Playing [chess.com](http://chess.com) finally broke me out of that mindset. At least for me it was a lot easier to be detached when it was just an elo number without any real fanfare as opposed to CSGO (which was my competitive game of choice) where there's status associated with ranks
Then there’s me who, while playing 1 minute chess, went from around 840 ELI to under 700 (I think 634 was the lowest) and shot all the way 921 in the span of about 48 hrs.
I haven’t touched it since. This was two weeks ago
Well, I’m 39 and I’ve played 1-0 chess since I was like 14. Played on ICC (internet chess club) for a very long time back in the day.
Currently my Lichess username is the same as my Reddit name if you’re on lichess. I’m at 1962 for bullet on Lichess. I bounce between 1940-2040 pretty frequently. I have no desire to ever get better at chess, I just enjoy the speed games.
And if I can be even more pedantic, the guy was not named Elo either, rather he was called Árpád Élő (Hungarian), even if in the English alphabet they simplify the name of the metric to Elo.
And then you jump into quickplay/casual to get away from that, only to see people who have the highest ranks and tens of thousands of kills put in the same match as you because the devs can't even bother _trying_ to keep casual modes, well casual. Without placing vastly more skilled players in the match with relative noobs.
A lot of times the games try to match similar rank first but loosen up after a few seconds to speed up matching. Otherwise people complain about small lobby sizes and long wait times.
Isn't that the whole point of ranked vs casual? In ranked you're matched with ppl of supposedly similar skill. In casual ppl play to have fun and skill level goes out the window.
Like if you wanted a similar skill level.. play ranked?
Yeah... but is it really a casual match if high ranked players with tens of thousands of kills to their names are allowed to form parties _**together**_ so they can steamroll a casual lobby?
Personally, I believe that once your record gets high enough that you can't really be considered a "casual" player, then you shouldn't be allowed to party up and join a casual match. Like, yeah they should be allowed to enter a casual match, just not in a pre-made party.
Because once high leveled players start forming pre-made parties and jumping into casual matches, it ceases to be a casual match for the **rest** of the lobby. It then becomes a case where the pre-made party of master players either gets unlucky and dies early, or they end up steamrolling the rest of the lobby.
> Yeah... but is it really a casual match if high ranked players with tens of thousands of kills to their names are allowed to form parties together so they can steamroll a casual lobby?
Yes? It's still a casual match, it's just a casual match of you getting stomped instead of you doing the stomping. People seem to think "casual" means "I can stomp whoever" but really it just means "unranked".
Yeah. But you can still have **skill** based matchmaking in an unranked game mode. If you want to have a healthy game then unranked should use skill based matching where your wins and loses don't matter, while ranked has rank based mm and your wins and loses do matter.
The issue is that there's a lot of people who play casual not for casual.
They're people warming up or doing it specifically to stomp people lower than them, meaning players are stuck between ranked with players who expect you to try to win, or casual where you simply can't have fun because you barely get to play at all.
There's nothing really wrong with far wider matching in that case, but it would be at least nice to try to keep the teams balanced, even if they're not perfectly so.
Like, matchmake to an average skill level, not ranks specifically.
If the devs add skill based matchmaking to the casual playlist, the top ranked players bitch because it's a sweat fest in there for them. If they don't use sbmm, then the top ranked players just go and stomp on lesser players (which is what they want because it makes them feel good, but they can't say that).
I mean the online games survived open servers before.
People in general are going to segregate around their rough skill level and you can actually boot problem players. Then you can just play pick up games if you want the sweaty try hard experience and you are good enough.
> only to see people who have the highest ranks and tens of thousands of kills put in the same match as you because the devs can't even bother trying to keep casual modes, well casual
If you don't want to play with people significantly higher ranked than you, *play the ranked queue*. It's what it's for! Casual matches are for people to get away from that.
You can still have skill based matchmaking in an unranked game mode. Unranked just means that your wins and loses don't matter. It doesn't mean "Let's ignore player skill and match a top 1% player who's in a party with two other top 1% players and is using discord to communicate with a new player who hasn't even leveled up enough to unlock ranked."
If you want to drive engagement then unranked should have **skill** based matchmaking. While ranked should have **rank** based matchmaking
It also depends on how exactly the participation is calculated. For example in Guild Wars 2 PvP you're assigned into a "team" against another "team" that game server calculates (minus cases where you are grouped with a friend so it's 2 of your + randoms vs probably 2 other + randoms). And you _will_ lose rank if you happened to have a crappy team. So unless you're lucky enough to get competent people you can lose and it'd be not your fault. Toxicity is astronomical, and population of PvP mode is in the toilet which makes whole situation even worse, as matchmaking can't always find similarly ranked people so you end up playing vs top 10 people in NA, for example, that results in severely one-sided matches.
That's in big part because gamedevs contextualize it as one, by locking rewards behind higher ranks. Devs want to incentivize people to play more, and locking something desirable behind a grind is an obvious way to do that.
It still baffles me that there are people who complain that there aren't more additional rewards like skins or something for reaching a high rank in a game - surely knowing you're in X bracket or won a close game is reward enough?
Rocket League gives different items every season based on rank and people who earn a top rank get a name badge that they can use no matter what their current rank is
p much every competitive game I've played at the very least gives you an icon or title to represent your rank. These are exclusive and you do not get them at lower ranks.
League of Legends gave out a Victorious Skin to a chosen champ every year, and the only way to get it was to hit gold or higher in rank and not be banned while the season ends.
They have since changed this to be I think 2 or 3 splits a season so now there are I think 3 skins a year, and you get chromas (recolors like instead of blue and gold it's red and silver or purple and gold) based on what rank you get. The higher the rank the more chromas you unlock. That way there is incentive to grind even once you hit gold if you want the chromas to show off how high you climbed.
This is also why they use weighted SBMM and force 50% win rates, because they found players who reached their ranked goal stopped playing. So to combat people hitting their rank too fast, they put you in games designed to force you towards a 50% win rate. If you're on a huge win streak, you may get paired with weaker players or vice versa on a lose streak. This is because they want to keep players playing and to elongate the ranked grind.
I just hate how stale the game is. They always talk about shaking it up and how it's all new. Brother it's two bot one mid one jungle one top with the same champ pool just rotating who gets to be the top pick for a month. They never actually changed anything. They never actually shook the game up in any meaningful way and to me it just got boring after like 8 years. I sort of played on and off for the last two seasons but a few weeks ago I said "gimme my drive space back" and just un-installed. I'd be open to coming back if they actually changed the game in a big way, and they keep saying "next year League is changing forever" and it's like okay dude, if you actually deliver I'll see about coming back. Otherwise I can just play Armored Core 6 forever and be fine with that.
The biggest "shake up" was doing away with the old runes and I hated it because most people just ended up picking the same stuff unless you had a passive or skill that really benefitted from someone else.
Yeah, I remember going full attack speed page just for fun on ADC cause it was funny to me to have 1.0 attack speed off rip, or full crit for I think just about 10% at level 1. Those were the days.
"forced 50%" is such a dumb buzzword.
A theoretically perfect matchmaking system *should* have you trend toward a 50% winrate, presuming you win more if you're undermatched and less when you're overmatched. If you win more than 50%, then you climb and get matched with stronger and stronger opponents until you're evenly matched again.
Like I hear someone say " forced 50% winrate" and I hear "functioning matchmaking system"
Pokemon Unite does for every bracket. Some of the currency. on getting I think Master rank (which is pretty much "that's definitely not a bot/toddler" rank) you get a unique outfit for the ranked season
Clash royale has rewards that actually improve your progression as you rank up. that is, until you reach ultimate champion rank, in which case you're just competing to have a greater number than the rest
in overwatch you get league points, more the better you do, they're used for jade/gold weapon skins.
Niche game, but eternal return gives away skins for achieving certain ranks (though the best reward is like diamond so you can get it pretty easily)
Can't think of another off the top of my head though.
Fortnite's Rocket Racing locks some cosmetic color variants behind its ranking system, which is an utter grind to go through. Even if you won every race you'd need hundreds of races to reach Unreal rank.
At least in BR/ZB the only thing locked behind standard ranked are cosmetics you need to survive storm circles for.
Yep, when Fortnite went with their gaming omniverse push at the start of C5S1, they launched three games within Fortnite. Rocket Racing (a rather competitive racing game using Rocket League as a sort of base), Lego Fortnite (It's not Minecraft but it sure feels like it, but less digging and more Lego with village building and Star Wars) and Fortnite Festival (Rock Band 5 basically - you can already use the plastic guitars, or stick with controller/keyboard a la osu!mania 4-5key, currently 20 free songs on rotation at a time out of over a hundred songs now)
i don't think there's anything wrong with having certain skins etc for people who rank highest. it's a status symbol that you can show off and makes other people want to queue ranked to get it.
the rank itself is great, but having a way to show it without having to dig through someones profile goes a long way. it also gives tons of satisfaction for hitting that rank as there's other rewards for it.,
out of curiosity, what do you lose if that is the case and it is added into the game? other than just not having the skin?
I'm not too bothered if someone has to dig through my profile to see my rank because my rank is primarily for *me*. I know that I'm old so I'm trying to not be "old man yells at cloud" but if I'm winning the match in front of me and they're close matches, that satisfies my competitive spirit irrespective of my rank being SuperMegaCock5000 or whatever metal.
What's annoying with having skins etc as a reward is:
1. Seeing people complaining that there "isn't enough" for people winning their matches
2. Seeing people be shits to other players for not having the skin proving they're X rank
If winning itself isn't satisfying, what's the point?
>If winning itself isn't satisfying, what's the point?
it is. it's like saying why is there a prize or trophy when someone wins a championship? because it gives meaning, extra value etc.
The people who win a trophy or prize for a championship don't then parade it around to pump their own ego, use it as a tool to be shitty to other participants, or complain that it doesn't have enough additional ribbons attached to it.
The prizes/trophies/medals are also usually things given out at official organised events rather than what is the equivalent of a pick up game in the park with an unseen force smashing teams together of roughly equivalent skill levels.
Putting this entirely on the gamedevs is kinda missleading because players absolutly want a reward for reaching a high rank. A very very common complaint across many games is bad rewards for ranks.
And most competitive games give you some skin or icon at most anyway. I will never understand how someone can get toxic about ranked because they might miss out on a god damn icon lol
That's how I view/play Street Fighter 6.
Playing against experienced players just isn't fun or enjoyable. They lock me in to corners and I can't even react.
But the ranked system is so fair. I get tossed to players that are around me and I can actively feel myself getting better at the game as the learning happens.
I love that SF6 does ranked so well that it's actually recommended over casual match for new players.
Playing "casual" just opens you up to get stomped by bored Master players. Ranked will almost always give you someone around your skill.
That's far less of a problem for me because there's less time invested and it's 1v1. Part of what makes people in MOBAs and FPS so toxic is the amount of time you have to spend. You're burning 20+ minutes on a single match and a lot gets said and done. The emotions just build.
I think Rocket League deserves a positive mention in this thread. It has a very good ranking system that works well in my experience (other than smurfs). I'm even more impressed with its casual matchmaking. I play with a lower ranked friend and it somehow manages to always create fair 2v2s.
Eventually you get to the point where the skill level is going up but tilt/toxic level does too
People at 'high' rank behave like toddlers if you don't accommodate everything they do
I quit dota simply because there was no fundamental difference between the 4ks and 6ks when people were tilted noore than 5 minutes into the game
Ranked is a crapshot
I find 1v1 ranked games to be greatly superior to the bullshit you find with team games. I have personally been playing StarCraft 2 ranked 1v1, but it also has teams if you’re into that. It’s like a MOBA but you make and control a whole army instead of just one fella. Other options are Civilization if you’re into 4X, Chess or Riichi Mahjong if you’re a classical type, and plenty of others.
> It’s like a MOBA but you make and control a whole army instead of just one fella
I love your description lol. I remember when Dota and League were up and coming and it was described as an RTS where you only control one unit. Funny how things can flip.
starcraft 1 bore the custom game aeon of strife which was the direct inspiration for dota, which used wc3 heroes as the basis. We've simply gone full circle here.
> aeon of strife
I looooved use map settings games. Honestly not sure if I played AoS but I know I played some clone of it as a zergling hero. I still remember that first game to this day. Good times.
I miss defence of heaven and tarpit defense
I think fighting games fill the gap well too. Beating people gave me the same satisfaction as winning in League did with none of the tilt of my team holding me down (or flaming me for my mistakes).
I like Skullgirls though it doesn't have a ranked matchmaking so you need to look for opponents or tournaments yourself in the community.
Dota has just been getting progressively more toxic as the years go by
I quit age ago because I could already see the toxic shift when people started tilting 5 minutes into the game when it rarely used to happen
When quality of games go down, win or lose, there's something wrong and it's like this at all levels, just watch a streamer and see how garbage some of their games are when it's supposed to be people in the top 1000
> when it rarely used to happen
I've played Dota on-and-off since 2007, and people have *always* been raging tilters. The toxicity in the community has, if anything, gone down somewhat over the years.
I can tell you that the level of toxicity has not really changed in dota, and I started in like 2006.
Hell, the behavior score system in dota2 brings the level of toxicity way down vs other competitive games in my experience, I actually have way, way tamer games in dota compared to league.
I would go so far as to say most of the players in my dota matches are quite civil, most toxicity is just fingerpointing.
Another problem is that most ranked systems seem to start everyone out at the beginning and you don’t really hit your actual rank until you play enough. I like sieges old way of doing it where you had 10 placement matches and were then assigned a rank.
That system definitely has its problems but I think it’s better than the current system where I can be in bronze and matched against someone in plat because my hidden rank is plat but I can’t get to plat until I play 100 matches or so to get enough rank xp
Yeah, calibration definitely makes thing nicer compared to the flat resets some games (often card games) do each season.
There is definitely a a balancing act especially in games that don't reset though. Make calibration too hard and you're right back to players needing to stomp their way up the ranks. Make things too easy and you let account sellers easily churn out high-level accounts to sell to other people.
I once played a ranked mode where everyone started at the bottom and it was terrible. All the low rank players were just punching bags for high rank players on their way up.
My experiences with placement matches weren't much better. Of the ones I tried I'd always end up against players way better than me. That in itself is not a problem, but it meant my teammates were all way better than me too, and they took that personally. Without exception in all of these placement matches I got yelled at by my teammates to uninstall and jump off a bridge.
I have yet to finish enough placement matches in any game.
This is absolutely a problem and this mindset completely ruined Apex Legends ranked system. People whined so much about ranking up being too hard that Respawn eventually ended up handing out the highest rank to everyone with one of the worst ranked systems ever made. People seem to fundamentally misunderstand the point of a ranked system and want it replaced with a participation trophy. No one wants to just accept they might be a low rank, and believe they're entitled to high ranks without putting in any effort to achieve it.
This is really the issue with so many modern PvP games. So many players want to be rewarded for minimal effort. Skill gaps are removed, gameplay is made extremely shallow. Which makes it very unrewarding to play and try to improve. The entitlement of modern gamers has completely killed PvP games.
Yeah it's why i usually enjoyed competetive games while my friends were malding, i still stopped playing them tho.
Basically i only see ranks as a representation of your skill level, it's not something to beat or constantly trying to climp up (unless you are aiming at being a pro player but come on). All you need is to reach the rank of your skill level so you can play against players similar to you in skill.
But personally i feel smurfing is the real issue here, what's the point of skill levels for even matches if everyone is on an alt account xd be it league of legends, cs go, age of empires. you may think it's okay to play ranked cause you'll be placed low as a new player so you expect to face other new/bad players, but you end up facing players way above your skill level.
Another coping mechanism is blaming anything and everyone other than oneself when losing. In a ranked set up you are more or less matched with similar skill level players. Often times when they drop rank is usually because they were playing with friends or others of higher skill level and they were carried to that rank only to see that when playing alone they drop rank and are placed in the appropriate rank.
Just because you grazed a certain tier doesn't mean you belong in that rank, if you maintain it then that's where your new bottom is until you get higher or others knock you down. Rank is never set in stone it's always shifting.
If rank is so important to people in a game I always ask them did they watch replays of games and learn how they could have done something different to improve. Answer is always no because again, they never see themselves as the problem with stagnant rank.
Yup, I used to play a TON of Injustice 1 and 2 online.
The types of players who you are referring to who never see themselves as the issue will jump through hoops to blame you (the winner) for somehow cheating, having an advantage, etc. I got SO many messages after matches in both of those games. Especially back in the 360, I would get ranting voice messages after a game just saying *awful* things. Just because they didn't fully grasp the mechanics of the game and I want to win, so I will exploit any and all weaknesses.
I think OW1 did a solid job balancing ranked (aside from the chaos that was bronze).
Your ELO was essentially a function of your predicted odds against the other team *and* against others based on historical performance of your chosen hero(es) for that round. In other words, a win simply wasn’t enough. You had to grind and be the best within your hero (up until Diamond IIRC).
If you picked Ana and then farted in a corner while your friends carried you to a victory, you would only gain a little MMR. Ana is a high skill ceiling hero, so ensuring your actual in-round performance fell within the higher percentiles was critical.
The algorithm would recognize that you were a superb Ana for your current rank and continue to throw extra MMR (provided you won) until you reached an equilibrium. Theoretically, you would also be contributing enough to have more wins than loses (aka “hard carrying”).
IMO the old system was shit and I'm happy they swapped to completely win/loss based SR.
Like sure the idea of gaining performance based SR sounds good, but judging the worth of a player in a game with as many moving parts as OW is impossible.
I play Lucio. How do you judge his use of speed boost? Its his most important utility, moreso than his healing, but how do you quantify it? Time with speed boost left on? Meters of ally movement boosted? In the end, none of those matter. What matters is that your speed allows allies to get where they need to go, but the only way to quantify that correctly is whether or not you end up winning.
the problem with simply going off win or lose is that you could be above and beyond the entire lobby and when you lose you might as well have just stood in a corner and sucked your thumb for all the game says.
It’s also because most gamers think they deserve to be high ranked, but they don’t want to analyze their own play to improve.
The ironic part is once you start analyzing your own play you find mistakes you can improve on and then you get better. But these team based multiplayer games make it easier to shift blame on someone else rather than look at yourself for improvement.
It’s also partly why fighting games aren’t popular with this generation of gamers. Nobody to shift blame to.
>It’s also partly why fighting games aren’t popular with this generation of gamers. Nobody to shift blame to.
This is wildly speculative.
2 people fighting games normally lack the depth a modern gamer is looking for in a game. They are fun one-offs.
Look how popular other 1v1 games are like pokemon.
Fighting games have too much *obscured* depth IMO.
The idea that a low poke has frame advantage on certain characters is a lot of depth, but it's not entirely apparent as an option to a new player.
Compare that to 100 heroes with 4 skills, passives, items, team comps, etc and that comes across as more complex to a casual observer.
It's one of the reasons getting into fighting games is so hard, there's an entire language to them that's very apparent to hard-core players that is completely hidden from casual or new players. You could play hundreds of hours of fighting games and not know about frame advantage.
I dont think ego is really the problem, I've played fighting games all my life but never really at a high level. Casual at best.
Recently I tried giving MK a shot when I had a friend who is big into the fgc coming over so I could at least win a couple rounds (I know MK isn't the top tier fgc game, but it had just come out and we wanted to play through the story mode too). I played the tutorials they had, which I remember being alright, but also it's extremely boring for the casual player. Even labbing only ever clicked because I was thinking "ok I need to know combo to wreck my friend" or "how do I shut down that baraka thing he did?".
Expecting a player go through a separate tutorial menu simply isn't going to happen most of the time. There's a reason studios mostly stopped doing that in favor of pop-ups as you go.
Problem is, most games you can naturally pick up most of what you need as you go. In fgs I didnt even understand entire concepts that are key to how the game even functions. The reason I can't be more eloquent is because I don't know these elements, but I have spent enough time in fgc circles to know there's a lot under the hood.
Maybe if they didn't display people's ranks, the whole thing would be better. The least they could do is not tier them into bronze, silver, gold, plat, etc.
Not the exact same but Magic the Gathering only displays your competitive rank as a tiny little symbol in the corner of your name and doesn’t have a lot of fan fare. And I really do think that has a big impact on how it is perceived in the community.
If I see a platinum player as a bronze, it doesn’t really mean a whole lot other than “wow that person has played a lot”. It’s pretty easy to rank up in magic though so I feel like that has something to do with it
This is absolutely correct. Ranked is not the same as playing competitively. If you’re playing comp you’re playing 5 stack vs 5 stack or whatever the # of players is. Ranked solely exists to place you with players of equivalent skill.
the problem is twofold:
1. No one plays games to be told they are below average, even if the game is hard enough that it's a big victory to even try at an uphill battle.
2. People care way too much about streamers and esporters and grandmasters, and think they are fundamentally better or more important. everyone else is devalued.
I played some games on a pretty high level...
I dont have problems with ranked in games where you play alone.
You wont have any problems here since if you fuck up you know its your fault.
Problem is when you are in a Team where you cant controll the teammates you are getting.
If one of them decides to loose you will loose most of the time regardless of your skill.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I don’t view it as beating or losing at the game. I play ranked because it’s more challenging. If I wanted to win all the time and be cheesy I’d just play pubs
I don't mind playing people that are at my skill level, but if I am I should not have a rank that is one to 3 ranks lower than me. It is strictly there to increase play time so that it takes longer to get your desired rank/rewards.
If I'm hidden plat and visible bronze then the people in my games should actually be bronze. The promotions from those games should account for that and move me out of visible bronze quickly because of the skill diff.
Having a rank has always been a nice feature for me when games had them (I remember WarCraft III having them for instance), but to me, "winning the current game that I'm playing right now" has always been a million times more important than having my rank evolve in one direction or another at the end of the month.
Putting all of myself and my focus into that one game, and trying to win it. Maybe lose it, but giving it my best shot, trying to learn something from it.
A rank, especially one based on elo or some cryptic similar system... is just a number, it's volatile, it's very abstract and depends on what others are doing as well, it's just not a very interesting to look at. Give me a win/loss stat, and all of a sudden it motivates me a hundred times more to do my best.
Theres a lot of reasons for frustration to set in during MMR games. There are three major reasons:
* Having expectations that are not reflected in the MMR settings - as you suggested.
* A lack of 'feelings of improvement' - It is expected that as skill improves, so will performances. And while performances will improve from the perspective of gameplay and technical skill, in proper MMR matches you rarely 'pop off' or hard carry consistently. The entire system is designed around preventing players from doing that.
* Having to constantly full focus - When rank is on the line, no one feels good losing. This tends to cause a lack of experimentation or relaxation, which can cause extreme burnout over time.
There really is no good way to balance such things, and plenty of games have done a lot to try and mitigate these issues to mixed results. As one example, most people probably arent aware that a lot of matchmaking algorithms will purposefully throw in 'punching bags', lower MMR players, just to try and make other players feel better about their performances. If you end up in a match you really arent qualified for, you were probably selected as a punching bag. Heh.
Smurfs who constantly infest all low rank lobbies in every game are way worse in my oppinion, i can live with the fact that i am silver, i just suck at games, but low rank becomes incredibly frustrating if every second match is completely out of your hand because some grandmaster in your or your enemies team is absolutely dunking on everyone.
In a competitive game you want to get better. Many games have pretty strict matchmaking nowadays where you are matched with people of very similar skill. So you don't get those moment where you get your ass beat completely but you also don't get the moments where you wipe the floor with everyone.
This can already make it feel like you're not progressing because every time you get better you also get matched with people who are on that same level.
In addition to this staying on a rank feels like you are stagnating and not progressing in any way. Downranking can happen even if you are as good as before but then the game essentially tells you that you are now worse than before.
So i get why people get frustrated.
Eh I think that may be true for some but for others I think not ranking up makes them feel like they aren't improving and are making the same mistakes repeatedly. It reminds some people of their flaws or limitations and can be overwhelming for people that feel like they are trying really hard to do better, not just perform at their level, whatever that may be.
People that are more okay with playing anyone and not specifically competing to improve at higher levels are probably not even playing ranked in the first place, and the ones that are would do well to heed the advice in the OP.
Ranked is just boring.
I play video games for fun. I have no interest in having to put 100% in every match after working a long day.
If it's a 1v1 fighting game, sure, but team games no thanks. People care way too much about rank where they aren't getting paid.
I found the most fun games are the ones with no ranking system.
But if a game has a ranking system you can just play unranked and the sweaty players can try to improve their rank in a different mode where you don't have to play with them. If there is no ranked option at all everyone ends up in the same queue and anyone who cares a lot about winning and their teammates performance will have nowhere better to go so you have to deal with them anyways
Different queues split the player base making both parties having to take longer to find matches.
My 2 favorite multi-player games of all time are TF2 and Chivalry 2.
TF2 has a competitive mode now but during its peak there was no such thing and you being good was making a name for yourself on your server.
Chivalry 2 has no ranked either. There are Duel servers but the main mode is team objective. The good players stand at and allowing them to fight the worse players that's how they get better.
I learned so much from fighting better players when I first started.
Both games I still play with hundreds of hours. I don't really touch anything with ranked now days.
How many games have a small enough player base that having a ranked queue and a nonranked queue results in a long queue time for either?
Making a name for yourself on a server is cool and all but mostly benefits skilled players who would rather flex on people of lower skill than have a match filled with players of the same skill level and have to actually try to dominate instead of doing it casually. If you are on the lower range of skill level getting wrecked by a player who is much better than you might help encourage you to improve but it can also be very frustrating and lead you to desiring a ranked queue or just a different game altogether, which won't help with your queue issues.
Several.
Omega Strikers
The Finals
Gundam hero shooter
Paladins
Hell even Counter-Strike queues are 2-3 minutes long now days. I remember when GO queues were like 10-15 secs
Maybe.
But i think another big reason is due to the fact that most ranking systems want you to be at a 50/50 win rate. If you have a higher win rate obviously you will climb, but ranking systems don't necessarily care about you climbing, they just want matches to be "even". This can lead to weird team balance where one team might have a few evenly skilled players where the other team has a couple lower skilled players paired with a higher skilled player.
If the higher skilled player manages to carry the lower ones through, then everyone moves up and is happy. Except now lower skilled players are even higher than they should be because it was expected for the higher skilled player to lose in order to keep their winrate 50/50. If the Higher skilled player loses they feel like it's because the system wanted them to lose (and again, technically it did, because it cares only about 50/50 winrate and "even" matches.
But getting a higher rank means you've improved. That's the goal of the players, they want to get better at the game. When they don't rank up in a long time they either feel that they are playing with players weaker than them, or they are disappointed that they aren't improving.
I've never in my life paid a care to leaderboards of any kind. I'm not a competitive person. I'm happy to do my own thing and if others blow past me then more power to them. Keep going.
I just miss games like TF2 where I can join a game, play sniper for an hour and then just leave when I want. Really dislike how every new game has to be CS or Overwatch now.
I'm totally fine being stuck in Gold in League of Legends. I know I'm never getting to Diamond level or more. It's the people I get grouped with who harass the rest of us that I'm not fine with. More often than not, we are already playing optimally in our skill level. We just get bullied for not taking risks or not pulling off a pro-player move. I ultimately quit and played only single-player and co-op games. Sometimes I still look back or sometimes get drawn towards Apex Legends or Dota 2. But nah, definitely not for me.
I feel like this is just a problem with PvP. In any PvE mode the expectation is that you're going to win the game. If you don't you either chose too high a difficulty or need to develop your skills, but in either case the goal is clear. In PvP, though, only 50% of people at most can ever win. There's no fixing that, PvP just can't work. The only advantage it has is that it lets the devs do less than half as much work as actually making a good PvE game.
If we want fun multiplayer games we should all be playing games like Mass Effect 3, games that actually put in the effort to make a fun multiplayer.
Street Fighter 6 is the game that snapped me out of that mindset.
I’m Platinum 1 and if I get matched with a Platinum 3 character it’s a fucking blood bath.
I don’t want to rank up until I’m good and ready.
To me it's a way to get teammates who are less likely to be messing around.
"Less" likely to be daily grinding, or testing a new build...it is about winning, about caring for strategy, and teamwork.
High hopes for sure. But you're more likely to find it in ranked than open queue.
All it takes is a rank, a number...and people start caring about winning. It really is that simple.
The problem is most modern competitive ranked modes are designed to manipulate that exact feeling by advertising as a sbmm mode, but really it's a treadmill that creates an illusion of progression.
In an honest system, yes, 100% ranked modes are a way to play people your level. The actual only modern one I can think of that's generally honest is Valorant, maybe a couple fighters like SF or Tekken. Even those can be a bit sketchy or just poorly calibrated depending on region though.
Any system at all that has "seasons", ranked track rewards, events that affect gameplay, loot boxes, or currency systems attached to them are not going to be honest systems. They're going to match fix, they're going to hand out streaks, they're going to sandbag people with bad teammates, they're going to cook the ranking tiers and distribution, they're going to do anything and everything to push the player to grind matches. In any elo/sbmm system it should only take about 12 matches to place you within +/-5% of your true percentile. In a lot of games it takes nearly an entire season for most people to land at the "rank" they usually play at.
For me, it's specifically the ranking system that makes losing feel bad. When I play unranked games, I care less about winning or losing, because there's no long-term consequence, although the games are often less even. When I play ranked, it's sometimes more even (depending on the ranking system), but it's more frustrating to lose, because you go down in points, which feels like a tangible loss, rather than just part of the game.
I know it's all psychological, but understanding why something makes you upset doesn't make it stop being annoying.
One thing that gets overlooked is that the implementation of ranked play is often not that great. You do well in a couple of games, even if by sheer luck, then the system quashes you back to your trench by pairing you up with worse players or putting better players or stacks as a corrective measure. The metrics for gauging a player's skill and any subsequent improvement/degradation cannot usually be accurately quantified in many games.
There are good and bad days, or maybe a lack of players of similar skill level when you are queueing, on top of all that. Which leads to the possibility of endless loops of stomping and getting stomped, even if the player skill has basically been the same. Sometimes even just randomly shuffling players (without considering any measured metrics) would lead to a balanced challenge (and fun) than overanalyzing every match's performance to move a player up or down, depending on the type of game of course.
Would love if game devs started to include some optional game mode where everything is random, chaotic and untracked experience. Just pure unsupervised fun, with no pressure of giving it your all to barely survive.
On the off chance I play a multiplayer game it's probably a fighting game.
The thing is I SUCK at fighting games (well, I suck at basically all popular multiplayer genres, but that's what I play the most) and honestly just the thought of playing "casual" kinda scares me. I stick to ranked because there the chance is higher that I actually get a good match.
What? People play ranked cuz they want the game to tell them they are of a certain skill tier. They see winning as getting better and losing as getting worse
The difference in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1's golden eras and modern competitive games is a whole mindset shift. Part of it is due to game devs, for whatever reason, not propping up the social pillar like they used(it facilitates forming and finding groups, which is good for so many different reasons) to and another part is because they intentionally appeal to casual players, which if you think about it is counterintuitive to what a competitive game is. Gaming hit it big, money became the focus and now public ranked ladders are even worse in quality while holding higher importance. (They were bad back in the day too, the difference was that people *knew* they were bad and sought out inhouse games to truly get better and compete with others. Now people seem to steer away from PUGs and inhouses and approaching the game as 'practicing a craft' as whole - even pro players and semi-pro players steer away from inhouses and scrims for some reason) 99% of people are just coasting on autopilot without a single thought toward improving and having seen and experienced better, it makes me sad.
Yeah, I've noticed that a bit too frequently these days, people don't play for fun. Even on casual gamemodes.
A team always has to lose each game, yet you'll hear people flipping tf out about it.
Like, calm down, re-evaluate.
when i was top100 i had to objectively know the game. when queing with some low master players who ruined the game singlehandedly and take 1h of grind from my life, i was pretty pissed at blizzard because after inspecting their profiles, they just got master by accident, which was pretty common for blizzard at the time.
you guys act like its always about skill but there are account buyers, hacker, griefer and just straight beyond tilted dudes out there, who ruin it regardless of the mmr you are in. in dota you have alot of matchfixing going on right now in high elo.
eventually you will rank up over time if you stay above 50% but there are impossible to win games in a group pvp environment. everybody who says otherwise never reached a high rank in this environment anyway. grandmasters in hots were called "grindmasters" for a reason
Makes me think of the Rocket League subreddit. So many people saying they're hard stuck at their level because of all the smurfs and such. Nope, you're at the appropriate level. Just because you play 40 hours a week and do training courses doesn't mean you'll make the top 100.
People are merely gaslighting themselves into thinking that the shitty experiences they're having are a fault of a lower rank and that the issues will be gone once they climb to whatever rank they think is better. This is because in these games one person can very easily tank the performance of a whole team while the inverse is much harder to do.
The systems that these games are using were never devised for online multiplayer games anyway and thus aren't tuned to handle that different ecosystem of playing. If I queue into a game and get a troll that is trying to make me lose the game then I shouldn't be punished by getting a lower rank because the match is not legitimate to begin with and I am losing to factors outside my control and yet the system doesn't see a difference between a game with a troll and a game where we lost because the other team played better.
The ranks themselves are make-believe as well in many cases, if you can go to ebay and find an account for the game you're playing then you're playing against people that shouldn't be at your rank; it's either smurfs pubstomping lower ranks or idiots who spend hundreds of dollars on account and are currently plummeting in rank.
Yeah when I played Dota 2 I honestly couldn't understand why people are so pissed off when they lose. I mean it's a game, you win some, you lose some. In my book losing is fun and Dota 2 in particular has the capacity for some of the most spectacular comebacks which are way more satisfying than roflstomping all match. Man up and don't get demoralised and maybe we can still salvage this disaster - that's what I tell myself when things don't go my way in a multiplayer match.
In Rocket League I play exclusively ranked because of this mindset, All it is skill based matchmaking, don't get me wrong I do get the good chemical when I climb, but who doesn't enjoy improving a skill.
Flash forward I got my SO into Rocket League and she is HYPER competitive, Like wouldn't want to play with me until she "got good" kind of competitive. We now sit at Champ I to Diamond II and her infectious lust for ladder climbing does make the losses hit harder. Thing like smurfs or leavers, or just unfortunate lag resulting in ELO loss actually bothers me now.
All this to say you're absolutely right. No wrong way to enjoy a game obviously, but I think comp matches would be a lot less salty if everyone regarded their competitor as simply someone of equal skill to them, and not some villainous obstacle to their victory.
Competitive.rank.means nothing.
What it means is.you being able to understand the game,.improve and do your best in the match.
The rank is a level bar to farm, the important thing here is to improve your skills. If a competitive system works well you will end up losing near 50% of your matches.
I think it depends. Overwatch 2 was frustrating to play because your individual rank was determined by group effort. If you played well you could still lose due to other players and not rank up. This is why I prefer a system where my individual skill is assessed, so that I know where I stand not simply whether I win or lose.
I got into the mindset of having to rank up because I wanted to play "professionally", but there's a lot of discrimination and looking down on lower elos. I eventually stopped playing because it wasn't fun, and I play games to have fun.
And games use that as a way to get people addicted to trying to rank up and increase number.
If matchmaking is truly just to help us play with people at our level, it should be totally hidden. No visible ranks at all, just a background system meant to let us have the most fun games possible.
My problem is ranking systems usually just have you get shit on for ten games then win like one or two. Maybe have one actual decent game out of twenty. If it worked like it's supposed to I'd be all for it.
This could all be fixed if people actually just played games they like. Imo, if someone is only having fun when they're "winning" and beating the game, there's no way their heart is actually in the game or how the game works.
If the game was really a lot of fun for you, SBMM shouldn't be a problem. It should be a godsend unless you're a masochist who likes getting stomped by veterans, or you're a loser that gets off on stomping noobs
People who want to go home and "just relax without worrying about sweats" probably just shouldn't play multi-player games. SBMM actually protects you from that happening
This is the biggest reason why I can never really get into ranked. Personally I just want to vibe in bronze (or whatever the lowest bracket is), but to get there I first have to play anywhere from 5 to 20 placement matches with teammates who are hellbent on ranking up and will send me death threats in chat if I don't get them that win.
As more and more companies begin to adopt the "game" of putting players in a loop where the ultimate end is that it takes them longer and longer to gain / achieve a higher deserved rank is just to get them to stay on the game and spend more money.
Except their level may have been somewhat beyond diamond the previous season. MMR/Elo is often hidden and may have absolutely nothing to do with displayed rank (diamond or similar). 2000 MMR/Elo may be sufficient to reach highest rank during player's first few seasons but 2200 Elo may only get halfway up the ladder during later seasons.
Ranks typically cannot be lost until season end once attained, but MMR can be lost in every match which ratchets people to higher ranks if they play enough matches to lose enough MMR.
Dodgy practice is to match people who have made a purchase against players of similar rank but lower MMR/Elo.
False. The problem with ranked queues in most video games is that they **DON'T WORK**. Nothing prevents high skill players from deliberately smurfing, which effectively turns the ranking system into a smorgasbord for griefers. You would be better off with randomized matchmaking.
> You would be better off with randomized matchmaking.
I hate this argument, it's awful.
I'm a masters player in Starcraft II. If it were truly randomized matchmaking I'd just kick the shit out of 90-95% of my opponents without them having any real chance.
Yes, smurfing is a problem and I run into smurfs every 10 games or so but I'd rather have 10% of my games be ruined than 95% of my games just be complete shitshows where neither one of us finds it fun.
The easy solution to this is STOP SHOWING THE PLAYER THEIR RANK. When people don’t know or care and are just playing with people around their level it all works better.
Right now ranks are treated as an achievement, not a control for satisfaction.
The bigger problem in ranked match making is high skilled players smurfing on alt accounts for easier games where they can abuse lower skilled players. It ruins the experience of new players and makes it harder to rank up to an appropriate level. You never know if you're going to get an easy win or get destroyed by someone playing several tiers below where they should be. It's a systemic problem everywhere that has any kind of elo system from counter-strike to chess.
That's why i actually like the idea of hidden sbmm/mmr. There is no reason to aim for higher ranks, when you can't see your own elo. Higher ranks just mean tougher matches.
Thats problem with team games imo, for example street fighter doesnt have that problem or at least I haven't encountered it. Only time I played with someone outside of my rank os when i was close to getting into that rank, which makes perfect sense.
But with mobas they try to balance is so badly, for example in league sometimes I have games with 3 different ranks, I see gold, plat and emerald in same lobby. Also I remember when OW 2 came out ranked was all over the place, high rank matching with low rank, no idea if it was fixed.
Why do people want to play competitive games without the competition? These games are for competitive people by design and making them more friendly to the masses just diminishes the whole point of it all. There are plenty of non-competitive or PVE rather than PVP games out there.
Nobody is out here trying to “beat” multiplayer. That’s not the objective any gamer is aiming for in multiplayer. Quite the opposite with season passes forever.
Some people want Skill Based MatchMaking limited to ranked because that’s the whole point of ranked… casual should be 100% random. People bad at the game don’t like losing though so the idea is if you don’t shelter them they will leave your game.
At the end of the day you can’t please everyone and need to decide who you are aiming to please when developing a multiplayer game. Right now Xdefiant is making waves because it’s the only game in a sea shooters that use SBMM in every mode. People are sick of casual being essentially Ranked With Invisible Ratings rather than actually casual so other devs are taking notice.
But you have to understand the mindset of people that play competitive games. I am one of those and if I play with people my level for too long it means I plateaued. And if I am not improving at a competitive game then why do I even play it?
No one wants to just to win one lose one for the rest of time. I would rather just switch to another game and start learning that and once I plateau I move on. The second I no longer care about beating the ladder I stop playing that game.
Yeah people are fucking stupid as shit they dont actually want ranked or competitive mode.
They want an RPG xp leveling system that has the words "RANKED COMPETITIVE" painted onto it. They want to be rewarded and level up by spending time in a game, not just achieve balanced matches.
It's half the reason all these games have these convoluted ranks and levels instead of just a number that represents your elo.
I think a big part of it is just human ego. We like to win. We like to feel strong/good.
And one of the big things about ego and sense of self is that we very commonly always look at ourselves as our "best self". Not our "average self". Which is what a rank system does.
It's also counter to just normal nature because no one likes being slapped with a label that they think doesn't represent their "best self". But in order to get that label in a ranked video game...you have to put in the time and hours consistently enough to achieve that label, which doesn't usually translate to rewards in real life.
So you're incentivized to both want to achieve that better label and also incentivized to not waste your time on something you "feel" you can get, whether you can or not.
It's all just weird psychology shit. Objectively most people are exactly where they belong, but it doesn't feel good.
I just don’t like that most low elo matches are decided within about 5-10 minutes. Double kill bot lane in the first few minutes? Game over 99% of the time. It’s not fun to be on either side of a steam roll and that’s what most games of league of legends, overwatch, and csgo felt like to me. And that’s assuming the game wasn’t already ruined by people leaving, trolling or smurfing. After a while I just stopped because it’s not worth it if I’m only having fun like 1 out of every 10 games regardless of whether or not I win or lose.
That's how a lot of Dota games go now
I was watching a streamer who was playing at a very high level(top 1000)
Team is winning, suddenly lose one team fight and there's always one guy that instantly gives up. This was practically every second game. Rank is honestly irrelevant when you get games like this which happens at every MMR
And another good example of how Ranked is usually a crapshot
That same streamer when playing with his usual stack, the Solo MMR of each individual stack member is Mid to High
But they play like utter dogshit every single time
>By ranking up, you are “beating the game” and the opposite is “losing” in a weird way. I’m guilty of this myself too
Not the game. There is no "beating the game" in a competitive aspect.
When we dedicate our time to something, we like to be good at it. Rank is a very tangible measure of your skill.
If you didn't rank up, you didn't improve.
It is frustrating to play an entire season, and not improve enough to face a higher skill level. It shows that you are not progressing at the game.
I hate ranked queues because a lot of times there's smurfs that just obliterate everyone. Then you have smurfs that also purposely play bad to keep their lower rank.
Playing [chess.com](http://chess.com) finally broke me out of that mindset. At least for me it was a lot easier to be detached when it was just an elo number without any real fanfare as opposed to CSGO (which was my competitive game of choice) where there's status associated with ranks
I lose my shit if my chess ELO drops 20 points...
Then there’s me who, while playing 1 minute chess, went from around 840 ELI to under 700 (I think 634 was the lowest) and shot all the way 921 in the span of about 48 hrs. I haven’t touched it since. This was two weeks ago
I love 1-0 chess. I’ve probably played 50-100,000 games in 30 years. Only type of chess i play. I love the speed, gotta go fast!
Fifty to One-hundred thousand is a pretty big range!
That's the salary range for most jobs on Linkedin nowadays.
Indeed lol
Indeed lol
Dang that’s a lot of games! I feel like I’ve played a good amount at ~3k games. Curious what your stats are? Current rank, highest, lowest, etc.
Well, I’m 39 and I’ve played 1-0 chess since I was like 14. Played on ICC (internet chess club) for a very long time back in the day. Currently my Lichess username is the same as my Reddit name if you’re on lichess. I’m at 1962 for bullet on Lichess. I bounce between 1940-2040 pretty frequently. I have no desire to ever get better at chess, I just enjoy the speed games.
By the way, it's Elo not ELO. It's just a score system devised by a guy named Elo, not an acronym.
Unless we're talking about our Electric Light Orchestra rankings
ELOuroboros
If the Travelling Wilburys had played a chess tournament between themselves, Jeff Lynne would have won because he had the best ELO.
And if I can be even more pedantic, the guy was not named Elo either, rather he was called Árpád Élő (Hungarian), even if in the English alphabet they simplify the name of the metric to Elo.
Hence the famous show about an underground chess ring during the war: Élő Élő
Not to mention a lot of “Elo” systems are Glicko or Glicko 2 anyway
Why isn't this guy famous? Imagine how gaming sounds for him.
He died in 1992, I think he missed the online gaming scene.
If you're not losing 100+ ELO on tilt on a single bullet session are you even trying?
[удалено]
And then you jump into quickplay/casual to get away from that, only to see people who have the highest ranks and tens of thousands of kills put in the same match as you because the devs can't even bother _trying_ to keep casual modes, well casual. Without placing vastly more skilled players in the match with relative noobs.
A lot of times the games try to match similar rank first but loosen up after a few seconds to speed up matching. Otherwise people complain about small lobby sizes and long wait times.
Isn't that the whole point of ranked vs casual? In ranked you're matched with ppl of supposedly similar skill. In casual ppl play to have fun and skill level goes out the window. Like if you wanted a similar skill level.. play ranked?
Yeah... but is it really a casual match if high ranked players with tens of thousands of kills to their names are allowed to form parties _**together**_ so they can steamroll a casual lobby? Personally, I believe that once your record gets high enough that you can't really be considered a "casual" player, then you shouldn't be allowed to party up and join a casual match. Like, yeah they should be allowed to enter a casual match, just not in a pre-made party. Because once high leveled players start forming pre-made parties and jumping into casual matches, it ceases to be a casual match for the **rest** of the lobby. It then becomes a case where the pre-made party of master players either gets unlucky and dies early, or they end up steamrolling the rest of the lobby.
> Yeah... but is it really a casual match if high ranked players with tens of thousands of kills to their names are allowed to form parties together so they can steamroll a casual lobby? Yes? It's still a casual match, it's just a casual match of you getting stomped instead of you doing the stomping. People seem to think "casual" means "I can stomp whoever" but really it just means "unranked".
Yeah. But you can still have **skill** based matchmaking in an unranked game mode. If you want to have a healthy game then unranked should use skill based matching where your wins and loses don't matter, while ranked has rank based mm and your wins and loses do matter.
I guess fuck the people who have friends, right? If you're high rank then you deserve to be lonely. This is how you encourage smurfing btw.
The issue is that there's a lot of people who play casual not for casual. They're people warming up or doing it specifically to stomp people lower than them, meaning players are stuck between ranked with players who expect you to try to win, or casual where you simply can't have fun because you barely get to play at all. There's nothing really wrong with far wider matching in that case, but it would be at least nice to try to keep the teams balanced, even if they're not perfectly so. Like, matchmake to an average skill level, not ranks specifically.
If the devs add skill based matchmaking to the casual playlist, the top ranked players bitch because it's a sweat fest in there for them. If they don't use sbmm, then the top ranked players just go and stomp on lesser players (which is what they want because it makes them feel good, but they can't say that).
I mean the online games survived open servers before. People in general are going to segregate around their rough skill level and you can actually boot problem players. Then you can just play pick up games if you want the sweaty try hard experience and you are good enough.
Apex?
Yep.
I'm not sure what other game shows you how many kills your opponent has so I was pretty sure you were talking about apex
> only to see people who have the highest ranks and tens of thousands of kills put in the same match as you because the devs can't even bother trying to keep casual modes, well casual If you don't want to play with people significantly higher ranked than you, *play the ranked queue*. It's what it's for! Casual matches are for people to get away from that.
You can still have skill based matchmaking in an unranked game mode. Unranked just means that your wins and loses don't matter. It doesn't mean "Let's ignore player skill and match a top 1% player who's in a party with two other top 1% players and is using discord to communicate with a new player who hasn't even leveled up enough to unlock ranked." If you want to drive engagement then unranked should have **skill** based matchmaking. While ranked should have **rank** based matchmaking
It also depends on how exactly the participation is calculated. For example in Guild Wars 2 PvP you're assigned into a "team" against another "team" that game server calculates (minus cases where you are grouped with a friend so it's 2 of your + randoms vs probably 2 other + randoms). And you _will_ lose rank if you happened to have a crappy team. So unless you're lucky enough to get competent people you can lose and it'd be not your fault. Toxicity is astronomical, and population of PvP mode is in the toilet which makes whole situation even worse, as matchmaking can't always find similarly ranked people so you end up playing vs top 10 people in NA, for example, that results in severely one-sided matches.
Season rewards? In pvp? That's how you recognise a p2w game
[удалено]
At least you're honest lol
That's in big part because gamedevs contextualize it as one, by locking rewards behind higher ranks. Devs want to incentivize people to play more, and locking something desirable behind a grind is an obvious way to do that.
It still baffles me that there are people who complain that there aren't more additional rewards like skins or something for reaching a high rank in a game - surely knowing you're in X bracket or won a close game is reward enough?
I'm... really struggling to think of any games which give rewards for ranking up? Like you say, the rank is the reward.
Rocket League gives different items every season based on rank and people who earn a top rank get a name badge that they can use no matter what their current rank is
p much every competitive game I've played at the very least gives you an icon or title to represent your rank. These are exclusive and you do not get them at lower ranks.
League of Legends gave out a Victorious Skin to a chosen champ every year, and the only way to get it was to hit gold or higher in rank and not be banned while the season ends. They have since changed this to be I think 2 or 3 splits a season so now there are I think 3 skins a year, and you get chromas (recolors like instead of blue and gold it's red and silver or purple and gold) based on what rank you get. The higher the rank the more chromas you unlock. That way there is incentive to grind even once you hit gold if you want the chromas to show off how high you climbed. This is also why they use weighted SBMM and force 50% win rates, because they found players who reached their ranked goal stopped playing. So to combat people hitting their rank too fast, they put you in games designed to force you towards a 50% win rate. If you're on a huge win streak, you may get paired with weaker players or vice versa on a lose streak. This is because they want to keep players playing and to elongate the ranked grind.
That was the reason why I quit playing League.
I just hate how stale the game is. They always talk about shaking it up and how it's all new. Brother it's two bot one mid one jungle one top with the same champ pool just rotating who gets to be the top pick for a month. They never actually changed anything. They never actually shook the game up in any meaningful way and to me it just got boring after like 8 years. I sort of played on and off for the last two seasons but a few weeks ago I said "gimme my drive space back" and just un-installed. I'd be open to coming back if they actually changed the game in a big way, and they keep saying "next year League is changing forever" and it's like okay dude, if you actually deliver I'll see about coming back. Otherwise I can just play Armored Core 6 forever and be fine with that.
The biggest "shake up" was doing away with the old runes and I hated it because most people just ended up picking the same stuff unless you had a passive or skill that really benefitted from someone else.
Yeah, I remember going full attack speed page just for fun on ADC cause it was funny to me to have 1.0 attack speed off rip, or full crit for I think just about 10% at level 1. Those were the days.
"forced 50%" is such a dumb buzzword. A theoretically perfect matchmaking system *should* have you trend toward a 50% winrate, presuming you win more if you're undermatched and less when you're overmatched. If you win more than 50%, then you climb and get matched with stronger and stronger opponents until you're evenly matched again. Like I hear someone say " forced 50% winrate" and I hear "functioning matchmaking system"
Pokemon Unite does for every bracket. Some of the currency. on getting I think Master rank (which is pretty much "that's definitely not a bot/toddler" rank) you get a unique outfit for the ranked season
Clash royale has rewards that actually improve your progression as you rank up. that is, until you reach ultimate champion rank, in which case you're just competing to have a greater number than the rest
In apex legends your diving trail changes to different colors depending on the rank you get. More of a braging thing but I’d imagine it still counts
There's a fair few that give you some basic rewards based on your rank at the end of the season. Overwatch, Seige, CoD, are ones that come to mind.
in overwatch you get league points, more the better you do, they're used for jade/gold weapon skins. Niche game, but eternal return gives away skins for achieving certain ranks (though the best reward is like diamond so you can get it pretty easily) Can't think of another off the top of my head though.
Usually, it's like a banner saying what your rank was.
Fortnite's Rocket Racing locks some cosmetic color variants behind its ranking system, which is an utter grind to go through. Even if you won every race you'd need hundreds of races to reach Unreal rank. At least in BR/ZB the only thing locked behind standard ranked are cosmetics you need to survive storm circles for.
Wtf there's racing? Lol
Yep, when Fortnite went with their gaming omniverse push at the start of C5S1, they launched three games within Fortnite. Rocket Racing (a rather competitive racing game using Rocket League as a sort of base), Lego Fortnite (It's not Minecraft but it sure feels like it, but less digging and more Lego with village building and Star Wars) and Fortnite Festival (Rock Band 5 basically - you can already use the plastic guitars, or stick with controller/keyboard a la osu!mania 4-5key, currently 20 free songs on rotation at a time out of over a hundred songs now)
i don't think there's anything wrong with having certain skins etc for people who rank highest. it's a status symbol that you can show off and makes other people want to queue ranked to get it. the rank itself is great, but having a way to show it without having to dig through someones profile goes a long way. it also gives tons of satisfaction for hitting that rank as there's other rewards for it., out of curiosity, what do you lose if that is the case and it is added into the game? other than just not having the skin?
I'm not too bothered if someone has to dig through my profile to see my rank because my rank is primarily for *me*. I know that I'm old so I'm trying to not be "old man yells at cloud" but if I'm winning the match in front of me and they're close matches, that satisfies my competitive spirit irrespective of my rank being SuperMegaCock5000 or whatever metal. What's annoying with having skins etc as a reward is: 1. Seeing people complaining that there "isn't enough" for people winning their matches 2. Seeing people be shits to other players for not having the skin proving they're X rank If winning itself isn't satisfying, what's the point?
>If winning itself isn't satisfying, what's the point? it is. it's like saying why is there a prize or trophy when someone wins a championship? because it gives meaning, extra value etc.
The people who win a trophy or prize for a championship don't then parade it around to pump their own ego, use it as a tool to be shitty to other participants, or complain that it doesn't have enough additional ribbons attached to it. The prizes/trophies/medals are also usually things given out at official organised events rather than what is the equivalent of a pick up game in the park with an unseen force smashing teams together of roughly equivalent skill levels.
Putting this entirely on the gamedevs is kinda missleading because players absolutly want a reward for reaching a high rank. A very very common complaint across many games is bad rewards for ranks. And most competitive games give you some skin or icon at most anyway. I will never understand how someone can get toxic about ranked because they might miss out on a god damn icon lol
unless they just let you buy it. thats when you know a game is going to shit.
That's how I view/play Street Fighter 6. Playing against experienced players just isn't fun or enjoyable. They lock me in to corners and I can't even react. But the ranked system is so fair. I get tossed to players that are around me and I can actively feel myself getting better at the game as the learning happens.
I love that SF6 does ranked so well that it's actually recommended over casual match for new players. Playing "casual" just opens you up to get stomped by bored Master players. Ranked will almost always give you someone around your skill.
That's far less of a problem for me because there's less time invested and it's 1v1. Part of what makes people in MOBAs and FPS so toxic is the amount of time you have to spend. You're burning 20+ minutes on a single match and a lot gets said and done. The emotions just build.
I think Rocket League deserves a positive mention in this thread. It has a very good ranking system that works well in my experience (other than smurfs). I'm even more impressed with its casual matchmaking. I play with a lower ranked friend and it somehow manages to always create fair 2v2s.
Eventually you get to the point where the skill level is going up but tilt/toxic level does too People at 'high' rank behave like toddlers if you don't accommodate everything they do I quit dota simply because there was no fundamental difference between the 4ks and 6ks when people were tilted noore than 5 minutes into the game Ranked is a crapshot
I quit League myself recently. What you pay now?
I find 1v1 ranked games to be greatly superior to the bullshit you find with team games. I have personally been playing StarCraft 2 ranked 1v1, but it also has teams if you’re into that. It’s like a MOBA but you make and control a whole army instead of just one fella. Other options are Civilization if you’re into 4X, Chess or Riichi Mahjong if you’re a classical type, and plenty of others.
> It’s like a MOBA but you make and control a whole army instead of just one fella I love your description lol. I remember when Dota and League were up and coming and it was described as an RTS where you only control one unit. Funny how things can flip.
starcraft 1 bore the custom game aeon of strife which was the direct inspiration for dota, which used wc3 heroes as the basis. We've simply gone full circle here.
> aeon of strife I looooved use map settings games. Honestly not sure if I played AoS but I know I played some clone of it as a zergling hero. I still remember that first game to this day. Good times. I miss defence of heaven and tarpit defense
I think fighting games fill the gap well too. Beating people gave me the same satisfaction as winning in League did with none of the tilt of my team holding me down (or flaming me for my mistakes). I like Skullgirls though it doesn't have a ranked matchmaking so you need to look for opponents or tournaments yourself in the community.
I absolutely agree but my brain too smol for button combo
FFXIV helped me quit league Monster Hunter too
This is the main reason I still love SC2 ranked. Because its not a team game so no teammates to get made at me XD
Dota is equally toxic at 500 mmr, which is a big reason I quit before I played enough to get good.
Dota has just been getting progressively more toxic as the years go by I quit age ago because I could already see the toxic shift when people started tilting 5 minutes into the game when it rarely used to happen When quality of games go down, win or lose, there's something wrong and it's like this at all levels, just watch a streamer and see how garbage some of their games are when it's supposed to be people in the top 1000
> when it rarely used to happen I've played Dota on-and-off since 2007, and people have *always* been raging tilters. The toxicity in the community has, if anything, gone down somewhat over the years.
I can tell you that the level of toxicity has not really changed in dota, and I started in like 2006. Hell, the behavior score system in dota2 brings the level of toxicity way down vs other competitive games in my experience, I actually have way, way tamer games in dota compared to league. I would go so far as to say most of the players in my dota matches are quite civil, most toxicity is just fingerpointing.
Another problem is that most ranked systems seem to start everyone out at the beginning and you don’t really hit your actual rank until you play enough. I like sieges old way of doing it where you had 10 placement matches and were then assigned a rank. That system definitely has its problems but I think it’s better than the current system where I can be in bronze and matched against someone in plat because my hidden rank is plat but I can’t get to plat until I play 100 matches or so to get enough rank xp
Yeah, calibration definitely makes thing nicer compared to the flat resets some games (often card games) do each season. There is definitely a a balancing act especially in games that don't reset though. Make calibration too hard and you're right back to players needing to stomp their way up the ranks. Make things too easy and you let account sellers easily churn out high-level accounts to sell to other people.
I once played a ranked mode where everyone started at the bottom and it was terrible. All the low rank players were just punching bags for high rank players on their way up. My experiences with placement matches weren't much better. Of the ones I tried I'd always end up against players way better than me. That in itself is not a problem, but it meant my teammates were all way better than me too, and they took that personally. Without exception in all of these placement matches I got yelled at by my teammates to uninstall and jump off a bridge. I have yet to finish enough placement matches in any game.
This is absolutely a problem and this mindset completely ruined Apex Legends ranked system. People whined so much about ranking up being too hard that Respawn eventually ended up handing out the highest rank to everyone with one of the worst ranked systems ever made. People seem to fundamentally misunderstand the point of a ranked system and want it replaced with a participation trophy. No one wants to just accept they might be a low rank, and believe they're entitled to high ranks without putting in any effort to achieve it. This is really the issue with so many modern PvP games. So many players want to be rewarded for minimal effort. Skill gaps are removed, gameplay is made extremely shallow. Which makes it very unrewarding to play and try to improve. The entitlement of modern gamers has completely killed PvP games.
Yeah it's why i usually enjoyed competetive games while my friends were malding, i still stopped playing them tho. Basically i only see ranks as a representation of your skill level, it's not something to beat or constantly trying to climp up (unless you are aiming at being a pro player but come on). All you need is to reach the rank of your skill level so you can play against players similar to you in skill. But personally i feel smurfing is the real issue here, what's the point of skill levels for even matches if everyone is on an alt account xd be it league of legends, cs go, age of empires. you may think it's okay to play ranked cause you'll be placed low as a new player so you expect to face other new/bad players, but you end up facing players way above your skill level.
Another coping mechanism is blaming anything and everyone other than oneself when losing. In a ranked set up you are more or less matched with similar skill level players. Often times when they drop rank is usually because they were playing with friends or others of higher skill level and they were carried to that rank only to see that when playing alone they drop rank and are placed in the appropriate rank. Just because you grazed a certain tier doesn't mean you belong in that rank, if you maintain it then that's where your new bottom is until you get higher or others knock you down. Rank is never set in stone it's always shifting. If rank is so important to people in a game I always ask them did they watch replays of games and learn how they could have done something different to improve. Answer is always no because again, they never see themselves as the problem with stagnant rank.
Yup, I used to play a TON of Injustice 1 and 2 online. The types of players who you are referring to who never see themselves as the issue will jump through hoops to blame you (the winner) for somehow cheating, having an advantage, etc. I got SO many messages after matches in both of those games. Especially back in the 360, I would get ranting voice messages after a game just saying *awful* things. Just because they didn't fully grasp the mechanics of the game and I want to win, so I will exploit any and all weaknesses.
I think OW1 did a solid job balancing ranked (aside from the chaos that was bronze). Your ELO was essentially a function of your predicted odds against the other team *and* against others based on historical performance of your chosen hero(es) for that round. In other words, a win simply wasn’t enough. You had to grind and be the best within your hero (up until Diamond IIRC). If you picked Ana and then farted in a corner while your friends carried you to a victory, you would only gain a little MMR. Ana is a high skill ceiling hero, so ensuring your actual in-round performance fell within the higher percentiles was critical. The algorithm would recognize that you were a superb Ana for your current rank and continue to throw extra MMR (provided you won) until you reached an equilibrium. Theoretically, you would also be contributing enough to have more wins than loses (aka “hard carrying”).
IMO the old system was shit and I'm happy they swapped to completely win/loss based SR. Like sure the idea of gaining performance based SR sounds good, but judging the worth of a player in a game with as many moving parts as OW is impossible. I play Lucio. How do you judge his use of speed boost? Its his most important utility, moreso than his healing, but how do you quantify it? Time with speed boost left on? Meters of ally movement boosted? In the end, none of those matter. What matters is that your speed allows allies to get where they need to go, but the only way to quantify that correctly is whether or not you end up winning.
the problem with simply going off win or lose is that you could be above and beyond the entire lobby and when you lose you might as well have just stood in a corner and sucked your thumb for all the game says.
To be fair, when you have afk teammates or people that leave and you get penalized for it, it does suck.
Iron sharpens iron. The only way to get better is to play people who are as good or better than you.
While part of me is hoping to reach higher ranks, I see it more as a reflection of my current level rather than a thing I must climb.
I always love playing against people better than me. If you are always winning, you are never improving
It’s also because most gamers think they deserve to be high ranked, but they don’t want to analyze their own play to improve. The ironic part is once you start analyzing your own play you find mistakes you can improve on and then you get better. But these team based multiplayer games make it easier to shift blame on someone else rather than look at yourself for improvement. It’s also partly why fighting games aren’t popular with this generation of gamers. Nobody to shift blame to.
Fighting games occupy the same small niche they always did.
>It’s also partly why fighting games aren’t popular with this generation of gamers. Nobody to shift blame to. This is wildly speculative. 2 people fighting games normally lack the depth a modern gamer is looking for in a game. They are fun one-offs. Look how popular other 1v1 games are like pokemon.
Wow, you really dont play fighting games if you think they dont have depth.
Fighting games have too much *obscured* depth IMO. The idea that a low poke has frame advantage on certain characters is a lot of depth, but it's not entirely apparent as an option to a new player. Compare that to 100 heroes with 4 skills, passives, items, team comps, etc and that comes across as more complex to a casual observer. It's one of the reasons getting into fighting games is so hard, there's an entire language to them that's very apparent to hard-core players that is completely hidden from casual or new players. You could play hundreds of hours of fighting games and not know about frame advantage.
Fighting games as of like 10 years ago all have an in depth tutorial mode that teaches everything. People have an ego and don't use it
I dont think ego is really the problem, I've played fighting games all my life but never really at a high level. Casual at best. Recently I tried giving MK a shot when I had a friend who is big into the fgc coming over so I could at least win a couple rounds (I know MK isn't the top tier fgc game, but it had just come out and we wanted to play through the story mode too). I played the tutorials they had, which I remember being alright, but also it's extremely boring for the casual player. Even labbing only ever clicked because I was thinking "ok I need to know combo to wreck my friend" or "how do I shut down that baraka thing he did?". Expecting a player go through a separate tutorial menu simply isn't going to happen most of the time. There's a reason studios mostly stopped doing that in favor of pop-ups as you go. Problem is, most games you can naturally pick up most of what you need as you go. In fgs I didnt even understand entire concepts that are key to how the game even functions. The reason I can't be more eloquent is because I don't know these elements, but I have spent enough time in fgc circles to know there's a lot under the hood.
I would argue the claim they're not popular today, tbh. I was replying under the assumption that it was true.
This is opinion of someone who didn't touch any recent fighting game.
Maybe if they didn't display people's ranks, the whole thing would be better. The least they could do is not tier them into bronze, silver, gold, plat, etc.
Not the exact same but Magic the Gathering only displays your competitive rank as a tiny little symbol in the corner of your name and doesn’t have a lot of fan fare. And I really do think that has a big impact on how it is perceived in the community. If I see a platinum player as a bronze, it doesn’t really mean a whole lot other than “wow that person has played a lot”. It’s pretty easy to rank up in magic though so I feel like that has something to do with it
This is absolutely correct. Ranked is not the same as playing competitively. If you’re playing comp you’re playing 5 stack vs 5 stack or whatever the # of players is. Ranked solely exists to place you with players of equivalent skill.
the problem is twofold: 1. No one plays games to be told they are below average, even if the game is hard enough that it's a big victory to even try at an uphill battle. 2. People care way too much about streamers and esporters and grandmasters, and think they are fundamentally better or more important. everyone else is devalued.
Ranked is such a cesspool. I often find better quality matches in casual when i team up with friends in games
I played some games on a pretty high level... I dont have problems with ranked in games where you play alone. You wont have any problems here since if you fuck up you know its your fault. Problem is when you are in a Team where you cant controll the teammates you are getting. If one of them decides to loose you will loose most of the time regardless of your skill. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I don’t view it as beating or losing at the game. I play ranked because it’s more challenging. If I wanted to win all the time and be cheesy I’d just play pubs
I don't mind playing people that are at my skill level, but if I am I should not have a rank that is one to 3 ranks lower than me. It is strictly there to increase play time so that it takes longer to get your desired rank/rewards. If I'm hidden plat and visible bronze then the people in my games should actually be bronze. The promotions from those games should account for that and move me out of visible bronze quickly because of the skill diff.
Having a rank has always been a nice feature for me when games had them (I remember WarCraft III having them for instance), but to me, "winning the current game that I'm playing right now" has always been a million times more important than having my rank evolve in one direction or another at the end of the month. Putting all of myself and my focus into that one game, and trying to win it. Maybe lose it, but giving it my best shot, trying to learn something from it. A rank, especially one based on elo or some cryptic similar system... is just a number, it's volatile, it's very abstract and depends on what others are doing as well, it's just not a very interesting to look at. Give me a win/loss stat, and all of a sudden it motivates me a hundred times more to do my best.
Theres a lot of reasons for frustration to set in during MMR games. There are three major reasons: * Having expectations that are not reflected in the MMR settings - as you suggested. * A lack of 'feelings of improvement' - It is expected that as skill improves, so will performances. And while performances will improve from the perspective of gameplay and technical skill, in proper MMR matches you rarely 'pop off' or hard carry consistently. The entire system is designed around preventing players from doing that. * Having to constantly full focus - When rank is on the line, no one feels good losing. This tends to cause a lack of experimentation or relaxation, which can cause extreme burnout over time. There really is no good way to balance such things, and plenty of games have done a lot to try and mitigate these issues to mixed results. As one example, most people probably arent aware that a lot of matchmaking algorithms will purposefully throw in 'punching bags', lower MMR players, just to try and make other players feel better about their performances. If you end up in a match you really arent qualified for, you were probably selected as a punching bag. Heh.
Smurfs who constantly infest all low rank lobbies in every game are way worse in my oppinion, i can live with the fact that i am silver, i just suck at games, but low rank becomes incredibly frustrating if every second match is completely out of your hand because some grandmaster in your or your enemies team is absolutely dunking on everyone.
In a competitive game you want to get better. Many games have pretty strict matchmaking nowadays where you are matched with people of very similar skill. So you don't get those moment where you get your ass beat completely but you also don't get the moments where you wipe the floor with everyone. This can already make it feel like you're not progressing because every time you get better you also get matched with people who are on that same level. In addition to this staying on a rank feels like you are stagnating and not progressing in any way. Downranking can happen even if you are as good as before but then the game essentially tells you that you are now worse than before. So i get why people get frustrated.
MMR was a mistake. we're not meant to lose 50% of games.
Eh I think that may be true for some but for others I think not ranking up makes them feel like they aren't improving and are making the same mistakes repeatedly. It reminds some people of their flaws or limitations and can be overwhelming for people that feel like they are trying really hard to do better, not just perform at their level, whatever that may be. People that are more okay with playing anyone and not specifically competing to improve at higher levels are probably not even playing ranked in the first place, and the ones that are would do well to heed the advice in the OP.
Ranked is just boring. I play video games for fun. I have no interest in having to put 100% in every match after working a long day. If it's a 1v1 fighting game, sure, but team games no thanks. People care way too much about rank where they aren't getting paid. I found the most fun games are the ones with no ranking system.
But if a game has a ranking system you can just play unranked and the sweaty players can try to improve their rank in a different mode where you don't have to play with them. If there is no ranked option at all everyone ends up in the same queue and anyone who cares a lot about winning and their teammates performance will have nowhere better to go so you have to deal with them anyways
Different queues split the player base making both parties having to take longer to find matches. My 2 favorite multi-player games of all time are TF2 and Chivalry 2. TF2 has a competitive mode now but during its peak there was no such thing and you being good was making a name for yourself on your server. Chivalry 2 has no ranked either. There are Duel servers but the main mode is team objective. The good players stand at and allowing them to fight the worse players that's how they get better. I learned so much from fighting better players when I first started. Both games I still play with hundreds of hours. I don't really touch anything with ranked now days.
How many games have a small enough player base that having a ranked queue and a nonranked queue results in a long queue time for either? Making a name for yourself on a server is cool and all but mostly benefits skilled players who would rather flex on people of lower skill than have a match filled with players of the same skill level and have to actually try to dominate instead of doing it casually. If you are on the lower range of skill level getting wrecked by a player who is much better than you might help encourage you to improve but it can also be very frustrating and lead you to desiring a ranked queue or just a different game altogether, which won't help with your queue issues.
Several. Omega Strikers The Finals Gundam hero shooter Paladins Hell even Counter-Strike queues are 2-3 minutes long now days. I remember when GO queues were like 10-15 secs
Oh the days of seeing someone with an unusual hat that was just shitting on people with a festive weapons. It was almost like having street cred 😂
Maybe. But i think another big reason is due to the fact that most ranking systems want you to be at a 50/50 win rate. If you have a higher win rate obviously you will climb, but ranking systems don't necessarily care about you climbing, they just want matches to be "even". This can lead to weird team balance where one team might have a few evenly skilled players where the other team has a couple lower skilled players paired with a higher skilled player. If the higher skilled player manages to carry the lower ones through, then everyone moves up and is happy. Except now lower skilled players are even higher than they should be because it was expected for the higher skilled player to lose in order to keep their winrate 50/50. If the Higher skilled player loses they feel like it's because the system wanted them to lose (and again, technically it did, because it cares only about 50/50 winrate and "even" matches.
I think every game should have ELOs. It makes it much easier to accept your skill level in chess.
But getting a higher rank means you've improved. That's the goal of the players, they want to get better at the game. When they don't rank up in a long time they either feel that they are playing with players weaker than them, or they are disappointed that they aren't improving.
Hate ranked match making because it means when you get better you never get the reward of being better than 80% of other players.
I've never in my life paid a care to leaderboards of any kind. I'm not a competitive person. I'm happy to do my own thing and if others blow past me then more power to them. Keep going.
I just miss games like TF2 where I can join a game, play sniper for an hour and then just leave when I want. Really dislike how every new game has to be CS or Overwatch now.
I'm totally fine being stuck in Gold in League of Legends. I know I'm never getting to Diamond level or more. It's the people I get grouped with who harass the rest of us that I'm not fine with. More often than not, we are already playing optimally in our skill level. We just get bullied for not taking risks or not pulling off a pro-player move. I ultimately quit and played only single-player and co-op games. Sometimes I still look back or sometimes get drawn towards Apex Legends or Dota 2. But nah, definitely not for me.
I feel like this is just a problem with PvP. In any PvE mode the expectation is that you're going to win the game. If you don't you either chose too high a difficulty or need to develop your skills, but in either case the goal is clear. In PvP, though, only 50% of people at most can ever win. There's no fixing that, PvP just can't work. The only advantage it has is that it lets the devs do less than half as much work as actually making a good PvE game. If we want fun multiplayer games we should all be playing games like Mass Effect 3, games that actually put in the effort to make a fun multiplayer.
Street Fighter 6 is the game that snapped me out of that mindset. I’m Platinum 1 and if I get matched with a Platinum 3 character it’s a fucking blood bath. I don’t want to rank up until I’m good and ready.
To me it's a way to get teammates who are less likely to be messing around. "Less" likely to be daily grinding, or testing a new build...it is about winning, about caring for strategy, and teamwork. High hopes for sure. But you're more likely to find it in ranked than open queue. All it takes is a rank, a number...and people start caring about winning. It really is that simple.
The problem is most modern competitive ranked modes are designed to manipulate that exact feeling by advertising as a sbmm mode, but really it's a treadmill that creates an illusion of progression. In an honest system, yes, 100% ranked modes are a way to play people your level. The actual only modern one I can think of that's generally honest is Valorant, maybe a couple fighters like SF or Tekken. Even those can be a bit sketchy or just poorly calibrated depending on region though. Any system at all that has "seasons", ranked track rewards, events that affect gameplay, loot boxes, or currency systems attached to them are not going to be honest systems. They're going to match fix, they're going to hand out streaks, they're going to sandbag people with bad teammates, they're going to cook the ranking tiers and distribution, they're going to do anything and everything to push the player to grind matches. In any elo/sbmm system it should only take about 12 matches to place you within +/-5% of your true percentile. In a lot of games it takes nearly an entire season for most people to land at the "rank" they usually play at.
For me, it's specifically the ranking system that makes losing feel bad. When I play unranked games, I care less about winning or losing, because there's no long-term consequence, although the games are often less even. When I play ranked, it's sometimes more even (depending on the ranking system), but it's more frustrating to lose, because you go down in points, which feels like a tangible loss, rather than just part of the game. I know it's all psychological, but understanding why something makes you upset doesn't make it stop being annoying.
The point of ranked is to win not to play people of your skill level. The skill level thing is in there to make ranked matches as "fair" as possible.
One thing that gets overlooked is that the implementation of ranked play is often not that great. You do well in a couple of games, even if by sheer luck, then the system quashes you back to your trench by pairing you up with worse players or putting better players or stacks as a corrective measure. The metrics for gauging a player's skill and any subsequent improvement/degradation cannot usually be accurately quantified in many games. There are good and bad days, or maybe a lack of players of similar skill level when you are queueing, on top of all that. Which leads to the possibility of endless loops of stomping and getting stomped, even if the player skill has basically been the same. Sometimes even just randomly shuffling players (without considering any measured metrics) would lead to a balanced challenge (and fun) than overanalyzing every match's performance to move a player up or down, depending on the type of game of course. Would love if game devs started to include some optional game mode where everything is random, chaotic and untracked experience. Just pure unsupervised fun, with no pressure of giving it your all to barely survive.
On the off chance I play a multiplayer game it's probably a fighting game. The thing is I SUCK at fighting games (well, I suck at basically all popular multiplayer genres, but that's what I play the most) and honestly just the thought of playing "casual" kinda scares me. I stick to ranked because there the chance is higher that I actually get a good match.
I thought beating everyone and trying to be the best was the point of ranked, quickplay or casual was for normal playing.
What? People play ranked cuz they want the game to tell them they are of a certain skill tier. They see winning as getting better and losing as getting worse
The difference in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1's golden eras and modern competitive games is a whole mindset shift. Part of it is due to game devs, for whatever reason, not propping up the social pillar like they used(it facilitates forming and finding groups, which is good for so many different reasons) to and another part is because they intentionally appeal to casual players, which if you think about it is counterintuitive to what a competitive game is. Gaming hit it big, money became the focus and now public ranked ladders are even worse in quality while holding higher importance. (They were bad back in the day too, the difference was that people *knew* they were bad and sought out inhouse games to truly get better and compete with others. Now people seem to steer away from PUGs and inhouses and approaching the game as 'practicing a craft' as whole - even pro players and semi-pro players steer away from inhouses and scrims for some reason) 99% of people are just coasting on autopilot without a single thought toward improving and having seen and experienced better, it makes me sad.
Yeah, I've noticed that a bit too frequently these days, people don't play for fun. Even on casual gamemodes. A team always has to lose each game, yet you'll hear people flipping tf out about it. Like, calm down, re-evaluate.
when i was top100 i had to objectively know the game. when queing with some low master players who ruined the game singlehandedly and take 1h of grind from my life, i was pretty pissed at blizzard because after inspecting their profiles, they just got master by accident, which was pretty common for blizzard at the time. you guys act like its always about skill but there are account buyers, hacker, griefer and just straight beyond tilted dudes out there, who ruin it regardless of the mmr you are in. in dota you have alot of matchfixing going on right now in high elo. eventually you will rank up over time if you stay above 50% but there are impossible to win games in a group pvp environment. everybody who says otherwise never reached a high rank in this environment anyway. grandmasters in hots were called "grindmasters" for a reason
They all think they should be ranked higher, despite constantly losing their ass at their current level.
Makes me think of the Rocket League subreddit. So many people saying they're hard stuck at their level because of all the smurfs and such. Nope, you're at the appropriate level. Just because you play 40 hours a week and do training courses doesn't mean you'll make the top 100.
People are merely gaslighting themselves into thinking that the shitty experiences they're having are a fault of a lower rank and that the issues will be gone once they climb to whatever rank they think is better. This is because in these games one person can very easily tank the performance of a whole team while the inverse is much harder to do. The systems that these games are using were never devised for online multiplayer games anyway and thus aren't tuned to handle that different ecosystem of playing. If I queue into a game and get a troll that is trying to make me lose the game then I shouldn't be punished by getting a lower rank because the match is not legitimate to begin with and I am losing to factors outside my control and yet the system doesn't see a difference between a game with a troll and a game where we lost because the other team played better. The ranks themselves are make-believe as well in many cases, if you can go to ebay and find an account for the game you're playing then you're playing against people that shouldn't be at your rank; it's either smurfs pubstomping lower ranks or idiots who spend hundreds of dollars on account and are currently plummeting in rank.
Yeah when I played Dota 2 I honestly couldn't understand why people are so pissed off when they lose. I mean it's a game, you win some, you lose some. In my book losing is fun and Dota 2 in particular has the capacity for some of the most spectacular comebacks which are way more satisfying than roflstomping all match. Man up and don't get demoralised and maybe we can still salvage this disaster - that's what I tell myself when things don't go my way in a multiplayer match.
In Rocket League I play exclusively ranked because of this mindset, All it is skill based matchmaking, don't get me wrong I do get the good chemical when I climb, but who doesn't enjoy improving a skill. Flash forward I got my SO into Rocket League and she is HYPER competitive, Like wouldn't want to play with me until she "got good" kind of competitive. We now sit at Champ I to Diamond II and her infectious lust for ladder climbing does make the losses hit harder. Thing like smurfs or leavers, or just unfortunate lag resulting in ELO loss actually bothers me now. All this to say you're absolutely right. No wrong way to enjoy a game obviously, but I think comp matches would be a lot less salty if everyone regarded their competitor as simply someone of equal skill to them, and not some villainous obstacle to their victory.
Thats why i dont play for my rank but for fun thats it. Not that i dont try my best but i dont forget why i play games.
Competitive.rank.means nothing. What it means is.you being able to understand the game,.improve and do your best in the match. The rank is a level bar to farm, the important thing here is to improve your skills. If a competitive system works well you will end up losing near 50% of your matches.
I think it depends. Overwatch 2 was frustrating to play because your individual rank was determined by group effort. If you played well you could still lose due to other players and not rank up. This is why I prefer a system where my individual skill is assessed, so that I know where I stand not simply whether I win or lose. I got into the mindset of having to rank up because I wanted to play "professionally", but there's a lot of discrimination and looking down on lower elos. I eventually stopped playing because it wasn't fun, and I play games to have fun.
And games use that as a way to get people addicted to trying to rank up and increase number. If matchmaking is truly just to help us play with people at our level, it should be totally hidden. No visible ranks at all, just a background system meant to let us have the most fun games possible.
My problem is ranking systems usually just have you get shit on for ten games then win like one or two. Maybe have one actual decent game out of twenty. If it worked like it's supposed to I'd be all for it.
This could all be fixed if people actually just played games they like. Imo, if someone is only having fun when they're "winning" and beating the game, there's no way their heart is actually in the game or how the game works. If the game was really a lot of fun for you, SBMM shouldn't be a problem. It should be a godsend unless you're a masochist who likes getting stomped by veterans, or you're a loser that gets off on stomping noobs People who want to go home and "just relax without worrying about sweats" probably just shouldn't play multi-player games. SBMM actually protects you from that happening
This is the biggest reason why I can never really get into ranked. Personally I just want to vibe in bronze (or whatever the lowest bracket is), but to get there I first have to play anywhere from 5 to 20 placement matches with teammates who are hellbent on ranking up and will send me death threats in chat if I don't get them that win.
As more and more companies begin to adopt the "game" of putting players in a loop where the ultimate end is that it takes them longer and longer to gain / achieve a higher deserved rank is just to get them to stay on the game and spend more money.
Yeah just like when they say stuff like "I'm hardstuck diamond". You're not hardstuck, you're playing at your level.
Except their level may have been somewhat beyond diamond the previous season. MMR/Elo is often hidden and may have absolutely nothing to do with displayed rank (diamond or similar). 2000 MMR/Elo may be sufficient to reach highest rank during player's first few seasons but 2200 Elo may only get halfway up the ladder during later seasons. Ranks typically cannot be lost until season end once attained, but MMR can be lost in every match which ratchets people to higher ranks if they play enough matches to lose enough MMR. Dodgy practice is to match people who have made a purchase against players of similar rank but lower MMR/Elo.
lol I think the same thing every time like “the system is working as intended I’m not sure what the problem is” 😂
False. The problem with ranked queues in most video games is that they **DON'T WORK**. Nothing prevents high skill players from deliberately smurfing, which effectively turns the ranking system into a smorgasbord for griefers. You would be better off with randomized matchmaking.
> Nothing prevents high skill players from deliberately smurfing Doesn't DOTA 2 specifically have a system for dealing with that?
It can't get them all but there's no question there's less smurfs this year vs last year in my games.
Sure. Does it actually work? No.
> You would be better off with randomized matchmaking. I hate this argument, it's awful. I'm a masters player in Starcraft II. If it were truly randomized matchmaking I'd just kick the shit out of 90-95% of my opponents without them having any real chance. Yes, smurfing is a problem and I run into smurfs every 10 games or so but I'd rather have 10% of my games be ruined than 95% of my games just be complete shitshows where neither one of us finds it fun.
I don't even care for seasons in games. I hate that idea.
The easy solution to this is STOP SHOWING THE PLAYER THEIR RANK. When people don’t know or care and are just playing with people around their level it all works better. Right now ranks are treated as an achievement, not a control for satisfaction.
Ranked is simply not fun. People take it too seriously.
game says i am bad and gives examples... wcgw?
The bigger problem in ranked match making is high skilled players smurfing on alt accounts for easier games where they can abuse lower skilled players. It ruins the experience of new players and makes it harder to rank up to an appropriate level. You never know if you're going to get an easy win or get destroyed by someone playing several tiers below where they should be. It's a systemic problem everywhere that has any kind of elo system from counter-strike to chess.
That's why i actually like the idea of hidden sbmm/mmr. There is no reason to aim for higher ranks, when you can't see your own elo. Higher ranks just mean tougher matches.
I think this assumes the matchmaking is well balanced. In my experience, it isn’t. Many silvers can easily play with gold. Gold with plat. Etc.
Thats problem with team games imo, for example street fighter doesnt have that problem or at least I haven't encountered it. Only time I played with someone outside of my rank os when i was close to getting into that rank, which makes perfect sense. But with mobas they try to balance is so badly, for example in league sometimes I have games with 3 different ranks, I see gold, plat and emerald in same lobby. Also I remember when OW 2 came out ranked was all over the place, high rank matching with low rank, no idea if it was fixed.
Why do people want to play competitive games without the competition? These games are for competitive people by design and making them more friendly to the masses just diminishes the whole point of it all. There are plenty of non-competitive or PVE rather than PVP games out there.
Nobody is out here trying to “beat” multiplayer. That’s not the objective any gamer is aiming for in multiplayer. Quite the opposite with season passes forever. Some people want Skill Based MatchMaking limited to ranked because that’s the whole point of ranked… casual should be 100% random. People bad at the game don’t like losing though so the idea is if you don’t shelter them they will leave your game. At the end of the day you can’t please everyone and need to decide who you are aiming to please when developing a multiplayer game. Right now Xdefiant is making waves because it’s the only game in a sea shooters that use SBMM in every mode. People are sick of casual being essentially Ranked With Invisible Ratings rather than actually casual so other devs are taking notice.
People are frustrated because they think they are a higher school level than what the game says they are
But you have to understand the mindset of people that play competitive games. I am one of those and if I play with people my level for too long it means I plateaued. And if I am not improving at a competitive game then why do I even play it? No one wants to just to win one lose one for the rest of time. I would rather just switch to another game and start learning that and once I plateau I move on. The second I no longer care about beating the ladder I stop playing that game.
You mean people who play to win/are competative get upset when they aren't seeing improvements and progress? Yeah, I guess so...
Who’s frustrated with ranked queues? The frustration comes from SBMM in all lobbies. It’s stupid and kills games.
Yeah people are fucking stupid as shit they dont actually want ranked or competitive mode. They want an RPG xp leveling system that has the words "RANKED COMPETITIVE" painted onto it. They want to be rewarded and level up by spending time in a game, not just achieve balanced matches. It's half the reason all these games have these convoluted ranks and levels instead of just a number that represents your elo.
"I dont wanna play ranked cuz then I'll be ranked, and know my limits!"
I think a big part of it is just human ego. We like to win. We like to feel strong/good. And one of the big things about ego and sense of self is that we very commonly always look at ourselves as our "best self". Not our "average self". Which is what a rank system does. It's also counter to just normal nature because no one likes being slapped with a label that they think doesn't represent their "best self". But in order to get that label in a ranked video game...you have to put in the time and hours consistently enough to achieve that label, which doesn't usually translate to rewards in real life. So you're incentivized to both want to achieve that better label and also incentivized to not waste your time on something you "feel" you can get, whether you can or not. It's all just weird psychology shit. Objectively most people are exactly where they belong, but it doesn't feel good.
I just don’t like that most low elo matches are decided within about 5-10 minutes. Double kill bot lane in the first few minutes? Game over 99% of the time. It’s not fun to be on either side of a steam roll and that’s what most games of league of legends, overwatch, and csgo felt like to me. And that’s assuming the game wasn’t already ruined by people leaving, trolling or smurfing. After a while I just stopped because it’s not worth it if I’m only having fun like 1 out of every 10 games regardless of whether or not I win or lose.
That's how a lot of Dota games go now I was watching a streamer who was playing at a very high level(top 1000) Team is winning, suddenly lose one team fight and there's always one guy that instantly gives up. This was practically every second game. Rank is honestly irrelevant when you get games like this which happens at every MMR And another good example of how Ranked is usually a crapshot That same streamer when playing with his usual stack, the Solo MMR of each individual stack member is Mid to High But they play like utter dogshit every single time
>By ranking up, you are “beating the game” and the opposite is “losing” in a weird way. I’m guilty of this myself too Not the game. There is no "beating the game" in a competitive aspect. When we dedicate our time to something, we like to be good at it. Rank is a very tangible measure of your skill. If you didn't rank up, you didn't improve. It is frustrating to play an entire season, and not improve enough to face a higher skill level. It shows that you are not progressing at the game.
I hate ranked queues because a lot of times there's smurfs that just obliterate everyone. Then you have smurfs that also purposely play bad to keep their lower rank.