Killer Instinct’s ranking system is some how how worse than Street Fighter 4. That’s pretty awful. I think the team that works on the ranking system needs to make better matchmaking in rank. When I was in the bronze I got people who were killers, masters, some silvers, but mostly killers and gold tiers. It made me angry so much I don’t even want to go to rank anymore. I believe the ranking system needs some serious fixing when it comes to matching up players with similar ranks.
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I can’t say with any certainty but I think the system is setup to attempt to match you with someone close to your rank. The more time that goes by the wider the search parameters. Would you rather be waiting 20 minutes between every match, or fight a Killer?
I’ve been stuck in Gold for quite a while now also. If you want to be a Killer, level up your game. And the best way to do that is honestly fighting more Killers.
Yeah, there might not be anyone left in bronze. I know the game is supposed to check for your level first, then expand to the next if it doesn’t find anyone (then it continues until a match is made).
If you are stuck in Bronze right now, might want to wait for the PC crowd to join in while you play other modes. A lot more players will fill the tiers that way.
The bottom line is there is no rank system imaginable that can make up for a lack of players. I’m a Killer and I only get matched up against Killers - who are normally way better than me. It’s very rare for me to fight someone outside of the Killer league. This tells me that most of the people playing ranked are Killers. That’s not surprising.
I’m completely sympathetic to people who are tired of getting overmatched online. Unfortunately, besides growing the community there really isn’t anyway to deal with that, other than trying to actively find and recruit friends of a similar skill level and then play against them in exhibition. Good luck.
Same here…i feel i cant get out of Gold due to 78% of my matches are against Killers, Pro killers at that. I did a study on it last week. 5 nights in a row. 25 matches each night.
Average of 18 killers, and the other 7 were Qualify, bronze and Gold… rarely a silver
I have also tried this same test with Exhibition. Not a problem at all to find a Gold match. Easy easy.
So that tells me, all the killers play ranked and everyone else is tired of ranked because they keep getting matched against killers and getting there teeth kicked in. Therefore they head to Exhibition.
Owell
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Smaller player base and a lot of people have made it to Killer already since ranks don’t reset.
Best approach is to play exhibition and filter to just gold or lower. Or add players you know and play long sets. I’m open to play as I try to work on my Aganos rank but I’m also a “Killer”.
It’s funny, the new ranked system with best 2/3 for killers was really fun for a while. But predictably, the more casual (literally, not in the demeaning sense) players abandon ranked matches and the hardcore remain. So eventually it becomes an inhospitable environment to people trying to improve their game. It’s the same in almost every online fighting game.
The good news is, there are still lots of people playing in exhibition. Probably helped by Rash, but just because of the nature of the game.
I was killer before my rank reset with the update and I will say this time it was the toughest to get to killer. I finally make it to promotion and it sticks me to @kholaski’ probably the best ki player in Canada. So I will say yes, it is definitely tougher to get into killer now.
I will agree with previous posters is stick with exhibition. Personally its far better. Rank label means nothing as I was dropped to gold and supreme victory-ing killers. So when using exhibition you can drop out if the matchup is too tilted. And the best part is if you get matched with someone who is close in skill. You can play that opponent again and again insteadnof just once. Also, you will tend to learn faster in exhibition when you replay an opponent vs just one match.
Get into exhibition and thrive. 
Rank is rank! It should be Corner Instinct because that’s where the best players keep me and absolutely destroy me. And the Killer title is perfect because they’ve killed any desire for me to continue playing ranked. i have the same problem, im a qualifier and button masher who fights killers untouchables and masters. Hard to get good when you’re demolished by such skill. I still love this game though. I really do.
If you want to up your skill so as to better compete there are a few things you can do that might help. One thing I used to do when a new character came out was grind in survival…start out on the easiest setting and keep at it until you can get up to like 25/26 wins. That in & of itself should get you an adequate enough skill base to get up to at least a high silver rank. No promises though, your mileage may vary. It did for me though.
A lot of what was said a year ago though has changed so much, KI seems to have new players coming in it seems like the game is fairly alive and well. Plus with Shadow Lords adding in player shadows you can easily get some variation from the standard AI, but all in all the more you play, the better you’ll get. Just make sure you’re learning from your mistakes.
That doesn’t make any sense. How can 100% of players be in the top 10% or whatever it is of players?
lmao I’m lucky if I can take one health bar off an enemy