CC Ranking System: MMR, placement matches, and rank decay

[Ixon]

Unfortunately, as much as I agree it should be there, I highly doubt SE will ever put in an ACTUAL MMR system. I don't think SE is willing to spend dev cycles spinning up a system that accurately tracks player performance that is based off job performance in order to more accurately place players for what at the end of the day is a piece of side-content. Believe me, I want it, I just highly doubt they are willing to do so. That's why they rely on the rank, cause it's much, much easier to maintain.

I don't think they will every introduce rank decay either, as forced player interaction with the game goes against the spoken philosophy of what Yoshi has said time and time again. And while this is a different discussion as it's a ranked game mode, I'd rather they focus on making the game mode more fun and rewarding to play than force players to play just to keep their rank.

I think the reason why most matches seem so imbalanced has to do with a lot of little issues compounding into a major issue of player balancing. Streaks and lack of placement matches makes it extremely easy for any player to eventually climb to Crystal, as at the end of the day, you don't need to be skillful if you just queue enough to get a lucky string of matches to streak you into Crystal. No de-ranking structure also means you have an extremely large group of players sitting at Crystal 0, unable to ever climb due to their own lack of skill, yet they continue to queue and end up in high tier Crystal games. Then there are the Crystal ranks themselves, which based off what I see, considered every player in Crystal capable to queueing into every other Crystal player despite of their ratings. So that same 0 rank Crystal player get's queued against some Crystal player in the 6k range.

Top of my head, what I would add as simple solutions would be:
1. De-ranking: If a player loses 3-5 games at the lowest tier, or at 0 Crystal, they de-rank. Crystal players stuck at 0 rank aren't Crystal players, they are Diamond players who got lucky.
2. Add tiers to Crystal Rank matches: A new Crystal 100 player shouldn't be matched with someone who is like 6k. There is the issue of longer queue times, but I am sure more people want quality over quantity, especially since the win to loss point ration is about 1 to 1.
3. Dedicated devs to PVP job balancing: Most of us were pleasantly surprised at the amount of PVP job adjustments in the patches following it's release, but it has to continue until as close to perfect balancing is reached. 6.15 should have had much more than what we got, BLM is still busted, and many jobs still underperform and need to be addressed. Please don't stop balancing.

There exists one other major issue that even I don't really know how to address, the issue of not being able to "carry" a game. I think most can agree that Crystalline Conflict is much closer to Frontlines than Feast, this has both pros and cons. The reduced responsibility and need for coordination makes it much more accessible to the majority of players, but severely hurts the more hardcore players. Speaking as a tank player from Feast to CC, I feel I have less control over a match no matter how hard I try, and it makes the matches feel way more of a coin flip than it did before. I know I am not the only one who feels this way, but I am unsure how to address it without drastically changing the game mode. Certain jobs definitely feel like they have a higher impact on matches, so maybe it just requires better job design/balancing, but it's definitely unrewarding and disheartening to do your best, pump out the highest damage and healing, push the Crystal the most, have a few fight winning moments, just to lose cause it didn't matter. Even the most hardcore and best PVP players are upset that there isn't a lot of room in games to excel and be the reason why your team won especially compared to Feast.

Oh, and remove non-LB AoE crowd control. Being accidently CC'd by a giant line AoE Silence when you weren't even the target of the enemy is both unfun and extremely annoying.

[Petite]

Crystal players stuck at 0 rank aren't Crystal players, they are Diamond players who got lucky.

Absolutely.

The sad part is they're the most prone to become griefers. Seeing that big fat 0 all the time, they stop caring.

Being able to derank would help dissuade such behavior at all ranking levels.

[Nukro]

I don't think they will every introduce rank decay either, as forced player interaction with the game goes against the spoken philosophy of what Yoshi has said time and time again. And while this is a different discussion as it's a ranked game mode, I'd rather they focus on making the game mode more fun and rewarding to play than force players to play just to keep their rank.

I know exactly what you're talking about, That design philosophy has worked extremely well for their PvE content. But come on man, you and I both know that top 100 is stagnant. Some days you'll see lots of different players and others you'll see the exact same people for 10 matches straight. The way I see it, what we have now is a "very casual top 100" system, pick up and put down. But really think about that concept for a second, casual friendly but also the most competitive the game has to offer. It just doesn't make sense.

[Gserpent]

I know exactly what you're talking about, That design philosophy has worked extremely well for their PvE content. But come on man, you and I both know that top 100 is stagnant. Some days you'll see lots of different players and others you'll see the exact same people for 10 matches straight. The way I see it, what we have now is a "very casual top 100" system, pick up and put down. But really think about that concept for a second, casual friendly but also the most competitive the game has to offer. It just doesn't make sense.

I don't remember what DC Famfrit is on, but Crystal ain't stagnant. The top 5 or so are pretty well set in stone, but that's because all of them have played a terrifying number of games to get there. Zeltra was 8k forever and slowly creeped up to 9k and I'd imagine they're taking a break after the grind to secure #1. Where you see people not participating, it's because they feel comfortable that their position in one of the reward brackets (top 100, top 30, top 1) is safe and they don't need to keep playing. Considering that these players were all very active through most of the season and earned their places, it's more like taking a deserved break from the game. I imagine most of them will be back in it on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The ranking system is very casual, indeed. It's why I wish they'd not even bothered with solo ranked and had just done casual (and you can bring one friend) and team ranked (rigid 5v5 using PvP Teams.) The ranking system isn't the best at measuring actual player skill (while the people are consistently on top 100 are certainly better than the vast majority of players, I don't think #12 is magnitudes better than #68... they probably just play more), and it's not really that great as a "casual game" either - losing points for a loss that wasn't your fault (whether it actually wasn't your fault or you just perceived it that way doesn't matter to "casual" players) feels awful, so if it was truly "designed for casuals", I'd just remove the loss of risers/credit on losses entirely. After all, if the point of the system isn't to match people based on skill rating (and it's not, this is most certainly not Elo), why do you need to lose points on a loss at all?

[Ixon]

I know exactly what you're talking about, That design philosophy has worked extremely well for their PvE content. But come on man, you and I both know that top 100 is stagnant. Some days you'll see lots of different players and others you'll see the exact same people for 10 matches straight. The way I see it, what we have now is a "very casual top 100" system, pick up and put down. But really think about that concept for a second, casual friendly but also the most competitive the game has to offer. It just doesn't make sense.

Issue is I don't see a way for this to actually help. You can't make decay happen every day, so you would make it what, 3days? 5days? A week? Then all a player has to do is log in once in that time frame and play a single match, then never queue again till they have to. Forcing everyone to play a single match of an imbalanced game mode just for slight wiggle in the board isn't a fix. I'd rather them see the board not moving at all so they can understand no one really wants to hardcore grind in such a disadvantageous game mode.

[Gserpent]

Issue is I don't see a way for this to actually help. You can't make decay happen every day, so you would make it what, 3days? 5days? A week? Then all a player has to do is log in once in that time frame and play a single match, then never queue again till they have to. Forcing everyone to play a single match of an imbalanced game mode just for slight wiggle in the board isn't a fix. I'd rather them see the board not moving at all so they can understand no one really wants to hardcore grind in such a disadvantageous game mode.

Hence why I think they should just remove points loss on a loss entirely. They aren't pretending or trying to make this game into an actual "ladder game," so why bother punishing people when they get derps for teammates? If your system is setup such that *not playing* is the best way of maintaining a rank... yo, your system's broke.

[Nanne]

Hence why I think they should just remove points loss on a loss entirely. They aren't pretending or trying to make this game into an actual "ladder game," so why bother punishing people when they get derps for teammates? If your system is setup such that *not playing* is the best way of maintaining a rank... yo, your system's broke.

Didn't they say today that they are improving the MM system in the future? Also they mentioned so that people can't queue sync too easily in the future because there already were 2-3 cases of people wintrading on same jobs and getting banned

[Gserpent]

Didn't they say today that they are improving the MM system in the future? Also they mentioned so that people can't queue sync too easily in the future because there already were 2-3 cases of people wintrading on same jobs and getting banned

I have no idea, I never watch live letters. I just wait for the cliff's notes afterwards. There's no point in making improvements to matchmaking if they're still sticking with solo queue only. Skill based matchmaking is always going to be questionable when you're forcing people to play alone in a team-based mode.

[Ransu]

. Crystal players stuck at 0 rank aren't Crystal players, they are Diamond players who got lucky.

I've gained and lost 1k points in a single day so this statement is kinda nonsense. Most people likely just don't really care, I know I don't given how terrible the matchmaking is. Hell I only play pvp like once or twice a week usually and I'm playing a different job every time I queue most of the time because I'm generally bored after an hour.

[Ixon]

I've gained and lost 1k points in a single day so this statement is kinda nonsense. Most people likely just don't really care, I know I don't given how terrible the matchmaking is. Hell I only play pvp like once or twice a week usually and I'm playing a different job every time I queue most of the time because I'm generally bored after an hour.

Then you aren't hardstuck 0, and don't apply. I mean people that actually never leave 0 Crystal except for maybe a once or twice lucky win. They exist.