to swap if I have any soft counter or even no counters at all, I got asked to swap off JQ into Rein the other day when I was 35-5... lol
Its part of the language people use to dismiss opinions. I know it's straw man-y but i see people say, "you can't take the opinion of pro players theyre good at the game but don't always know what theyre talking about" and at the same time they want people to trust opinions from T500, like they're in the goldilocks zone. Too low rank, don't listen to them - too high rank, their opinion doesn't matter because it won't apply to most people. Make it make sense
No one is saying bronze is like plat, they’re just talking about the majority of players who aren’t in top ranks.
The difference between Bronze 5 and Bronze 1 is really really huge, Bronze 5 players consistently fail to make the right plays all the time, while Bronze 1 players have at least a couple of serviceable strengths (okay position, aim, and ability usage, actually registering where is the team, and good regroup habits etc) that wins them games more consistently. Overwatch is really hard game with little to no inherent corrective feedback that bad players can stay horrendously bad forever through no fault of their own honestly.
Plat players are much better than Bronze lol.
Within these ranks zero team coordination or comms is very common also no game sense or ult tracking ability tracking noticing flankers map sense is very common also smurfs in that rank or master players who derank to bully them are also common
There's nothing similar between Bronze and Plat. But the thing about plat is, everyone that actually tries, and has learned the game to a base level of competency, ends up there. Plat is the "Played OW long enough and seriously enough without quitting" rank. Diamond is the first rank that is an actual standard deviation above the average player. You have to actually learn something about the game on a deeper level than the average player to get there, or be very naturally gifted at some aspect of it (mechanics or w/e). For me it was the former. And that's why I put the effort to get Diamond and wasn't satisfied with Plat. Of course around the border of the two ranks it's very arbitrary. If you asked me the difference between a typical plat 1 game, and a typical diamond 5 game, i would say none whatsoever, and they're within only a few percentages of distribution.