The Feast

[Praesul]

It's pretty sad when I see even the best players on the leaderboard struggle to climb, and quite a few of them LOSING points some days, especially with how good their winrates are. Top 30 or so on Aether is a clown fiesta because matches are being decided solely on who gets more bronze/unranked players in their party, and it's showing. Everyone's progress this season is really slow, and a lot of top players aren't even queuing anymore, or only queuing at certain times just to avoid the insane RNG swings.

[Kaiyoko]

It's pretty sad when I see even the best players on the leaderboard struggle to climb, and quite a few of them LOSING points some days, especially with how good their winrates are. Top 30 or so on Aether is a clown fiesta because matches are being decided solely on who gets more bronze/unranked players in their party, and it's showing. Everyone's progress this season is really slow, and a lot of top players aren't even queuing anymore, or only queuing at certain times just to avoid the insane RNG swings.

Yeah this is definitely how I feel. I was in top 10 on Aether for a week and then I started getting non-stop bronze/unranked, lost a ton of points due to 2-3 dc's and 2-3min matches with bronze / unranked and just don't feel like dealing with it anymore.

Regardless, I understand your frustrations, but that's no reason to shoot queues in the foot. You might be happy to have a 30+ minute wait time in order to avoid the bronze and unranked tier, but SE has to consider the community as a whole. They can't base matchmaking solely on the whims and wants of the elitists, especially when the actual point of the game is to just play the game. If matchmaking is too restrictive, then you end up with stagnant queues. Stagnant queues create an exclusive and stagnant ranking system. We already saw how that worked in season 1, and it was awfully boring until the failure of Shatter brought people back to Feast. Even then, untested players were still a problem. It's just that the buck of dealing with them was passed down to silver ranked players instead of gold.

The thing is they have more people available for bronze / unranked to give people experience playing with players that are closer to their skill level that is more regularly available. I've been matched with all variations of roles, so I know the people are available in queue. They're matching the golds+ w/ those people just because of our spot in queue and what seems to be how their match making takes 1~2 golds per team 2~3 bronze / unranked. They would only be dramatically slowing the queues for Gold+ if it actually followed what they said in the patch notes.

[Praesul]

Yeah this is definitely how I feel. I was in top 10 on Aether for a week and then I started getting non-stop bronze/unranked, lost a ton of points due to 2-3 dc's and 2-3min matches with bronze / unranked and just don't feel like dealing with it anymore.

I fell out of gold THREE TIMES because soon after I get to gold, I get strings of games with super inexperienced players. It's extremely disheartening, but I managed to muscle through and get back every single time. At this point though I don't think I'll keep going, it's just way too volatile.

[Februs]

The thing is they have more people available for bronze / unranked to give people experience playing with players that are closer to their skill level that is more regularly available.

I get you. I'm just a little more concerned about the later end of the season. Back in season 1, golds and higher flat out stopped queuing near the mid to late season just to protect their rank, and the system rewarded them for doing that. They didn't have to worry about losing their spot because there wasn't enough activity to generate any movement in the rankings. The top 100 barely budged an inch for the last month (until the last week, when people started to scramble for last minute points). Personally, I don't think that's a good thing, because I don't believe anyone should feel 'safe' about their rank in a game mode that is supposed to be competitive ... and it's just plain boring when that happens.

I mean, I HATE losing a match because of a crummy team. My losing streak from last night made me want to punch myself in the face and bring down the ban hammer on everyone who contributed to it, but when I remember the utter boredom of not playing PvP at all I get the totally different attitude of being as inclusive as possible. It's a very strange tug-o-war ...

[Koltik]

I get you. I'm just a little more concerned about the later end of the season. Back in season 1, golds and higher flat out stopped queuing near the mid to late season just to protect their rank, and the system rewarded them for doing that. They didn't have to worry about losing their spot because there wasn't enough activity to generate any movement in the rankings. The top 100 barely budged an inch for the last month (until the last week, when people started to scramble for last minute points). Personally, I don't think that's a good thing, because I don't believe anyone should feel 'safe' about their rank in a game mode that is supposed to be competitive ... and it's just plain boring when that happens.

tbh Primal's gold/plats were more active at the end of S1 than mid S1, so not sure what was going on at other DC's.

[Februs]

tbh Primal's gold/plats were more active at the end of S1 than mid S1, so not sure what was going on at other DC's.

At the very end of the first season, yes. I remember this posting did a lot to draw players back into Feast at the end of Season 1, because Shatter was so utterly boring that no one wanted to play it. It was fantastic, because queue times went from a hour + to 5 or 10 minutes.

Before that, though, queues were nearly dead. I waited in hour long queues just to get into one or two matches a night. A lot of players were practically locked into whatever rank they had before Shatter came out, because there just wasn't enough activity. There were quite a few posts about it right here in the forums.

It will be interesting to see if this problem is mitigated somewhat due to the participation of some players from the top 100 of last year.

I've been curious about this as well, because I wasn't sure how the lack of new incentives would effect the community. I've been happy to see, so far, that people are still playing regardless of their position last season. It would seem that they still give a damn, especially with all the salt over new players costing vets their matches. There have been a few absent faces, but by in large it's been a half decent turn out. It's good to see people playing for enjoyment of the game mode, rather than just purely for rewards ... though it does kind of suck that there isn't additional incentives for repeat performances... Maybe they should put in a hall of fame or something?