Ranked points : too hard to earn ?

[LoafOfBread]

Honestly if I’m gonna get terminal ass cancer and AIDS for a single case I’d really rather select the card I wanna get you know…

But that would be less annoying I guess.

Thats not what we want now.

is it.

doont think sooooo.

[B_Montiel]

Currently the current earning rate is too high for many players, even when winning. And I actually consider including a base rate over time part would be interesting.

[Lord_Coctus]

@FalseLumpy said:
Could give 5 extra ranked points for every 5k score points you earn, plus the base ranked points you’d get for a W/D/L. The base ranked points could also be affected by the length of match.

I like this. It would reward both teams and players on each team for doing well. The only issue though is that stompers would be rewarded very often due to most likely having higher scores compared to the others.
I would suggest that the bonus points would end for each player once they reach 20k score, giving at most 20 extra points per game.

[Homu1124]

@Drac0rion said:
So essentially what everyone seems to be getting at is that the skins shouldn’t be locked behind ranked points since nobody here cares about ranked.

No one has yet to mention the season end rewards or any kind of rewards for rank progression. So everyone who wants more ranked points just see ranked as a grind for the shiny skins, as they don’t actually care about ranked.

“I’m bronze but I also deserve more ranked points.” Oh, yes, the participation award.
If you play ranked, the only reward you should care about is your Elo.

It’s just a silly system to include casuals in ranked who don’t want to be there in the first place. I mean they even added ranked points boosters for crying out loud…

Instead of only adding limited edition skins, SD should finally either add new skins to the default cases which still only include 10 skins or make a new, more expensive case with new skins.

I don’t want ranked catering towards some filthy casuals. If I wanna play in a zoo, I’ll just jump into the first 8vs8 server I can find.

You seem to imply that everyone playing ranked only plays for the skins.

I play it to get a competitive match, which is incentivized by getting points during progression to get rewards. But if I get a stack on the other side constantly and the occasional hacker and/or intentional teamkiller ruining the flow of the game, and then get only 10 points, anticipating from the trend of matches that I will only see matches like that in the future, then forgive me if I start to get cynical about the accuracy of a person’s so-called “rank” in the game.

End of season points silver agent or below does not give enough points for a case, just in case you actually thought that the season end rewards compensate for the frustration of the previously mentioned problems with ranked.

PS: Sterling would laugh at your elitism.

[Xenithos]

@Homu1124 said:

@Drac0rion said:
So essentially what everyone seems to be getting at is that the skins shouldn’t be locked behind ranked points since nobody here cares about ranked.

No one has yet to mention the season end rewards or any kind of rewards for rank progression. So everyone who wants more ranked points just see ranked as a grind for the shiny skins, as they don’t actually care about ranked.

“I’m bronze but I also deserve more ranked points.” Oh, yes, the participation award.
If you play ranked, the only reward you should care about is your Elo.

It’s just a silly system to include casuals in ranked who don’t want to be there in the first place. I mean they even added ranked points boosters for crying out loud…

Instead of only adding limited edition skins, SD should finally either add new skins to the default cases which still only include 10 skins or make a new, more expensive case with new skins.

I don’t want ranked catering towards some filthy casuals. If I wanna play in a zoo, I’ll just jump into the first 8vs8 server I can find.
I play it to get a competitive match, ---- if I get a stack on the other side constantly and the occasional hacker and/or intentional teamkiller ruining the flow of the game, and then get only 10 points, anticipating from the trend of matches that I will only see matches like that in the future, then forgive me if I start to get cynical about the accuracy of a person’s so-called “rank” in the game.

You have an elegance with words my friend. That’s exactly how I feel. The current ranked system, disregarding points entirely, is win/loss based, and not your personal contributions based. Skill and teamplay is supposed to be your ELO, NOT your win/loss ratio. It’s very hard in the current system to not only reward, but to JUDGE where it is because of how it’s set up. You have only so many games where an aura has less than a thousand score in ranked after 4 minutes before you want to punch someone in the face. And that is just one small meager example. That aura costs you the match, and now you’re teaming with even STUPIDER people when solo queuing.

[anon41468043]

@Drac0rion: I both agree and disagree with your post. I’m conflicted. I think it’s unfortunate that most people are only in it for the skins, and I suppose an argument could be made that it’s catering to casuals, but I don’t agree that having ranked progression and points be determined by individual performance is catering or a participation trophy.

[Drac0rion]

@Homu1124

I imply, that the current ranked rewards are a joke, simply to include players that would otherwise keep avoiding ranked. But if they want the skins, they’ll have to play it.
I’d actually like to consider the skins as a bonus to playing ranked, rather than a reward for playing ranked.

SD has worked on DB for over 5 years now? You’d think that by now they’d understand their target audience, but obviously they don’t.

While trying to avoid Brink 2.0, SD is still trying to work on their vision of the game, trying to claim that DB “is” the successor to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

There’s a reason why ranked sucks, there’s a reason why DB isn’t gaining popularity.
I mean the game has been over 2 years on steam and after the initial 12k playerbase it managed to achieve, it’s never even reached back to 7k players.

SD is far too content with their game and playerbase and are too afraid to take any drastic changes to make any actual improvements.

I played Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory for over 8 years straight. There were no rewards, no ranked. SD gave us the base game, the community perfected it to fit everyone, from casuals to pros.
I truly wish that DB would become a successor to Wolfenstein: ET, but if SD won’t bother to understand veterans and pros and what they value in this shooter, then it will eventually still be written off as Brink 2.0.

Ranked is trash and it will remain that until certain changes are made.
No system is perfect, but upping the value of ranked points isn’t going to help anyone. If anything it could harm the ranked environment by including players who are there just to grind through, since it will only take X amount of games for a fancy limited edition skin.

And by all this, I don’t mean that casuals will ruin the ranked environment, but rather that if their perspective is to only play ranked for the limited loadouts, they’re not in it for the experience and will ruin it for everyone else. If you’re not interested to tryhard, then why queue for ranked in the first place.

In the end it’s all down to perspective, if you need ranked points as an incentive to play ranked, then you probably shouldn’t be playing it in the first place.

! To be honest the current ranked points system is already the best system for limited edition loadouts.
! For the example, I’ll assume the matchmaking is perfect, as in the win rate percent is 50%.
!
! With only 10 games per day, with the 50% win rate, you could earn 3 limited edition loadouts in 10 days, which is far better for many players in comparison to the limited edition case drops from previous events.
!
! Even if the matchmaking is horrible and you end up with a win rate percent close to 40%, you could still get your fancy special edition card once every 4 days.
! Even players with the worst win rates should receive 1 shiny in less than 40 games as long as the matchmaking system is somewhat competent (50% +/- 10% win rate).

[Nail]

“SD has worked on DB for over 5 years now? You’d think that by now they’d understand their target audience, but obviously they don’t.”

or… you ain’t it

lol

[Drac0rion]

I never claimed to be.
But if they did understand their target audience, they’d have a bigger playerbase and wouldn’t keep losing veteran players.

My vision of the game would essentially be Wolf:ET 2.0, but SD is busy working on “new and cool” hybrid mercs etc.

[Artyrim]

Well I don’t mind farming for points like it is now, but the problem is that you can get with them.
In ranked season 2 my luck wasn’t great . Just look how many points were farmed for these cases.

Is better to pay 2/3k points for a case of merc you like than a random one like is now.
Or introduce a recycle system for event cards

[anon41468043]

@Artyrim said:
Well I don’t mind farming for points like it is now, but the problem is that you can get with them.
In ranked season 2 my luck wasn’t great . Just look how many points were farmed for these cases.

Is better to pay 2/3k points for a case of merc you like than a random one like is now.
Or introduce a recycle system for event cards

The triple duplicate Phoenix triggers me. Badly. You got some decent ones, though. Could definitely be worse. A31 Fletch, G85 Aimee, and MO22 Vassili are good. A92 Rhino is decent and I guess KE53 Proxy is pretty good.

[Sorotia]

@Artyrim

I’ll trade you for one of those Felix Aimee dupes if that ever becomes possible!

But at least you did get some nice ones…I’d say about 90% of the special cards I get I’ll never use

[Sithas]

Why are people complaining about people playing ranked only for shinies anyway?
Lets be honest with the balance in ranked it does not offer any test of skill.
You either team up and steamroll yourself to cobalt and then get a long waiting time.
Or you are the one who gets steamrolled while being teamed up with people that dont even manage to find the ‘e’ key on their keyboard, forever doomed to be in high silver low gold hell(or worse).
The only thing ranked offers are shinies. So the trend of people going ranked just for the shinies is pretty reasonable.

[Sorotia]

@Sithas said:
Why are people complaining about people playing ranked only for shinies anyway?
Lets be honest with the balance in ranked it does not offer any test of skill.
You either team up and steamroll yourself to cobalt and then get a long waiting time.
Or you are the one who gets steamrolled while being teamed up with people that dont even manage to find the ‘e’ key on their keyboard, forever doomed to be in high silver low gold hell(or worse).
The only thing ranked offers are shinies. So the trend of people going ranked just for the shinies is pretty reasonable.

Because constantly getting stuck with those people and losing every other game sucks?

People who don’t want to put effort into it because win or lose they get points and have a small chance to get a case ruins teams and take all of the fun out of it?

Because some people of these people may also be trolling people…intentionally throwing games knowing their frustrating other people…

It only gets worse when you throw smurfs into the mix with all of this.

[anon41468043]

@Sithas said:
Lets be honest with the balance in ranked it does not offer any test of skill.
You either team up and steamroll yourself to cobalt and then get a long waiting time.
Or you are the one who gets steamrolled while being teamed up with people that dont even manage to find the ‘e’ key on their keyboard, forever doomed to be in high silver low gold hell(or worse).

Not a jab directed at you personally and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but the people that say things like this are almost always bad or mediocre at best and have never climbed out of the silver ranks. It is hard if you solo queue beyond those points, yes, but how could anyone expect anything less? It doesn’t matter how good you are individually if you have an entire lobby of people roughly around the same skill level, but one team is mic’d up in a group(s) that has played together and the other is/has not. My matches do improve a lot and get more competitive the higher rank I go. All of these nightmares and stories I hear about stomping and steamrolling are more common during the placement matches and low ranks when a fresh season starts in my experience. It naturally balances itself after time. Good players and teams rise while bad ones fall.

@Sithas said:
Why are people complaining about people playing ranked only for shinies anyway?
The only thing ranked offers are shinies. So the trend of people going ranked just for the shinies is pretty reasonable.

Because it appeals to people that’d otherwise have no interest in a competitive setting. People who are less likely to be prepared or skilled enough. It’s like the SuperBowl halftime shows hosting trash like Katy Perry to appeal to casual, everyday people that don’t know a thing about football and are only in it for fun and the commercials. With the system the way it is currently, there are not enough incentives for people to stay for the entire match and do their best to rank up. Because at least half (and that’s a generous number; I’d wager it’s more around 70%) of people in ranked are NOT in it for rank, they are in it for ranked cases with flashy skins.

50 points for a win and rank-up rewards is not enough. Most will never gain more than a few ranks because they’re not good enough and thus rely solely on points from winning. I have seen countless of these people quit in the beginning of matches because it’s not going to be an easy 50 points. I’ve also seen countless people drop messages like ‘not staying for 10 points’ before quitting. On top of that, one of my buddies intentionally plays like garbage during his placement matches so he starts with a poor initial rank and can fly through the early ranks to reap those extra ranked point rewards. The problems you described with your ranked experience that so many people share IS A RESULT of the contrast between those that care about rank and want to play competitively and those who likely would have never been in there in the first place.

I’d propose the following solutions:

1. Penalties (not just time) for repeatedly quitting. Loss of rank and rank point penalties. I’ve gone over the how and why of this in a thousand different threads this week so I won’t clarify the rest of the details in here again.

2. Individual rank progression and point rewards based on personal performance would fix all of this overnight. This benefits absolutely everyone no matter which angle you look at it from. Account for score, wins and losses, opposing team rank, and match duration. A similar model to what we have currently and how credits are calculated at the end of our matches with a few tweaks.

3. Changing the base rates of ranked case drops in matches and increasing the amount of points rewarded per rank up. This also encourages more people to stick it out and do their best to rank up. Bronze rank = 2% drop rate. Silver = 4%. Gold = 6%. Cobalt = 8%. Elite = 10%. Not a fan? Make the drop percentage based on personal score at the end of the match. Or rather rewarding ‘x’ amount of cases at the end of the season based on somethin’ like a win/loss ratio or highest rank attained. Etc. Anything else could help.

4. Preventing deranking too far. I didn’t think this would ever be an issue in this game, but with so many people seeking an easy 50 points it became one last season. I saw videos and discussions on Steam about people who completely derank once they can’t get any higher so they can fall back down to stomp on bronzes for easy wins. The only reason why this exists, and why many people may be experiencing terrible stomps at lower levels, is because of ranked skins. There would be no other reason to do this without that. I’d propose only allowing someone to lose rank down to the lowest tier of the highest rank they’ve broken into. Meaning once you’re silver or gold, you can’t fall back down too far into the previous rank. They could stop it after, say, 3 deranks and that person is then stuck there no matter how many more losses until they can rank up. Each consecutive loss at that floor would require more wins to start progressing again. This keeps people relatively close to their own skill rank. Nobody ‘accidentally’ gets carried to high gold or lucks out and ends up there and ‘accidentally’ falls back down to bronze.

That or just completely remove ranked skins or only reward one per rank up. One case after finishing your placement matches, one case getting into silver, one case getting into gold, one case into cobalt, and a bundle of some cases for getting to that lovely elite status. I really don’t care at this point. Ranked is for competitive. If people don’t like that and can’t compete at any tier level, get out. Stop diluting the experience and milking cosmetics.

[Sithas]

@Wintergreen
FIrst i wrote a long response, but i decided that it is pointless.
Our experience and opinions on the ranked seasons are completely different(honestly somethings you are saying makes me wonder if we are playing the same game) and i dont see either of us changing our mind, so i will just comment on your improvement suggestion.
1: this should have been implemented in the first season sadly we still dont have this.
2: I can see where your coming from, but the problem is how do you calculate the performance? total kills? revives? xp? I have seen people making great contributions to the team while being last place on the scoreboard.
3: Making it based on win/lose ratio would be horrible. This season i have played 6 matches 4 won 2 lost. excepts the 2 matches that i lost were because we lost a teammate and it became 4vs5 right at the beginning of the match. Its already frustrating losing because of that, dont punish players more because of teammates who quit/gets disconnected
4: ’ Nobody ‘accidentally’ gets carried to high gold or lucks out and ends up there and ‘accidentally’ falls back down to bronze.’ high gold? no, low gold/high silver on a losing streak to bronze happened to some people.

[anon41468043]

@Sithas said:
@Wintergreen
FIrst i wrote a long response, but i decided that it is pointless.
Our experience and opinions on the ranked seasons are completely different(honestly somethings you are saying makes me wonder if we are playing the same game) and i dont see either of us changing our mind, so i will just comment on your improvement suggestion.
1: this should have been implemented in the first season sadly we still dont have this.
2: I can see where your coming from, but the problem is how do you calculate the performance? total kills? revives? xp? I have seen people making great contributions to the team while being last place on the scoreboard.
3: Making it based on win/lose ratio would be horrible. This season i have played 6 matches 4 won 2 lost. excepts the 2 matches that i lost were because we lost a teammate and it became 4vs5 right at the beginning of the match. Its already frustrating losing because of that, dont punish players more because of teammates who quit/gets disconnected
4: ’ Nobody ‘accidentally’ gets carried to high gold or lucks out and ends up there and ‘accidentally’ falls back down to bronze.’ high gold? no, low gold/high silver on a losing streak to bronze happened to some people.

That’s fair. We can agree to disagree on some. As for the fine details about calculating progression and ranked points on score and how a rework to the case skin (the win/loss bit and drop percentages), I was throwing some examples out openly. I’m not a developer and this isn’t my job, but based on my own experiences in DB and with other competitive games back when I gave a damn, I think implementing things along those lines will result in a much better ranked mode.

I want to respond to your point about #4, though. Even if that did happen which I find extremely uncommon, you acknowledged it’d be as a result of a terrible losing streak rather than so-and-so suddenly becoming a bad player the next day and only being able to compete with bronzes. That just doesn’t happen. All I was suggesting is that we’re only able to derank so far after attaining a certain rank so we’ll always be matched with people within a reasonable skill range of our own. It prevents intentional deranking.

But yeah, I do feel like I’m playin’ a completely different game than some of the people on here sometimes. Every ranked season I’ve played upwards of 100-150 matches with my mic’ on and I talk to folks about these things a lot. They’re not just my own impressions and opinions. I know of a bunch of people who would raise the minimum level to 20+ in a heartbeat, get rid of the skins entirely, and punish the Hell out of people who team kill or quit matches. I’m just sitting back here trying to brainstorm options that’d work best for everyone. Ways to prevent abuse and limit quitters, incentives for both serious competitive players who want to rank up and those who would like to earn some cool cosmetics along the way, and ways to keep similarly skilled people appropriately matched. Suppose it’s pointless, though. Probably shouldn’t bother.

[RJSx]

Personally I think there should be some sort of winning streak bonus, example in heartstone after 3 wins in a row you gain 2 bonus stars for each win until you loose,

So I think for points;

Loss: 20 Points
Draw: 40 Points
Win: 60 Points

Win streak: 120 Points after 3 wins in a row per win until a game is lost.

Also for a win the chance for a Ranked 4 case to drop should be increased to 5% per win, when on a win streak increase it to a 10% drop chance for the ranked 4 case keep the 2% for losses and draw’s rather than 2% all the time.

This would stop being throwing the game just to farm points/cases as there is an incentive to winning.

So I’ll make is look more clear below

/-----------------------------------------------/

Loss: 20 points + 2% chance to get Ranked season 4 case

Draw: 40 points + 2% chance to get Ranked season 4 case and you don’t loose win streak

Win: 60 points + 5% chance to get Ranked season 4 case

Win streak: 120 Points per win + 10% chance to get Ranked season 4 case

[Sorotia]

I was thinking about a 100 win/50 draw/30 loss.

Maybe be a little high…but I would like to earn more than one case before I just say screw this

[znuund]

In my opinion, solo queue ranked is completely contradictory to the nature of a team-based shooter. Combined with the low amount of players, you are in for a big percentage of unsatisfactory experience. For me, ranked or competitive is something where you play with the same team/players to get better and increase in a ranking or a ladder.
Back in the days of ET, you had to be a registered team and you would need to set a time and day to play the match. This made it all the way more serious. In ET, these ladder systems were served by clanbase or ESL later but this can be done by SD too.

Let’s be honest, queuing ranked and queuing CMM is, in its core, the same: You press a button and it finds a game for you. One is supposed to be casual and one is supposed to be ranked. Hell, some even call CMM mini ranked.

The ranked plattform should be more serious, with registering teams and separate leagues as you wish.