People at Iron and Bronze ranks do not seem to comprehend the weight behind a competitive match and that it should be taken seriously. I have played a lot at Iron and Bronze and maybe a dozen matches at Silver and Gold and I always notice that the Iron and Bronze players play Competitive matches as if they have nothing to lose and have no problem losing. I am specifically referring to not giving callouts, not listening to callouts, not caring about eco, being drunk and/or high (because they brag about it in chat), spamming the "All" chat trying to crack jokes at the enemy team and not focusing, not playing with volume or comms, claiming that they "play every character" and have no main -_-, leaving a totally winnable match, going afk (this is a huge one), playing on higher level accounts with low experience, or having no experience at all.

Most Iron and Bronze players know what callouts are, how to give them, and how to react to them, but they just do not care enough to become involved in the callout system. Even if they do, then why are they in competitive? The general theme I see is that Bronze and Iron players certainly can take competitive seriously, but they treat it as unranked because their elo is low.

A lot of Iron/Bronze like to full buy a Vandal or Phantom second round with no shields or abilities unless someone calls them out for it. Low elo players love to spend credits on guns and shields, but not abilities. This creates situations where a team of duelists/initiators will have the same attacking power as Cypher with no utilities.

So many players are high during these games at low elo and seem to not care and if they are they always want to tell everyone in the chat. Why are you on Competitive if you are high or drunk? You obviously won't play as well and you can have fun being annoying in unranked.

Unserious low elo players also love to talk in the chat with the enemy team and joke around as if the main focus of the game is to socialize. If your main priority is not to win while having fun and spending most of your time in the chat trying to start 5v5 knife fights at mid, then why are you playing Competitive?

A lot of these low elo players will play with no volume or with music on in the background. Not only is this bad for optimizing computer performance, listening for footsteps and callouts is essential. Other players do not respond to voice or text chat and do not seem to understand what us happening each round. These types of players are the type to only rotate because they look at the mini map and see their whole team doing so. If you cannot consistently sustain a focusable environment where you can participate in one of the game's essential aspects to win (listening for footsteps), why are you in Competitive?

Some Iron and Bronze players do not really have a main character and think that playing all characters and being 5% good at all of them is better than picking one or two and being very good at those. If an Iron or Bronze player usually plays around 1-2 hours per day, then how could you expect them to be sufficiently good at every agent. The reality of this "all agent" fantasy is usually that they know what buttons to press and very general stuff about each ability, but do not really understand how their player is supposed to operate and with what role.

Another thing that I always see in Bronze is one or two players leaving as soon as your team loses a few rounds in a row. This screws over your team and if you are not willing to take the game seriously just because you are losing, then why are you in Competitive? I don't know why, but whenever I trio/quad queue in bronze, the one or two randoms always either leave or go AFK if the game is not in our favor. That is cowardly and screws over our team. Why is this the common attitude? Just because a comp game is low-elo, that does not mean that it is unranked and that you aren't screwing over people who want to try at the game. Also, just because you are low elo, that does not mean you shouldn't care about your rank. Bronze and Iron players also leave totally winnable matches because they are bored or do not have good connection. Why are you playing competitive Valorant if you are willing to leave a match in the same way you would if you were playing casual Call of Duty and your mom called you for dinner? People play competitive because they want to avoid this type of stuff in unrated, but unfortunately at low elo, the match integrity of comp games no longer holds and people do not care about the outcome or how they affect others. Also, why are you playing Competitive if you know your ping is bad? I am NOT addressing the people that have a single game full of ping spikes that they did not expect or their computer crashing for no reason. I am addressing the people that know their ping is consistently unstable and that their computer's performance may be a hindrance to winning. I have to admit that I used to be guilty of this but once my friends complained that I was a hindrance because of my ping and computer, I fixed it by not playing ranked until I found an area of my home with better internet and I also used a cooling pad to help out my computer. The results from this were amazing and I feel really terrible about playing comp with my friends while knowing that I had bad ping.

The final issue pretty much people playing comp with no experience and being a hindrance to their team. This is the person who has never played Valorant in his life and just tried to get his unranked matches out of the way so he can immediately play comp. Please do not do this, because Bronze I can get paired with Iron I and there are so many Iron I that think they are ready for competitive just because they played their placement matches. I always see people who are Iron III, Bronze I, and Bronze II who seem to have not played the game at all, but still get to play matches at that rank because the account is that level. Great. So now the people who earned Bronze II can play with other Bronze II who just use their friends' accounts and don't actually know how to do anything. People do not realize that players actually take time to earn these low elos and try their hardest to rank up, only for someone who uses an alt account that they didn't earn to jump into a Comp just to "see what it is like" and not know how to do anything. This happens to me all the time; I'll start a comp at Bronze I and there will be an Iron I on my team that has never played the game. Just because you did your unrated matches, that does not mean you are ready for comp.

At one point, I ranked up to Silver and Gold (I am currently Bronze II) and these matches were heaven, compared to Iron and Bronze. You would think that it gets harder, but no. The Silver and Gold players on BOTH teams were respectful, cared about the game, did not leave, played honestly, knew what they were doing, had great comms, were READY to play matches with eagerness and positivity, and understood the weight of the Competitive game mode. It seemed that the matches were less dependent on which team was worse and rather on which team was better. Maybe this is because Silvers and Golds see their ranks as more valuable to preserve since they are technically harder to get to than Iron and Bronze and most players that deserve those ranks actually take the game seriously. Showing this amount of respect for the Competitive game mode for the two lowest elos would create a better experience for everyone.

I understand that the lower elos may "deserve" this bad match quality because they are not good enough to afford the luxury of people that care about the game and they must go through the same grind that all current Golds and Plats etc. once had to go through, but it is competitive...Is it so much to ask that people actually care?

In conclusion, I think that the term "Competitive" has lost all meaning to low elo players. They treat Competitive as Unranked with a cool rank to show off because they earned it. For all these low elo players that don't understand (INCLUDING MYSELF): In Competitive you get a rank and that rank matters and your unserious behavior can affect the rank of those who actually try to win games and try to rank up. If you want to have fun and be casual, you have the Unrated game mode, where you will not only be welcomed to sit back, relax, and have fun, but also be encouraged to do so.

I wish everyone would have fun, but please understand that some of the Competitive players' fun comes from putting effort into matches and winning.