I just finished my qualifiers and won 8/10 of my matches…most of them by a massive margin. I was then promptly placed into bronze as a “button masher.” i don’t play ranked much so this was mostly a test of the online for me but it got me curious because 8/10 doesn’t sound like a bronze W/L ratio.
Algorithms
Just say magic. 
Hmm strange. Did you accidentally disconnect? I had the same score but am ranked in the Silver tier.
Na, seriously though, just a guess but it probably has to do with the level of competition you face while qualifying. If you mop the floor with other qualifiers or Bronze level players you probably won’t get ranked above Bronze. Maybe if you beat like 5 Gold ranked players that would bump you up to Silver or Gold. Again, I’m just guessing.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s mostly based on the level of your opponents more than anything. I went 7-3 and was placed into Gold, but I also beat several Killers and Gold players in my run.
I actually only played 3 Bronze players in Qualifiers now that I think about it; the rest were all Killers and Gold. So I think that doing well against that caliber of players made the system go “oh, this guy should be placed higher”.
If that’s the case then the system is more luck based since the level of opponents you fight is random. I fought nothing but bronzes and qualifiers and was forced to climb to killer from the bottom.
Maybe in the future they can add the option to attempt to qualify for specific tiers. Not sure how Gold and Killers would feel about that though. If you fail you go to the lowest tier. Then, if you try to re-qualify that tier wouldn’t be selectable. So, if you failed to qualify for Killers as your choice, then decide to qualify again you couldn’t pick Killers because you already failed it.
Well, I don’t know that this is quite true. I waited a few days until I tried to qualify, and the system generally seemed to do a good job of giving me opponents who were “appropriate” based on how I’d done. My Qualifier road looked something like this:
- Bronze
- Bronze
- Gold
- Killer
- Killer (loss)
- Gold
- Gold (loss)
- Gold (loss)
- Bronze
- Gold
That succession might not be 100% right, but in general it seemed like the system was giving me matches based on how I did in the fights before against members of certain tiers.
The only players I lost to were gold. I got placed in bronze.
I just play ranked for the achievements. I think the ranked system is to jacked up to worry about my stats. Most people fight more out of their rank than in it. I don’t worry about losing to a killer, or high gold, because they are not my rank. Also it depends greatly on time of day. Better players play at night, and are online longer. I also don’t care if I lose to some idiot who uses some bug or issue to win.
I guess I just care more about 100% ing the game each month over my win loss record. 4 achievements left.
If you want to be higher you could always choose to qualify and see if you get placed higher, worse case you get put into bronze again.
Interesting to see. I just made it to silver and my first two matches against silver I won, after that I paired up with G, K, K, G, K, all losses. I guess the system kindly rewarded me for winning those first two matches, lol.
Ouch. That sucks man 
No worries, I am using non mains like Maya and Riptor so it will take me longer anyway.
Since everyone’s been asking, my ladder went as follows:
- Bronze (Win)
- Gold (Win)
- Gold (Win)
- Silver (Win)
- Gold (Win)
- Silver (Win)
- Gold (Lose)
- Silver (Win)
- Gold (Win)
- Gold (Lose)
I’m still not sure why i got placed in Button masher but at this point it’s more of me being curious how it works than wanting to do something about it since i mostly did the ladder for kicks and giggles.
I main Aganos (only manuals) if anyone’s curious about the general playstyle i use.