CC Ranking System: MMR, placement matches, and rank decay

I love CC but this ranking system needs another look from the dev team. The goal of a ranking system should be to match players of similar skill level and create an environment where players can challenge themselves. While the current system is a nice first iteration, I dont think it achieves these goals in a meaningful way.

The most obvious change is the removal of star based ranking and the introduction of credits at all tiers. The star system lacks even what little nuance is present in the crystal credit system and can be incredible frustrating.

The dev team needs to come up with some kind of MMR for ranked CC. Its obvious that the only thing in place rn is matching people based on rank. This makes crystal a huge open field of wildly different skill levels.

As for the credit system, I think KDA/damage/mit/heal should have more of an impact on your gains and loses. As it is now it still feels cut and dry.

Placement matches! We need placement matches! 5-10 games to determine you're skill and start you in an appropriate rank bracket.

Rank decay in crystal, Nobody wants to say it but we all know it needs to happen. Look at any top 100 list over a couple days and you know that most players stop playing after getting rank. To keep crystal engaging, que times low, make top 100 a continuous fight, and to reward people that keep playing, we need decay.

I know ff is all about "ease of use, no commitment, pick-up put-down", but this approach seems silly for competitive environment.


PS: Also, MMR in casual matches too please. Crystal fighting bronze isn't fun for anyone.

Unfortunately, as much as I agree it should be there, I highly doubt SE will ever put in an ACTUAL MMR system. I don't think SE is willing to spend dev cycles spinning up a system that accurately tracks player performance that is based off job performance in order to more accurately place players for what at the end of the day is a piece of side-content. Believe me, I want it, I just highly doubt they are willing to do so. That's why they rely on the rank, cause it's much, much easier to maintain.

I don't think they will every introduce rank decay either, as forced player interaction with the game goes against the spoken philosophy of what Yoshi has said time and time again. And while this is a different discussion as it's a ranked game mode, I'd rather they focus on making the game mode more fun and rewarding to play than force players to play just to keep their rank.

I think the reason why most matches seem so imbalanced has to do with a lot of little issues compounding into a major issue of player balancing. Streaks and lack of placement matches makes it extremely easy for any player to eventually climb to Crystal, as at the end of the day, you don't need to be skillful if you just queue enough to get a lucky string of matches to streak you into Crystal. No de-ranking structure also means you have an extremely large group of players sitting at Crystal 0, unable to ever climb due to their own lack of skill, yet they continue to queue and end up in high tier Crystal games. Then there are the Crystal ranks themselves, which based off what I see, considered every player in Crystal capable to queueing into every other Crystal player despite of their ratings. So that same 0 rank Crystal player get's queued against some Crystal player in the 6k range.

Top of my head, what I would add as simple solutions would be:
1. De-ranking: If a player loses 3-5 games at the lowest tier, or at 0 Crystal, they de-rank. Crystal players stuck at 0 rank aren't Crystal players, they are Diamond players who got lucky.
2. Add tiers to Crystal Rank matches: A new Crystal 100 player shouldn't be matched with someone who is like 6k. There is the issue of longer queue times, but I am sure more people want quality over quantity, especially since the win to loss point ration is about 1 to 1.
3. Dedicated devs to PVP job balancing: Most of us were pleasantly surprised at the amount of PVP job adjustments in the patches following it's release, but it has to continue until as close to perfect balancing is reached. 6.15 should have had much more than what we got, BLM is still busted, and many jobs still underperform and need to be addressed. Please don't stop balancing.

There exists one other major issue that even I don't really know how to address, the issue of not being able to "carry" a game. I think most can agree that Crystalline Conflict is much closer to Frontlines than Feast, this has both pros and cons. The reduced responsibility and need for coordination makes it much more accessible to the majority of players, but severely hurts the more hardcore players. Speaking as a tank player from Feast to CC, I feel I have less control over a match no matter how hard I try, and it makes the matches feel way more of a coin flip than it did before. I know I am not the only one who feels this way, but I am unsure how to address it without drastically changing the game mode. Certain jobs definitely feel like they have a higher impact on matches, so maybe it just requires better job design/balancing, but it's definitely unrewarding and disheartening to do your best, pump out the highest damage and healing, push the Crystal the most, have a few fight winning moments, just to lose cause it didn't matter. Even the most hardcore and best PVP players are upset that there isn't a lot of room in games to excel and be the reason why your team won especially compared to Feast.

Oh, and remove non-LB AoE crowd control. Being accidently CC'd by a giant line AoE Silence when you weren't even the target of the enemy is both unfun and extremely annoying.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ixon

Crystal players stuck at 0 rank aren't Crystal players, they are Diamond players who got lucky.

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Absolutely.

The sad part is they're the most prone to become griefers. Seeing that big fat 0 all the time, they stop caring.

Being able to derank would help dissuade such behavior at all ranking levels.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ixon

I don't think they will every introduce rank decay either, as forced player interaction with the game goes against the spoken philosophy of what Yoshi has said time and time again. And while this is a different discussion as it's a ranked game mode, I'd rather they focus on making the game mode more fun and rewarding to play than force players to play just to keep their rank.

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I know exactly what you're talking about, That design philosophy has worked extremely well for their PvE content. But come on man, you and I both know that top 100 is stagnant. Some days you'll see lots of different players and others you'll see the exact same people for 10 matches straight. The way I see it, what we have now is a "very casual top 100" system, pick up and put down. But really think about that concept for a second, casual friendly but also the most competitive the game has to offer. It just doesn't make sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ixon

. Crystal players stuck at 0 rank aren't Crystal players, they are Diamond players who got lucky.

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I've gained and lost 1k points in a single day so this statement is kinda nonsense. Most people likely just don't really care, I know I don't given how terrible the matchmaking is. Hell I only play pvp like once or twice a week usually and I'm playing a different job every time I queue most of the time because I'm generally bored after an hour.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nukro

I know exactly what you're talking about, That design philosophy has worked extremely well for their PvE content. But come on man, you and I both know that top 100 is stagnant. Some days you'll see lots of different players and others you'll see the exact same people for 10 matches straight. The way I see it, what we have now is a "very casual top 100" system, pick up and put down. But really think about that concept for a second, casual friendly but also the most competitive the game has to offer. It just doesn't make sense.

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I don't remember what DC Famfrit is on, but Crystal ain't stagnant. The top 5 or so are pretty well set in stone, but that's because all of them have played a terrifying number of games to get there. Zeltra was 8k forever and slowly creeped up to 9k and I'd imagine they're taking a break after the grind to secure #1. Where you see people not participating, it's because they feel comfortable that their position in one of the reward brackets (top 100, top 30, top 1) is safe and they don't need to keep playing. Considering that these players were all very active through most of the season and earned their places, it's more like taking a deserved break from the game. I imagine most of them will be back in it on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The ranking system is very casual, indeed. It's why I wish they'd not even bothered with solo ranked and had just done casual (and you can bring one friend) and team ranked (rigid 5v5 using PvP Teams.) The ranking system isn't the best at measuring actual player skill (while the people are consistently on top 100 are certainly better than the vast majority of players, I don't think #12 is magnitudes better than #68... they probably just play more), and it's not really that great as a "casual game" either - losing points for a loss that wasn't your fault (whether it actually wasn't your fault or you just perceived it that way doesn't matter to "casual" players) feels awful, so if it was truly "designed for casuals", I'd just remove the loss of risers/credit on losses entirely. After all, if the point of the system isn't to match people based on skill rating (and it's not, this is most certainly not Elo), why do you need to lose points on a loss at all?

Crystal is essentially a dead DC though, so those leaderboards can be taken with a grain of salt lol.

How do you figure? Crystal's as active as any other DC and is in fact the largest NA DC according to the most recent Lucky Bancho I could find: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...5/c54fa129.png

Sure, there will be alts. But people make raiding alts on Aether and Primal so I imagine it balances out. I've noticed there are a *LOT* of PvP alts on Crystal. A substantial number of our consistent top 100's are PvP alts. Are they coming here to smurf, or are they coming here because other people are coming here, and they know they'll get good fights? I dunno, maybe I can track some of them down and ask them.

Either way, calling Crystal a dead DC is pretty much flatly wrong.

I highly doubt that site is even remotely accurate lol.

What? It's Lucky Bancho, man. People have used it for years and years to track population trends with the game. It's as accurate ffxivcollect or any of the other achievement-mining sites.