There is zero matchmaking in crystal ranked.

[Liam_Harper]

Because none cares about ranked anymore it doesnt have cool exclusive items like Feast did, you fill your series then your basicly done for the season unless you really enjoy the new PVP and wanna go full tryhard but thats a minority.

As far as I saw it, Ranked was basically Casual but hey, you might gain some rank as a bonus and if not nothing lost. If you had that mindset, it's a lot less frustrating to lose stars and the lack of fancy rewards isn't a big deal.

I personally can't see the point of playing Casual while ranked exists, but nonetheless the mode is mostly abandoned and queues were 15+ minutes for me while Casual is almost instant. Shame.

[Gserpent]

I literally see no purpose to solo-only Ranked mode. SE is really bad about "who is this even for?" kind of development, and it's just one more thing you should add to that list. Like, think about it:

What is the purpose of Ranked mode? Presumably, it's for serious-minded players who want to climb a ladder, right? It's very common in competitive games, it provides that dopamine drip that keeps people coming back. Monkey brain like see big numbers. But, crucially, in all of these other games, the matchmaking is *skill-based.* It's either Elo, or derived from Elo (such as Blizzard's MMR system used for arenas, Starcraft, etc.) While you can never *truly* gauge individual player skill in a team-based game, it at least attempts to provide a more balanced matchmaking system. But XIV doesn't have that. Crystal Credit is not Elo, nor does it even attempt to be. Yeah, sure, there's an algorithm that adjusts your winnings and losses based on discrepancy between your team's total credit score and their team's... but it's *very* slight. I think the highest number I've seen was like 109 or 110, and the lowest was 93. That's *nothing.* You're still looking at roughly 100 points per game, doesn't matter if you're 5000 credit versus 0 credit. Moreover, Crystal itself should be bracketed into several different tiers and matchmaking given additional weight based on that tiering. Like, if you wanted skill-based matchmaking, delete all of the lower tiers entirely, start everyone in Crystal with like 1000 credit, and go from there. But like we can see, they aren't trying to do skill-based matchmaking. But neither are they doing something more casual-friendly, which would be like "you never lose points for a loss, you can only gain them, and the tiers and stuff are just to reflect how much effort you've put into the mode so you can get cool little extras." More casual players *hate* losing points, they hate feeling like they've lost something when it may not have even been their fault - so stuff like how they have Ranked setup is anathema to them. So it's not skill-based, but it's not really casual-friendly either... so who the fuck is it even *for*?



Nah. They shouldn't have done Ranked *at all* for 6.1. Do Casual (Solo) and Casual (Team), and call it good. Keep the tiers and stuff, remove penalties for losses, and go from there. Have your Top 100, too, why not? See how much activity there is on Casual (Team). If there's enough activity, add Ranked (Team) in 6.2+, using the existing PvP Team systems and go for a proper skill-based matchmaking system for it. But we know SE will never do this - it doesn't fit their "side content" development style.

We'll see few changes of real significance to Crystalline Conflict's core systems for a while, because their development style for "side content" is generally to throw it out, make some tweaks in the following weeks or months (typically until the next major patch), and then they basically abandon it entirely except for small balance tweaks here or there and focus on the next big "side content" thing.