Crystalline Conflict tweak for Casual/restoring casual play

If one has played enough CC, they will have noticed that people who are in the deep end of playing ranked CC (which to keep things civil I will just say that I have no interest in Ranked until PvP is overhauled) sometimes decide to go and punch down on people that just want to play casual, effectively raiding the casual queues and ruining it for those who just want to do a 5v5, maybe win, maybe lose, have some fun, earn some tomes.

A fair solution to help combat powergaming in casual CC would be that, when your team has the crystal in the enemy's checkpoint or beyond, your teams back-third of the whole field becomes some kind of poison zone for enemies, inflicting significant damage (5k damage per second regardless of shields) to any enemies that enter and remain in it. That may sound odd, but the point is that there shouldn't be any in it- the issue is that only overinvested powergamers from ranked, who do not belong in casual, would chase or hunt all the way into your teams backfield at this time, to get a kill while their team is fighting on the crystal on the opposite side. The poison zone at your base's end would disable if/when the crystal gets pushed back through the enemy checkpoint towards the middle and your teams base direction). The ranked-players-raiding-casual element that makes the experience unfun wasn't something you saw on day 1, but it's quite common now. Please recalibrate casual CC for casuals with this fix. No genuine casual players will be negatively impacted by this.

Where the 'poison' zones would reach when you have pushed the crystal into the enemy checkpoint or beyond:
Palaistra- From your base to the bottom of the stairs that touch the middle area. (and horizontally across the map either side, partially covering the speed zone yes).
Volcanic Heart- From your base to the top of the stairs that touch the middle area (and horizontally across the map either side, again covering some of the speed zone).
Cloud Nine- From your base to the bottom of both sets of steps that touch the middle area.
The Clockwork Castletown- Pretty much from your base up to the portal door ahead, and from here horizontally across 4 of the 5 flipboard zones and covering the checkpoint side.

If Ranked had something worthwhile to aim for, the queues would pop and there would be less high ranks in your Casual matches.
Yet they decided to put same match rewards for Casual so it's vastly faster and easier to farm once you have locked down your rank.

Realistically you can't expect ranked to always pop no matter what, and crystal players also like playing other jobs than their mains. I'm not gonna try out other jobs in ranked, that would be griefing. At best a handful in the top 30 may be able to pull this off for obvious reasons, but well...

I do understand the frustration though, and I actually don't know what the matchmaking system takes into account when splitting players between teams besides a rough balance between melees and ranged jobs. Does it try to spread ranked players quietly so it's more balanced or not? No idea. What if there is only one ranked player in the full roster? What if said ranked player plays an off job or a job they're discovering, and another is playing their main jobs?

I'm not sure telling ranked players that they don't belong in casual is very productive though. Your idea is changing/butchering the mode so much that it would effectively puts me off the mode altogether, not gonna lie.

I don't understand why you would want the back of your field to be poison when you're in the lead. Confirming kills is an important part of the mode and turning tides in battle. If anything, the majority of abuse comes in the form of being pinned in your base when you're on the defensive side.

I do agree they need to have separate prize pools though.

There really should be some sort of matching based on your lifetime comp ranking. It's not really fun to go in and smash a bunch of people who are new or haven't played the mode that much.

Basically I think that in order to foster a genuine competitive scene and support what appears to be an attempt to become an esport, there needs to be gameplay distinctions between casual and ranked. In counter strike for example (when it was good), you can pass through your teammates in casual mode, but in competitive (ranked) your character is solid and this makes things harder as you can fall to an enemy because your teammate got in the way, and also the other way around (not that this will work for CC at all, again just an example). The damage and HP situation is identical between modes in CS apart from armor being automatically applied/bought in casual and can only carry 3 utilities instead of 4. Crystalline Conflict will benefit from gaining ruleset/gamplay distinctions between Casual and Ranked, with ranked players then being able to take pride in playing a harder ruleset mode. Basically under this change to casual, you would now only get the 'privilege' to use discretion to go hunting to the enemy's backline in specific moments when your team is actually up against the wall fighting on the crystal at your end. Backline hunting indeed can seal a win, but this advanced thing should become something you only have to contend with when you step up to the 'advanced' mode of Ranked. After this change would be implemented, I would no longer feel the need to refer to it as 'powergaming' because it would only take place in the ranked ruleset mode where it belongs.

On top of this rule tweak to Casual, perhaps a rule tweak could also be done to Ranked itself whereby you can no longer see enemy Limit break information etc, to improve the harder nature and add to the 'prestige'- but this may also create a greater need to add more communication options for Ranked. Implementing these rules distinctions and maybe a couple of others should attract people to Ranked and shorten queues. There would also need to be decent and exclusive rewards for ranked of course. Probably some kind of exclusive currency that doesn't have an 'end life' due to buying everything. But somehow also something that doesn't attract widespread use of cheats- so not limited time rewards. It may even be feasible to make it so you can win an extra day to your sub, once per week or two-weeks, based on some performance/results metric- because that's not entirely useful to cheater/burner accounts. Maybe a CC ranked variant of a wondrous tails book would be good, where the top or middle prize is a free extra day, if you get enough wins crossed off or something (and a few objectives like getting wins with a number of different jobs).

Alright. Question: how do I practice for ranked on a gamemode with different rules? How do I learn a job on a mode that's basically played differently? Do I just have to bite the bullet and learn it in ranked?

Jokes aside anyway, while having the enemy team running rampant in your spawn and everywhere is one of the first frustrations that I also experienced when starting in CC, you also learn that when this happens, it essentially means that the game is lost due to an utterly irreconcilable discrepancy in skill and pressure between both teams. It's a strong indicator of the game having reached that point, and no matter what you do to alleviate this to happen, you'll still have the enemy team crushing yours at the crystal instead, so.. Not totally sure what it would achieve in fine, for a very convoluted and hard to implement solution that would also raise so many questions...

I do think that considering ideas to make spawns safer is not necessarily bad though, but when thinking about it, the very spawn tower is safe. What would it change to have a larger safe area or not? You'd still be camped just outside.

The very idea to hide LBs is not a good thing either, because that's what it makes the games tactical in ranked (high level). It's what generates so much counter play and skill play that removing it and making everybody blind would not only make them even more powerful, but also hard to counter, or just relying on pure luck. No thanks.

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

I don't understand why you would want the back of your field to be poison when you're in the lead. Confirming kills is an important part of the mode and turning tides in battle. If anything, the majority of abuse comes in the form of being pinned in your base when you're on the defensive side.

I do agree they need to have separate prize pools though.

There really should be some sort of matching based on your lifetime comp ranking. It's not really fun to go in and smash a bunch of people who are new or haven't played the mode that much.

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What do you mean by separate prize pools? A general pool that can be obtained by both modes and one specific to rank? Or one exclusive to casual and one exclusive to ranked?

I would think exclusives to both so neither suffers from a decline in engagement as we see ranked experiencing on most data centers at the moment.

You do realize that this would mean even more ranked players in casual all the time if just to farm the casual rewards then?

If there were some sort of sorting that wouldn't be an issue though. Why are you so grumpy these day?

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

I would think exclusives to both so neither suffers from a decline in engagement as we see ranked experiencing on most data centers at the moment.

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I don't know why casual needs exclusive rewards, it already is incredibly accessable and the most efficient place to farm out achivements/xp/tomes without the fear of getting demoted.

Ngl reading the idea of casual having exclusive rewards along with the shared reward pool (Wolfmarks, Trophy Crystals, Wolf Collars, Battlepass) while having none of the challenge and bite of Ranked is perhaps the third dumbest thing I have heard this week.

Casual participation is not suffering. Casual playerpool does have players like me (Diamond+, Top100 candidates) in there ripping people a new one. You will not fix that by making arbitrary walls to bar us from entering your spawn nor will you fix that with a magical fix-it-all matchmaker.

You fix it by making us stick in ranked because we have things to play for. Frankly, the reward from Bronze to Platinum is insulting and does not encourage participation of low-ranks in the slightest where Diamond + Crystal have "just" gotten their first actual Ranked rewards that arent paltry, carbon-copy portrait elements with each season. It's a start, but it doesn't fix low-rank participation nor are Augmented Hellhound weapons particularly eye-catching.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Ngl reading the idea of casual having exclusive rewards along with the shared reward pool (Wolfmarks, Trophy Crystals, Wolf Collars, Battlepass) while having none of the challenge and bite of Ranked is perhaps the third dumbest thing I have heard this week.

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Well, that's pretty rude mister paragraph champion. I don't remember setting a bar for the obtaining of said rewards, and the point isn't to give them exclusives based on current participation.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Casual participation is not suffering. Casual playerpool does have players like me (Diamond+, Top100 candidates) in there ripping people a new one. You will not fix that by making arbitrary walls to bar us from entering your spawn nor will you fix that with a magical fix-it-all matchmaker.

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Separating rewards is a thought toward not trading one dead queue for the other. I love how you skipped over the commentary on the need for better (or any) match making though.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

You fix it by making us stick in ranked because we have things to play for. Frankly, the reward from Bronze to Platinum is insulting and does not encourage participation of low-ranks in the slightest where Diamond + Crystal have "just" gotten their first actual Ranked rewards that arent paltry, carbon-copy portrait elements with each season. It's a start, but it doesn't fix low-rank participation nor are Augmented Hellhound weapons particularly eye-catching.

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There's like three people on the entire forum arguing against more rewards for ranked and they are only doing it because they are thinking about old top 100 rewards rather than an outlet for currency based on placement etc. Low level participation isn't the problem in ranked either or did you just stop playing? I wouldn't say high plat and all of diamond is low rank. Unranked through entry Plat still pops just fine. There's just the big dead spot between plat 1-2 and crystal. As it stands now unless you spam during the first week or two and have the skill you just won't hit crystal because there's no games to get from plat to crystal in.

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

Well, that's pretty rude mister paragraph champion. I don't remember setting a bar for the obtaining of said rewards, and the point isn't to give them exclusives based on current participation.

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Ah, greetings Elfidan, overreacting to my opinion on the matter as always. I specifically meant that the idea is dumb, not that you are so there was no rudeness intended. If you still think it is, be my guest and strap in a helmet for protection. But I give you that, "paragraph champion" is quite an original insult, I actually kinda like it. :D

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

[1] Separating rewards is a thought toward not trading one dead queue for the other.
[2] I love how you skipped over the commentary on the need for better (or any) match making though.

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1.) Having exclusive (desirable) rewards in Ranked will not lead to the death of queues in Casual Mode. The reason why Casual PvP (The Feast) had dead queues was due to the high bar of entry with the forced 1-1-1-1 team composition and high skill floor for healers. You also couldn't see which jobs were missing when queueing. While I believe that rewards for the general PvP playerbase could be upped (Trophy Crystal, Wolfmarks, Wolfcollars, Battlepass), I do not think "exclusive rewards in CC Casual Mode" is the way to go - not because I don't think they deserve it, but because I know that it will drive high ranks to further bite on casuals for the same rewards, making it a miserable experience for those who play casual mode exclusively. Casual Mode's key selling point is accessibility.

2.) I "skipped" it because A.) I don't see the benefit of arbtitrary pooling / segregation of the casual pool in an attempt to filter out skill differences (leading to inflated queue times OR same players each match) and B.) because I frankly do not have a lot of thoughts to share on the matter of matchmaking beyond this. I didn't intend to cherrypick, I simply don't have a lot to say about it.

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

There's like three people on the entire forum arguing against more rewards for ranked and they are only doing it because they are thinking about old top 100 rewards rather than an outlet for currency based on placement etc. Low level participation isn't the problem in ranked either or did you just stop playing? I wouldn't say high plat and all of diamond is low rank. Unranked through entry Plat still pops just fine. There's just the big dead spot between plat 1-2 and crystal. As it stands now unless you spam during the first week or two and have the skill you just won't hit crystal because there's no games to get from plat to crystal in.

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Firstly, regional differences apply. While one region may have zero issues getting a particular tier to pop another may have issues. The reason I am saying this is because I am actively supporting aspiring pvpers in ranked and have heard issues getting low ranks to pop on Light DC for example. On the other hand our Plat-to-Crystal population is fairly active.

Regardless whether or not a particular datacenter has issues within a skill tier or not, at least one thing is true - the rewards for Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum are quite frankly not worth bothering for, which compared to the old days of Wolf collars was not the case. Even if you scored 2x Bronze and 1x Silver you still earned yourself a Hellhound weapon, as opposed to now you get... 1000-4000 Trophy crystals. And portrait elements that you might already own, with a different number.


Sincerely, your Paragraph Champion
Reinhardt Azureheim

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Ah, greetings Elfidan, overreacting to my opinion on the matter as always. I specifically meant that the idea is dumb, not that you are so there was no rudeness intended. If you still think it is, be my guest and strap in a helmet for protection. But I give you that, "paragraph champion" is quite an original insult, I actually kinda like it. :D

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It's not so much an insult as a title for those who fail to relate their opinions in a concise manner. If I had to guess I would say you're probably an academic of some sort. Perhaps a teacher or a lifetime language student.
'Don't take my statement of your idea being dumb as an insult.' That's very interesting.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

1.) Having exclusive (desirable) rewards in Ranked will not lead to the death of queues in Casual Mode. The reason why Casual PvP (The Feast) had dead queues was due to the high bar of entry with the forced 1-1-1-1 team composition and high skill floor for healers. You also couldn't see which jobs were missing when queueing. While I believe that rewards for the general PvP playerbase could be upped (Trophy Crystal, Wolfmarks, Wolfcollars, Battlepass), I do not think "exclusive rewards in CC Casual Mode" is the way to go - not because I don't think they deserve it, but because I know that it will drive high ranks to further bite on casuals for the same rewards, making it a miserable experience for those who play casual mode exclusively. Casual Mode's key selling point is accessibility.

2.) I "skipped" it because A.) I don't see the benefit of arbtitrary pooling / segregation of the casual pool in an attempt to filter out skill differences (leading to inflated queue times OR same players each match) and B.) because I frankly do not have a lot of thoughts to share on the matter of matchmaking beyond this. I didn't intend to cherrypick, I simply don't have a lot to say about it.

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1.) If you add a good enough reason to keep people playing and striving all season where will the time for casual be in their schedule? The Feast and the Fold before it died for a myriad of reasons. There weren't any rewards for lower tier players outside hellhound weapons which nobody cared about since the regularly added pve weapons generally just looked better. This is an issue they have brought forward into CC unfortunately. The initial kits weren't very inviting when players were used to standing and hitting or moving in set pattern while preforming a rotation. For the average player this was too much of an ask with the chaotic movement of actual players in combat. People complain about cheaters now but there were full on automated healers running around in matches back in the day. The forced 1 tank 1 healer 1 dps 1 ranged was a debatable choice. On one hand it did cause an increase in queue time but on the other at least you knew that when you lost there was a potential for a win from the start. I don't really think it would. Their already hanging out there 100% after the initial season start. Don't try anything different though because you might get a different result. I still think people miss the point of casual modes in games like this. It's intended for practice. People just play them more because there's no pressure on a loss(although people still get toxic here on ffxiv. Thanks community!).

2.) I see a lot of benefit to making sure 3+ crystal players don't end up on the same team v.s. 5 casual only players. That's like saying let's not have weight classes for boxing. A foolish point to skip if you were going to pass on anything I said.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Firstly, regional differences apply. While one region may have zero issues getting a particular tier to pop another may have issues. The reason I am saying this is because I am actively supporting aspiring pvpers in ranked and have heard issues getting low ranks to pop on Light DC for example. On the other hand our Plat-to-Crystal population is fairly active.

Regardless whether or not a particular datacenter has issues within a skill tier or not, at least one thing is true - the rewards for Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum are quite frankly not worth bothering for, which compared to the old days of Wolf collars was not the case. Even if you scored 2x Bronze and 1x Silver you still earned yourself a Hellhound weapon, as opposed to now you get... 1000-4000 Trophy crystals. And portrait elements that you might already own, with a different number.


Sincerely, your Paragraph Champion
Reinhardt Azureheim

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You won't find a one size fits all solution. If you just add things to Ranked and call it a day we will be right back here responding to angry threads about how anyone past OP's rank is a cheater. All I'm saying is keep it equitable to continue playing that mode while making it more appealing to play ranked more often.

There are skill based match making, But maybe not as strict as call of duty. If some Top 100 destroy people in casual match, They will eventually get several games of Jimmy no thumb teammates to balance it out. I have seen a ninja that only uses the basic combo won a game because matchmaking gave him teammates that carried hard

I wouldn't believe that for a second Eastwall. I've seen the same teams matched 3-5 games in a row where it's a complete stomp. I wouldn't be surprised if it literally just took the first 10 divided into 5 unique jobs and fired a match. It would be in perfect keeping with everything else in FFXIV which is to say random. This is of course to say nothing of the people sabotaging the matches like petulant children because they aren't allowed to queue as a party and don't respect the request of the director to refrain from this behavior. But both of our experiences are anecdotal and not a proper sample that has been impartially reviewed.

I had three separate people today that basically just walked around the match or sat in the respawn. We were at 70% in the lead one game and our BRD died because he was trying to solo a BLM and he just checked out completely. We lost by the way.

I did look for it but failed to find a post rework interview where Yoshi was asked about match making and various things for casual replied something to the gist of 'Long queue time bad, so no'. Since I couldn't find it though we'll discount that though.

I'm starting to think consistency will always be a problem because frequent adjustments to pvp content in this game doesn't seem to matter to the development team. Also, there are a lot of people who make wild claims that any change is bad change and still others that want things to change in ways they used to be that were quite terrible. Something's got to give, and the beauty of life is it's always changing. If something doesn't work, then you've learned from that and can try again.

I don't understand this. You want good players to just not be in your game? PvP is competitive by its very nature, ranked or not.

OP,

I do have to remember that the majority of folks do not care about "getting good" and simply just want to play a few games for job xp and battle pass progress.

However, if you are interested in improving... Take advantage of the games you get that are blowouts by more experienced players than you. These are chances to play with teammates much higher ranked than you are that you would otherwise not be able to be paired with to learn from. Its what I have recommended to my FC mates, friends and fam and they've all made significant improvements over relatively short periods of time.

It will definitely suck being on the recieving end, but there will be times where you are on the winning side as well, where your team is steamrolling the other team. Take these opportunities to focus less on your gameplay and really observe how your teammates are playing. Assuming your team isnt actually a pre-made que-sync squad, you might be able to pick up a few new tricks from them or combine what you observe with your own flair and come up with something new.

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Originally Posted by Atreus

I don't understand this. You want good players to just not be in your game? PvP is competitive by its very nature, ranked or not.

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To be fair, if I was doing football one sunday out of two with my little cousin for one hour or two, and I was told that a pro player was going to participate as well from now on, I'm not sure I'd be especially thrilled about it.

But that's a problem on every multiplayer game that has a ranked ladder, and unranked quick matches. If one wants to make sure they play with similarly rated players, they need to play ranked. The problem being that ranked is sweaty, and has stakes (your rank) which a lot of players playing unranked don't want to deal with.

I'd like everybody in the game to actually have a hidden elo rating so that the matchmaker could take it into account even in casual, but let's be honest, even in casual that pops all day long (which is already a miracle, all praise yoshiprimal our lord and savior), you still end up with the same pool of players one game out of two, or even every game depending on the time of the day. At best you can hope that the system tries to balance out the ratings, but it won't magically make the good players being split from the more casual ones.

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

I wouldn't believe that for a second Eastwall. I've seen the same teams matched 3-5 games in a row where it's a complete stomp. I wouldn't be surprised if it literally just took the first 10 divided into 5 unique jobs and fired a match. It would be in perfect keeping with everything else in FFXIV which is to say random. This is of course to say nothing of the people sabotaging the matches like petulant children because they aren't allowed to queue as a party and don't respect the request of the director to refrain from this behavior. But both of our experiences are anecdotal and not a proper sample that has been impartially reviewed.

I had three separate people today that basically just walked around the match or sat in the respawn. We were at 70% in the lead one game and our BRD died because he was trying to solo a BLM and he just checked out completely. We lost by the way.

I did look for it but failed to find a post rework interview where Yoshi was asked about match making and various things for casual replied something to the gist of 'Long queue time bad, so no'. Since I couldn't find it though we'll discount that though.

I'm starting to think consistency will always be a problem because frequent adjustments to pvp content in this game doesn't seem to matter to the development team. Also, there are a lot of people who make wild claims that any change is bad change and still others that want things to change in ways they used to be that were quite terrible. Something's got to give, and the beauty of life is it's always changing. If something doesn't work, then you've learned from that and can try again.

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That's fine if you believe it is random. I noticed that after l Do well, l would get 2 to 4 teammates that do bottom damage out of all 10 people. After l get destroyed for like usually 4 games, l would get easy opponents or skilled teammates again. I lean towards sbmm exists. It wouldn't make sense to not to exists. From a business perspective, you got to make sure bad players can win so they keep their interest

While I haven't seen evidence of the first part myself, but I pretty much agree with your sentiments regarding the need for it.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'd like everybody in the game to actually have a hidden elo rating so that the matchmaker could take it into account even in casual

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My experience is that it already exists. Dunno if it's based on someone's actual tier in ranked or number of wins, but I am regularly pit against other crystal players when they're in queue, and not because of role balancing.

I think I have a better idea
They should add a mode where you can't be matched with players at platinum rank or above.
That way you can enjoy the game with players of a similar skill level, and not have to worry about the sweaty try hards that would otherwise be playing ranked, if they could actually get a game.
Hmm

Honestly, I enjoy ranked just for the joy of climbing ranks. Do I wish it had more rewards that were cool? Sure do.

But is there joy in just playing ranked and seeing how far you can get and improving as a player? Sure is.

The reward can also be about how good you can get. And just a hint, being good isn't just about niche knowledge on your class, it's about knowing overall decision making that can be applied to many games.

In Feast you got easily a 70-90% winrate as healer in casual mode (if it even popped). Now I am happy if I can stay at 50-60% in CC.
You trying to tell me that ranked people ruin the game for casuals, when in reality, casuals ruin my winrate in casual mode way more. xD

I agree it is dumb if multiple crystal/diamond players end up in the same team in casual queue, an algorithm could prevent it, but it shouldn't prevent matches from happening, if no better matchup can be made.

One could argue if the High rank Players "invade Casual" than the Casual should invade low rank... at least they are mostly save there than...
...
(Boi as if escaping Bronze hell isnt luckbased enough already.... ranking system just doesnt really work in low rank CC...)

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Originally Posted by Zofian

If one has played enough CC, they will have noticed that people who are in the deep end of playing ranked CC (which to keep things civil I will just say that I have no interest in Ranked until PvP is overhauled) sometimes decide to go and punch down on people that just want to play casual, effectively raiding the casual queues and ruining it for those who just want to do a 5v5, maybe win, maybe lose, have some fun, earn some tomes.

A fair solution to help combat powergaming in casual CC would be that, when your team has the crystal in the enemy's checkpoint or beyond, your teams back-third of the whole field becomes some kind of poison zone for enemies, inflicting significant damage (5k damage per second regardless of shields) to any enemies that enter and remain in it. That may sound odd, but the point is that there shouldn't be any in it- the issue is that only overinvested powergamers from ranked, who do not belong in casual, would chase or hunt all the way into your teams backfield at this time, to get a kill while their team is fighting on the crystal on the opposite side. The poison zone at your base's end would disable if/when the crystal gets pushed back through the enemy checkpoint towards the middle and your teams base direction). The ranked-players-raiding-casual element that makes the experience unfun wasn't something you saw on day 1, but it's quite common now. Please recalibrate casual CC for casuals with this fix. No genuine casual players will be negatively impacted by this.

Where the 'poison' zones would reach when you have pushed the crystal into the enemy checkpoint or beyond:
Palaistra- From your base to the bottom of the stairs that touch the middle area. (and horizontally across the map either side, partially covering the speed zone yes).
Volcanic Heart- From your base to the top of the stairs that touch the middle area (and horizontally across the map either side, again covering some of the speed zone).
Cloud Nine- From your base to the bottom of both sets of steps that touch the middle area.
The Clockwork Castletown- Pretty much from your base up to the portal door ahead, and from here horizontally across 4 of the 5 flipboard zones and covering the checkpoint side.

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OR OR, get this... maybe they should fix casual matchmaking so that people in crystal won't get any teammates below diamond or brand new players. Use a hidden MMR or something. It's not fun to kill less skilled players nor is it fun to get stomped because 1 guy doesn't know how to guard, sprint, recuperate, etc. A good game is when everyone is around the same skill level, win OR lose.

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Originally Posted by Nubrication

OR OR, get this... maybe they should fix casual matchmaking so that people in crystal won't get any teammates below diamond or brand new players. Use a hidden MMR or something. It's not fun to kill less skilled players nor is it fun to get stomped because 1 guy doesn't know how to guard, sprint, recuperate, etc. A good game is when everyone is around the same skill level, win OR lose.

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I'm sorry but you are living in lala-land if you think excluding high level players basically entirely from the casual pool is a good idea.

For starters either team can get access to high-performing players, so at worst it is is a diceroll. What should definitely happen is an even split in high performing players aka ELO balancing.

Second, why should I and many others get punished with having inhumane queue times in Casual mode just because we perform better in Ranked than many others? We want to have relaxing games too or be able to try other jobs than our mains.

If we want Crystal matchmaking, we will actually go and play ranked, your idea of seperation in casual is utter nonsense.

If you want us to stick more to ranked, incentivize us to be in Ranked, not punish our access to Casual.

I'm pretty sure there's hidden SBMM in casual anyway, so the entire premise of the thread is questionable.

Any high ranked player queuing for casual will, without fail, be paired with the worst players in the queue. I'm sure some of you have noticed this when you bump into crystal+ friends queuing and rarely get placed in the same team.

CC is a mode that's difficult to carry but easy to throw in. The literal best player in the world would struggle to win a 4v5 match against average players. It's such a miserable experience that far from invading casual games, i consider it more like an act of charity for high ranked players to queue for casual at all.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

I'm sorry but you are living in lala-land if you think excluding high level players basically entirely from the casual pool is a good idea.

For starters either team can get access to high-performing players, so at worst it is is a diceroll. What should definitely happen is an even split in high performing players aka ELO balancing.

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That's where you're wrong, there is definitely some kind of matchmaking system going on but however it's done, it's not working. If you play a ton of casual games, you'll notice that if you have a crystal teammate (2 crystals including you), there's bound to be two crystal players on the other team. And there will always be another crystal player on the opposing team that'll never be paired with you, 6+ games in a row.

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Second, why should I and many others get punished with having inhumane queue times in Casual mode just because we perform better in Ranked than many others? We want to have relaxing games too or be able to try other jobs than our mains.

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That's EXACTLY my point, why should I have to go into casual and have to carry 4 players about 70% of my games just to win? I'm talking about players that play like silver or below. How is that even fun? And you seem to misinterpret what I mean by good games, I'm not talking about Crystal/T100 games where tanks can die faster than they can guard, all I'm asking is for people to know what guard, recuperate, sprint, and elixir are. Literally the bare minimum. If anything, I'll take gold players and above. I want games where I don't need to care about winning but that are still challenging and winnable. AKA "CASUAL."

As of now, most casual games consists of either getting stomped by 5 medicore players because team is worse or completely stomping the opposing team. I don’t care how good you think you are, it’s hard to carry 4 silver/bronze level players vs 5 gold/plat-level players. Point being, some casual games are more draining than ranked games. I'm 100% down for actual ELO balancing.

All they have to do is get rid of rank down and you get people to play it again. It's very simple. Then there's a reason for casual players to actually jump into ranked/have people want to try for CC.

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Originally Posted by Enjuden

All they have to do is get rid of rank down and you get people to play it again. It's very simple. Then there's a reason for casual players to actually jump into ranked/have people want to try for CC.

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Clearly the inability to facegrind into Diamond/Crystal and bloating skill tiers with people that should not be in them is why Casuals don't go into Ranked.

Clearly it isn't the fact that the rewards for Platinum and below are utter dogshit that look neither appealing to default portrait elements nor are sufficient (you earn 4000 Crystals in 4 series levels for god's sake).

Let's make something very clear - if people are able to grind into Crystal with no deranking they will inevitably get bullied the f- out of actually high-performing players they share a queue pool with and have no choice but to continue playing with them when they clearly aren't ready yet.

I demand that casual people be removed from my FL games because they are ruining it for me. And if they can't be removed I demand a personal 50% echo buff (that can be added to BH) so I can carry them.

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Originally Posted by Enjuden

All they have to do is get rid of rank down and you get people to play it again. It's very simple. Then there's a reason for casual players to actually jump into ranked/have people want to try for CC.

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Do you mean the end of season derank, or just being able to drop from diamond to plat through losses? Exactly how is this going to encourage casuals to go into ranked?
You're thinking too small. The people who only want the meagre offerings of the series malmstones aren't going to touch ranked regardless of what you do to casual. There are only two actual solutions, give tangible rewards for ranked players at every skill level, or delete casual. Obviously if you do one of them well enough you won't need to do the other.

Mahjong manages just fine without an unranked mode. Maybe we could learn something from it's success. Being able to queue for multiple duties simultaneously? Queue size reports? Numerical rating system right from your first match maybe?

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Clearly the inability to facegrind into Diamond/Crystal and bloating skill tiers with people that should not be in them is why Casuals don't go into Ranked.

Clearly it isn't the fact that the rewards for Platinum and below are utter dogshit that look neither appealing to default portrait elements nor are sufficient (you earn 4000 Crystals in 4 series levels for god's sake).

Let's make something very clear - if people are able to grind into Crystal with no deranking they will inevitably get bullied the f- out of actually high-performing players they share a queue pool with and have no choice but to continue playing with them when they clearly aren't ready yet.

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I know that i as casual shitter would at least try my luck in ranked again than, although i agree that facegrinding into crystal shouldnt be a possebility, however, i think till platinum it would alow a better motivation "curve", as you would have access to one of those nice red crystals if you put in the work, get (hopefully) some experiance on the way and have maybe enough sunken time falacy to push on.

unlike now where you come in as newby, you get your 3 victories and now are hardstuck in bronze, either because you unexperient, or your teammates are unexperianced or matchmaking perma aims for 50/50 winrate, you do 2-3 sessions of yoyo in ranked with no progress, cant even get feedback from teammates to find out possible problems, and say "F this mode, this is a waste of time, i am done" and never come back.

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Originally Posted by Zofian

If one has played enough CC, they will have noticed that people who are in the deep end of playing ranked CC (which to keep things civil I will just say that I have no interest in Ranked until PvP is overhauled) sometimes decide to go and punch down on people that just want to play casual, effectively raiding the casual queues and ruining it for those who just want to do a 5v5, maybe win, maybe lose, have some fun, earn some tomes.

A fair solution to help combat powergaming in casual CC would be that, when your team has the crystal in the enemy's checkpoint or beyond, your teams back-third of the whole field becomes some kind of poison zone for enemies, inflicting significant damage (5k damage per second regardless of shields) to any enemies that enter and remain in it. That may sound odd, but the point is that there shouldn't be any in it- the issue is that only overinvested powergamers from ranked, who do not belong in casual, would chase or hunt all the way into your teams backfield at this time, to get a kill while their team is fighting on the crystal on the opposite side. The poison zone at your base's end would disable if/when the crystal gets pushed back through the enemy checkpoint towards the middle and your teams base direction). The ranked-players-raiding-casual element that makes the experience unfun wasn't something you saw on day 1, but it's quite common now. Please recalibrate casual CC for casuals with this fix. No genuine casual players will be negatively impacted by this.

Where the 'poison' zones would reach when you have pushed the crystal into the enemy checkpoint or beyond:
Palaistra- From your base to the bottom of the stairs that touch the middle area. (and horizontally across the map either side, partially covering the speed zone yes).
Volcanic Heart- From your base to the top of the stairs that touch the middle area (and horizontally across the map either side, again covering some of the speed zone).
Cloud Nine- From your base to the bottom of both sets of steps that touch the middle area.
The Clockwork Castletown- Pretty much from your base up to the portal door ahead, and from here horizontally across 4 of the 5 flipboard zones and covering the checkpoint side.

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Except your perception is flawed.

Ranked is actually the more enjoyable experience because it weeds the trash bots and low-efforts from the queue so that you can actually have the potential for an enjoyable game.

If you don't think queuing into a game, and then suffering the abject deplorable low-efforts that go 0/10 with 100k or less in damage because they're not trying at all, is a terrible experience because you never get to actually play a meaningful game, then there's only two reasons you don't think that:

1) your time isn't valuable and you never really wanted to play pvp in the first place, otherwise you'd want a fair game that everyone was at least trying in.
2) you're a bot.

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Originally Posted by Taketori

Do you mean the end of season derank, or just being able to drop from diamond to plat through losses? Exactly how is this going to encourage casuals to go into ranked?
You're thinking too small. The people who only want the meagre offerings of the series malmstones aren't going to touch ranked regardless of what you do to casual. There are only two actual solutions, give tangible rewards for ranked players at every skill level, or delete casual. Obviously if you do one of them well enough you won't need to do the other.

Mahjong manages just fine without an unranked mode. Maybe we could learn something from it's success. Being able to queue for multiple duties simultaneously? Queue size reports? Numerical rating system right from your first match maybe?

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Being able to drop into a lower rank in the same season, and why would it be thinking small when a mass queue increase happened almost immediately on the season after CC implemented it? Frankly if the reward of the glamour was lower and you couldn't demote below that, then maybe people would at least play it (IE not being able to grind into Crystal). And so what if they get to a rank they're not ready for? Does it matter? Definitely didn't in Season 1. The people who only wanted the reward would simply drop and not play again regardless once they get the reward they want, and you'll never keep those people. But you get demotes down to Gold 0 iirc, and most of the people I knew quit the instant they learned that demotes during a season was happening, or quickly realized that wasn't worth any amount of stress. You keep demotes, you don't get casual players no matter what reward you get. You could have Yoshida visit your irl house and they still wouldn't bother.

Personally, I don't think the reward is worth bothering for even on Diamond and Crystal. The rewards are simply not good enough, and the new weapon glows are not even close to what would be good enough for an incentive. The rewards would have to be significantly better to even begin to try on ranking up, and it can't be locked to something you can demote below to, else the majority will not even try. There's enough video evidence/admission of guilt on cheating that is publicly available yet SE has done nothing to those accounts that on the outside, most see ranked as a joke. Why would I, as a casual player, bother with a mode that a company clearly doesn't care much about, outside of a reward for a specific weapon? Why would I care about a plate with a 2, or a 7, or whatever it is when I have an X and it's significantly more difficult to climb back to where the old plate was?


There's a lot to Mahjong than just smashing into another player, so two modes of Mahjong would just mean people would get slaughtered and you'd have even less of a queue than it does. It's non existent on Balmung, but I never tried to queue for it outside of there, if you even can. There's clients that have casual, but if you're going into that, then you're there for it, not just going into it because 'why not'. And very, very few people bother with casual in any of the clients I did play. Mostly because the rank gap is way too large for people to deal with.