CC Ranked Feels Like An Unfun Joke

[AristocraticCorgi]

Genuine question, no bait, but (how) can a single person carry a team against five (potentially) skilled players? Even if you are good, 1v5 seems unproportionally difficult to me? I'm sure some incredibly good players can do it but I don't think this should lead to the conclusion that those who can't do it/overcome the matchmaking RNG are not good at all in turn. There are many people who may not be exceptional but are still skilled nonetheless.

people who say that are coping and should not be taken seriously, they are literally saying "just carry 3-4 other players bro, it's easy". If your matchmaking is so broken that relies on a player or two carrying 3-4 others, then you know you are in front of a dumpster fire. there simply is no justification for it to be this crappy

[gidsonBrand]

Genuine question, no bait, but (how) can a single person carry a team against five (potentially) skilled players? Even if you are good, 1v5 seems unproportionally difficult to me?

The best way to do it is to view ranked like blackjack. You can make all the right decisions in terms of positioning and burst, steal the right ground pots, bait enemy burst into your guard to give room for your teammates -- after all that, you may come out with a 55% win rate. Which means you can literally do everything right, but you just draw a bad hand. Maybe your team just bursts the wrong target, maybe they die a little too much, maybe you run into someone who is good at forcing mistakes on you and your team.

Push the odds in your favor as much as possible and play enough games to realize your gains with that 55% win rate. And recognize that no single game or streak defines you.

[Mawlzy]

The best way to do it is to view ranked like blackjack. You can make all the right decisions in terms of positioning and burst, steal the right ground pots, bait enemy burst into your guard to give room for your teammates -- after all that, you may come out with a 55% win rate. Which means you can literally do everything right, but you just draw a bad hand. Maybe your team just bursts the wrong target, maybe they die a little too much, maybe you run into someone who is good at forcing mistakes on you and your team.

Push the odds in your favor as much as possible and play enough games to realize your gains with that 55% win rate. And recognize that no single game or streak defines you.

Do we know in detail how matchmaking actually works in CC? Like it would not surprise me if SE took a player with 54% WR and matched them with 4 players of 49% WR to face a team with an average WR of 50%.

Which is a roundabout way of asking if the MMR naturally pushes everyone to a 50% WR?

Edit additional: If the MMR worked effectively, there would be no need for the separation of ranked and casual.

[Garuketo]

Genuine question, no bait, but (how) can a single person carry a team against five (potentially) skilled players?

Some games are just truly lost no matter what you do, but the ranked system basically forces you to go up the ladder until you hit Crystal because you get bonus stars while being on a win streak. This means unless you are going WLWLWLWL, etc. you should be climbing through your bracket if you are playing better than the average player in that bracket, unless you are expecting to climb with a sub 50% win rate. When people get stuck, its not matchmaking, they are exactly where they are supposed to be until they improve at the game.

Also, would you say you can carry on every job? Because personally I have the impression that some jobs lend themselves better for carrying than others. So even if you are good (or even crystal-worthy) on a job that has little carry potential you might be stuck if your team isn't strong?

And if your answer to that would be "just switch to a carry job" then I don't think this is a satisfying solution because first, you could be terrible at "carry" jobs (e.g., I am terrible at AST, but some non-carry jobs feel very natural to me).
And second then your original statement would only be semi-true because it would indeed mean that there are some jobs that can't carry and are much more team-dependant (hence if your team sucks, you'll go down too) if the solution is to not play them.

Some jobs are obviously better to carry on than others–AST, PLD, RDM, SAM, etc.–, but you can still carry on any job, its just harder. BLM is probably imo, one of the worst jobs right now, but people have still climbed to Crystal this season playing exclusively it.

And I'd also like to add that switching to a job for practical reasons would make ranking up purely about...ranking up. And while that is perfectly fine and may be the goal for some people, other people might see little value in it if they have to play many, many matches on a job they don't enjoy. The result/high rank would not justify/balance out the lack of fun the ranking process itself might be under those circumstances.

At the end of the day, ranked is a competitive mode. If you aren't playing the competitive mode to win and still expecting to rank up like the people who are, why are you playing it over casuals? It seems disingenuous to the other people on your team who are.

[Rayn_Vulpes]

If you are winning Diamond/Crystal matches, but generally dropping stars in Plat/Diamond and thats what preventing you from hitting Crystal, then you need to play better because it means you are not playing well enough to carry your plats when you get them. Like some people are not good, but the reason why you–and other people–get stuck in ranked is not because of matchmaking. Its generally a lack of fundamentals, consistent poor decision making, or a lack of knowledge of how to play their job.

If this were a game like league where you as an individual can make an impact through your own lane skill, splitting, or understanding how to apply pressure & focus objectives I'd be inclined to agree. The game provides ways to make & open opportunities that don't have to involve direct engagement with the enemy.

However CC is designed around a single point objective that it seems all too often players at a lower level ignore. Sure I can spend a game harassing the enemy backline and essentially be a 2v1 distraction to make controlling the crystal less oppressive but if they wont stand on it wtf am I to do? I can stand on it as SAM but that's just a good way to get bullied by enemy casters as my team stands around slack jawed ignoring the current roster of back line menaces. Solo kills aside from SAM & NIN LBs don't really happen all too frequently unless someone is truly incompetent. Even unskilled players realize they can mash purify, elixir & run in circles near indefinitely if not grouped on. There's zero wonder ninja is oppressive when it's the only job that can actually secure kills at a higher level of play. This especially nonsensical with the state of AST & WHM being full hp without needing to touch mana when attacked, so coordinated focus is mandatory to remove enemies. Even further amplified by the fact that PLD allows characters to stand in the direct middle of a fight and fully recover dragging out painful overtimes.

CC is far too often a boring numbers game where if you have the weak link or wrong jobs you dont have the numbers to make anything happen.

Sure there are a few jobs that can have high impact moments through their LBs but they still require a level of coordination from a team that all too often I fail to see outside of crystal.

[Garuketo]

If this were a game like league where you as an individual can make an impact through your own lane skill, splitting, or understanding how to apply pressure & focus objectives I'd be inclined to agree. However CC is designed around a single point objective that it seems all too often players at a lower level ignore & killing an enemy requires more than 2 of your teammates to be narrowed in with you. There's zero wonder ninja is oppressive when it's the only job that can actually secure kills after a certain level of play. Sure there are a few jobs that can have high impact moments through their LBs but welcome to CC ranked where it's a mirror reflection on both teams of the meta & the team that has the weakest link loses because crystal control is often a numbers game.

I mean CC is kinda a Mario Party mode, but at the end of the day, the very good players climb each season pretty fast, and the not very good players get stuck. Until you are at the top spots of the leaderboard and you're losing games because you have a few thousand Crystal credits and matchmaking is giving you Diamond 5s on your team vs multiple other people in the current t30, matchmaking is not playing against you and is actively trying to push you up to Crystal. Just keep practicing and learning from your mistakes each game and you'll improve over time.

Like there are exceptions to this where you truly just lose to team rng, but if you get stuck in a tier lower than Crystal for probably around 15+ games, its not the game's fault you are there. I don't know how else to say this lol.

[Rayn_Vulpes]

I mean CC is kinda a Mario Party mode, but at the end of the day, the very good players climb each season pretty fast, and the not very good players get stuck. Until you are at the top spots of the leaderboard and you're losing games because you have a few thousand Crystal credits and matchmaking is giving you Diamond 5s on your team vs multiple other people in the current t30, matchmaking is not playing against you and is actively trying to push you up to Crystal. Just keep practicing and learning from your mistakes each game and you'll improve over time.

Like there are exceptions to this where you truly just lose to team rng, but if you get stuck in a tier lower than Crystal for probably around 15+ games, its not the game's fault you are there. I don't know how else to say this lol.

All you've explained is that you have no comprehension of what makes CC an RNG shit show. If I didn't have fundamentals capable of climbing I wouldn't have been competing and winning versus the highest ranked players followed by then having back to back games thrown due to the same plat player being on my team for 5 games in a row.

The statistical odds of that same player on my team back to back that many times & not flipping sides is a weird anomaly I've seen repeat if not engineered somehow. I could make a list of names of what players going into a game I can expect to see at the bottom I've played them so often. If I can predict the outcome of a match before it begins due to the players in it. This game has a major issue balancing the sides & actually weeding out players that shouldn't be where they are. The predictions are never made based on who I know to be a good player, they're decided by who I've seen frequently the worst.

Once in crystal matches are far better skill matchups. When the lower ranks are involved the game is not designed to allow for carries when you have bottom feeders.

Just played 6 matches. The same bard was in all of those games. I won 2 & lost 4. The bard was on my team 4 of those games and you can probably piece together which.

[Loggos]

At the end of the day, ranked is a competitive mode. If you aren't playing the competitive mode to win and still expecting to rank up like the people who are, why are you playing it over casuals? It seems disingenuous to the other people on your team who are.

Er, no, it's disingenious to twist my words into "why aren't you playing to win". That's not what I said at all, but hey.

I said, some people don't just want the end result (high rank), some people also want the ranking itself, the journey through the tiers, to be fun. This inherently means they want to rank. They want to play competitive. Some people have fun on that journey no matter what job they play.
And for some people certain jobs are (vastly) more fun than others. Consequently playing ranked on a job they don't like defeats the purpose, but not because they don't want to win, but because getting to win on a job they like is an integral part of the quality the path to winning has for them personally.

As frustrating as losing is, when I get to win on my fav job it feels infinitly more fun and meaningful than wins on a job I have no attachment to. You can be 100% serious about winning but also acknowledge conditional factors that change the personal meaning a win has for you. I love to win but how I win is an important part of the experience for me.

The best way to do it is to view ranked like blackjack. You can make all the right decisions in terms of positioning and burst, steal the right ground pots, bait enemy burst into your guard to give room for your teammates -- after all that, you may come out with a 55% win rate. Which means you can literally do everything right, but you just draw a bad hand. Maybe your team just bursts the wrong target, maybe they die a little too much, maybe you run into someone who is good at forcing mistakes on you and your team.

Push the odds in your favor as much as possible and play enough games to realize your gains with that 55% win rate. And recognize that no single game or streak defines you.

Thank you for the input! This is a good way to put it imo and something very helpful to work with for me. I'll keep on strengthening that mindset.
It makes sense that you can influence your win rate by bringing your best game but you can't control your entire circumstances and if the negative factors outside of your control outbalance the positive factors you bring to the match then it is what it is.


(I noticed this when I ranked up with an alt. There were ranks I climbed through relatively fast on my main but that took me longer on my alt. I was playing the same job so my skills should have been the same. I eventually made it out so I guess in the long run I could persistently shift the odds in my favour but the "hands" I drew when playing my alt tended to be worse than when I ranked on main.)

[gidsonBrand]

but you can't control your entire circumstances and if the negative factors outside of your control outbalance the positive factors you bring to the match then it is what it is.

This is why I'm such an advocate of custom games/tournaments. If you can choose your own teammates and practice with them, it feels like those factors ARE in your control and your victories are more earned.

And yeah ranked is more about the journey and the grind rather than the destination. It's why I started queueing random jobs in plat, just to get experience on them and have a bit of fun.
Which if I did that in League I'd be throwing, so I'll get my fun in here while I can lol

[Valence]

Do we know in detail how matchmaking actually works in CC? Like it would not surprise me if SE took a player with 54% WR and matched them with 4 players of 49% WR to face a team with an average WR of 50%.

Which is a roundabout way of asking if the MMR naturally pushes everyone to a 50% WR?

Edit additional: If the MMR worked effectively, there would be no need for the separation of ranked and casual.

I somehow doubt that they do this. The system for sure tries to somewhat balance out melees and ranged between both teams, although it does a somewhat sloppy job of it (just play hybrid jobs like RDM/DNC and you'll see what I mean).

But I've had way enough games where either:
1) The comp is garbage and the opposing comp is meta (but I guess the system cannot fix what the balance team should fix on their end)
2) The players on one team are all nobodies facing a team stacked full of CCRC rankers or top crystal ratings