Ive been playing some other games with ranking systems recently, and they make it very clear that ranked isn’t just for skill tracking, it’s also to group players together in a balanced way where the competition is always even.
KI’s ranking system makes no attempt to do this. I spend the entire day going back and forth between 2 types of matches:
I get matched with Gold rank or lower, usually someone who doesnt do anything but jump HP, get two quick ULTIMATES, almost no reward for the win, and move on.
I get matched with someone who is so good, they make ME look like all i do is jump HP, They get two quick ULTIMATES, and i lose 50 Points.
I get a DECENT game about 30-40% of the time, and then almost never find them again. Why am i not getting matched with THEM as much as i am other people? I get more Qualifiers and Bronze players than a i get balanced matches.
This is not fun, and something should be done. If more tiers in ranked cant be made, and the system cant more heavily prioritize same-rank matches, then AT LEAST add in options to override search requirements. (For example, Search connection more heavily, or search rank more heavily, or opt to WAIT longer until a better match is found.)
Im really tired of thoughtless, 1-sided games.
EDIT: My NEXT MATCH after this post was a game VS a silver rank player, which i won with NOTHING but jumping HP. No blocking, no breaking, nothing else. This is unacceptable.
Thank you. I’ve been stuck in gold teir for a while, I can’t get past master. I’ll get a handful of wins but then by sheer chance I’ll inevitably get paired with someone I wouldn’t have a shot in Hades of beating. My most recent embarrassment I was paired with a 10 star killer teir. A low level gold vs a 10 star killer teir. It’s right about here where I’d go on an expletive marathon, a 10 star? Freaking seriously?
Agree with everything you said. KI’s ranking system just really makes no sense to me. Ranked to me in any game means you should be playing people roughly your same level to see who comes out on top statistically and then work your way up. It doesn’t seem like KI’s ranked system encourages this at all. First of all the fact that you can’t go down in rank means an artificial limitation on where you should be placed at. If you’re at Gold, for example, but you’re not “truly” gold, you should be subjected to ranking down. This is not necessarily a BAD thing. That means maybe you bit off a tiny bit more than you can chew. You rank down a little and you find players closer to your skill level and see if you can go back up in Gold (and staying there). But not ranking down means you can get in over your head. It can be instructive to fight tougher players, yes, but this isn’t always fun or fair.
So what do you do then? You requalify. The requalify thing makes this all weird because now you have these great players who requalify and are absolutely NOT what their rank claims to be, whether intentionally or not. When I was fighting through Gold to get to Killer I faced off against other “Golds” that absolutely mopped the floor with me.
All in all, in a few ways you are not ranked what you actually are skill-wise. So throw on top of this the fact that the matchmaking system likes to match you up with “absolutely anyone” and this just gets bizarre. You have people whose ranks don’t truly represent them… and on top of that you’re getting thrown ranks all across the spectrum. It’s just Wild West out here.
In my march to Killer I kept a detailed record of every single Gold match I did. I had 38 Killers, 41 Golds, and 27 Silvers/Bronze/Qualifiers. 16 of those matches were against Killers (and some Golds-Who-Aren’t-Really-Golds) who absolutely completely wiped the floor with me and I had no chance. All in all not what I expect from ranked matchmaking.
I haven’t been on Ranked in long enough to give a properly educated opinion, but there is one thing I do stand firm on:
It would sure be cool to have an extra rank in between Gold and Killer. Preferably Diamond, since a cyan would be much more distinguishable from Silver than Platinum would be.
Reason being that I tend to stay around High Gold status (I’ve been Supreme for a few months now, and the last few times I went for Requalification it stuck me right back in Gold, so I think I’ll stay), never quite dropping and never quite having the energy to make it into Killer like I did in Season 2. And when I fight other Gold players, I tend to do very well, while nearly any Killer I play gives me a very rough time. Having an extra spot inbetween would be a good way to represent players of Above Average (but not quite great) skill.
We already asked for this a lot but the devs don’t seems to give a ■■■■. Is it so hard to put a filter in ranked like this?
Player Rank / Opponent Rank
Qualifiers - Qualifiers or Bronze
Bronze - Bronze or Silver
Silver - Silver or Gold
Gold - Gold or Killer
Killer - Killer or Stars
Stars - Stars only
I understand that this can make the matchmaking search takes longer but I prefer quallity matches over cheap matches.
I always like to remind people what happened when they tried implementing a system that only paired you with people near your rank and never expanded the search:
if I only played people my own rank, how would I learn to beat people like trymyai? or charlieboy or swordsman? never being challenged and to some extent overwhelmed, Dosent promote learning or breaking bad habits. playing your own rank really just reinforces bad execution and Dosent prepare people against a more read heavy opponent.
you guys might get frustrated but I have to styles one is somewhat reckless and the other is…OMG it’s nightslash playing aganos! which the ladder is more thought provoking and cautious.
these suggestions aren’t a good idea but to have another rank in between killer and gold? I would still get paired against so why have another layer to the cake? the only difference would be like…“oh this player is really good”. but that’s all it’s good for. not good enough for stars but better than average killers, is all the info you get to better help read your opponent.
You mean longer then they already are? In SL MP while I wait to be matched with someone, I have enough time to: check my email, check my Twitter, visit the ki forum, play with my son , get a snack, take a dump, do homework, schedule my NCLEX, call the DMV, and take a shower. Granted rank league doesn’t take that long, but what it does is pair me (a low level gold) with a 10 star killer teir, holy ****. I might as well not even pick up the remote, I just have to sit there and take it. Can we at least get a with drawl button so I can get out of a fight with a freaking 10 star and not loose any points?
That is clearly broken. It’s not a good argument saying that video is evidence that stricter searches cause people to not be able to find matches. Is anyone really supposed to believe that there was NO ONE online of his skill level at that time? It was just a bug in the system.
EDIT: Let me re-phrase…
when i say “skill level”, i meant “level of skill that would cause an interesting match”. Narrowing the search to TWO ranks difference was ridiculous. But today, there are 4 “tiers”, narrowing in as close to those tiers as possible would NOT cause the same effect.
what system would we use to determine what’s going to be an interesting match? players who use manuals consistently? then that would most likely yield the same matchmaking perimeters we have now. right???
I noticed there seems to be more Gold-tier players in ranked on the weekends. In a run through gold last weekend, I fought something like 1 Killer, 8 Golds in a row, 2 more Killers, then 3 more Golds.
Seems like the matchmaking is trying to match close to one’s rank, but outside of the weekend there’s probably a lack of Gold-tier players available, causing those lopsided match-ups.
Divide the Killer tier further, then more heavily search for same tier players. I think Killer tier is currently holding 50% of players. To match the top 50% with each other is ridiculous. Could you imagine that in CSGO? Halo? COD? Any other game at all?
Divide killer into 3 tiers, then maybe only search for 1 tier difference.
I do believe that a great system is to add “Platinum” rank between Killer and Gold. There is to much of a gap between the skill of Killer rank players. I have been playing Killer Instinct for a long time, and when they eventually implemented this ranking system there was a little rush when you fought another Killer rank player. Nowadays, I can play a match with Storm and his amazing Hisako, turn around and play a match against someone who Windkick’s on wakeup when I have bugs on top of them, or when I have already blocked it 15 times earlier in the set.
Just blows my mind that the ranked system hasn’t changed yet, which means they must have a reason to keep it this way.
Again, adding another rank between Gold Rank and Killer Rank could be a possible solution to this problem.
0. Qualifier
