When ranked leagues were first introduced, I was really happy about the fact. Having played a lot of Starcraft 2 in the past, I thought it would be a great addition to the game. Unforutnately, it didn’t quite pan out as I had hoped, so here are my suggested season 3 changes, which might even draw in more PC players after the PC port is out.
Ranks should be per character. This has been raised before. I got to gold league with Jago in the past, with just under 50% win ratio, then switched to Cinder and later Thunder and got my arse handed to me over and over and over again in both of those cases. I think this would encourage people to experiment with other characters and be good overall.
The leagues should have sub-leagues or tiers, if you will. You don’t even have to change the current system much, just add a tier every 200 points or so, exemplified by a slightly different icon, star, whatever. This could also allow for an increase in the points pool per league (2000?) to more accurately place players and enable more accurate matchmaking.
Allow demotions, especially if you don’t do go with point number one. Before the ranked leagues were in place, you were allowed to drop in rank after a special “title defense” match so to speak, I’m not sure why this was ever done away with. If there are separate characters it’s not as big of a deal, but it would still be nice to see.
I think that, with the exception of the rank per character concept (which I like, BTW), this sounds exactly like season 1’s ranked system, which was considered unfair and broken. It had sub-ranks (such as noob, button-masher, master, etc.) and allowed for demotions. It was done away with, largely because there was a huge gulf in the middle - there were a lot of “noobs” and a few “killers” and almost nothing in-between. The current system was setup in such a way to fill in that void. Whether it actually worked, however, is an entirely different discussion…
I think you can avoid the gulf if you just properly weigh the various league populations. In Starcraft, the majority of players are - or were, since I last checked a while ago - in the gold league, that is somewhere in the middle. I hear that either LoL or DotA or both have a similar system, but I don’t play those games, so I can’t be sure. Granted, all of these games have massively larger playerbases, but with the PC release, I think the KI playerbase will grow considerably, and allowing for more lague variation (and more accurate matchmaking) will make more players stick around. All that said, if league rankings were made to be per character, I would be completely fine with taking back the third point.
It’s not necesssarily based on league rankings, but we already do have character leveling (1-50). What would be your solution to change/consolidate/remove that if individual character ranks actually became a thing?
No need to remove anything I think. Levels and league rankings can be completely independent; levels can be gained in all modes and grant rewards, leagues are only for ranked play and don’t do anything other than symbolize your MMR in an easy to understand way.
We should ask for a pinned topic where to talk and discuss everything about the ranked system. There are various posts and threads, some of which with good ideas.
I’ve been playing ranked for the first time in a long while on account of Shadow Jago and it really is mind blowing that there haven’t been any changes to the system. The ranked system is generally fine up to Killer but once you hit Killer it’s really, really bad. There needs to be an option to re-qualify, pure and simple.
What I don’t get is what it was repeatedly said that the ranking system was in beta when it released but there hasn’t been a single change to it. I guess I’ll just get my 20 ranked wins for the achievement and not touch the mode again because it’s not worth the frustration when the matchmaking is so awful at Killer.
The new ranked system was pretty much why I stopped playing KI for months and it being completely untouched after this long is just disappointing. I really hope there will be some significant changes once season 3 rolls around.
How so? I’ve never had any problems finding people as a Killer in ranked leagues matchmaking…
The very idea that someone could hit top 32 in Killer rank only to then be able to “requalify” themselves and go back down to the lower ranks as if they’ve never played the game before where they can absolutely trash the competition with what they already know and have learned, AND have more players to fight, AND scare people away from the KI and FG community? NO THANKS! That would truly break the system. Why, for someone who doesn’t want a broken system, would you want that?
That is both true and false. It’s true that if you could requalify whenever, the system would be broken. But look at Starcraft - they got re-qualifying right. There are ladder seasons (once a month? every two months? I forget) and each season you play a qualifier match (the first time around - five matches). Then, based on the result of that match and your previously established MMR, you are placed into a league that fits your skill. Usually the same one you were in before, sometimes a little lower or higher. It’s just not possible to simply lose the qualifier, go to bronze league and destroy noobs. I think that system works very well.
So more along the lines of “this is how much you’ve improved/worsened over the past 10 days (or in your case’s example, a month) that you’ve played” kind of a thing? KI has something like that within the leaderboards - it shows you your last 10 matches’ w/l ratio.
Kind of, but not really. It’s much more complex, the sample of games played can be significantly greater than ten (and therfore the MMR a lot more accurate). Add to this the fact that there are seven leagues in SC instead of four in KI - and you could split them further if need be like Rising Thunder does - and you get a much more robust system that also has league demotions built-in (but only between seasons).
That said, KI might not have the playerbase required for that sort of granularity, but I’m holding out for the PC release to remedy that.
The problem at Killer isn’t the ability to find a match, it’s the quality of the match. Once you hit Killer the match quality takes an absolutely nose dive. The majority of matches I’ve played at Killer have been blowouts either in favor or against myself, something that rarely happened in the old system outside of the rare match where you face someone not even close to your rank. At Killer though, it’s pretty much the norm.
As far as re-qualifying breaking the system, there are ways around that. Whether have set periods in which you can re-qualify or limiting the amount of times you can re-qualify.
Regardless though, the ideas in the original post are much better. Having individual ranks for each character is the absolute best solution but it would require major changes to both the UI and how the matchmaking in the game works so I really don’t see it happening, but it would be a nice solution. Having the ability to be demoted would also be nice although it sort of feels like a band-aid on a bigger problem.
I’m just hopeful for some change come season 3 because the current iteration of leagues just puts me off the game. I can say without a doubt that I much prefer the old ranked system compared to the way Killer tier is right now in ranked leagues.
I disagree with your viewpoint almost entirely (respectfully, of course); and you and I remember S1’s ranked system VERY differently as well as how we view the current system that’s in place. Regarding the current setup, I find that unless I’m fighting a top 32 player, most of my matches are actually rather close, usually within 25% health of the opposing player. Of course, this is going to be different from person to person, respective of each person’s own skill-level and knowledge of the game’s mechanics and general tactics of other players.
That being said, when it came to S1, where I lacked a lot of the knowledge and experience that I currently now possess, I would say that I was matched up with someone tougher probably about 2/3 of the matches altogether (and almost always 10+ ranks or more higher during rank up/down matches, which made it virtually impossible to progress).
I think most people were focusing on the problem of the newbies facing killers straight forward because a requalify of ranks is missing along with a demotion system.
In fact, if you consider that when I played in March (first month with the new rank system) I met different various killers when I was still a bronze, I don’t imagine now.
Another important thing is THE PC FLUX WON’T FIX THE PROBLEM DEFINITIVELY, IT’S JUST A TEMPORARY SOLUTION. In fact, give a month / two if we’re optimistic and we get the same situation there’s now on Xbox One.
It’s true that if you could requalify whenever, the system would be broken. But look at Starcraft - they got re-qualifying right. There are ladder seasons (once a month? every two months? I forget) and each season you play a qualifier match (the first time around - five matches). Then, based on the result of that match and your previously established MMR, you are placed into a league that fits your skill. Usually the same one you were in before, sometimes a little lower or higher. It’s just not possible to simply lose the qualifier, go to bronze league and destroy noobs. I think that system works very well.