How I think ranked could be fixed


(spartamania302) #1

Hi there, my name is Robin and my in-game name is spartamania302. I am a twitch streamer/youtuber who is dedicated to making DB content. I love this game so much and want to say to SD that they’ve done a wonderful work creating this “concept” game. And you all probably understand why I say “concept” game.

As we all know ranked is just broken at the moment, just like in season 1 and pre-season. I don’t know, but a full team of silvers against a gold agent and an elite operative is no matchmaking at all. Sure you could blame the low playerbase for this, but still having to play those matches and losing those still have an immense high impact on your profile. Placing everyone in silver/low gold during placements is bad placement and just doesn’t work. This is why I want to start this discussion on how I as a programmer would fix this. Since I am a programmer, and am currently working on a matchmaking system as a school assignment, I have a few ideas that will fix this once and for all. If you disagree on anything then go ahead and reply.

First of all ranked should be COMPLETELY reworked from scratch. From core to connection, it should be completely discarded and reprogrammed from the core itself. As a programmer I know this because if you rewrite ****ty code it will work 100x better. This would take a lot of time I know but at least we will have a better system. And yes I know they already did that but they should do it again.

Second of all placements. During placements, you shouldn’t look at wins or losses because placements will ALWAYS be unbalanced. There is no way at all to balance a handful of players that are unranked. Adding to that you should not look at the ranks from previous season to match players, because until now we’ve had broken seasons with players that belong in gold being stuck in silver, and players belonging in bronze that got carried to gold. I know that there is no way to stop these carries, though there is a way to slow these down. I want to add that it might be better to look at performance of the player in pubs/casual, what I would do is monitor the player during his lvl 1-7, and give him a certain rating equal to a rank that is invisible. Use that to match him with other unrankies. Also level 7 is WAAAAAY too low for ranked. It should be between 15 and 20 no offense to those insane good low levels that come from other fps games. Though because of the low playerbase this might make things even worse so at least crank it up to 10. This will also fix the smurfing problem. Most level 7s just don’t have enough experience.

Going back to what I’ve said about the match against a gold agent and an elite operative with a full silver team at my side. First of all these matches can be allowed since the playerbase is a bit low yes sure BUT if you lose this match (which you are most likely to do) it should NOT have any impact whatsoever on your ranked profile AT ALL. For the high ranked people they also shouldn’t rise a lot from that. IF however you manage to win that, then you should rise EXTREMELY high like an instant uprank or something and those high ranked should get an instant down rank for losing against low ranks (not that this would ever happen but there is a possibilty). Besides in my opinion matches like these shouldn’t even be created but then the high ranks would have a hard time finding games. Also those matches were you have a leaver should if you lose these they also shouldn’t have high impact on your profile BUT if you win 1 of these impacts should be high. Losing with a 5 man team against a 4 man team is a disgrace and should be punished more while winning with a 4 man team against a 5 man team should be rewarded much more. Also these leavers need HIGHER penalties. Because some hop into ranked and then just leave for no reason, ok sure you have those that are having crashes to their game but they can reconnect. If they don’t however they should be punished more.

Next up is what a lot of people have been asking for, is a merc limiter. This is used by DBN for their tournaments so there is no reason to not implement this in ranked. It will fix the 3 thunders meta we have atm. Adding to this comes the problem of not being able to spawn since all those mercs are already on the field. Though this can be solved with 2 things. First of all mercs should be picked in the lobby as in all the moba games but instead of just 1 you pick 3 off course. Second of all, players should have a certain amount of mercs unlocked before being able to play ranked and those should contain of equal amount of engis, meds and dps mercs. Most new players unlock vasili first and jump into ranked with it only to get obliterated. Not saying there are no good snipers, just saying that not even training with a sniper means that you will be bad at sniping. Merc banning can also help. And last but not least, you should AT LEAST have a bronze for all of those mercs.

This one goes directly to SD, can you please, just please, start releasing weekly updates with balance changes to ALL mercs, not saying thunder only, you have to stop nuke nerfing mercs in 1 patch and start balancing every merc in small ways weekly. Thunder is by far the most unbalanced merc atm. Also, don’t go on your dev video and say things like this “Hop into ranked to get balanced matches” -_- you’re literally lying against your players who are your source of income and support. Also the skin cards are very nice, but they attract a lot of noobs that are just not ready to play ranked. You guys can be pretty creative I can give you that, I liked the “visual pun” at the start of your most recent video. BUT DON’T LIE TO YOUR PLAYERS FFS. Sorry, that was the raging me that came up for a second there. Also don’t say “if you want to play with friends hop into ranked to team up with 1 or 4 friends” because ranked is playing serious, and because of this, a lot of players hop into ranked and don’t take it serious enough. Things like “it’s just a game” make me rage even harder during ranked. If you want people to be able to play with friends give them CMM.

Next up, ranking up and down. Ranking up for carrying is way too slow, ranking down when even carrying is way too fast. Ranking up for being total trash is still too fast, and ranking down for being absolute trash is way too slow. As simple as that, the system is NOT looking at the performance you’ve made during a ranked match.

Noobs should have a better play field to train on, this was suggested by a lot of people, we need those 5v5 FF-on servers so they know how ranked works. CMM will also help them to learn so I would suggest releasing that BEFORE ranked season 3. Assuming S3 will ever happen.

For hackers, I don’t really have an opinion on how to fix this since it’s been a long time since I came across a hacker and especially in ranked. But to be fair your anti-cheat system is banning people that are not hacking as well, heard about some really good players that had their smurfs banned for no reason.
To end this post I would like to say, stop saying “it’s in alpha” or “DB is in beta” because, for how long has that been the case? 2 years of beta is like NO. You are just throwing away those potential players, also F2P is just not the right business model for Dirty Bomb. Sorry, but it attracts hackers and smurfs by far too much, and I’d rather pay 20 euros and get all mercs, then having to grind them all (even though grinding them all was fun). But as a new player I would prefer paying.

I hope SD takes a look at this, because this just has to stop, this game is supposed to be a competitive shooter but to me, it’s just a “concept” game. Just an idea that is not yet worked out correctly. It might even be better to rework DB COMPLETELY from scratch in a new engine as well and call it Dirty Bomb 2 or something I have no idea, and then import all profiles to that new game. Because you will get a lot of people mad if you don’t. I love this game and hope for the best, but I am not sure how long it will take until I uninstall the game for the 5th time and don’t play for another 3 months because of this.

This is my first ever post about Dirty Bomb, so if I forgot something please don’t hate me and let me know by replying to this post. If you feel offended by something, let me know and I will change it as fast as possible!

Media:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBGcBjLXNeQNoCVB44wMtcg
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/spartamania302
Twitter: Don’t have one at the moment


(Szakalot) #2

lol, okay lets go:

  • scratching ranked - yeah not gonna happen. Cute though. Not gonna happen.

  • lvl 15 for ranked: not gonna happen. Ranked isnt about having good players, its about letting everyone play competitively. Lvl 7 already takes something like 10 hours, this is plenty of pre-requisite time to allow players to join with the basic idea of the game. To compare, lvl 10 is something like 15-20hours, lvl 15 probably upwards of 30.

  • the golds + elite vs silvers should never happen, agree to that. Even if player stats indicate the opposite, as a silver might get good stats from playing against other silvers, or lots of gametime in max-lvl servers. Ideally, the skill estimate would factor in the amount of hours played, but it looks like SD is short of a good statistician to workout a proper formula.


(Glottis-3D) #3

I did like one point here.
If you win 4v5 you do need to rank a little more (comparing to same teams 5v5). Because it means those 4 are far better and need a higher match


(Szakalot) #4

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;563150]I did like one point here.
If you win 4v5 you do need to rank a little more (comparing to same teams 5v5). Because it means those 4 are far better and need a higher match[/QUOTE]

this is not trivia to implement:
4v5 can often be a transition state, the 5th player keeps connecting, gets dropped again etc. i dont think SD has good tools to tell when the game is actually 4v5