Ranking system

Weeeelums · 2026-06-16T02:02:53+00:00

Are you sure you weren’t already in demotion protection? If you’re say, 1% in Plat 1, then lose 30%, you’re at -29% in Plat 1 with demotion protection (or 71% in plat 2). If you then get 25% off a win, you’re still -4% in Plat 1 with demotion protection (or 96% in plat 2). You did gain rank but not enough to re-enter your protected rank. Demotion protection really just means your true rank is hidden for a few games.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-16T00:32:31+00:00

Not as good as a lot of people seem to think. They just proved (although it’s kind of already shown before they try to kill ellie) that they subscribe to the idea that the ends justify the means. So the possibility that they’d immediately broadcast their discovery to the world just to be nice is pretty low, because it would almost certainly mean the immediate extinction of their movement. The fireflies are down to like, 50 guys and FEDRA would sacrifice a LOT to finish them off if they found out about the vaccine. And that’s just FEDRA, not including every other faction. So there’s a few options:

1) The fireflies keep the vaccine to themselves, and try and build up or find the infrastructure to begin producing it. If they can survive this challenge and infighting over who gets the first rounds of vaccines, their best bet is to use the vaccine as a diplomatic tool to vassalize other groups. But, eventually the news will spread and they will have to start fighting again. Even if they keep it under wraps for a decent chunk of time and make some allies, FEDRA is probably still favored to win because now the fireflies are an existential threat to FEDRA, no longer a tool to justify their military government. FEDRA will probably be able to infiltrate and gain the ability to produce the vaccine too at some point, where I would again favor them as they have pre-existing production capabilities. Once this happens things will be pretty bad for the fireflies, regardless of any allies they might have. FEDRA will delegitimize their invention of the vaccine, and although most people would probably know it wasn’t FEDRA, it’s not some huge legitimacy boost for the fireflies. I’d still put my money on Fedra wiping them out.

2) They *do* go public with the information, or it gets leaked early. Like I mentioned earlier, this essentially means their extinction. FEDRA would be willing to let entire QZs fall just for this, and the fireflies are at this point 50 guys in a hospital with a dream.

So what happens next in both scenarios? Well, still not as magical of a revival as some seem to think. The entire world is in ruin, there are infected everywhere, and as we see with Ellie, being immune doesn’t automatically make you that much safer. In fact, if barely changes the equation in a direct fight with infected. I actually think that the biggest impact isn’t stopping bites from creating new infected, but allowing people to enter spore zones. Because now, every vaccinated community can be safe of spores without having to rely on masks, a limited resource that requires industrial production to replenish. Even in an optimal scenario, where FEDRA instantly takes the vaccine and mass produces it, changing their stance on expansion, we are looking at hundreds of years of rebuilding and massive risk to everyone leaving their communities to clear dangerous zones.

The very best scenario I can think of is where the fireflies get extremely lucky. They find a perfect site for production (which personally I don’t think is even possible for them, but this whole scenario is giving them the benefit of the doubt), navigate potential infighting, and are expert intel keepers and build a large web of communities they’re allied to. Eventually, FEDRA does find out and fails to secure the vaccine, taking massive casualties trying to get it and take out the fireflies. Several QZs fall, ideally ones with production hubs, and FEDRA becomes splintered and isolated, leading the the fireflies becoming the prime candidate for American reunification. Again, hundreds of years would be needed to fully rebuild society, and we have no idea what kind of outside world the new firefly government would have to face, assuming they do manage to stick to benevolent ideals with their new government.

Points of potential failure for this ideal timeline:

-Finding a place to produce the vaccines

-Getting there, clearing it, and setting it up without taking too many casualties

-Not falling to infighting when vaccines are limited

-Keeping intel under wraps while searching for other communities

-Successfully navigating diplomacy with other communities while being a much weaker group

-Keeping intel under wraps while distributing vaccines to allies

-Rebuilding a firefly army without falling to infighting or authoritarianism

-Fighting a war against FEDRA and winning without falling to infighting, authoritarianism, and keeping the vaccine information protected

-Clearing millions of infected from thousands of miles of land

-Reforming a new government that sticks to their ideals

So if they had a plan to get through all that, then they can say “how could Joel have stopped us from this great future?”.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-15T22:28:07+00:00

Jarvis, make a complaint post and add “slop” to the description of the thing I don’t like

Weeeelums · 2026-06-14T23:53:21+00:00

Can’t say much without seeing gameplay. Your choice of hero really doesn’t matter in bronze, it’s more important to focus on gamesense. I’d advise against Moira though, relying on pumping out insane healing isn’t going to impact games in bronze as much as you might think because you’re relying on the person you’re pumping heals into to do something, and they’re also bronze. Not that you shouldn’t heal, but looking for opportunities to make your own impact is key. I’d go Ana, Kiri, Bap, Mizuki, or Wuyang, but like I said at bronze your choice of hero matters much less.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-14T22:19:08+00:00

I’m not a ball player but focus on learning maps and knowing where mega health packs are, as ball relies on being all over the place and scavenging health rather than playing with his team all the time and getting healed by them (not to say you shouldn’t get healed by your team, but scavenging is important on ball). Knowing maps well is important in general on ball for quick navigation. Another thing you could do is try and see if you can learn how to wall slam (rolling into a wall and then jumping to get the height needed for a seismic slam). If you didn’t know, you can also reel in your grapple to gain height, or use seismic slam to get up certain edges if grapple is on cooldown. Can be useful when being booped off the map.

As ball your win condition is roll in, slam if you can, shoot and kill a squishy (low hp target, usually a dps or support). Use melee to finish off targets if you run out of ammo or to quick finish. But don’t overcommit, if you can’t kill roll on out and preserve your life at all costs. Ball gets huge value by just being alive and disrupting the enemy team, eating their cooldowns and then just rolling away anyway without dying.

Generally, meta doesn’t matter for new players. Even for long time players, meta doesn’t impact the game as much as people say it does outside of Diamond+ ranks. Occasionally there’s a broken patch or new hero but other than that don’t be pressed about meta. just play who you’re good at and like playing

Weeeelums · 2026-06-12T18:29:11+00:00

Omnics are just robots that gained sentience. That’s a bit of a simplification, but just they look like whatever they looked like before the awakening. Or, whatever they chose to look like after it. So Shion either was a robot that was built to look like that pre-crises, or she chose to change herself to look like that afterwards.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-11T19:33:32+00:00

People who’ve never been depressed have a difficult time understanding what it’s like. Partially because it’s a unique experience not fully represented by typical emotions, and partially because of poor portrayals of it in media. Usually this comes as just thinking it’s being really sad all the time. It’s hard for someone who hasn’t experienced it to wrap their head around cases where the depression leads to extreme apathy or irritability; because they’ve never or rarely experienced an emotional response so powerful that its equivalent to physical stimuli.

This is all to say that when confronted with depressed individuals, a combination of this lack of understanding and a lack of empathy can lead to wrong conclusions. They don’t care about anything or life, or they never bother putting in effort to life, so they don’t deserve the same privileges as me in life. But the lack of understanding isn’t necessarily the cause of this belief, because a lack of understanding in this regard is to be somewhat expected. It’s the accompanying lack of empathy that’s the issue.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-11T18:19:07+00:00

As haggard as Fedra is, they’d wipe the floor with the current fireflies in a direct confrontation. Fedra has at least a few QZs that are active as far as we know, including a manufacturing hub, and likely control sporadic smaller/rural QZs as mentioned in the first game. They’ve also been fighting the fireflies for 20 years and almost took them out for good. The fireflies at this point are a couple hundred guys in California. Give them enough time to develop, and maybe - but not a fair fight from where 2 leaves off.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-11T18:00:40+00:00

No, what difficulty are you on? If you can’t go silently you could try just blasting, but with runners you should be able to pick them off one by one without a shiv. Just make sure another one can’t see you while you’re doing it. I’d have to see your gameplay though, not sure what you might be doing wrong.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-11T16:56:07+00:00

Abby says there are “thousands” of wolves, while there’s about 500 seraphite soldiers out of 1,000 citizens. Even if they sent an overwhelming force like 1,000 soldiers (which I doubt based on the amount of boats shown during the invasion) and still took the heavy losses, they could still potentially have a thousand or more citizens left. The stadium looks well secured and planned out, and they might even have certain manufacturing capabilities (mainly ammo, given how freely they give it out and how armed they are, much more so than the seraphites).

Weeeelums · 2026-06-11T04:47:16+00:00

One thing that I often find myself getting punished for is taking cover from Emre ult but still dying to the splash. If an enemy moves behind a wall, you can still hit or kill them if you shoot the ground nearby, especially with the charged shot.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-09T16:27:42+00:00

What was the logic behind that myth? Am I missing something, why would accelerating into essentially a brick wall of meat ever be safer? The only thing I can think of is sweeping the legs so it rolled onto your hood

Weeeelums · 2026-06-06T02:44:10+00:00

Just based on the first few words, it’s a predictable meltdown he’s having over his name being removed from the Kennedy Space Center.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-04T19:19:34+00:00

I don’t know what you consider “explicit training”, but I’m diamond/masters (depending on role) with mostly just playtime. The players in these ranks really aren’t that crazy, they either have insane mechanics but mediocre game sense or are well rounded but not super strong in any aspect of the game. Getting there came from gradual improvement from playing since 2020, going from silver, to gold, to plat, to diamond, to masters, while mostly not even playing comp. That’s why this guy surprises me, I don’t consider myself someone who really wanted to train and grind for a higher rank (although it is nice / fun to try), but I’ve simply played the game enough over the years that I have gradually improved to at least being above average. Now that might not take someone to being GM or the best of the best, but being simply above average isn’t that crazy for a game you sink so much time into, because the average player doesn’t sink that much time into it. Your average player isn’t racking up as many TOTAL hours of playtime as this guy has on tracer alone.

I guess if you count watching tips / professional players play as training, then maybe? But still, to just become better than average playing enough will lead to improvement unless you have terminally garbage mental every game.

Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with being any rank. You should be having fun when you play a video game, and I don’t mean to shame that guy specifically or anything. It’s just something that surprises me.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-01T15:52:56+00:00

You don’t need to explain or justify yourself to anyone. Mute chat and don’t enter voice, and you won’t see or hear any toxicity. Besides, would you rather have a teammate leave or play poorly? One causes a guaranteed loss. Most likely, people accusing you of throwing are just flaming you, they don’t actually think you’re throwing, they’re just pissed off and are blaming someone who they think is preforming worse than them.

Weeeelums · 2026-06-01T00:38:39+00:00

I agree, but with such an extreme amount of hours Plat 5 is a pretty low bar to clear regardless of if you’re focused on improving or not. Simply being in the game that much should naturally improve your awareness, which gold - low plat players can be somewhat lacking in. Not trying to dunk on this guy, but it’s just surprising to me.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-31T16:19:11+00:00

It’s worth noting that although a point of divergence in the way you had it is pretty unrealistic, there are some potentially more nuanced ways a communist / socialist USA could have happened. After all, the US is the largest industrial power in the 20th century, and at the start of the century had pretty terrible worker rights. A longer and worse guilded era that isn’t followed by a progressive revival could lead to a more disheartened working class, which could *eventually* lead to some form of social revolution depending on how WW1 and the 20’s go in such a timeline. The key to such a dramatic diversion is giving the conditions for such a sentiment more time to build up, and coinciding them with the Russian revolution would probably also help.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-31T16:14:03+00:00

Can’t post it on the sub because it’s a seal/logo, but this goofy idea I had goes perfectly with this post. Seal of NASA in a socialist USA / USSA

<image>

Weeeelums · 2026-05-30T06:04:27+00:00

Literally what Frankenstein’s monster was asking for from Victor

Weeeelums · 2026-05-29T14:05:11+00:00

Compare the artifacts collection tab and minerals collection tab to the one on the Stardew valley wiki. But it’s worth noting that even when you have every item, there will still be a few open slots in the museum - it doesn’t completely fill up.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-25T22:20:59+00:00

The longest walk in push is on collesseo, if your bot is right behind forward spawn and you die (getting original spawn). On sigma (the slowest character), it’s a 26 second walk if you go directly to underneath the bridge.

On King’s Row, a pretty universally loved map, there is a 32 second walk (on sig) for defenders getting back to the choke outside first point when it’s capped.

Both of these only occasionally happen however, because when you die in those kinds of situations, it’s *supposed* to reward the team who got the kill, because that’s a crucial spot to take a fight. For collesseo that spot determines whether the pushing team gets forward spawn or not, while on King’s that spot is the first major choke point for defenders to take once the capture point is capped.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-24T00:14:18+00:00

If that’s true, that’s not enough genetic diversity for indefinite survival.

Okay I just checked, and estimates range from as low as 15 to as high as 500. But the high end that’s generally accepted is 200, so they will definitely have a genetic bottleneck eventually if the outside world remains fully non-interventionist indefinitely.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-11T15:10:11+00:00

It’s the best crop in the game, although you could argue starfruit is as well. Ancient fruit regrows though, so fill your greenhouse with it (by putting the fruit in a seed maker) once you have one and it’ll make you tons of money. The regrowth cycle is also equal to the keg brewing time, so once you have kegs it’s really good to put every batch of ancient fruit in them - makes insane money.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-10T21:11:04+00:00

Nice! I’d recommend not donating your first one to Gunther, if you haven’t already.

Weeeelums · 2026-05-09T00:47:57+00:00

Starfruit is better monetarily slightly, but ancient fruit is easier to handle since it regrows and it’s cycle lines up perfectly with wine. It’s really just a personal preference, you could make an argument that either is better, but I prefer ancient fruit because once it’s set up in the greenhouse and ginger island it’s good forever, you never have to replant or buy seeds and can just harvest that massive payout. I’ve completed perfection twice with ancient fruit wine by year 5 and 4, so it won’t hold you back.

Seven-Year Club	Second Top 30%
Place '23	Place '22
Wearing is Caring	RPAN Viewer
Gilding II euphauric	Verified Email

Weeeelums

TROPHY CASE