Rework Ranked Matchmaking to Fast-Track players to Platinum

[Commander_Justitia]

*cough* Astragalos.

[HojoMeiwah]

Queue times are an issue for sure, but by making Platinum actually queue with Bronze, Silver and Gold, it will just remove the point of actually having those skill tiers in the first place + you will have Platinum players that may hover between Platinum and Diamond, they will absolutely CRUSH whatever players you have in Bronze and Silver. This is a terrible user experience to go into and defeats the point of having low skill tiers.

The problem with ranked is that there is simply no reason to keep playing if you can't reach Platinum, obviously. But the way to address this is by making players organically interact with Ranked by giving them a reason to keep playing and rewarding them with specified Ranked Currency for winning at all ranks. Metal tiers also have terrible end-of-season rewards in general and even in gem tiers, Augmented Hellhound weapons are really not something greatly sought after, most of them look unfitting/ugly for the average player.

Your suggestion will allow for more queues, but it is just a band-aid on a gaping wound, not a cure - if you don't make time investment into Ranked appealing, you will always have low participation AND poor player retention (i.e. stops playing after 1-3 weeks), which is what the ACTUAL issue is.

Better rewards is an easy and good solution, but we've had a ton of threads begging for things like a crystal shop that lets us buy old Top 100 gear or old Crystal Pass sets. It's basically low hanging fruit at this point.
Instead, I suggest an easy to apply solution that requires little effort to actually apply, and makes queues more viable for lower ranked players.

Metal tiers are basically the same skill level, with little variance between them. You're more likely to get hardstuck due to a lack of games popping than you are actually by you being tested by higher ranked players. There IS no point to low skill tiers now, because the only pops in Gold or below are artificial events propped up by PvP communities. Low ranks are already fighting Crystals in both unranked and low-tier ranked during planned queue syncs.

Besides, that player experience is already rough in another place. Starting at Diamond 5, you unironically just get Top 100 players in your games non-stop. The gulf of skill there is so massive, that I find the difference between a perpetual plat 4 and a fresh bronze kind of laughable. I think these players would prefer to have the chance to play at all, rather then wait 45 minutes for a wash that already is 50% alts.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Better rewards is an easy and good solution, but we've had a ton of threads begging for things like a crystal shop that lets us buy old Top 100 gear or old Crystal Pass sets. It's basically low hanging fruit at this point.
Instead, I suggest an easy to apply solution that requires little effort to actually apply, and makes queues more viable for lower ranked players.

Metal tiers are basically the same skill level, with little variance between them. You're more likely to get hardstuck due to a lack of games popping than you are actually by you being tested by higher ranked players. There IS no point to low skill tiers now, because the only pops in Gold or below are artificial events propped up by PvP communities. Low ranks are already fighting Crystals in both unranked and low-tier ranked during planned queue syncs.

Besides, that player experience is already rough in another place. Starting at Diamond 5, you unironically just get Top 100 players in your games non-stop. The gulf of skill there is so massive, that I find the difference between a perpetual plat 4 and a fresh bronze kind of laughable. I think these players would prefer to have the chance to play at all, rather then wait 45 minutes for a wash that already is 50% alts.

As much as I understand your point, I don't want them to implement this band-aid for the simple reason that the moment they apply this band-aid, they basically see the problem as fixed and will do absolutely nothing else about it. I enjoy Ranked as much as the next person in there, but I am more concerned with long-term solutions and not short-term bandaids that will only treat the symptom, not the root of the problem.

[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.

[HojoMeiwah]

As much as I understand your point, I don't want them to implement this band-aid for the simple reason that the moment they apply this band-aid, they basically see the problem as fixed and will do absolutely nothing else about it. I enjoy Ranked as much as the next person in there, but I am more concerned with long-term solutions and not short-term bandaids that will only treat the symptom, not the root of the problem.

This is fair. PvP really isn't a big concern for ff14 unfortunately. It's been a rough first season for me, and I've been coming to terms with spending such a long amount of time on the climb up... for a game mode that honestly isn't that good. I made it to crystal at least, but I still see the low ranks dry up totally!.. It's kind of a bummer.

[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.