Why is it so difficult Ranking up from Bronze to Crystal

[ShirakoTheFirst]

Here we go again, I know people are going to come out of the woodwork on this one, but I will say it.

Why is it so difficult ranking up from bronze, I've been playing ranked for the past week trying to level up to just bronze 2.

I've put in maybe 80-90 of my matches of my total Conflict pvp of around 200. Never once saw anything past bronze 3 in recent months. It's literally impossible for people. Considering there's ranks beyond Crystal. That's what should be tracked. For every one or two matches I win, I'll lose like 4 in a row. I'll do moderately okay in a match, maybe get a kill or two from the back, but the only thing that matters is winning. It doesn't reward time or effort put in. You could play 1000 matches in a single season, but if half of those are strategic losses, you're not getting to crystal, let alone gold or platinum; and considering the random nature of matchmaking and the lack of communication in it, a random solo player will be turned off completely from even trying.

[ShirakoTheFirst]

Here's a solution, considering you get virtually nothing if you don't hit crystal.

Wins are what level your ranks up to Crystal. Past crystal, that's when the competitive nature comes out, and the leader board takes front and center with consistent repetitive wins.

For the minutiae, keep the levels and stars the same, so to level from bronze to silver, you still need to progress the various B3/2/1 etc. But the stars dont decrease on a loss. To earn a full star, lets say 3 wins a star, so thats 10 wins for an individual level with the rank up to the next level win, an 32 wins to go from no rank to Silver. And if you have no rank, just starting its 1 win a star to progress to bronze 3, so four wins for rank B3.

So when you hit gold and platinum it takes another level so you'd need like 40 or so wins for each of those, and diamond you have 5 levels so you'd need like 50 or so wins to hit crystal.

To keep the competitive nature, of pvp and if you play in crystal or above, you fall back to the crystal rating for next season, to get a boost into the competitive scene. if you hit a rank below crystal, you keep the rank, but restart at the lowest tier. So if you hit silver 2, you restart at silver 3. If you don't gain a rank to the next tier in a season you reset to the lowest tier ofnyour rating, you go back to the previous tier.

So example, you get to gold 3 in one season, you get reset to gold 4 in the next, but only play 5 ranked matches, not going back up to gold 3, you get sent down to silver 3 in the next season. And same for the other rating below crystal. To keep crystal, if you've hit crystal in one season, you keep it for the next season, but if you fail to rank up past that and don't reach omega in the next season, you go back down to diamond 5.

This kind of system probaly lengthens out leveling a players rating, but makes it friendlier and more inviting. They're still working just as hard as anyone else, but the progession is no longer dictated by sheer dumb luck of who your teammates are. As well as considering you can have multiple characters and play in different tiers, so you could have a team of players who succeed regularly in omega or ultima level matches, playing on different characters in bronze and silver level ratings. Completely ruining other peoples progress. Where's the fairness in that?

So again, from Bronze to Crystal, per tier, you have 3 stars, each star needs 3 wins, and then a winning match to rank up, so 10 wins per tier. And I'll even back track on lossimg some progress, if you don't win a rank up match, say you're at bronze 1 with three complete stars, if you loss the rank up match, you lose the third star completely, so you need at least 4 more wins. If you lose a rank up match from tiersnin the same rating, ie B3 to B2, you lose a single third of your star. So you need at least 2 more wins.

[SpritePR]

You might be at your appropriate rank still if you can't climb higher solo. I climbed last season on two different characters from unranked to crystal and my wins were 57 and 60 respectively (so around same winrate). What jobs are you playing? I feel like DPS jobs are typically more impactful at lower ranks then you can swap around depending on what rank you are. If you are truly a higher ranked player climbing should not be that difficult until you start hitting the higher ranks.

I would say try some more meta jobs like PCT/SCH/DRK since they are extremely strong currently and might offer you an advantage over a team not having said jobs.

[Valence]

Is your solution to put everybody that just plays the mode into crystal? You know that the reason lower ranks stop popping after a while is at least partially because half of the players have climbed up since there is no deranking below platinum? What do you think is going to happen if there is no deranking below crystal?

On top of it, you'll generate massive skill discrepancies in crystal games if you put literally everybody that can just play the game a certain amount of times to get there. Skill gaps are colossal in diam-omega games without this and it generates an insane amount of toxicity already.

[Draxian]

Progressing is hard if you're not particularly skilled or have a run of poor luck, but that's the nature of the game. One thing I do agree with is that it's silly to have no rewards at all below Diamond. The way to fix that isn't pushing everyone into crystal though. As another person pointed out, that would just make games a mess. What's needed is something to keep people at low-mid skill levels engaged with the content.

IMO the answer to the reward problem is to increase the number of tiers on the series reward track and add a couple of commendation crystals to those higher tiers. It currently takes roughly 10-12 hours to reach rank 25 for the main series reward and another 3 hours or so to reach 30. Increase it to 50 and have it take 4x as long to reach that point with a single commendation crystal at 40 & 50 and you'll give people a reason to continue playing even if their climb isn't going well. It would take too long for people to get it through daily FL, so they'd have to queue. If people are going to play 50 matches of CC anyway then they're likely to choose ranked to kill two birds with one stone. Boom, active queues at low-mid ranks throughout the season with no reason for any persistent player to be salty about having a couple dozen hours rewarded with absolutely nothing. It also doesn't undermine the nature of ranked rewards. People who are good can earn a full set of rerun glams in a single season. People who need to run the extended series would need 9 months to buy a single piece of gear.

[NightOwl35]

Why is it so difficult ranking up from bronze, I've been playing ranked for the past week trying to level up to just bronze 2.

This might just be a you thing as it's not that hard to rank up in PVP at all. As someone who usually ends up at least Diamond/Crystal most seasons, I started this season in Bronze because of taking a break for a few seasons and in 3 days with only 70ish games I'm already back into Platinum and more skilled players could easily do that faster.

It really comes down to time/effort/experience and there are communities out there that can help you with learning from where you're going wrong.

Often times in the low rank games I've seen it mostly came down to people playing too aggressive and not knowing when to back out to heal or people running into a 1v5 scenario and dying on repeat. Sure you can get strings of bad luck but if you are skilled enough to play in Crystal or higher ranks you'll get out of the low ranks fairly quickly. Not everyone has that skill to play at that rank, just like not everyone has the skill to go into savage, and that's ok. They just need to find the time or resources to get them to that point if they so wish.

Here's a solution, considering you get virtually nothing if you don't hit crystal.
So example, you get to gold 3 in one season, you get reset to gold 4 in the next, but only play 5 ranked matches, not going back up to gold 3, you get sent down to silver 3 in the next season. And same for the other rating below crystal. To keep crystal, if you've hit crystal in one season, you keep it for the next season, but if you fail to rank up past that and don't reach omega in the next season, you go back down to diamond 5.

Can almost guarantee this would kill ranked queues for low ranks. In fact I'm pretty sure it USED to work this way for a time, though I might be mistaken.

What's really needed is a reason for people to get into PVP. Right now, if you don't hit at least Diamond all you get is framer portraits for that season and trophy crystals which with how series passes work you'll almost always end up capped on them if you play enough. I don't personally know what would incentivize more people to get into ranked or PVP in general but they need something to bring in more people. As it is now, most people end up funneling to Platinum and then the lower queues tend to die until the last week or so of a season.