4 Problems with Ranked (placements, gains, everyone is in the same lobby)

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Brandis.

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Assuming dodging will be fixed, there's still many issues.

TLDR of my suggestions:
  • Massively lower placement rewards; max placement should be Silver/Gold
  • You should be a high rank because you play many games with a high winrate, not because you play a small amount of games with a high winrate
  • Leaderboard is stagnant and no one will play if camping is the best strategy
  • After placing, Gains/Losses should be 10-25 and never +/- 2
  • Putting 1000+ hour players and 1 hour players in the same ranked games is miserable for everyone involved

Problem 1: Placements reward too many points.

You can get 1900+ by simply going 4-0.

The initial placements need to be toned down massively. The highest you should place is Silver or Gold, followed by a period of climbing the ranks. At the moment, people place and then inevitably drop as they can't maintain 80% to 95%+ winrates required to stay in high ranks.

This means the only way to get onto the leaderboard is to stack during your placements, or dodge until you get favorable teams/factions, and preferably both. Even if dodging was fixed, the leaderboards would only be occupied by people and accounts that abused making a new account.


Problem 2: You gain less and less (and lose less and less) as you play more games.

I started out winning ~25 per game. Then it dropped to 8, then 7, then 4, and now 3. I can only assume it continues to drop to +1 and then +0. This seems like the confidence factor in GLICKO turned to infinity, where the system is extremely confident you belong at your exact rank and doesn't want you to climb or drop.

I'm relatively the same skill as my friend, but the ranked system expects me to win 300 games with zero losses in order to catch up to his rank. If I drop down to +2 or +1 per victory, it'd be even worse.

Minimum gains should be 10, but much higher for every rank that isn't high Conqueror. Anything less feels like a waste of time.


Problem 3: There is no rank gating, meaning lobby MMR is always a mess.

This is closely related to Problem 2.

You have to win 20+ games in a row without a loss to climb in higher ranks. Even in mid Gold, I have to win more than twice the games I lose, or else I will lose rank. I am assuming this is due to many low rank and unplaced players in the lobby lowering the lobby average rating.

Ranked systems are not designed for players of a bunch of random MMR to be thrown all into the same game. Lobbies are supposed to have players of relatively equal skill.

As a direct example, this is noticeable in custom pickup matchmaking, where having 12 players is usually worse than having 24 players, because 24 allows you to have a higher and lower lobby, improving the game for everyone involved. Even just one level of seperation improves games.

My suggestion: The system tries to make a higher and lower lobby with 24 players for 8 minutes. If a player in queue has been waiting for longer than 8 mins, then it will give them a match with the first 12 who queued.


Problem 4: Putting new players in games with experienced players is awful for retention.

This also ties into the above. It's a huge problem when new players, casuals, and "off meta" players are in the same lobbies as experienced players, who want to win and will follow the meta.

Ranked normally should separate these ideologies, but this throws them all together and the result is a lot of toxicity aimed at new players, who will likely never play again.
 
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Since I can only agree @Brandis. .... One problem is that, in principle, Captain, there are simply too few players for the new system ... friends can not play together anymore ... My Captain is dead :wink:
Also main problem is that people will quit the game if they're not together with friends and it will draw the match, also they see how unbalanced the factions are( in captain) and they quit.
Being forced to play solo with people that have no clue how to play is a punishment, so they rather leave.
Ranking system is a big mistake in such a small community
 
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Also main problem is that people will quit the game if they're not together with friends and it will draw the match, also they see how unbalanced the factions are( in captain) and they quit.
Being forced to play solo with people that have no clue how to play is a punishment, so they rather leave.
Ranking system is a big mistake in such a small community
everything is right here
 
Also main problem is that people will quit the game if they're not together with friends and it will draw the match, also they see how unbalanced the factions are( in captain) and they quit.
Being forced to play solo with people that have no clue how to play is a punishment, so they rather leave.
Ranking system is a big mistake in such a small community
Here's a thought. You can only queue with a party for nonranked Captain games. Your problem is immediately solved and you can enjoy playing with friends while ignoring a ranked system you don't want to participate in. Ranked should only ever be Solo queue, until we have enough players to justify having parties in the mode.
 
Here's a thought. You can only queue with a party for nonranked Captain games. Your problem is immediately solved and you can enjoy playing with friends while ignoring a ranked system you don't want to participate in. Ranked should only ever be Solo queue, until we have enough players to justify having parties in the mode.
Could work but with the small amount of players we currently have, queue for ranked would be insane.

Also the big other issue, being forced to go solo, you have 0 guarantee your team in ranked will have good players, it's always a coin toss. People don't want to wait in lobby for X amount of time just to be paired with a bad team and bad faction.... The reason why people join friends in the first place is to avoid random people.

Ask any player in the past few days if they're enjoying being paired with 5 other strangers, losing the game and rank versus before when they could play with their friends and have a good time and actually win something.
 
Could work but with the small amount of players we currently have, queue for ranked would be insane.
I think it would be much better than it is now, we have more than enough players willing to queue into a solo ranking system and many players who want absolutely nothing to do with a ranked system, at least until they understand how to play the game.

Also the big other issue, being forced to go solo, you have 0 guarantee your team in ranked will have good players, it's always a coin toss. People don't want to wait in lobby for X amount of time just to be paired with a bad team and bad faction.... The reason why people join friends in the first place is to avoid random people.
Over time, your rank would accurately reflect your own individual ability on the team. Over time, you would rank up assuming you know what you are doing and be paired with individuals who have similar levels of skill to your own. This is the entire point of a ranking system.
Ask any player in the past few days if they're enjoying being paired with 5 other strangers, losing the game and rank versus before when they could play with their friends and have a good time and actually win something.
From what I've been reading on forums, this is the exact opposite of what happened when ranked was released. People were partying up with friends, curbstomping 6 unorganized players with a cumulative playtime far less than their own, and gaining easy ranks because of it. I sincerely doubt that has changed since there is not yet a ban on partying up for ranked modes.
 
On the party issue: allow partying for gold and below. Allow duos in higher ranks.

This will lead to people making new shared accounts to play with friends, but it prevents stacks from ruling the leaderboard and makes the games slightly better. And don't forget that stacking and winning every single game makes the game less fun for new players you're going against, even if you're just doing it to play with friends.
 
I qualified after 10 games at Gold 2, played 4 or 5 games with autistic/new players and dropped go BRonze 1... why even bother playing after that...
 
Also you forgot to mention resetting Ranks. In order for anything to work or be fixed the Rankings of players would have to be reset & everyone would have to re qualify and play their 10 matches again. I mentioned this important factor but they moved my post so no one could see it.
 
Also you forgot to mention resetting Ranks. In order for anything to work or be fixed the Rankings of players would have to be reset & everyone would have to re qualify and play their 10 matches again. I mentioned this important factor but they moved my post so no one could see it.

Yes I agree. Ranks should be reset.

People should place gold/silver max. At the moment, you can see almost none of the top leaderboard players play, because the chances are that they'll lose rank even if they win almost every game they play. This should be the opposite.

The only way you should get the top ranks should be because you play. Not because you play less than 15-20 games with a very high winrate.
 
Yes I agree. Ranks should be reset.

People should place gold/silver max. At the moment, you can see almost none of the top leaderboard players play, because the chances are that they'll lose rank even if they win almost every game they play. This should be the opposite.

The only way you should get the top ranks should be because you play. Not because you play less than 15-20 games with a very high winrate.
Easy solution, MMR decay.
 
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