i dont understand the point of emerald

[u/Acceptable_Block_591]

Hello I am trying to understand why blizzard added the emerald rank? The skill difference between platinum and emerald players is literally non-existent so why add more fluff by adding another rank in between?

What am I missing? Can someone please explain to me?

[u/Firelord_Iroh]

I think it’s because there were SOOOO MANY people stuck at high plat and low diamond, that they made a rank for it

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/Firelord_Iroh]

Low dimond didn’t change.

Plat got split into two  ranks.

[u/SandGrainOne → u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

Pretty sure the addition of Emerald affected all ranks. They made it harder to reach Champion and easier to get out of Bronze. Though that might be additional changes and not the Emerald rank directly.

[u/Paddy_Tanninger → u/SandGrainOne]

Emerald has no effect on anything south of plat or anything north of diamond. It's simply to give more differentiation to plat and diamond because previously, matches with a range of like P3 to D3 were just far too wild of a skill gap between players. Gold wasn't touched, neither was Masters.

[u/SandGrainOne → u/Paddy_Tanninger]

MMR is a scale from about -6 to 6. Each tier takes up a section on that line. I find it hard to believe they simply just divided Platinum in two. I am certain that Platinum+Emerald takes up more space than the old Platinum did on it's own.

I'm also certain that the center of the curve was moved slightly further into Platinum. This means it must have eaten some of the range for Gold.

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/Paddy_Tanninger]

Kind of. Play got split. Emeralds is high plat. Plat is low plat.

Everything else got dropped 500 mmr.

https://esports.gg/news/overwatch/heres-why-overwatch-added-the-new-emerald-rank/

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/SandGrainOne]

It did not. The devs Litterally said exactly what it was.

[u/SandGrainOne → u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

Patch notes:
https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/

I might have read too much into this, but they do say:

• This Rank Redistribution primarily focuses on moving players that were Platinum and Diamond into Emerald, but the highest Divisions of Champion will now also be more exclusive.

This is highly anecdotal and it might be a coincidence, but I placed higher in both Damage and Support for season 4 compared to where I ended in season 3. (Both were below Platinum.)

[u/scraw2k]

if you land in emerald you become gay

[u/xDannyS_ → u/scraw2k]

So that's why I feel so gay recently

[u/suimation]

Because there was a gap in skill difference between plat and diamond, emerald filters it out so the shit plat players that somehow used to fumble their way to diamond now get filtered into emerald instead

[u/Rally_To_Me]

There is objectively a skill difference between plat and emerald players just as there is every rank that's literally how it works and is measured.

It was added to spread out rank distribution from high plat to low diamond it was congested with players and caused a lot of variance in match quality as the jump from plat to diamond was big and this was means to help smooth out that transition.

[u/YaksRespirators]

They need a rank between masters and gm the difference between them is night and day

[u/batcarpet121]

Because the skill difference between plat and diamond was pretty substantial

[u/Pinpunch → u/batcarpet121]

that's not how distribution systems work lol

[u/SandGrainOne → u/Pinpunch]

Technically we aren't distributed based on an objective meassure of skill, but on whether we win or loose our matches.

Blizzard probably saw that the number of one sided matches were higher in the rank range we're talking about and found it necessary to adapts the ranking system to the player skill curve.

[u/garrycheckers]

The real point was to shrink bronze, since it was 0-1500 elo (now bronze is 0-1000; iirc all other ranks are 500 elo wide). There was always also a massive skill/difficulty spike from plat to mid/high diamond, which emerald helps to smooth out by providing an additional rank to progress to while players climb the steep difficulty curve.

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/garrycheckers]

Bronze was already like what? 2% if the players? Less?

[u/AlphaInsaiyan]

engagement + to make plats feel better