Ideas to boost ranked attendance

[_retired]

I must have trauma about this game and ranked but…

an Event won’t solve anything. Events are just short term solutions just like were all these cases/credits events or even merc releases. They will momentarily rise the player base and then drop it along the line.

Pugs etc. are all different story since you mostly know that the people playing are “solid”. Unfortunately that also means you are playing the same people within small circles again and again.

Why you would play ranked with random people against other random people when there random variables such as suicidal minedropping or then again someone playing proxy on attack and just trying to bumrush a repair while getting killed 100x times?
There were also Aura’s putting station right on open space so it could be shot etc.

Real ranked requires solid game with solid players to have healthy player base in the long run. Magic tricks such as advertising and events by springling something fancy to top of it all won’t do.
Some people I know waited lllooooonnngggg time to get all this stuff fixed so they might go ranked and that was before ranked was actually down…

Otherwise with events or “extra prizes” it will only make “wrong kind of players” join the ranked matchmaking who won’t stick around or don’t want to learn to play. The problem has been much bigger than just “let us introduce to ranked, you will love it!”
Reason why people tolerate certain things in casual is because they are just pubs. But when they go to more competitive enviroment they wait certain things being ready to go or they won’t stick around.

Same goes to actual competitive or pro league stuff, it needs to be even further step above normal ranked play. Everything needs to be in order including netcode and balance because otherwise players won’t feel it’s fair or that plays ok.

Dirty Bomb simply hasn’t been on par what is required from ranked gameplay that people would stick to it. Carrot won’t do.

[BananaSlug]

i remember them saying that each season will be 3/4 months long, soo yeah…

there are two reasons why people dont play ranked
1.there are people that say “8v8 is better”… quite a lot of them
2.a loop which looks like that:
-no one plays because queue times are too long
-queue times are long because no one plays

and thats why imo ranked should get that huge 100% charge revive with get up augument
i think that giving weapon kits as reward for playing would be awesome for that

[n-x]

I think an event would be a good idea to boost players numbers in ranked. This mode is just completely off the radar for most players and even if they try it out now it is mostly stomp or get stomped.

But an event will help nothing if all that it does is let people try out ranked grab the rewards and when its over, it all falls back to just 200% credits. So there needs to be several points considered.

1. Make ranked worthwhile compared to missions, also after a potential event.
2. Lobbies of 5 should have a higher chance of getting a reward/ get better rewards. This way players will group together and experience the game as a team, can develop tactics, strategies, and a sense of community. Something that will bind them more to ranked than any reward.
3. Give us Casual 5vs5 servers, so people can play and learn that format in a casual way.

There are probably some more points to it. But an event will only help to get people in trying rank. To keep them there, there must be significant changes.

[jooshoyes]

I feel that every time you pass a full rank(like silver to gold, not silver 1-2) you should either get an arsenal crate or a fixed amount of credits. I feel that there should be more incentive toward playing ranked other than trinkets and credit boosts. The thing is though, it will be impossible to maintain a good ranked playerbase without a decent amount of players playing the game. Quite frankly, there are not enough people playing pubs to even consider a ranked playerbase even existing. Focus on putting the game out there, then on ranked.

[Amerika]

If SD added more incentives to playing ranked it would get played. Not just credits…not everyone cares about credits. But season rewards that go beyond just trinkets. New skins/titles/anything for achieving ranks, a consistent and easy to understand rank system, advertising the hell out of it on the load screen. Hell, this sounds dumb, but even a UI change where ranked is a big damn button staring a player in the face and making a big deal out of “unlocking” ranked would push people towards it…especially new players.

I think if CMM ever gets finished then ranked will also get a lot more support since CMM will be 6v6 with skill ranked sorting like ranked and it will be a natural move over.

I’d also be perfectly fine with the whole game being ranked only once community servers are released. Let people go pub on community servers with 24/7 Chapel 16vs16 (No Snipers) and not get credits while the main game is just ranked. That would give people a lot of choice still in how they want to play while also making the game pretty competitive with good incentives if you queue.

[Dawnlazy]

Repeating an old suggestion of mine:

-reset ladder more frequently (2 or 3 months)
-if you play enough to get any rank, you’re guaranteed a random bronze loadout when the season resets
-if you reach silver rank, you get a random silver drop, on gold rank a random gold, on cobalt rank a random cobalt card and on elite operative you get a special obsidian or other unique skin made just for that season

[BananaSlug]

[quote=“Dawnrazor;206800”]Repeating an old suggestion of mine:

-reset ladder more frequently (2 or 3 months)
-if you play enough to get any rank, you’re guaranteed a random bronze loadout when the season resets
-if you reach silver rank, you get a random silver drop, on gold rank a random gold, on cobalt rank a random cobalt card and on elite operative you get a special obsidian or other unique skin made just for that season[/quote]
yes but i think that every rank should get a special edition card, because imo getting random cobalt would be meh but if for example every guy in gold would get the same special card it
would work better imo

or something like you unlock more rewards rewards by playing and ranking up, soo even the shittiest player can get some rewards

but rewards for playing and ranking up would be separated

[Dawnlazy]

[quote=“BananaSlug;207142”][quote=“Dawnrazor;206800”]Repeating an old suggestion of mine:

-reset ladder more frequently (2 or 3 months)
-if you play enough to get any rank, you’re guaranteed a random bronze loadout when the season resets
-if you reach silver rank, you get a random silver drop, on gold rank a random gold, on cobalt rank a random cobalt card and on elite operative you get a special obsidian or other unique skin made just for that season[/quote]
yes but i think that every rank should get a special edition card, because imo getting random cobalt would be meh but if for example every guy in gold would get the same special card it
would work better imo

or something like you unlock more rewards rewards by playing and ranking up, soo even the shittiest player can get some rewards

but rewards for playing and ranking up would be separated
[/quote]

In that case, what if there was a special skin for each season, and the higher your rank at the end the less RNG you’d have when getting your loadout (at a certain rank you can pick the merc, higher than that you can pick the weapon and at the top you can just choose the specific card).

[BananaSlug]

[quote=“Dawnrazor;207174”][quote=“BananaSlug;207142”][quote=“Dawnrazor;206800”]Repeating an old suggestion of mine:

-reset ladder more frequently (2 or 3 months)
-if you play enough to get any rank, you’re guaranteed a random bronze loadout when the season resets
-if you reach silver rank, you get a random silver drop, on gold rank a random gold, on cobalt rank a random cobalt card and on elite operative you get a special obsidian or other unique skin made just for that season[/quote]
yes but i think that every rank should get a special edition card, because imo getting random cobalt would be meh but if for example every guy in gold would get the same special card it
would work better imo

or something like you unlock more rewards rewards by playing and ranking up, soo even the shittiest player can get some rewards

but rewards for playing and ranking up would be separated
[/quote]

In that case, what if there was a special skin for each season, and the higher your rank at the end the less RNG you’d have when getting your loadout (at a certain rank you can pick the merc, higher than that you can pick the weapon and at the top you can just choose the specific card).[/quote]

hmmm, i dont think that i want rng in this (maybe if cases were a reward)imagine that at elite you can choose card, you choose it, you are happy and then you see bronze 5 with the same card, a lot of people would get upset

[SnakekillerX]

Could maybe make a new currency only obtained through Ranked, then allow people to use it on things (like trinkets, etc) that can only be purchased with this currency.

[doxjq]

I really think they should actually put a player counter in, if it’s possible. I always hear random people saying from time to time “I spent an hour searching ranked but no luck” etc.

I think it would give more incentive to play, if you saw it said like “9 people currently searching” opposed to just having no idea and assuming no one is playing, so not searching at all.

[The_N00Ba]

a more visible indication of how many people are searching for rank might be helpful. it kind of think it is similar to seeing how many servers have people in them and how many are full. For information provided to the player like that would be good I think.

[SnakekillerX]

[quote=“Dox;207204”]I really think they should actually put a player counter in, if it’s possible. I always hear random people saying from time to time “I spent an hour searching ranked but no luck” etc.

I think it would give more incentive to play, if you saw it said like “9 people currently searching” opposed to just having no idea and assuming no one is playing, so not searching at all.[/quote]

Works both ways though.

If there are only 2 people searching and the game tells you that… then why waste your time queuing up at that point?

You’d already know that you wouldn’t be getting into a game… not unless other people also decided to purposely waste their time on starting a game that probably won’t end up happening.

It would also cause certain people to go… “oh… pfft, only X number of people playing ranked, this game is dead.”

What we need is proper incentive to play ranked, paired with a highly boosted player base to keep it afloat. (advertising, official release, more regular content updates)

While I know they only have so many people, and new content takes time to make and test… maybe they should consider bringing more people onto this project? The game has potential to be quite successful, I hope they realize that enough to let this game grow.

[priah]

If you want to play DB more competitively than pubs, start pugging or form/join a team. Ranked is useless, it’s faster and easier to get a competitive game going by just finding 9 other players. Plus you can ensure balanced teams.

[The_N00Ba]

I think the main thing with a player count for ranked is for players to know when is the best time to play ranked. With casual games you can tell when prime time is by how many servers are filled. Ranked not so much. Incentive alone may bring players in to ranked but without them knowing when they should play it is likely they still will not find games and quit ranked. if that makes any sense.

[JonBongNoJovi]

Make all matches ranked is only way to go as far as i see , as i said before , you will be placed with like minded people of the same ability , also be nice if the ranked season was better defined .

Have leader boards for each division , show top 10-20 players of each merc ie top aura healer / bush turret kills / nader martydom kills , or a way to show who played to the merc strengths .