Is ELO Hell Real in Overwatch? Where does the idea of Elo Hell come from?

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The Doctor & The Wizard

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Published on September 17, 2016 3:00:03 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5LWvF9-u0

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Elo Hell (2019)

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Elo Hell. Does it exist in Overwatch? Where did the idea come from? Why is it so prevalent? With Overwatch Season 2 of competitive a few weeks under way - I thought it would be a good time to talk about this and give my opinion on the subject.

Dunning-Kruger Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Confirmation Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Elo Hell is a concept that gained popularity from the League of Legends community regarding Riot's ranking system. It was definitely a concept or thought before that, but the league of legends community is what really popularized it. It's the idea that you deserve to be in a higher tier or rating, but that you are held back by your teammates. Another meaning could be that players in different tiers provide different game experiences for you, perhaps more toxicity, ruining many of the games you play. In that idea, ELO hell doesn't necessarily mean lower tiers - it could be any tier that offers a predominantly negative experience.

I wanted to talk today about whether or not ELO hell exists as it relates to Overwatch - and specifically, I'm talking about the idea of elo hell that has people thinking they would be diamond if only their teammates learned how to play!

Before I get too into it, let's talk about why ELO Hell as a concept even exists. Why is it that people think that in the majority of all of their games they are unlucky and have bad teammates losing the matches for them?

First, we need to take a look at the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'll put a link in the description to the wikipedia page for it.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

But before I get into this - I'm going to use words like "incompetent" and I want to be clear that by using this word I mean that a person is performing below average at a specific thing, I don't mean that they are incompetent in general, and I am not using it as an insult to people below the 50th percentile.

To quickly summarize this concept as best I can - this effect is essentially that people perceive themselves to be better at a given thing than they actually are. It manifests itself in a few different ways - here are the bullet points. People who are incompetent at a given thing will tend to:


* fail to recognize their own lack of skill
* fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
* fail to accurately gauge skill in others
* recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill


An analogy that Dunning has said, is that the incompetent person can't know they are incompetent - because the skills they require to produce to right outcomes are the same skills they need to recognize what the right outcome is. I'm paraphrasing of course, but that is the general idea.

For example, in Overwatch terms, Will is rank 2250. This puts him somewhere in and around the 25th percentile (give or take maybe 5). That means according to the system, 70-80% of players are better than Mr Smith. One of the things that the Dunning-Kruger effect does is make it so Will thinks he's better than he is - So Will thinks he deserves to be rank 2500-2750.

When he's playing with other 2250 rank players, he feels like they are underperforming. he's overestimating his own ability, and unable to effectively judge the skills of his teammates and enemies. This makes it very easy for him to blame his losses on his team.

The second reason I believe ELO hell exists is something called confirmation bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Confirmation Bias is pretty straight forward. Essentially, it is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

What this means is that you'll notice your leavers on your team more than you'll notice the leavers on the other team. Or any other evidence that points to the idea that losses aren't your fault.

Cognitive bias is something that happens subconsciously in most of the situations. It's not that people ignore the opposing evidence entirely - it's just that they place more weight in evidence that favours their belief. Basically, their mind conveniently forgets about evidence that opposes their opinion or what they already believe to be true, causing their perspective to skew further as they continue to receive evidence that they are correct.

These two factors together can very clearly create a scenario where Will not only thinks he's better than he is, but also notices evidence that promotes that idea more than evidence that doesn't.
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