PvP Rank Decay or Solutions to a Dwindling PvP Queue

[ThaCa]

Casual queues pop around the clock, therefore the mode is fun enough to pull in people consistently even without a roulette to give PvE rewards.

Ranked is just dead in the water because there's nothing worthwhile beyond your first Season to push. Whether it's Series rewards, PvP currency, achievements etc. Casual is just way faster AND easier, especially to high rank players to grind.
Right now there's basically no reason for Ranked to exist, the level of competition keeps getting lower aside from the handful of people that have stayed active since beginning. Season 4 had LESS people in Crystal rank than in Top 100 on Light, it's that bad right now.

They really need to add more incentives to play Ranked or reform the whole thing. Going through the past PvP discussion there has been plenty of good ideas for general rewards or changes to the whole tier system (whoever decided on the star system? lmao). Hell, if nothing else they should at least give us titles for multi-top 100 rankings as stop gap while they try to figure things out, that would at least give something small to aim for the active regulars.

[Blindheart]

Sounds like the answer should just be get rid of casual and just make everyone play ranked? Then the people who care about ranks will “git good” and the rest of us can just lose enough games to get the series rewards and move on.

[ThaCa]

Sounds like the answer should just be get rid of casual and just make everyone play ranked? Then the people who care about ranks will “git good” and the rest of us can just lose enough games to get the series rewards and move on.

This would probably work and also make Casual matches more enjoyable for the average player as they would meet others closer to their skill level, however just seeing your rank is somehow stressing to alot of players and turns them off so it might need some trickery to make it seem like it matters less for them.
They should definately have the Crystal score thing from get-go and have more adjustments when teams aren't completely balanced, I guess they could just show your score and then only show ranks at the end of Season where the system counts certain % of players into each Rank based on total scores.
However the current system does need some tweaks, even with completely unbalanced teams you can get +/- 100 or extremely close to it, it should deviate far deeper into higher or lower numbers when team imbalances are present. Otherwise it's just the Star system without winstreaks and very minor occasional adjustments (like 99 or 101 instead of 100).

Probably the biggest hurdle from the change would be practising new Jobs, if you are already at your real rank, there's no way to just swap around and instantly perform at your main's level. Then again I think fighting game players are familiar with this and just take the L's until they learn the character but for a team game it might be considered griefing by others if you do it at high rank.

Another thing that might get into crossfire from such change is the potential of party queues, people have asked at the very least to get duos in Casuals for long time so they can play with friends for fun. In ranked every single member of team that coordinates through voice chat increases their team's potential dramatically. So if it's ever going to happen, it's less likely to do so in Ranked only setting.

I really hope they find somekind of solution for the current situation, it would be a good start towards expanded PvP systems (imagine a PvP relic that covers all game modes, roulettes for RW and CC among other things.)

[Vahlnir]

Apparently people can only show we care if there are enough queues. We can't get queues because not enough people play, but not enough people play because there is no incentive to play. So apparently we don't care.

And quality of whatever is left in the higher ranks has lessened over a period of no unique rewards, because nothing is at stake.

I'm all for adding more incentives as long as it isn't handled exactly like before. I think titles for example could work (they were a thing before the revamp anyway) so long as they are extra fancy like the legend titles are. Or maybe a very detailed trophy people can display in their houses and apartments. They might have been a thing before the revamp too but I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, I realize that not everyone has one of those, but it would still be something unique and collectable that they could potentially show off.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I'm all for adding more incentives as long as it isn't handled exactly like before. I think titles for example could work (they were a thing before the revamp anyway) so long as they are extra fancy like the legend titles are. Or maybe a very detailed trophy people can display in their houses and apartments. They might have been a thing before the revamp too but I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, I realize that not everyone has one of those, but it would still be something unique and collectable that they could potentially show off.

I'd take smaller steps first and just introduce a system that encourages play in general - namely an upgrade in the Tier rewards. Think about Wolf Collars, but a new version of it and corresponding shop for it. What matters right now is play incentivisation in all tiers, which you get this way.

[DixieBellOCE]

Lock a PVP exclusive hairstyle to top100 and watch ranked queues go through the roof.

Casual players will complain ofc.

But they complain about anything that makes them actually PLAY the game anyway.

[Xylira]

The best way to keep players queuing for a game mode is to just make it fun to play. Bribing players with rewards only goes so far, at a certain point it's just plain not worth the time and effort if it's not fun.

That said, there's no amount of bribery that will make me want to queue for ranked CC in its current state. It's a mess and not worth my time.

[ThaCa]

The best way to keep players queuing for a game mode is to just make it fun to play. Bribing players with rewards only goes so far, at a certain point it's just plain not worth the time and effort if it's not fun.

That said, there's no amount of bribery that will make me want to queue for ranked CC in its current state. It's a mess and not worth my time.

That's the issue, Casual queues are popular and pop all the time because people enjoy playing CC. There's currently nothing that warrants the existence of Ranked as there's nothing really to gain beyond what you already get from Casual.

[RyuDragnier]

A simple fix would merely make it so all future rewards are gotten first through ranked, and show up in the series rewards 6 months later. People who want those rewards now will suffer ranked, people who are willing to wait will wait until the series rewards for it come out later. And before anybody questions what they will put in the series rewards until then, a reminder...we have all those seasons of the Feast rewards just waiting to be re-released. All of those glams, all of those mounts.

[AnotherPerson]

It seems nobody else does either since you all can't get queues. Too bad, so sad.

The game mode is clearly fun enough to get people to play it - casual mode queues for Crystalline Conflict still pop frequently. However, there's no reason to play ranked because ... there's no rewards. The mode itself is fine, but there's no reason to queue for ranked if there's nothing to gain from it.
Quite literally why I stopped queueing for Ranked lately. I might enjoy the gameplay, but there's no reason for me to do it again if there's nothing to gain from it.

Just look at all the people who does roulettes. How many of them do you think would continue queueing for a roulette each day if tomestone reward for the roulette was weekly instead of daily and if there's nothing else attached for the role-in-need after? Not very many, I assure you.

All these Crystalline Trophies? Utterly worthless. I'm overfilling with them because I already bought out the shop a long time ago.