CC ranking system is simply bad

[Scghost]

I usually dont bother with forums but, i feel this needs to be addressed.
I believe that the current ranking system for Crystal Conflict is way too punishing and unrewarding for personal scores. Every time you Q in is like a coin toss, and maybe it's just me but i gone from Platinum 1 to 4 and multiple occasions now and pretty much stuck in the middle or so for a couple of weeks now. This system is simply upsetting all my friends and strait up depressing others, myself included. Its early ff11 all over again with their delveling system...

[Lucceira]

I was looking for this comment.

It's incredibly dishearting to be penalized for playing a team game with team members you don't choose. Also, I distinctly remember one time I was about to go from bronze to silver. I only needed 1 match. The system paired me with 2 new players and all bronzes while the opposing team got 3 (!!!) silvers. Of course, we ended up losing. It could be said that the match was lost before it began.

In the end and after a lot of hours I invested in the CC game mode I ended up in Bronze 3 again, just where I started... I decided to quit playing pvp altogether. The mode is incredibly frustrating and unrewarding.

[Nytes]

I was looking for this comment.
Also, I distinctly remember one time I was about to go from bronze to silver. I only needed 1 match. The system paired me with 2 new players and all bronzes while the opposing team got 3 (!!!) silvers. Of course, we ended up losing. It could be said that the match was lost before it began.

The system automatically pits you against a harder team when you're trying to rank up on purpose, it's a test to see if you can compete in that rank. I'm sorry you got new players, but that is the trouble of climbing from low ranks, you are playing with new players.

[Scghost]

This is not right or shouldn't. There is no way "see if you can compete" in that rank. You could be the MVP of the round and still lose the match. Again, there is zero reward for individual effort.

[Gserpent]

This is not right or shouldn't. There is no way "see if you can compete" in that rank. You could be the MVP of the round and still lose the match. Again, there is zero reward for individual effort.

This isn't true, though. If you play well, you will consistently win games more than you lose them. People aren't in top 10 with 6000+ credits and under 300 wins just out of blind luck, man. Nor are the people with 6000+ credits and 1000+ wins there out of luck. They are there because they play consistently and effectively over and over and over.

Picking the right class for the job helps. Some classes are better than others at compensating for weak teammates. Time of day that you're playing also has an effect, as I've mentioned. But the simple truth is that if you play the best you can, as consistently as you can, you *will* win games more than you lose them over time.

I end up seeing the player Ni Xi, on Crystal, in my games a lot. I guess we tend to be playing at around the same times. They are consistently moving up in ranks over the week and are currently #12, with quite a few credits and edging up on 1000 wins. Know why they're there? Because they are *consistent.* Every game I've had them in, friend or foe, whichever class they are playing, they bring a consistent and reliable level of performance. They are not always the best player in the game, but they are rarely if ever the worst or weakest. Consistency is key. I can say the same for several other players in the current top 20 on Crystal, many of whom I've had several games with over the past week or two.

Maybe you're new to the idea of laddering in a competitive field (not that this game is good for skill-based matchmaking, but whatever.) You can't let yourself fixate on the losses. Don't worry about the wins, either. Just focus on being *consistent*, every game. Think about what you did right, what you did wrong. Was there anything that caught you off guard? What can you change to prevent that next time? Was there anything you could have done to mitigate the loss or speed the win, even if the loss or win wasn't even really "your fault"? This is the essence of successful laddering.

[Scghost]

I have played some pvp in the past but not recently. In none of them I moved backwards in the rankings.
Maybe I just been unlucky, I guess. I been about to rank at least 4 times now and that last win that I need becomes a streak of losses, pushing me all the way back almost. And I am constantly on top of kills and dmg.
My point is that no matter how comfortable you are with losing, not progressing because your coin toss at match making is bad is strait up depressing and frustrating. Specially when personal scores not counting for nothing. I don't play games to get frustrated. Should I just throw the towel and give up? I will probably have to, but this feels like content I never finished....

[rofland]

Ni Xi also unironically tanked FIVE THOUSAND POINTS because of the unbearably horrible players in queue, so I'm not sure if it's the best comparison. Rating is too volatile because of the horrible matchmaking.

[Iyrnwaen]

The biggest problem with the ranking system right now is that it's too easy to rank up to Crystal and you can't derank out of it.
Crystal is full of bored trolls who just screw around in matches because there's no penalty for losing if you're not shooting for top 100.

[Gserpent]

The biggest problem with the ranking system right now is that it's too easy to rank up to Crystal and you can't derank out of it.
Crystal is full of bored trolls who just screw around in matches because there's no penalty for losing if you're not shooting for top 100.

Yeah. There's a series of problems with the ranking system, and this is one of the more pressing ones.

Personally, I think you should be able to lose tiers, not just ranks. And it should take more stars and more ranks to reach the next tier (5 stars and 5 ranks per tier, except for 5 stars and 3 ranks to reach Bronze from unranked), and switching streak bonuses from an extra star to extra XP/marks. You can't control the quality of players on your team, but you *will* see upward momentum over tens or hundreds of games if you are actually skilled. There's people with 1000+ wins in the top 5-10 in pretty much every DC, which directly proves that if you work hard enough and are actually skilled, you can get there no matter how badly you get screwed with teammates. But the smarter thing is to only play when the high skill players are also playing - usually prime time, especially on weekends. I've noticed a dramatic shift in overall quality of games and teammates when I play during those times, versus early morning hours or noon or something like that. If I was focused on trying to push rank, as opposed to just playing to have fun, I would probably only play when there's a high density of high skill players active.

I don't think there's anything that can be done about people trolling in Crystal with "off spec" classes. Being able to de-rank to Diamond wouldn't fix anything. The only fix for that would be class-specific rankings, but people tend to freak out when they think about having to do a rank grind for each individual class they would like to play, even if you started like two or three tiers below your highest tier (so if you have a Crystal, your other classes would start at Gold 5/0.)

What I think folks don't realize or want to accept is that if you want actual skill-based matchmaking, you're going to have to create an actual, significant grind to move through ranks. Like, where it would take hundreds of games on average to make it to Crystal instead of potentially just like 50 or 60. With how easy it is to rank up right now, rank really means absolutely nothing about player skill, not even within Crystal. I've personally seen multiple top 30 players play like complete ass (maybe they were playing "off spec" though) and low Diamond players playing out of their minds.

[Tsugikai]

The biggest problem with the ranking system right now is that it's too easy to rank up to Crystal and you can't derank out of it.
Crystal is full of bored trolls who just screw around in matches because there's no penalty for losing if you're not shooting for top 100.

I very much disagree with the ranking system being "easy". I Have gone from Bronze 3 no stars to bronze 1 with 2 stars and back down again over 50 times since CC dropped.