Ratcheting ranking system makes for an utterly miserable experience

Having platinum ranked people on the team who have a third in all stats compared to the rest of the team, except for deaths, makes for an unfun experience all around. A ranking system that doesn't even remotely reflect the actual skill level of people is useless. And using it for matchmaking runs counter to the whole purpose of a ranking system.

Just get lucky.

Don't have to be good to get started, but you do have to get started to get good.

Let me guess, neither of you 2 know what "ratcheting" means.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

Let me guess, neither of you 2 know what "ratcheting" means.

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Dude, all I know is I had an afk'er block my potential win to platinum the other night. Killing my win streak and had them join another party of mine later that night...wtf. If you went afk and didn't even leave the gate? That should be an automatic ban from playing for like 48 hours. Yes the game tends to put the players you recently beat back in your team if you queue too fast it seems. They also need to not put teamates you blacklist or mute on your side as well since you can still hear their spam chat when you get paired up with them.

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Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

Dude, all I know is ...

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So you don't know what "ratcheting" means. That's fine, really. But your posts here are utterly useless, you aren't contributing to the topic at all. All your points are valid, but they have nothing to do with this topic. If you don't understand the topic, well, self-discipline and self-regulations are indeed virtues that should be fostered, but must also be practiced.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

So you don't know what "ratcheting" means. That's fine, really. But your posts here are utterly useless, you aren't contributing to the topic at all. All your points are valid, but they have nothing to do with this topic. If you don't understand the topic, well, self-discipline and self-regulations are indeed virtues that should be fostered, but must also be practiced.

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Please do explain what ratcheting is. I'm agreeing that the system is flawed.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

So you don't know what "ratcheting" means. That's fine, really. But your posts here are utterly useless, you aren't contributing to the topic at all. All your points are valid, but they have nothing to do with this topic. If you don't understand the topic, well, self-discipline and self-regulations are indeed virtues that should be fostered, but must also be practiced.

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So is humility. You don't seem to practise what you preach - aka self-discipline. Why not simply explain the concept?

Good luck trying to tackle this. FF isn't the only game that's dealing with this regarding rank.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

So is humility. You don't seem to practise what you preach - aka self-discipline. Why not simply explain the concept?

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Humility doesn't mean kowtowing to the deliberately ignorant who come guns blazing into a thread they don't even understand and then expect others to explain terms that they could just look up on the internet, after they unloaded whatever rant they had pent up with no regards to the actual topic at hand. It's one thing to ask "what is meant with ratcheting ranked system", since the inner workings of the ranking system aren't easily apparent, it's another to ask what the term "ratcheting" even means in a basic sense.

Further, you have a strange compulsion to constantly pick pointless fights with me. I mean, YOU could have just explained what the term itself means, but instead we now have this incredibly stupid meta discussion that YOU broke lose because ... I don't know, is my Lala character triggering you? Do you have so little self control? Is your petty alias your whole personalty?

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

Humility doesn't mean kowtowing to the deliberately ignorant who come guns blazing into a thread they don't even understand and then expect others to explain terms that they could just look up on the internet, after they unloaded whatever rant they had pent up with no regards to the actual topic at hand. It's one thing to ask "what is meant with ratcheting ranked system", since the inner workings of the ranking system aren't easily apparent, it's another to ask what the term "ratcheting" even means in a basic sense.

Further, you have a strange compulsion to constantly pick pointless fights with me. I mean, YOU could have just explained what the term itself means, but instead we now have this incredibly stupid meta discussion that YOU broke lose because ... I don't know, is my Lala character triggering you? Do you have so little self control? Is your petty alias your whole personalty?

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Dude calm down lol. This is a public forum for discussing ideas. It is your responsibility to explain the meaning of a particular word. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

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Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

Dude calm down lol. This is a public forum for discussing ideas. It is your responsibility to explain the meaning of a particular word. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

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There is a theory, to which I subscribe, that some forum posters use obscure terminology to demonstrate that they are smarter than others. The way to check for this is to look for constructions of the form: "ZOMG, you don't know what elencantatious even means?? Why are you even speaking to me??? I am so far above you I just got a nosebleed!!!"

just explain what you mean in the context of the game

it's a public forum, not your friday reading club at the comic book store

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Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

Dude calm down lol.

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A statement only uttered and believed by the emotionally immature who cannot fathom another person making a serious and stern statement without being emotionally aggravated. That's a YOU problem. And I can only recommend you start working on it, because otherwise your adult life will feature much unnecessary drama, where your kneejerk response will always be to only ever blame the other side.

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Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

This is a public forum for discussing ideas.

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Correct, it's not your private lessons to get you up to speed on what a "ratchet" is. And yet, despite it having been literal hours, there is no indication that you even bothered to put that word into a search engine of your choice and just look at the basically self explanatory animation on the right side of the Wikipedia page. Further, this is a discussion forum, for discussing ideas, why are you in here doing nothing discussing the actual topic? This whole side story started because YOU didn't understand the idea to be discussed. You went into this thread, parsed some keywords like "miserable experience" and "unfun", and thought "hey, let's use this thread to make some condescending statement". And when I called you out because you obviously did not know what this topic was about, we got to this mess, where you just keep digging yourself in more and more because you can't just let things be that you simply made a mistake in your initial response. I told you, it's okay to not know something. But what is not okay is the zeal with which you have decided to defend your lack of knowledge and unwillingness to remedy it.

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Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

It is your responsibility to explain the meaning of a particular word.

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No, it's not my responsibility to explain to you what a "ratchet" is. As I said, asking for the "ratcheting ranking system" might have been one thing, but this ain't it, chief. Also, is this how you go through life? Constantly expecting others to pick up all your shortcomings and to constantly cater to your personal unwillingness to even do the most basic of information gathering? Again, we aren't talking about some high level philosophical concept here, we are talking about a ratchet.

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Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

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We are talking about a RATCHET!

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

There is a theory, to which I subscribe, that some forum posters use obscure terminology to demonstrate that they are smarter than others. The way to check for this is to look for constructions of the form: "ZOMG, you don't know what elencantatious even means?? Why are you even speaking to me??? I am so far above you I just got a nosebleed!!!"

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Yes, because a "ratchet" is such a difficult technical concept. Requires years of study to know what a ratchet is. It's no wonder the quality of your posts is so insanely low if you think that the word "ratcheting" is an attempt to obfuscate a discussion.
Further, you have me blocked, but you just can't keep away from any PvP topic, can you? Bloody performative attention seeker. Next time the forum complains again that the devs do not listen, I will dig up this thread as exhibit A.

Several posts later, OP still hasn't explained to anyone who asks a "ratchet" is, even though it's the subject of their post, then starts to talk about other people complaining about not being listened to??

The irony is strong with this one.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

Several posts later, OP still hasn't explained to anyone who asks a "ratchet" is, even though it's the subject of their post, then starts to talk about other people complaining about not being listened to??

The irony is strong with this one.

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I always thought it was a tool?

Edit: a ratchet, not the OP.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I always thought it was a tool?

Edit: a ratchet, not the OP.

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Yes, it is a tool. It's main feature is allowing a screw/bolt/etc. to be placed only in 1 direction. The OP is using the analogy to describe the de-rank protection in ranked PvP.

I understood de-rank protection was probably put in during season 1 so that everyone could play PvP for the first time and feel great that they made it to the highest rank so that they'd likely continue to que up. Then it was dialed back to Platinum 4 de-rank protection because it made for a terrible matchmaking experience but at the same time was necessary to keep Diamond and Crystal ranked ques from going into 30+ minute wait times.

Now that all players que ranked on the same data center, I honestly see no need whatsoever for de-rank protection to exist any longer.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I always thought it was a tool?

Edit: a ratchet, not the OP.

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Agreed, I've only ever seen it used in the context of a ratchet screwdriver - and used one, on some projects - not that I'm the best resource for home repair projects.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

Agreed, I've only ever seen it used in the context of a ratchet screwdriver - and used one, on some projects - not that I'm the best resource for home repair projects.

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Popular with anyone who has a screw loose, one might imagine.

Anyway, now that Sinstrel has kindly explained the situation, I fully endorse this campaign to eliminate ratchets. And if SE wants ranked queues to pop across a season, add rank decay for inactivity so that people have motivation to keep playing.

I'm french and english is like my 3rd language and in my head, a ratchet is also a tool. The OP seems to like to tell it's a simple thing, but I have no idea what he talks about and he goes here and then raging that it's not his responsability to make himself clear of what he wants to talk about. Maybe he think he's smarter than anyone else by using that word and not explaining it, but in the end this is a japanese game with an internationnal community, so, of course english is not at the center of the world for everyone.

So, I would like to asks the situation but since I don't know what he means, it's hard. My guess, since he talks about plat people with bad KDA/damage, is probably because he encountered people who tries out other job in ranked. Since you can't fall down from plat to gold, if you are learning a new job, ofc you'll be bad with it but it won't affect your rank while it will makes the other teammates suffer. But that is also true in many games. This happens.

Anyway in the end, it's probably another "get good" or "get lucky" situation. It's frustrating but it's not all games that are like that.

The irony is that people complaining about their allies the most - and don't get me wrong, we all get paired with hopeless hands regularly, yesterday I had a 0 damage dealt PLD in my team, guess how it went - are often the players hard stuck in plat 4 trying to deflect their own shortcomings onto their team out of habit because they don't know any better, and can't control their salt levels. Removing the ratchet and I bet anything they all would drop back to silver/gold, if not lower.

There is definitely a factor at play with this system though, meaning that it prevents the rating to decant down significantly over time unless people get in high diamond or crystal.

I said this years ago that ranking should be job based. Like if you got to platinum on WHM then if you suddenly switch to say SGE then you will have to start from bronze 3 again. This way, people who are trying to climb won’t have to deal with your newness to a job just because you see other players playing it well and now you wanna try it. Stop disabling your team like that. Try jobs in causal not in ranked.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

I said this years ago that ranking should be job based. Like if you got to platinum on WHM then if you suddenly switch to say SGE then you will have to start from bronze 3 again. This way, people who are trying to climb won’t have to deal with your newness to a job just because you see other players playing it well and now you wanna try it. Stop disabling your team like that. Try jobs in causal not in ranked.

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This honestly seems like the most intuitive and effective solution. I’m surprised this is not how the game handles it because it would be such an easy way to solve certain problems.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

This honestly seems like the most intuitive and effective solution. I’m surprised this is not how the game handles it because it would be such an easy way to solve certain problems.

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Well it's the same thing in almost every game. I agree that it would be a solution, but, just an example out of many, if you play League of Legends for example, you can play any champion and you will stay on the same rank. It's also impossible to fall down in rank, like here.

And why is it like that? Because it allow players to adapt. Let's say that the queue is full of WAR that queue. Well, you might end up with an higher waiting time between 2 matchs because too many people play your job. Then, you can swap to something else and play faster. Sometime when I play and that I keep getting the same bad person on a job, and that I know that I can do better, I will take the job so that way I'm sure I won't be queued with that person again. But when you try to reach Diamond or Crystal for the weapon reward, you don't want to rank up on multiple jobs.

I understand that I don't know how to play the 19 jobs in pvp, I'm good with maybe 2 and ok with another 2, that's all. But yeah, I did my practice in non ranked. Some player doesn't care, that's the issue.

Maybe SE should instead put a restriction, like you need 30 match in casual with a job to be able to play ranked with it.

Those are good points. Being able to switch jobs to adapt to long queues or to make sure another person playing a job (badly) is on the enemy team are very legitimate concerns. I guess then there's no easy solution after all.

Pretentious Op. Not going to clip that response because it's so huge. Explaining the meaning of words you choose to use in a particular context, ensures clarity and context for people providing clear definitions or interpretations of key terms. Go buy a journal if you don't want your thoughts to be made public.

I agree, as another person whose native language is not English I initially read "ratcheting" competely differently. I primarily know ratchet as a demeaning slang term, so "ratcheting" read like an adjective à la "this godforsaken match making". It didn't help either that OP's initial elaboration of the problem in their first post was very sparse.

They didn't directly say "not being able to demote is a problem" which might have made the metaphor with the tool, that is a ratchet, much more intuitive. They just said having bad people in plat, whose statistics are significantly lower than those of their team mates, ruins the experience. And that a ranking system that doesn't even remotely reflect the actual skill is useless.

But a system that better reflects people's skills can be approached from various angles so "bad people in plat, system bad" doesn't exclusively and inherently translate into "my particular problem is the fact that people can't demote before diamond, anti-demotion protections should go completely, no exceptions".

Removing the anti-demotion system from plat and below is one way. But you could also think in other directons, so reading the initial post you can at best guess what OP actually had in mind in terms of solutions.
Alternative readings could entail:

• Giving points/stars for individual performances such as good KDA numbers instead of just wins.
• Having more finetuned match-making that's not just based on ranks but in addition puts together teams (and enemy teams) with similar statistics (e.g., by calculating an ongoing average across your past X matches).
• Lowering the threshold for non-demotable ranks (as in making gold 4 the last rank from which you can't be demoted).

(I'm not saying those are good/bad ideas. Just that they are possible interpretations of the statement "system bad, doesn't reflect skill, pls fix".)

So throwing your vaguely phrased frustration out there and then complaining that an (international) forum doesn't immediately get your rather specific metaphor comes off as a little insincere. Neither does it lead to helpful and productive discussions.

(Thanks to the other people in this thread who explained the meaning of ratchet in this context.)

Well thanks to the people that added their comments, this thread got a lot more interesting for me with the various suggestions that were being discussed

If we really want to get technical and look at how a lot of other games deal with ranking, they do have an ELO which correlates to your rank and league, but they also do have a hidden ELO which is actually the one being taken into consideration by the matchmaking. That hidden ELO is where the game is trying to evaluate your position and will swing a lot more than your league, since the league is supposed to be more stable. For instance, when you start an account, the game will attribute you an average hidden ELO, then match you with people of similar hidden ELO, and depending on your success or failure, will adjust the hidden ELO accordingly, and usually very dramatically until it can reduce the range to where your skill level is the most probably closest to. Once you have played enough games, you get delivered into the league that corresponds roughly to that. The hidden ELO however stays and if you get through a win streak, it will adjust immediately and increase the level of the adversaries you face, which can then be of the higher leagues compared to yours if you win enough. And if you keep winning, the rewards to your real ELO will be bigger and bigger to make you actually climb. On the other hand, loss streaks will dramatically lower your hidden ELO and suddenly match you with lower leagues past a point. Almost every multiplayer game works like this, where XIV doesn't.

Now that SE merged the pvp on a few datacenter, it would be interesting to have some stats. How many players are playing CC ranked in average at every hours of the day, how long is the average queue, and, how many player in each league.

Maybe having those stats for every weeks. It already feels that the queue time is increasing. For the first 2 weeks, it was always an insta queue. Now, it's always something between 15 sec and 5-6 minutes. But it's probably because the player pool is less big in gold/plat/diamond. It can also be that less player are playing now, because they didn't like the actual pvp or simply got the CC rewards they wanted and stop playing.

It's an important stat to know, especially if you want a more selective matchmaking without ending up with dead queue for some people.

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Originally Posted by AlliciaCapulet

Now that SE merged the pvp on a few datacenter, it would be interesting to have some stats. How many players are playing CC ranked in average at every hours of the day, how long is the average queue, and, how many player in each league.

Maybe having those stats for every weeks. It already feels that the queue time is increasing. For the first 2 weeks, it was always an insta queue. Now, it's always something between 15 sec and 5-6 minutes. But it's probably because the player pool is less big in gold/plat/diamond. It can also be that less player are playing now, because they didn't like the actual pvp or simply got the CC rewards they wanted and stop playing.

It's an important stat to know, especially if you want a more selective matchmaking without ending up with dead queue for some people.

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Player feedback would be so much better in many areas if we had access to data and better communication from the devs.

SE must needs (lol) make ranking apply on a per-job basis just as deep dungeon and Ishgard restoration scores were kept.

For the purpose of Top 300 rewards, only your highest ranked job will be considered (you cant recieve multiple T300 rewards for achieving the appropriate rank on multiple jobs).

This will also allow the players to see who is the best at "x" job and encourage more ques as people also compete to be the highest rank on thier favorite jobs. They could even introduce new titles and achievements based around specific job rankings. (Deadliest Lance = rank 1 DRG, Tyrannical Lance = T30 DRG, Stardiver = T100 DRG, for some examples)

Work harder, one player can make a difference, a big one at that as well any job.

Also it is the same for everyone else.