Locked out of Crystal Conflict Ranked by the matchmaking system

[Sinstrel]

Just to make sure I understand what everybody means by deranking (or if they actually have the same thing in mind), that's losing ranks over time when not playing right?

To some degree, yes. The problem is that SE decided to protect everyone from deranking when CC was first released. No matter how many times you lost, you stayed the same rank. Furthermkre, you even ranked up if you accidentally got a lucky winstreak bonus even if you had a 2% win rate.

What this essentially did was allow players with 2% win rates to eventually achieve the highest rank possible (Crystal) through enough effort and win streaks regardless of thier skill. This lead players to believe they truly earned Crystal rank through thier skill.

Eventually this lead to the majority of Crystal ranked players being unskilled, and the experienced veterans could not find matches with other experienced veterans because the rank became meaningless. The skilled players detested this, and the unskilled players did not have fun getting ripped a new one every time they qued up Crystal rank.

Yoshi and team decided to reimplemment deranking. And things were fine for a season... until thise unskilled/casual players who made it to Crystal before, suddenly couldnt get to Crystal anymore. This lead to a lot of frustration and mist of them quitting the mode altogether and now we dont have enough players to que up ranked.

Simultaneously, every experienced player has recieved the stupid adventurer plate by now. And the only new reward is... the same adventurer plate with a bigger number on it. And it looks like ita going to just be the same adventurer kit from now on with increasing numbers. So even the experienced players have no reason to play until season 30, when the adventurer plate number is "XXX"

[Gserpent]

Just to make sure I understand what everybody means by deranking (or if they actually have the same thing in mind), that's losing ranks over time when not playing right?

That would be rating/ranking decay. De-ranking means that you lose rank for losing games. So if you were at 0 Crystal Credit and lost a game, you would be demoted to Diamond 1, etc.

[SharCie]

That would be rating/ranking decay. De-ranking means that you lose rank for losing games. So if you were at 0 Crystal Credit and lost a game, you would be demoted to Diamond 1, etc.

That's exactly right :3

[Ransu]

To some degree, yes. The problem is that SE decided to protect everyone from deranking when CC was first released. No matter how many times you lost, you stayed the same rank. Furthermkre, you even ranked up if you accidentally got a lucky winstreak bonus even if you had a 2% win rate.

What this essentially did was allow players with 2% win rates to eventually achieve the highest rank possible (Crystal) through enough effort and win streaks regardless of thier skill. This lead players to believe they truly earned Crystal rank through thier skill.

Eventually this lead to the majority of Crystal ranked players being unskilled, and the experienced veterans could not find matches with other experienced veterans because the rank became meaningless. The skilled players detested this, and the unskilled players did not have fun getting ripped a new one every time they qued up Crystal rank.

Yoshi and team decided to reimplemment deranking. And things were fine for a season... until thise unskilled/casual players who made it to Crystal before, suddenly couldnt get to Crystal anymore. This lead to a lot of frustration and mist of them quitting the mode altogether and now we dont have enough players to que up ranked.

Simultaneously, every experienced player has recieved the stupid adventurer plate by now. And the only new reward is... the same adventurer plate with a bigger number on it. And it looks like ita going to just be the same adventurer kit from now on with increasing numbers. So even the experienced players have no reason to play until season 30, when the adventurer plate number is "XXX"

No one with a 2% win rate was making it to crystal....

[SharCie]

No one with a 2% win rate was making it to crystal....

im pretty sure that was just an exaggeration and isnt meant to be taken literally. The point still stands tho even if you loose 1000000 games in a row and win 20 in a row right after, you rank up, how is that ever a good matchmaking system

[Valence]

To some degree, yes. The problem is that SE decided to protect everyone from deranking when CC was first released. No matter how many times you lost, you stayed the same rank. Furthermkre, you even ranked up if you accidentally got a lucky winstreak bonus even if you had a 2% win rate.

What this essentially did was allow players with 2% win rates to eventually achieve the highest rank possible (Crystal) through enough effort and win streaks regardless of thier skill. This lead players to believe they truly earned Crystal rank through thier skill.

Eventually this lead to the majority of Crystal ranked players being unskilled, and the experienced veterans could not find matches with other experienced veterans because the rank became meaningless. The skilled players detested this, and the unskilled players did not have fun getting ripped a new one every time they qued up Crystal rank.

Yoshi and team decided to reimplemment deranking. And things were fine for a season... until thise unskilled/casual players who made it to Crystal before, suddenly couldnt get to Crystal anymore. This lead to a lot of frustration and mist of them quitting the mode altogether and now we dont have enough players to que up ranked.

Simultaneously, every experienced player has recieved the stupid adventurer plate by now. And the only new reward is... the same adventurer plate with a bigger number on it. And it looks like ita going to just be the same adventurer kit from now on with increasing numbers. So even the experienced players have no reason to play until season 30, when the adventurer plate number is "XXX"

I was trying to see what was the point being made but I think I see.

I'm not so sure about it all tbh. Gold and lower seems to pop a lot more than Plat+ that is just dead now. Not saying it's absolutely alive, it's actually kinda moribund from what I've been told by gold and lower players, but it actually still pops even during the middle of the day at least here on Light. And if we go by the logic that all those players stopped trying because they can't reach crystal easily anymore... then those lower ranks would be dead as heck, yet they aren't. People are still trying.

Does it mean that none of them just dropped it altogether because crystal was suddenly out of reach? I'm sure some have, but I hardly see it as the main explanation. The population is so low right now that we see actual top ranker vets roaming in diamond at times (at least until the mode finally died down at high rank). In my view it's just that the lack of players just spread everybody so thin that yes, the top is a LOT more competitive to get into when the only ones left are the absolute top rankers there.

[Valence]

im pretty sure that was just an exaggeration and isnt meant to be taken literally. The point still stands tho even if you loose 1000000 games in a row and win 20 in a row right after, you rank up, how is that ever a good matchmaking system

This is literally how almost every ranking system works. The main thing here is more that the bonus remains the same even at higher ranks. Usually it slowly decreases until you get a fully neutral system at the highest levels. That's how the feast risers actually worked btw, not sure why they changed it.

[SharCie]

This is literally how almost every ranking system works. The main thing here is more that the bonus remains the same even at higher ranks. Usually it slowly decreases until you get a fully neutral system at the highest levels. That's how the feast risers actually worked btw, not sure why they changed it.

This is not how usual ranking systems work tho? Take League of Legends for example, or OW (before they changed it in ow2 so no one knows whats up anymore) or Valorant etc etc etc. You win 20 games in a row, rank up, you loose 10000000 games in a row and you will be the lowest rank possible. If u were in Platinum, you'd be now in the lowest rank. That cant happen in ff14 tho, you get to platinum and you can literally never leave it as you play actively. Decay doesnt matter in this example since decay should always be a thing to make sure the people at the top of the ladder actually play the game actively and keep up with the current meta.

[Gserpent]

This is literally how almost every ranking system works. The main thing here is more that the bonus remains the same even at higher ranks. Usually it slowly decreases until you get a fully neutral system at the highest levels. That's how the feast risers actually worked btw, not sure why they changed it.

Every single competitive AAA game I can think of, which has a ranked mode using Skill Based Match Making (SBMM) uses a system derived either from Elo, or from TrueSkill 2 (Microsoft's own algorithm which is... fairly similar to Elo, too.) Elo is the system whereby each player is assigned an initial rating based on calibration matches, and from there they gain or lose points based on games played. Whenever possible, only players of equivalent ratings will be matched against each other, and they will stand to gain or lose a roughly equivalent amount of rating based on that match. Sometimes, there must be a match made with a discrepancy in rating - in those games, the stronger player may stand to gain only a few points of rating from a win, but lose dozens from a loss. For team-based modes, such systems *usually* focus on creating an equivalent *average* of rating among both teams, but will also try to avoid any serious discrepancies between teams - 6000+1500+1000+500+500 and 3500+2500+2000+750+750 both average to 1900, but one team is clearly more lopsided than the other.

This does not exist in XIV. Prior to Crystal it's basically a win streak tracker more than anything, and after Crystal it is most definitely *not* an Elo system. The most I've ever seen gained or lost from a single game was like 106, and most games average around 96-104. The most relevant feature of Elo is that the higher your rating gets, the less you gain from wins (unless matched exclusively against players of equivalent rating) and the more you stand to lose from your losses. Elo's biggest drawback is there is no solution to players at the top refusing to play games as a result of this, but there are numerous ways to approach that - simple rating decay (you lose x% of your rating per week, down to a threshold beneath which there is no decay) is, well, the simplest.

[Tooth]

Everything from nothing to gold is in one queue.
Once you hit platinum, that's it since it's too late in the season to get games. Try again next season, when it starts.