Just get rid of ranked

[Towa-Musa]

Its on constant life support and everybody would much rather play casual, what is the sense in supporting something the majority of the players don't care about?

From now on just focus on adding stuff to the series pass and the crystal shop.

[Archeron]

Personally I think they should just merge ranked with casual and implement a better matchmaking/rank system. All the highest ranked elitists would be stuck playing with each other, and the rest of us will be having fun in the lower ranks, without the privelege of playing with people who are clearly just the pillars of our community.

[Towa-Musa]

Personally I think they should just merge ranked with casual and implement a better matchmaking/rank system. All the highest ranked elitists would be stuck playing with each other, and the rest of us will be having fun in the lower ranks, without the privelege of playing with people who are clearly just the pillars of our community.

How do you think they should do this?

[Archeron]

How do you think they should do this?

I'd base ranks upon an average of someones performance in a match, a combination of Damage dealt, Kills, Assisted kills, Deaths, Healing done, Time on crystal. More likely to pair people of a higher skill level against each other. Newer players that don't quite understand their roles will stand a better chance to learn where they're not getting absolutely pummeled. Worst case if queues plummet they can still roughly get an even balance by splitting the lower ranked people between both teams. Of course it would be a bit of a nightmare to implement considering you'd also need a good job balance. I wouldn't mind any other system that would remove the rising stars and implement something more reasonable in its place.

They could also give out rewards for reaching certain ranks that would be worth grinding for, seperate from crystals, and wolf marks/collars. Portraits and recolors simply aren't good enough for the likes of me.

[Towa-Musa]

I'd base ranks upon an average of someones performance in a match, a combination of Damage dealt, Kills, Assisted kills, Deaths, Healing done, Time on crystal. More likely to pair people of a higher skill level against each other. Newer players that don't quite understand their roles will stand a better chance to learn where they're not getting absolutely pummeled. Worst case if queues plummet they can still roughly get an even balance by splitting the lower ranked people between both teams. Of course it would be a bit of a nightmare to implement considering you'd also need a good job balance. I wouldn't mind any other system that would remove the rising stars and implement something more reasonable in its place.

They could also give out rewards for reaching certain ranks that would be worth grinding for, seperate from crystals, and wolf marks/collars. Portraits and recolors simply aren't good enough for the likes of me.

sounds good on paper but how would one grind out these rewards?

[Archeron]

sounds good on paper but how would one grind out these rewards?

You'd in theory, just have to participate in the game mode, and you would naturally land in queues with people of similar skill, in similar ranks. Achieving high enough ranks would be sufficient to unlock the awards gated behind it. I'd probably put rewards beyond Platinum personally. Perhaps a unique armor set, or weapons that actually look cool enough that people would want to farm them.

I bet people would complain about being unable to get these rewards, but it would not be as much of a problem if they at the same time put items worth purchasing in the Crystal store, so it would feel like less of a total waste of time if you were stuck in a certain rank. Some content, people won't be able to clear, and thats fine. Nobody complains about Ultimates and savages, so I don't see the issue so much if they did the same with *some* PvP rewards.

[Boys]

Small arena pvp in MMOs... *Makes long accumulated spit*

[ThaCa]

I guess consolidating the Queues might work to a degree? The main issue would probably be not having a place to practise alt Jobs outside of using actual alts.

If there was only one queue they would probably have to hide ranks/rating until certain later threshold, maybe cut-off point for a reward so you know when you can stop the grind if that's all you care about. This would retain the lower stress enviroment for lower ranks and also yield them some small extra at the end of Season due automatically getting their corresponding reward as if they had played Ranked.

Benefits would include less stompy matches overall as the hidden rating would push more competitive people up against each other as they do in Ranked instead of leaving them to stomp the fully random queue, while the more Casual approach would lead in more games with others of same mind. From my experience there are a handful of Casual only players that play at the very least Diamond level and basically never touch ranked, moving those players from stomping games to competing in more even ground would be a win for the average player.

Biggest question would probably be if there's any limit to matchmaking range of if it would retain the Casual approach of picking up games ASAP, optimally it would probably wait for a short while and the fill the lobby. This would mean that the games keep happening, but in turn the teams would be more volatile if the pool only has limited amount of top or bottom end players to fill into matches.

I think using purely current Casual or Ranked as the base with no changes would end up having more issues than the split queue does.

[Araxes]

If i can finally queue with a Friend or my Wife, im all for the removal. It became a bad circus anyway and the Devs seem to be unwilling or unable to give it the attention it needs.

[Valence]

I've proposed the idea to merge both modes before, but one must be considerate in doing something like this because the only reason that casual is so popular is that there is no rank nor pressure inside. If you start adding leagues (bronze -> crystal) into it, I can guarantee you that you'll make half the players flee the mode in less time than it takes for the devs to nerf Bard to the ground.

You'll need carefully hidden ratings from some form of ELO system where everybody can only see theirs and not anybody else's, unless for example they reach a certain threshold (crystal level) where it becomes readily available for everybody to see, or something in that vein, for example.

You also cannot rate performance on all the metrics shows in the tally alone, else you'll favor immensely certain jobs or roles over others (good luck shining in such a metric based system as a support job like BRD).