Feast tier requirements should probably be lowered

Pretty much what the title says. A lot of the frustration I see in the Primal community is that the idea of every getting good enough to get to the next tier is next to impossible. That in turn makes people not as willing to play and makes the current situation of players sitting on rating that much worse and makes the matchmaking situation that much worse as well.

To elaborate on the matchmaking issue, people say there is a problem in that it to readily matches golds and plats with unranked players, which is true, but when there are already a very small amount of gold and platinum players in the pool already, there really is no way to have games played without it doing just that.

So why would lowering the tier requirements help fix this issue? A few reasons actually, I will list them as follows:

1. Lowering tiers would more accurately define people's skill. Currently a gold at 900 is leagues lower in skill compared to a gold at say 1400.

2. This builds on #1 in that lowering tier requirements would increase the number of silvers/golds/platinums/diamonds. If there are more people placed in these ranks then matchmaking will more readily do what SE claimed it would do in the previous patch notes, placing golds/plats/diamond in the same games with unranked/bronze/silver in others. And it will be more accurate to skill.

3. Lowering the difference between tiers encourages people to play more. A gold player at say 1100 may not be inclined to play since platinum is so far away at 1500 plus qualifiers. However if the difference would only be till 1200 for platinum then that gold player has incentive to at least try.

4. Builds on reason #1 a bit more, makes the tier system accurately reflect who belongs where. Me seeing the top 20, let alone most rank 1 players not be anywhere close to diamond is silly to me. It makes me feel that SE came up with random numbers for the tiers and ran with it without putting in any regard of it being achievable or not. Imo, hard tier placement shouldn't overshadow things like top 10 or rank 1, as that seems to be the case now.

I personally believe good tier thresholds would be the following

Bronze: 400 and below
Silver: 400-700
Gold: 700 - 1000
Platinum: 1000 - 1300
Diamond: 1300+

I don't like the idea of a unranked tier that doesn't let you lose points because there are people that cannot win if they cannot win then they obviously need to lose points until there are placed in a correct rating.

Also a little side rant I want SE to consider. Currently top 10 English titles are a joke. The idea that a top 10 finish, Beta Wolf, is overshadowed by a achievement in a completely different mode, 5000 wins in the The Fold = Alpha Wolf, just goes beyond common sense. Please change it to something more befitting of the achievement please.

Anyway thank you for reading.

Another consideration is to make it so that players keep their highest rating gained in the season. This is the number that shows on Leaderboard. You still gain/lose normally on an individual level, but your season-rating goes off of the highest you gained for that season. I know I'd queue more personally, and am sure I'm not alone there.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Another consideration is to make it so that players keep their highest rating gained in the season. This is the number that shows on Leaderboard. I know I'd queue more personally!

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No, that is abuse able. There would be no stopping people who get lucky with their rating and then proceed to throw games for their friends in order to manipulate the the ladder standing, since you know, they have nothing to lose.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

No, that is abuse able. There would be no stopping people who get lucky with their rating and then proceed to throw games for their friends in order to manipulate the the ladder standing, since you know, they have nothing to lose.

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Such faith in our community!

People can already do this if they want via alts. We all know how many alts there are out there.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Such faith in our community!

People can already do this if they want via alts. We all know how many alts there are out there.

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Dunno why you would have faith when people actively win trade. And you can already technically do this with mains. It's all about not making it easier for people to do it. Rating is pretty much the only deterrent.

Anyway, just because people can do it in a more tedious and timing consuming way doesn't mean you just make it easier for people to do.

Also Koltik realize that would make competition a joke right. You get a reasonably comfortable rank 1 and then tank your rating in order to snipe people who could possibly contest it? Risking rating is the only way to keep it honest. Which is why no other game does what you are suggesting.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

Also Koltik realize that would make competition a joke right. You get a reasonably comfortable rank 1 and then tank your rating in order to snipe people who could possibly contest it? Risking rating is the only way to keep it honest. Which is why no other game does what you are suggesting.

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I just can't imagine anyone that is actually capable of reaching Rank 1 being shitty enough to do that, but okay.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

Risking rating is the only way to keep it honest.

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Absolutely. This is still a competition we're talking about here, not flat progression. NO ONE, no matter the circumstances, should ever feel safe in a competition. You can, and should, always feel the pressure. Right now, I'd go so far as to argue that Feast doesn't have enough pressure as it is, because the top of the leader boards hardly move at all, no matter how abysmal the win rates are. There's no risk, even among themselves, which is not conducive to a proper competitive environment.

Back on point: I'd support the lowering of tier thresholds solely based on the fact that no one ever makes it to diamond rank. That, for me, is proof that point scaling, matchmaking, and point thresholds need to be looked at with scrutiny and adjusted accordingly. I don't know what it's like on the JP servers. Perhaps a bigger player pool supports the current point thresholds over there, but it clearly doesn't work in NA or EU. As far as I'm concerned, no rank (as well as achievements/titles) should be unattainable so long as the player is willing to grind for it. Given that we have some players in the top 100 who have more than 700 matches played yet are no further than gold or platinum, I'd say that diamond is far beyond what should be considered reasonable.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

I just can't imagine anyone that is actually capable of reaching Rank 1 being shitty enough to do that, but okay.

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All games have cheaters, and they don't necessarily have to be capable of rank 1. They can cheat to rank 1 and then be a scumbag if they wish.

Add a ranking decay then.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Add a ranking decay then.

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Then what you are proposing is redundant. Why have a rank that you are supposed to have saved as the highest rating if you then introduce rating decay?

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Originally Posted by Aviars

Then what you are proposing is redundant. Why have a rank that you are supposed to have saved as the highest rating if you then introduce rating decay?

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"Then" meaning "Instead of" in this case, since you guys clearly don't want the other proposal.

So that would take only 12 wins to rank up? Pretty much everyone will be Diamond in a few feeks then. What needs to be done is to increase points for wins and decrease for lose. Right now, I see people who only did 60-70 wins week one, never qued again and they are still in top 30, and will probably remain in top 50 by the end of season. Meanwhile people with over 500 matches come and go from top100 regularly, depending on quality of healers quing at any given day.
Just like with season 1, quing is simply not in people intersests when they reach a certain rating fast. With score adjustments they didn't fixed the core issue, and I see mostly new players with majority of top100 stopping queing.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

"Then" meaning "Instead of" in this case, since you guys clearly don't want the other proposal.

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I'm not against it. But this is going a little to off-topic from what I made this thread for. I know there are numerous problems to the feast but I'd rather not continue talking about something entirely different from what the OP was about.

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Originally Posted by SuperZay

So that would take only 12 wins to rank up? Pretty much everyone will be Diamond in a few feeks then. What needs to be done is to increase points for wins and decrease for lose. Right now, I see people who only did 60-70 wins week one, never qued again and they are still in top 30, and will probably remain in top 50 by the end of season. Meanwhile people with over 500 matches come and go from top100 regularly, depending on quality of healers quing at any given day.
Just like with season 1, quing is simply not in people intersests when they reach a certain rating fast. With score adjustments they didn't fixed the core issue, and I see mostly new players with majority of top100 stopping queing.

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Saying it only takes 12 wins to rank up is entirely disingenuous since you would have to win every game and not lose once. Winning one game then losing one means you still have to win a positive 12 games on top of your breaking even.

Another thing to say is that Aether only has 15 people above 1300. Try and be accurate to what you are trying to say if you are to disagree with the OP, not everyone will be diamond and it's been well over 2 months.

Also week 1 barely had any golds, I doubt what you are saying is actually true.

You need only to look at leaderboard to see the faults of this system. Those who have over 500 matches have close to 50% win rate because the more you play the lower your win rate. If they lose and win the same amount of points, they may never reach a place of those who did 100 matches with 70 wins week one and never qued again. How, exactly, is it fair?
Edit: just checked Chaos' top 100, everyone with over 1000 matches has win rate between 47.1 an 50.5%. There are people placed higher with less than 100 wins.

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Originally Posted by SuperZay

You need only to look at leaderboard to see the faults of this system. Those who have over 500 matches have close to 50% win rate because the more you play the lower your win rate. If they lose and win the same amount of points, they may never reach a place of those who did 100 matches with 70 wins week one and never qued again. How, exactly, is it fair?
Edit: just checked Chaos' top 100, everyone with over 1000 matches has win rate between 47.1 an 50.5%. There are people placed higher with less than 100 wins.

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Win rate doesn't actually mean anything beyond the fact that they probably deserve a even higher rating depending on what is going on if they have very high win rates. You playing more doesn't mean you deserve a higher rating. People having around a 50% win rate means they've ended up settling around the rating that their skills and matchmaking allows. This is especially true for people with over 1000 games. People need to stop thinking that winrates are a indication of a problem.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

Also week 1 barely had any golds, I doubt what you are saying is actually true.

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It's exaggerated a little, but, sadly, it's not exactly false.

Week 1 didn't have many golds, that's true, but you didn't have to be gold ranked to remain within the top 100. The bottom tier is only 800 pts. I had that many in the first two weeks, rocking about a 70% win rate. If I had stopped playing then and there, I would still be in the top 100 today (albeit barely). If I had played enough in the early season to play my way to gold rank, then I could have remained dormant until today and still been at a rank that would be considered relatively "safe," given that the leader boards move so little. Whether or not I deserved that rank is a different story.

That said, you're 100% correct that the issue isn't as simple as just win rates and total matches played. Selective queuing, the matchmaking system, personal performance, and even job balance (specifically the ability to carry a team or throw a match) all factor into this as well. Inactive players protecting their ranks is definitely part of the problem, but it's only a small part compared to the much bigger picture. If reducing the point threshold for each rank generates some activity, then I'm all for it. If adjusting the point scaling for wins and losses (perhaps being a bit more specific in regards to how many points are lost or gained by having unranked or first time players in your party) helped things out, then I'm totally fine with that too. As long as diamond becomes a viable option for those of you who play enough to get to it, and matchmaking is optimized to generate more matches per rank tier, then it's probably a good change and should be considered.

I personally get sad a lot about this because there are a lot of people that are in the 20's and 10's in the leader board, but they don't feel any accomplishment from it, mostly because being gold isn't seen as something to be proud about.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

I personally get sad a lot about this because there are a lot of people that are in the 20's and 10's in the leader board, but they don't feel any accomplishment from it, mostly because being gold isn't seen as something to be proud about.

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That really varies on a player by player basis. There are some players, especially in the top 20, who are worth their salt and should , rightfully, be proud of their accomplishments. There are others, however, who really aren't worth the rank they're sitting on.

Within the top 100, there are definitely a few players who deserve much higher rankings, as well as others who deserve much, much, lower rankings, especially those who have remained relatively inactive. Some of those names haven't been seen in matches for a month or more; whereas, there are others who are on almost every night, grinding away endlessly, but struggle to keep a decent spot. When the ranking system allows for positions to get that skewed, it's a lot easier to keep respect for individual players who deserve it rather than specific ranks as a whole.

Of course people with many games will have a winrate closer to 50%, that's the point. The more matches you play the more accurate of a display of your skill it is.

That isn't to say that a lot of the top players aren't good (because most of them are!) but using Aether as an example, most of the top 10 last season were hovering around 53 - 55% winrate after hundreds of matches, with only one outlier. So now they know better than to spam games out, because all it can do is harm them. It's a shitty system that incentives getting a good spot early and then just stopping because playing more puts you at risk.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

You playing more doesn't mean you deserve a higher rating.

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Playing more contributes to activity of the mode, not playing and afk sitting on rating makes ques longer until they eventually completely die like Season 1. So playing more should be encouraged and rewarded, including with rating gain, right now it's the opposite, it's not in people's interests to que more and dead mode is more beneficial for afkers than for active players.

As points creep up to the bottom 100, it should force players to queue up to the feast to maintain their ranking. So if more points are rewarded compared to lost points for loosing, the feast would be more active.

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Originally Posted by Kai_Lee

As points creep up to the bottom 100, it should force players to queue up to the feast to maintain their ranking. So if more points are rewarded compared to lost points for loosing, the feast would be more active.

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So, this might just be me, but it's not like I stopped queuing to maintain my rating. Well, not entirely. It's more like I want people to catch up so that games are more balanced. It's not fun playing when you make up the rating of two people on the enemy team. It leads to you getting two brand new people on your team more often than not.

Either way, your suggestion wouldn't help either scenario IMO. If everyone was gaining more and losing less, then all it would do is drive the discrepancy between Rank 1 and Rank 2 even further. For example instead of Rank 1 being 2K rated and Rank 2 being 1.7k, the Rank 1 would be 3K rated and Rank 2 would be 2.5K. This same idea would apply across the board in top 100.

Im not sure how the points system works and how much points are distributed when you win compare to when you lose. But there have been 2 matches I know of, that when I won I only got 5 and 8 points. Which is harsh IMO especially when the matches were hard won with two even teams. And I have bounce in and out of the top 100 a few times. Its just seem its easy to loose points with a few consecutive loses if you are pair with new players then it is to gain points with wins.

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Originally Posted by Kai_Lee

Im not sure how the points system works and how much points are distributed when you win compare to when you lose. But there have been 2 matches I know of, that when I won I only got 5 and 8 points. Which is harsh IMO especially when the matches were hard won with two even teams. And I have bounce in and out of the top 100 a few times. Its just seem its easy to loose points with a few consecutive loses if you are pair with new players then it is to gain points with wins.

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Sounds like you were maybe at a cap for a tier. The cap is +100 over the tier you're on.

So say you've somehow hit 590 as a bronze, and are in the final qualifying game for Silver. If you win, you'll get promoted to Silver but since you're still technically bronze in that match you'll only get +10 because the max rank a Bronze rank can have is 600.

By the way, the issue regarding new players only gets worse as you get a higher rank.

Oh, there is a cap. That sucks.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

By the way, the issue regarding new players only gets worse as you get a higher rank.

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This is kind of the reason why point scaling should be looked at, though.

I don't mean win/loss points on the whole, mind you. I mean specifically when you have an un-ranked or totally new player in your party, especially if that player is a healer. As long as matchmaking continues to place new players in matches with seasoned players, then the favourable tactic for ranking up will always be to accumulate as many points as you can as early as you can, then simply stop queuing, because the risks far outweigh the potential rewards. Right now, active players, regardless of their personal skill/current rank/desire to rank up/etc, are basically being punished for keeping the queues alive and playing with newcomers. That system doesn't encourage veterans to have a very open minded or friendly opinion of new players, nor does it encourage them to stick it out and teach newcomers the ropes. It's a terrible way of keeping the game mode active.

Quite frankly, I don't know if adjusting the point scaling is the correct way to address this problem, because it could, potentially, open the door to early season boosting when everyone's rank is reset, but SE needs to do something; otherwise, every season of Feast will go the exact same way. Even if they only adjusted the negative point scaling for having newcomers, or perhaps placed new players under a "probationary period" until they've played a sufficient number of matches or attained a specific rank, that would be better than nothing. It would allow middle ranked players to continue to grind forwards, even when playing with newcomers. It would also allow veteran players who want to continue playing and enjoy the game mode the freedom to do that without living in total fear or newcomers or inexperienced players.

you just need to read between your lines.
the feast just need to stimulate ppl each season with new stuff, gear, achievements title, mount whatever u want, and a sort of penalization for afkers, for example if u dont play for a week u get -50 points on tuesday reset day and follows up for the next weeks if he doesnt play feast. the penality doesntt need to be much cuz u still need to consider the player has reached that position for his skillz and luck and the lost points should be recaught in a few matches.
i dont know if this is the rating decay u spoke before.
if SE want to do catch up patch, can make that after every 2 seasons, the seas 1 top100 can be caught being in top 150 or achieving rank gold in current season etc etc..
i find rank cap good like we have now. from a loser point of view would be more easy for me to get diamond tier or platinum, but that should be something a bit more"difficult"

Decay. Higher you're ranked..more coveted position...heavier the decay. Drop more than 10 ranks from decay ....your ass drops to 101, no questions asked. 'B-but I was on vacation!" ...not my problem. Impliment this along with the OP's original idea, all will be well. Other wise, unless you were smart enough to be in Feast 1st week instead of say PotD Part 2 for new patch, its same problem all over. This keeps the ranks from stagnating. Mighta been skilled week 1, are now garbage week 2, and have horrible luck week 3...thats part of the gamble, just keep stuff alive, passionate, and stressful ;p

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Originally Posted by Vaeria

Decay. Higher you're ranked..more coveted position...heavier the decay. Drop more than 10 ranks from decay ....your ass drops to 101, no questions asked. 'B-but I was on vacation!" ...not my problem. Impliment this along with the OP's original idea, all will be well. Other wise, unless you were smart enough to be in Feast 1st week instead of say PotD Part 2 for new patch, its same problem all over. This keeps the ranks from stagnating. Mighta been skilled week 1, are now garbage week 2, and have horrible luck week 3...thats part of the gamble, just keep stuff alive, passionate, and stressful ;p

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No-one is going to buy into that.