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

[ThaCa]

The whole ranking system should be based on Rating since it's more accurate than the +/- 1 that stars have. The lack of deranking and power of winstreaks makes people fall upwards as long as they keep playing and not performing abysmally.

If they keep the current system, Crystal should start at something like 1000 or even more rating to have more accurate description of the player skill, worse players approach 0 while others either stay afloat or climb.

Currently the biggest problems are people being able to sit on their points, being able to get multiple alts into top 100 and 0 rating players having nothing to lose so they can play it like Casual without worry while causing grief to the grinders.

[KickRox]

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.

Yea I've been in the de-rank camp from the rip. It would, without question, be the one thing that SE could do that would have the greatest effect on the "coin-toss" while having the least effect on actual gameplay. You know what they say: "Nothing more dangerous than a person with nothing to lose."

There's certainly something to inner-crystal tiers. If people stuck at 0 knew that they could eventually de-rank, and that they won't have any top 100s to carry (as much as any 1 person can "carry" with current MM issues) They might be apt to queue on a job they are actually proficient with. I initially considered the idea of some type of "Job Score" threshold to queue in crystal matches but it wouldn't work; queue would eventually die etc.

I feel like the answer lies somewhere in mechanism/formula that's currently responsible for the actual credit gained/lost. Right now IIRC its the difference in the average credit between the 2 parties. I remember way back a few weeks into season 1 being thrown that after the 1st 10 or so matches realizing that it was always about 100 credits either way with a MoE +/- 10 points or so. I feel like it should be dependent on the make up of one's own party more so than the differences in averages between the two groups. If someone with 6k CC is grouped with 4 others at 0 CC, they shouldn't get hammered just because the other team had 5 people at 1250 so its "a fair fight."

That made more sense in my head but TL;DR= Work on scaling the amount of credit gained or lost in accordance to the individual player's current credit vs that of the members on their team; rather than vs the other groups average credit as a whole.

[Gserpent]

I'm still going to put my vote in the "just remove points losses entirely" camp. Add in some hidden tiers to Crystal to improve matchmaking, that'd work fine. But I think we're always going to be dissatisfied with a system that is solo queue only, and "punishes" us when our losses may not be our fault at all. Everyone's had games where your teammates are running off to die like fucking lemmings, or refusing to focus fire, or whatever, and it costs your team the game. Due to the way the system tries to balance teams, it feels like those games are more common the higher your CR is - certainly, the closer I got to top 100 and the higher I went inside top 100, the more likely it seemed I'd be "trapped" with bad players repeatedly if I just kept queuing instead of dodging queues.

I don't think any system whereby the highest-rated players are very directly encouraged to *not play the game* is a broken system and should be reviewed. Simply removing points losses from game losses would eliminate that issue entirely. You could add diminishing returns to keep keep ratings from blasting into the stratosphere (10% fewer points per tier, etc), but ultimately it would just simply be about total games played and total wins. Obviously, "teammate RNG" would still be frustrating, but I think it would be *far* less frustrating if there was no perceived loss for failure. I suppose that runs the risk of *increasing* "lol idc" behavior... but, let's be honest - you actually think those people are *ever* going to actually try to win?

[KageTokage]

It does seem fundamentally...wrong that some hardcore CC players like Violent Destruction who have well over a thousand victories are placing lower then people with only a couple hundred.

Normal ranking systems weigh wins more heavily then losses specifically so people who are playing well will inevitably end up with a higher point score over time.

[KickRox]

I'm still going to put my vote in the "just remove points losses entirely" camp. Add in some hidden tiers to Crystal to improve matchmaking, that'd work fine. But I think we're always going to be dissatisfied with a system that is solo queue only, and "punishes" us when our losses may not be our fault at all. Everyone's had games where your teammates are running off to die like fucking lemmings, or refusing to focus fire, or whatever, and it costs your team the game. Due to the way the system tries to balance teams, it feels like those games are more common the higher your CR is - certainly, the closer I got to top 100 and the higher I went inside top 100, the more likely it seemed I'd be "trapped" with bad players repeatedly if I just kept queuing instead of dodging queues.

I don't think any system whereby the highest-rated players are very directly encouraged to *not play the game* is a broken system and should be reviewed. Simply removing points losses from game losses would eliminate that issue entirely. You could add diminishing returns to keep keep ratings from blasting into the stratosphere (10% fewer points per tier, etc), but ultimately it would just simply be about total games played and total wins. Obviously, "teammate RNG" would still be frustrating, but I think it would be *far* less frustrating if there was no perceived loss for failure. I suppose that runs the risk of *increasing* "lol idc" behavior... but, let's be honest - you actually think those people are *ever* going to actually try to win?

I agree with the principle and I do agree that it would remedy part of the issue if loss penalties were removed. But tbh, there's something that just doesn't sit right about rank being so dependent on sheer volume of wins. I'm not saying that the people with 1000+ victories aren't among the best, but I'd worry that many of the top spots would end up going to people that had the most time to play. But at this point, it'd be a welcomed improvement to being grouped with a "Diamond Plus" tier PLD that doesn't use Guardian once during the entire match.. even after they LB.

What I'd really like to see, and IIRC the OP or someone mentioned it, would be credit gain/loss be based on match contribution merit. If play your ass off but lose, and it shows on the board at the end. Curb, the credits lost. Same with wins. Can't tell you how many screenshots I have taken out of sheer astonishment at the contrast in contribution. It's demoralizing after a loss to see your the only one on your team with 0 under "D" and the only on with anything but 0 under "K." "Thanks for all the help, there fellers."

Not going to hold my breath on that though, lol.

[Nanne]

I'm still going to put my vote in the "just remove points losses entirely" camp.

Ishgard restoration was the worst piece of content because it literally was "Do you have 10 days of free time?". Making PvP just be a competition of people farming 20 hours a day would punish people who cannot play all the time People in top 100 ranged from 170 wins to 1800 wins. That wouldn't work with removing all point losses

[Ransu]

It does seem fundamentally...wrong that some hardcore CC players like Violent Destruction who have well over a thousand victories are placing lower then people with only a couple hundred.

Normal ranking systems weigh wins more heavily then losses specifically so people who are playing well will inevitably end up with a higher point score over time.

That's generally the result of no decay in ratings. Both really good players and win traders will get a ton of points in the least amount of games, so players like VD who play ALOT of matches is going to fluctuate quite a bit regardless of how good he is. He deals with the same crap as everyone else. Hell I've ran into him dozens of times in the evenings and have beaten his team on numerous occasions even though we should have outright lost the match. No matter how good you are, you can't always overcome stupid players.

That said, decay can be a double edged sword because with decay you get more people potentially win trading to stay above the other top players who continue to play and climb which can inflate ratings.

[Gserpent]

Ishgard restoration was the worst piece of content because it literally was "Do you have 10 days of free time?". Making PvP just be a competition of people farming 20 hours a day would punish people who cannot play all the time People in top 100 ranged from 170 wins to 1800 wins. That wouldn't work with removing all point losses

Top 100 is already basically a "do you have all day to play?" competition, though. I'd go so far as to say that you are *guaranteed* to be in top 100 if you are both competent and consistent in your performance, and simply play enough games. Queue dodging can help reduce the number of wins needed to place highly, but it's pretty unlikely to see people with very high ratings and few wins - and of those, I'm pretty skeptical about how they manage it.

[WhiteFlow]

Can we at least change the titles to:

...of the rising suffering (top 100)
...of the endless suffering (top 30)
...of the final suffering (top 1)

at least it give me feeling the title fit its purpose.

[JamieRose]

Can we at least change the titles to:

...of the rising suffering (top 100)
...of the endless suffering (top 30)
...of the final suffering (top 1)

at least it give me feeling the title fit its purpose.

Why? You're not hard stuck in Bronze. If anyone's suffering should be noted in such a manner it's people like us who can't get out of bronze because of the horrific matchmaking and lack of communication tools.