Ranked is mega unpopular even though it offers the same rewards as Unranked

[Archeron]

I mean theres really no incentive as a frontlines degenerate for me to want to do ranked over casual. I go into ranked and people are getting salty putting "target to be ignored" marks on each other, and theres some super sweaty gameplay in every round of ranked. People breaking out the /sweep emote, or /squat. Too much stale cheeto dust in the ranked air. I'll personally pass on that.

[Post]

I'm someone who likes the new PvP changes since 6.1 considerably. I think CC is fun, and I like to play unranked and ranked.

I'm happy that Unranked exists because it allowed me to learn the game mode when I got started, and to get froggy with a job I haven't played yet without letting my team down (and the new map when they added Clockwork Colosseum). It's also nice to play and not feel stressed.

I like Ranked, too. It feels good to climb the ranks because good opponents quickly teach me bad play on my part. It feels great to finally break a barrier and climb up a whole lot once you fix what you can.

There's a few cons of Ranked, though. Mostly stress. Feeling unprepared contributes: when I'm trying to learn new jobs, I'm forced to start from Diamond 5 if I manage Crystal in a season.

Sometimes you get awful people like Archeron posted about, though honestly that's just as likely in Casual, too. I feel like I've seen more players "quit" overall (compared to just spamming/emoting) in Casual though, probably because their rank isn't on the line.

Given that I have enough fun with the mode that I just play CC to blow off steam (it's seriously one of my major highlights of Endwalker), I think anything they could do to keep the queues flowing and keep the stress low would be a good thing.

I think collapsing the two modes together would be good if they allowed you to drop your rank down or base your rank on a per-Job basis. Maybe competitive games don't let you manually reset your rank other than tanking by losing (thus harming other players in the process) because such a system could be abused, and lord knows they don't adequately deal with abuse as is.

Forcing high ranked players that don't want/need to do this might be bad, but it might keep the queues going more at different levels. Also, since I imagine you can't place top 100 on multiple Jobs at once, I dunno what would happen if you hit Crystal on multiple Jobs. Just having the highest one's rating seems dumb because that would kinda defeat the purpose of learning multiple Jobs in case you felt it was a good day to play a different one, or to avoid/face a certain player.

Comparing CC to its previous incarnation "The Feast," casual matches *never* popped on my datacenter without community events while ranked would. This probably because rewards for Ranked Feast were more enticing (exclusive mounts), and the season pass didn't exist/Garo was gone for a while, but I think that speaks to how much improved and more fun CC and the reimagined Jobs are. Also, I healed in The Feast, which was the least played because it was high stress, so my queues were probably shorter.

If there are other competitive games out there that *only* have a ranked mode, does that tend to hurt its popularity?

[RajNish]

I mean theres really no incentive as a frontlines degenerate for me to want to do ranked over casual. I go into ranked and people are getting salty putting "target to be ignored" marks on each other, and theres some super sweaty gameplay in every round of ranked. People breaking out the /sweep emote, or /squat. Too much stale cheeto dust in the ranked air. I'll personally pass on that.

Unfortunately, this also happens in casual matches, the only difference is how often. But it's not about the game mode, it's about the culture of the players. Some of them just can't handle their emotions. Ignore it, report it if you want (it doesn't work though) and move on. Just don't let others take away your enjoyment of the game.

[Malganis_L]

Ranked formular and constrained communication just sucks for noobs like myself, who want to get into ranked.
combine that with team Rng were one team member cant carry the whole team to victory, but one bad team member can surely screw up your chances for victory, you are in a situation where you win some matches, lose some matches, and you made absolute 0 progression on the rank ladder, you have no idea what you are doing wrong and its just painful demotivating to a point you just give up and dont bother for ranked anymore and just do casual for the battle pass here and there.

[RyanCousland]

Ranked formular and constrained communication just sucks for noobs like myself, who want to get into ranked.
combine that with team Rng were one team member cant carry the whole team to victory, but one bad team member can surely screw up your chances for victory, you are in a situation where you win some matches, lose some matches, and you made absolute 0 progression on the rank ladder, you have no idea what you are doing wrong and its just painful demotivating to a point you just give up and dont bother for ranked anymore and just do casual for the battle pass here and there.

Hmm i cant say i entirely agree with the one person cant carry because theres stuff you can do to increase your chance e.g placing marker with a quick chat or guiding with quickchat, and im not saying that it will guarantee you a win but it does help, and i know its taxing to do all this as well as worry about yourself but in this mode with limited options you gotta make the best with you got, if you're a noob then def ask questions whether it's about your class, playstyle or tactics or macros

[Tooth]

Because being 1 win away from crystal can be reset down to the bottom of platinum in 30 mins.

[Tooth]

Also they'll gladly change the matchmaking range on the Japanese servers(see patch notes 6.3) and ignore the rest of the servers, even dynamis.

[Ransu]

Also they'll gladly change the matchmaking range on the Japanese servers(see patch notes 6.3) and ignore the rest of the servers, even dynamis.

Probably because pvp is more active in JP.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Probably because pvp is more active in JP.

Well they see PvP as content they can do rather than "this isnt content for me" sorta deal. Same with Savage tbh, they have significantly higher participation and clear rates.

[Tooth]

It was made larger, not smaller. Diamond and Crystal were merged with the zero to platinum queues, for just one single queue.