Rework Ranked Matchmaking to Fast-Track players to Platinum

[Valence]

I've always suggested to merge casual and ranked CC modes together but with big caveats. The reason a lot of players only go for casual is precisely not to have to deal with ranking, pressure, and everything that goes with it. A huge amount of people is competition adverse, and this isn't just a XIV thing, it's also something you'll find in multiplayer competitive games at the core where in reality the majority of the playerbase congregate around co-op modes.

The way I'd merge them is for you to be able to toggle on or off your elo, which wouldn't make it go away, but you wouldn't be able to see it if you didn't want to. You'd also not be ranked into ladder leagues until reaching specific points of elo, and again, if you have your elo turned off, you wouldn't be ranked into those leagues either. The only thing that would remain would be the elo, hidden or not hidden to the appreciation of each player, because the elo would be the prime directive the system would follow to match people together between similar skills. I do feel like it would still fall short of what it tries to achieve since there is just not enough players playing at the same time (just queue for casual and you'll still get the same 8/10 players at most times of the day beyond the peaks), but well. I also feel it would potentially open the door for exploit where ranked people would gather their casual friends and farm them to go up, so there is that too. The more I think about it, the more I think it's not really realistic of an idea.

[Sinstrel]

They just need to get rid of de-rank protection. Because of de-rank protection, players who have luckily streaked out of a tier will never fall back down to fill ques for the lower ranking players no matter how many times they lose. Compounding this is the fact that at the start of the next season, these same players start off at higher ranks which even further deprives the que of players for lower ranks.

[Commander_Justitia]

Do we really need ranked? Is there really a huge skill gap between players that warrants a ranked mode?
Shouldnt casual just get the same matchmaking system like ranked so you can get rid of the separate queue?
Distribute the remaining rewards to casual queue.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Do we really need ranked? Is there really a huge skill gap between players that warrants a ranked mode?
Shouldnt casual just get the same matchmaking system like ranked so you can get rid of the separate queue?
Distribute the remaining rewards to casual queue.

Good points, but I'd rather they do something with the Ranked mode to make it shine rather than remove it and it's gone in the void, never to be seen again - because we know what happens when they remove stuff, rarely does anything ever come back.

*cough* Astragalos.

[Commander_Justitia]

*cough* Astragalos.

[Malganis_L]

I think the ranking pool isnt technicly the issue

low tier ranked is to demotivating for general players starting to dipping there toes into pvp.
if they yoyo 1-2 days without accomplishing any progress (which in Crystal conflict, doesnt even has to be there own fault in those tiers, no real chat function doesnt help getting any useful feedback either),
why would they return for more?

the result is new blood is drying up, which leads to higher que time in low tiers,
which leads to even worse experiance, aka even less new blood.

i would argue low tier has to be less punishing when it comes to the ranking yoyo, and than gradually ramping up the punishment for losses till diamond or platinum
so that new players can have somewhat of a hook that motivates them to aim higher and keep engaging in ranked pvp.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I think the ranking pool isnt technicly the issue

low tier ranked is to demotivating for general players starting to dipping there toes into pvp.
if they yoyo 1-2 days without accomplishing any progress (which in Crystal conflict, doesnt even has to be there own fault in those tiers, no real chat function doesnt help getting any useful feedback either),
why would they return for more?

the result is new blood is drying up, which leads to higher que time in low tiers,
which leads to even worse experiance, aka even less new blood.

i would argue low tier has to be less punishing when it comes to the ranking yoyo, and than gradually ramping up the punishment for losses till diamond or platinum
so that new players can have somewhat of a hook that motivates them to aim higher and keep engaging in ranked pvp.

Technically, you got a point because it sort of was like that in Feast era pvp. Let me explain... during The Feast, we had five skill tiers from Bronze to Diamond, but rather than Stars & Risers, we had rating pretty much starting from Bronze. The breakpoints to get to the next tiers were the following:

Bronze -> Silver: 500
Silver -> Gold: 1000
Gold -> Platinum: 1500
Platinum -> Diamond: 2000

There was no fail-safe demotion protection in between the tiers, but it actually was more lenient on losses so to speak. Generally, a win gave +25 rating and a loss gave -5 / -10 / -15 / -20 / -25 rating depending on your skill tier from Bronze to Diamond. Based on performance, there was also an adjustment on rating gained or lost depending on how well you played, so you could've gained more and lost a bit less if you played a lot better and vice versa if you were the deadweight in your team.

There was also a best-of-5 promotion period once you hit the rating threshold for each skill tier - your current rating could only go 100 higher than the threshold before being hardcapped so you had to win that to progress. Furthermore, if you fell below the threshold I think you had like 3 or 5 games to go back above the threshold without dropping the skill tier you are in.

In a nutshell, with a tier less there was less of a gap and progession within the skill tier was more nuanced rather than greatly affected by luck (win streak didnt really exist like now).

[Malganis_L]

this indeed sounds like a way better system than what they came up with CC ...

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Yeah... we been saying this for a while too, but getting them to change anything for PvP on a larger scale literally mostly just happens on a X.1 patch... pray for 8.1.

[Valence]

If there is one thing I've learned is that SE doesn't backpedal so don't hold your breath to see this model make a come back...

Also I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the little point adjustment we had after games didn't come from in game performance but from what we still have at crystal tier level: if the total rating of your team and the opposite team aren't perfectly balanced, the rewards will adjust a little depending of the gap.