Assuming dodging will be fixed, there's still many issues.
TLDR of my suggestions:
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.
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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