De-ranking from Diamond to Platinum needs to go

Diamond as a tier is pointless after the addition of de-ranking. If you're a Diamond tier player, you now spend 80% of your time pushing out of Platinum only to get de-ranked again once you start fighting Crystal players. The skill gap between Platinum and Crystal is huge. How are you supposed to learn to play at a Crystal level when you spend all your time fighting Platinum/Gold players?

It's demoralizing to need to go through NINE (9) tiers with no checkpoints. Diamond tier players are churning out of ranked play because it's impossible to make any progress. I've spent well over 100 games now ping-ponging between Platinum 2 and Diamond 4. I've pushed all the way to Diamond 2 a couple weeks ago. Tonight I made it to Diamond 5 three separate times only to immediately get de-ranked to Platinum 1. It's no longer fun anymore. I'm on the verge of churning out too.

it’s not doing a great job keeping new players like me interested in ranked. the system is already super casual with random matchmaking so maybe leave the deranking to Crystal rank only? either that or have some kind of decent matchmaking where you get put against fresh crystal ranks instead of people with thousands of crystal credit. a plat/diamond game is very different from a nearly full crystal game and why would a low diamond be put in the latter?

ranked seems very unpopular in general and I don’t think the change is doing it any favors either

de-ranking is fine. The problem is crystal should be crystal only given that it has an entirely different ranking progression. They shouldn't be mixing diamond players into the crystal ranks.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

de-ranking is fine. The problem is crystal should be crystal only given that it has an entirely different ranking progression. They shouldn't be mixing diamond players into the crystal ranks.

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yeah I think that’s the main issue. deranking is fine but why put diamonds against people with like 3000 crystal credit? seems like a huge oversight on their part

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Originally Posted by Ransu

de-ranking is fine. The problem is crystal should be crystal only given that it has an entirely different ranking progression. They shouldn't be mixing diamond players into the crystal ranks.

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If they implemented this as their solution, I'd be fine with it, but I'd rather they simply remove the Diamond-Platinum de-rank because:

1. The Crystal population isn't always big enough to support Crystal-only games. There are barely enough Crystal players to support a single Crystal-only match on Materia, for example. Also imagine you're the first person to make it to Crystal in a new season. Then what? You can't queue up anymore because there's nobody to play with.

2. Diamond players need exposure to Crystal skill. Otherwise, the problem remains unchanged. Diamond players will still get destroyed by super-veteran Crystal players as soon as they set foot in Crystal, and then they have to spend a bunch of time fighting Diamond/Platinum players that aren't as skilled.

They should keep high diamond in crystal games, but only with lower crystal ratings. If you get higher rating you should stop seeing diamonds.

They should keep the deranking.

They probably just didn't change the matchmaking algorithm when they implemented deranking. When you couldn't derank they put you up against difficult opposition early because they wanted to be sure you belonged there before giving you the higher tier. Being low diamond in a lobby full of crystal ranks (literally my first game in diamond this season, lmao) made some sense under that system, but it feels strange under the new one.

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Originally Posted by bejii4

Diamond as a tier is pointless after the addition of de-ranking. If you're a Diamond tier player, you now spend 80% of your time pushing out of Platinum only to get de-ranked again once you start fighting Crystal players. The skill gap between Platinum and Crystal is huge. How are you supposed to learn to play at a Crystal level when you spend all your time fighting Platinum/Gold players?

It's demoralizing to need to go through NINE (9) tiers with no checkpoints. Diamond tier players are churning out of ranked play because it's impossible to make any progress. I've spent well over 100 games now ping-ponging between Platinum 2 and Diamond 4. I've pushed all the way to Diamond 2 a couple weeks ago. Tonight I made it to Diamond 5 three separate times only to immediately get de-ranked to Platinum 1. It's no longer fun anymore. I'm on the verge of churning out too.

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Shhhhh, you not supposed to say that. It’s to filter out the ppl who doesn’t deserve crystal rank.

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Originally Posted by Nikoto

They should keep high diamond in crystal games, but only with lower crystal ratings. If you get higher rating you should stop seeing diamonds.

They should keep the deranking.

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Ya that is another problem with ranking that the game doesn't differentiate the crystal scores. I hovered around 800 points sometimes over 1k in crystal season 1 and 2, but I would frequently bump into top 100 players which was never fun lol.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Shhhhh, you not supposed to say that. It’s to filter out the ppl who doesn’t deserve crystal rank.

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I'm honestly okay with Diamond being the tier for "people who don't deserve Crystal".

But that's not what Diamond is today. Diamond as a tier just doesn't exist. I don't think I've been in a single match that has been majority Diamond players. The make-up is usually something like 8 Crystals and 2 Diamonds, or 7 Platinums and 3 Diamonds. When you're not good enough for Crystal, and you're constantly being de-ranked to Platinum, you simply burn out and churn out.

This is what I mean when I say the Diamond tier is currently pointless. There aren't any Diamond matches going on. It's just simply a meat grinder to keep Crystal queue times low.

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Originally Posted by bejii4

I'm honestly okay with Diamond being the tier for "people who don't deserve Crystal".

But that's not what Diamond is today. Diamond as a tier just doesn't exist. I don't think I've been in a single match that has been majority Diamond players. The make-up is usually something like 8 Crystals and 2 Diamonds, or 7 Platinums and 3 Diamonds. When you're not good enough for Crystal, and you're constantly being de-ranked to Platinum, you simply burn out and churn out.

This is what I mean when I say the Diamond tier is currently pointless. There aren't any Diamond matches going on. It's just simply a meat grinder to keep Crystal queue times low.

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I get ya. I had a hunch that something like this would happen. Where after reaching beyond platinum, the que times are going to crater. Not by having a lot of different ppl, but having the same ppl over and over. I knew that was coming cause that’s how I view it in a fighting game ranks for the top. Amazing for the top, abysmal for everyone else so it’ll go back to being niche.

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Originally Posted by bejii4

I'm honestly okay with Diamond being the tier for "people who don't deserve Crystal".

But that's not what Diamond is today. Diamond as a tier just doesn't exist. I don't think I've been in a single match that has been majority Diamond players. The make-up is usually something like 8 Crystals and 2 Diamonds, or 7 Platinums and 3 Diamonds. When you're not good enough for Crystal, and you're constantly being de-ranked to Platinum, you simply burn out and churn out.

This is what I mean when I say the Diamond tier is currently pointless. There aren't any Diamond matches going on. It's just simply a meat grinder to keep Crystal queue times low.

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Yeah I don’t think losing games against top crystals as a diamond means you deserve platinum rank again. you just don’t deserve crystal yet I guess but I don’t think this was a good change, it didn’t help queues like they were trying to do, if anything people will just burn out and quit faster making queues longer, and pvp is already a pretty unpopular side game. Either revert the changes or change the matchmaking system

They don’t need to change the matchmaking system……yet. They can revert the promotion change…or(I’m all in for this) create a prestige system. Regardless of rank, can sacrifice it back to bronze, but lvl up your “P” rank….for bragging rights in a way. They have to fix this problem so ppl won’t lose interest in this content. Then again, I have no idea if ppl playing Season 3 on a global scale.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

They don’t need to change the matchmaking system……yet. They can revert the promotion change…or(I’m all in for this) create a prestige system. Regardless of rank, can sacrifice it back to bronze, but lvl up your “P” rank….for bragging rights in a way. They have to fix this problem so ppl won’t lose interest in this content. Then again, I have no idea if ppl playing Season 3 on a global scale.

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Yeah maybe, another thing is that if you’re the only diamond in the lobby you might get toxic behavior, someone stopped playing and just stood there to spam marker me because i died once… which isn’t fair at all. other people died but I got signaled out bc I was the low rank and obviously the weakest player. like, I didn’t ask to be put here. xD this kind of stuff completely turns new players off from even bothering to push through diamond.

Most of the issues stem from the lack of interest, which leads to so few people playing that some ranks are very barren, which in turn results to extended matchmaking range that causes a lot of the current issues.

After the first 2 seasons most people have the rewards they wanted, especially with fairly easy ranks gained during the first season. There's so little to keep people playing that some DCs such as Light have days when Crystal doesn't pop at all or does for few games and dies again. That will probably hit Diamond too if it hasn't already.

Since aside from the borders and titles there's very little reason to play Ranked. While I don't think the old Feast stuff is reasonable for the larger player base, it at least made people fight over it and could be repurposed as something you can buy over multiple seasons like Hellhound weapons were so you can always eventually get them but higher ranks get more and faster. There have been some good posts about ideas for both Trophy Crystal dumps and Seasonal currency rewards.

As for Casual, it is just plain superior for getting your Series rewards or for farming Wolf Marks or Achievements, doubly so if you are good player and play during prime time since the skill level is very low which results in fairly high winrate towards the achievements.

Overall the mode is pretty good despite the issues with server ticks which make it kinda janky, but there's not much to keep people playing Ranked and it will just keep on piling issues until they resolve it one way or another.

If the playerbase was healthy enough and the rewards enticing enough then it wouldn't matter even if the demotion went all the way to the Bronze. As it is, Season 4 will be completely dead on some DCs with the exception of handful of players that just want to collect their top 100 borders and stop.

Deranking in general needs to go. I dont see why I would want to spend hours of my life on a system I can lose progress on. Not to mention people are cheating on it. Someone just disconnected my entire team as the fight started and when I managed to get back in they were capping the end.

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Originally Posted by Warlord_Bear

Deranking in general needs to go. I dont see why I would want to spend hours of my life on a system I can lose progress on. Not to mention people are cheating on it. Someone just disconnected my entire team as the fight started and when I managed to get back in they were capping the end.

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Your problem is looking at ranking as progression when that's the opposite of what it is. Its not a progression system, its a rating.

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Originally Posted by Warlord_Bear

Deranking in general needs to go. I dont see why I would want to spend hours of my life on a system I can lose progress on. Not to mention people are cheating on it. Someone just disconnected my entire team as the fight started and when I managed to get back in they were capping the end.

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If someone disconnects, the match should just end honestly. It’s not fair to lose a star because someone else had a DC. Deranking can be frustrating but you should take a break if you deranked a lot and come back later and try again, it’s not going anywhere so just take your time and as you improve the ranking part will get easier anyway

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Originally Posted by nighttimebunny

If someone disconnects, the match should just end honestly. It’s not fair to lose a star because someone else had a DC. Deranking can be frustrating but you should take a break if you deranked a lot and come back later and try again, it’s not going anywhere so just take your time and as you improve the ranking part will get easier anyway

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That would be ridiculously easy to exploit.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

That would be ridiculously easy to exploit.

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I guess. I haven’t really had an issue with disconnects but there is one person I noticed who disconnects a lot either on my team or enemy team and I reported them because it seems to be on purpose

I don't agree that de-ranking needs to go, just that the matchmaking needs some fixing to be much tighter than it currently is. I have gotten from Plat 1 to Diamond 5 3 times so far. I think the system they initially started out with worked the best (Dia 4 or 5 will get matched up with max. Plat 1 or 2 iirc).

Currently, each time I manage to get up to Diamond 5, either one of the following happens:
1. I get matched up with Plat 4s that just dive in and try to 1v5.
2. I get matched up with Crystal players that are on the top 10 of the leaderboards.

Obviously in case 1, it's a loss because you cannot 4v5 a match. In the second case, a win or loss is a coin flip. I definitely don't think I'm able to compete with the top 10 of the leaderboards, and at the same time I'm probably ruining their matches by not being good enough.

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Originally Posted by Ansel_Gardner

I don't agree that de-ranking needs to go, just that the matchmaking needs some fixing to be much tighter than it currently is. I have gotten from Plat 1 to Diamond 5 3 times so far. I think the system they initially started out with worked the best (Dia 4 or 5 will get matched up with max. Plat 1 or 2 iirc).

Currently, each time I manage to get up to Diamond 5, either one of the following happens:
1. I get matched up with Plat 4s that just dive in and try to 1v5.
2. I get matched up with Crystal players that are on the top 10 of the leaderboards.

Obviously in case 1, it's a loss because you cannot 4v5 a match. In the second case, a win or loss is a coin flip. I definitely don't think I'm able to compete with the top 10 of the leaderboards, and at the same time I'm probably ruining their matches by not being good enough.

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That mentality there isn’t wrong that maybe you don’t need to be at the highest rank, but it’s also infectious to blame oneself….even though you’re at the mercy of 4 randoms to be on the same mindset of knowing who to target, when to use your tools in sync, asking for the impossible to obtain the high chance of wins. So the chance of earning the highest tier makes it more….unbearable to obtain.

Pretty much at this point, ppl are questioning if achieving this goal of reaching crystal, reaching the top 100 at least even “fun” to do for Season 3, is it worth their time doing the content at all. Not saying the content isn’t enjoyable to play, but achieving the main objective, is it “fun” to achieve? With the demotion system in place, by the mercy of 4 randoms, the “fun” is dying out quicker than normal. So yeah, maybe the 95% of players don’t need to be at the highest rank due to shame and whatnot, and the 5% earn their place. Well…..yeah, that’s probably for the best. Then the top tiers will rage at each other because somebody got to take the place as the new loser of the 95% that fully left ranked and go casual. Once the 95% leaves and creates a new objective, to find that “fun” factor, I believe the forum complaints will dwindle about the system hence what I’m concluding, seeing events happened these last few weeks.

I mean this happens in every bracket. I certainly feel like I am a much better player than Gold. Got Platinum 1 previous two seasons. But I am in Gold doing 800k-1m damage in a game trying to carry two other players who do 100k or less with 6 deaths and less than 100k healing each. Am I actually just a mediocre Gold player because I can’t carry that team? Because that is what my rank says I am. I am still going to try to rank up, and learn to optimize my SCH pvp even more. But sometimes you just have to play your best and know that other folks will queue to ranked matches just not a giving even the slightest crap about how they effect other people’s experience. Just part of how the sausage gets made

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Originally Posted by AshaStardust

I mean this happens in every bracket. I certainly feel like I am a much better player than Gold. Got Platinum 1 previous two seasons. But I am in Gold doing 800k-1m damage in a game trying to carry two other players who do 100k or less with 6 deaths and less than 100k healing each. Am I actually just a mediocre Gold player because I can’t carry that team? Because that is what my rank says I am. I am still going to try to rank up, and learn to optimize my SCH pvp even more. But sometimes you just have to play your best and know that other folks will queue to ranked matches just not a giving even the slightest crap about how they effect other people’s experience. Just part of how the sausage gets made

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There's always going to be some RNG with your teammates. Sometimes, you just have some rough RNG patches. Like, I had a much harder time getting out of Platinum than going from Bronze to Platinum. Even if I would be the top player on my team by a considerable margin on any metrics you can mesure. It's not all great once you get past Gold, the Plat 4s are a whole other set of problems.

But if you compare your stats to everyone else and they are clearly better, then you know you are not currently at your true rank. If you play enough games, sooner or later the RNG gods will smile on you. That's what happened to me and that's pretty much what happened to everyone else.

Also, if you play SCH, that might be part of the issue. The class is very good, but it is pressure-oriented. It won't secure many kills. It's a lot more dependent on your teammates since you can't really burst anyone down.

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Originally Posted by AshaStardust

I am still going to try to rank up, and learn to optimize my SCH pvp even more.

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SCH is rough because your main contribution is slow, widespread "rot" damage. Compare that to WHM and AST which have good CC, and SGE which has good burst damage. SCH can buff the team's damage by 8% but 108% of a small number is still a small number. You're completely reliant on your team to perform well, so even if you were a Crystal-level SCH you could still get stuck in a much lower tier.

I didn't have much trouble getting past Gold with RDM. I think DRG and NIN are also very strong. Any job that can put out a lot of single-target pressure would probably do the trick.

De-Ranking as a concept is intended to keep people to push and win. What i think should change is more so what rank you start to lose star ratings at to re-encourage people to keep pushing to higher teirs. As of this time, Once you hit silver that is when you start losing star ratings. I am perfectly fine with the deranking because you don't exactly need to hold the Crystal Rank via constantly PVPing if you made it there for the season if you want that reward.

However most of the issue is already shared by everyone. RNG matchmaking, the MMR going out of whack cause fewer people are interested, Rewards are no different from Casual Que (Seriously up the rewards -_-) and 95% of all the PVP rewards can be obtained without ever touching Ranked.

The solutions for De-Ranking boil down to the following:
- Premade Groups which entices win traders
- Never losing ranks meaning eventually Bronze players will be paired with Crystal players late season thus killing their enjoyment if they get completely stomped.
- Not losing Star Ranks until Diamond encourages people to keep pushing until the real stuff start.
- Just don't play Ranked since Casual is the same minus the plates.

Honestly at this point doing ranked is like bashing your head against a wall to win a t-shirt that's poorly put together that has your name on it. It's frustrating, annoying, and the reward is insulting for higher ranked players IMHO.
It's just going to be the same Adventure Plate stuff but they'll just change the roman number associated with the season. Even the high end titles are exactly the same as prior seasons.

For those who enjoy doing rank, more power to you but the system really needs better stuff to entice people to play it over casual.
My recommendation:
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Losing Ranked Match: 900 Series EXP/500 Wolf Marks
Winning Ranked Match: 1250 Series EXP/750 Wolf Marks
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Winning Ranked Matches as Crystal should also boost the reward to 1500 Series EXP and give 1k Wolf Marks each for reaching that ranked mode and maybe give 100 trophy crystals a win on top of that.

I'd be fine if de-ranking only applied to crystal. Not like silver through plat really differ all that much. I don't really see a change in playstyles till late diamond.

Imho de-rank protection shouldn't exist at any rank, but I do understand that it helps to fill ques at higher ranks. I'd much rather that de-rank protection end at gold if we must have it. As it stands, whichever rank de-rank protection kicks in at causes that rank to be full of players who have luck streaked in and do not actually belong there (much similar to last seasons Crystal rank, indefinite 0 credit score players with 2% win rates).

What we have now is the same issue at platinum 4. We have very few players who deserve to be at platinum, and as we get further and further into the season, more players who are actually gold/silver who have played enough games to luck streak in by accident and get locked in permanently by de-rank protection. These players luck streak up through platinum 1 and then go right back down to platinum 4 for the remainder of the season, but can never truly break out of Platinum because they are constantly being matched to diamond players who are by far and away above their true skill level of silver/gold.

These pseudo-platinum 4 (true silver/gold) players are now constantly matched with Crystal ranked players who have demoted to Diamond 1. There is such a vast difference in skill level between a silver/gold player and sub-crystal diamond 1 player that the Diamond player must adjust their playstyle to babysit the pseudo-platinum 4 (true silver/gold) players in almost every game for a win. This is not fun for a player who wishes to play competatively.

Furthermore, it is very rare at least in my experience to even see diamond level games. It is usually platinum 4 games with 1 or two diamonds on either side, or crystal games with 1 or 2 diamonds on either side. It would be nice to have some diamond games. Instead of Diamonds carrying plat 4s or crystals carrying diamonds.

And lastly, please limit crystal game matchmaking to Diamond 3 and above. There should be no platinum players in Crystal matchmaking for the reasons outlined above. For players at the early crystal skill level, it is frusttating to have to baby sit platinum 4 players into cryatal, only then to be matched into a 4v5 cryatal game where your team is stuck with the only platinum 4 (true silver/gold skill level) player who is trying their best but is nowhere near the skill level of anyone else in the match.

Demoting tiers would be fine if the matchmaking system wasn't absolute dogshit. :^)

I also think decay should be introduced above a certain rank, maybe like diamond or platinum AND have the rewards be rewarded for the tier you end in, not your peak. But all the issues come down to the absolutely horrid matchmaking.

Hmmm this is funny

It's honestly bad for someone to be locked into plat, if they "lucked out" or were carried there. That player then hurts the chances of diamond players on their team as well as the golds that also get them. None of them will be having much fun.

This is what occurred to Crystal players in seasons 1 and 2. Someone would "luck out" up to high dia/ crystal and get stuck in that area, while hurting crystal players ability to move up the board or onto the board as well as become an anchor to platinum players down below. The crystal players that "lucked" into it were referred to as Crystal 0s. It's a term a I never used personally, but the situation caused a lot of negativity. This is why the safety nets were removed in Crystal and Diamond. You put the Diamond safety net back up, and the Crystals will have to deal with more uneven matches again.