Ranked: The silver hell we've been damned to

(blonk) #1

To expand on part of @MidnightButterSweats’s OP second point as a separate discussion, one thing that I’d say is wrong with ranked play is that you seem to get really shafted for losing a game, even if your individual performance was great. While I agree entirely that DB is objective oriented and that winning is important, considering you are tossing a coin between fighting 5 enemies and fighting 8 enemies (or even 9 if you have no friends), assuming one of your team doesn’t leave, you can have your progress ruined entirely by a string of poorly matched games.

This is triply frustrating as you aren’t being rewarded for good play, you are backpeddling further into the rabble, so only have the same or worse quality of games to look forward to, and you’ve just wasted possibly 30 mins of your own time. My usual partner has played over a hundred ranked games so far and is stuck in silver ranking/deranking, and he’s a great objective-minded competitive player. That’s completely stupid, and it mirrors my own experiences as well.

To resolve this, I would say that the impact of winning on your progress should increase relative to your rank, starting with a low modifier and gradually increasing as you get higher up the ranks. Since the pool of players at higher ranks will be better (hopefully) you should be pushing to win, but as long as you’re stuck bubbling around with the potatoes going up and down silver, you’re never going to shake this unlesss you’re a solo/duocarry hero, and they bubble out by themselves. Considering I’m stuck pissing around in silver I can’t say with any authority that the higher ranks are actually any better than the lower ones, but I’ve got to believe in something, right?

There’s a real lack of transparency in how the ranking actually works, the UI could do with some real clues about WHY things are happening to your ranking, rather than just a bar that moves around in surges whenever it fancies. Only reason I can think you wouldn’t communicate this to the player is if there’s a really easy way to pad it, which is scary in itself.

This is cropping up in other discussions of ranked as well but I want to focus on this in particular, and get an idea of how widespread this is, or if it’s a limited set of experiences, including my own, that are so bleak.

in b4 potate get gud

(ostmustis) #2

[quote=“blonk;24880”]
There’s a real lack of transparency in how the ranking actually works, the UI could do with some real clues about WHY things are happening to your ranking, rather than just a bar that moves around in surges whenever it fancies. Only reason I can think you wouldn’t communicate this to the player is if there’s a really easy way to pad it, which is scary in itself.[/quote]

you win, your bar gets bigger.
you lose, your bar gets smaller.
whats so hard about that? >_<

(BerylRdm) #3

you win, your bar gets bigger.
you lose, your bar gets smaller.

I had a better win/lose ratio than someone, but they had better rank. Explain that to me :slight_smile:

(blonk) #4

[quote=“ostmustis;157085”][quote=“blonk;24880”]
There’s a real lack of transparency in how the ranking actually works, the UI could do with some real clues about WHY things are happening to your ranking, rather than just a bar that moves around in surges whenever it fancies. Only reason I can think you wouldn’t communicate this to the player is if there’s a really easy way to pad it, which is scary in itself.[/quote]

you win, your bar gets bigger.
you lose, your bar gets smaller.
whats so hard about that? >_<[/quote]

It doesn’t go up or down in consistent amounts as I’m sure you’ll have noticed. Sometimes I lose and it barely moves, sometimes I lose and it goes down about 20% or more. The reason I’ve heard for this is that losing to a weaker team hits your progress harder, but I’m not sure. Even aside from that, there are no hints or instructions in the UI about how to improve your ranking or even what determines why the rating is where it is at a given time.

(bontsa) #5

In short, as said, losing to opponents rating considers “worse” makes one lose more rank than losing to opponents it considers “better”. Same with winning.

(Litego) #6

[quote=“Beryl;157087”]

you win, your bar gets bigger.
you lose, your bar gets smaller.

I had a better win/lose ratio than someone, but they had better rank. Explain that to me :)[/quote]
You won against shitties and that other guy won against higher ranked players.

(Sir_Slam) #7

The league community has been throwing shit fits over this for ages for the same reasons. No one likes being that one guy on team of a potato, a dead gopher, Trump’s pocket lint and a used condom, but that is the natural state of a team oriented rank game. Youre going to be stuck with dipshits until you luck out or carry so hard you literally break in half.

I wish I had any advice, I really do, but sadly Im not sure much can be done.

(Jostabeere) #8

Isn’t Silver here like Gold Novas in CSGO and nothing people should be ashamed of?

(Captain_Forward) #9

I still can’t fully understand this logic behind that system. For example, 2 days ago we (me and my MM partner) lost 1 match and my bar was on “1 more lose and you’ll be deranked” position. After that we got a draw against a very good team, I even recognised 2 or 3 names from tournaments; obviously, my bar wasn’t moved. And after this we got 3 wins in a row against mid to mediocre-level teams, and I got like 3/4 of my bar for this; these are wasn’t really honorable wins, more like stomps; for example, my last match I finished with 50-13 as a Fragger.

So, is this draw against a professionals affected my later generous income of the rank meter? Or, perhaps, this feature about consecutive wins = more promotion, consecutive losses = more deranks?

(bontsa) #10

Why should people be ashamed of any rank to begin with though? If people thought through it, they’d realize every single matchmaking included game needs their “silver scrubs”, bronzes and whatever is the lowest rank in LoL, you get the idea.

But agreed, Silvers here is comparable to Gold Novas. Gets some people confused, which is a slight shame.

(BerylRdm) #11

You won against shitties and that other guy won against higher ranked players.

But here’s the funny thing. I’m talking about ranks that we’ve got after first 10 matches. If I remember right they had 5:5 win/lose, while I had 7:3, and I was 2 ranks lower. Do you know how many matches I had to win in order to rank up by those 2 ranks? It’s not my fault that I got shitty enemies in my first matches, why am I supposed to be punished for that? :wink: I won most of my matches, lost two because of some fucking leavers and got a rank that ruined my start. I’ve ranked up by 3 ranks so far, and if I only got a better starting rank I might’ve been gold by now. This starting rank thing needs a fix imo.

(neverplayseriou) #12

@Beryl starting ranks atm work fine, they put you in a rank mostly by wins and losses and also involve some individual play.

(BerylRdm) #13

they put you in a rank mostly by wins and losses and also involve some individual play.

Right. So that’s why I was given a Silver 4 after winning 70% of my matches and topscoring in most, if not all of them. Makes perfect sense :slight_smile:

(neverplayseriou) #14

@Beryl silver is the rank most people get after their placement matches unless they were cobalt/elite last season, do you happen to have some screenshots of your scores? I got silver 2 and the guy I queued with got silver 3 and I went 6-1-4 (1 win didn’t count towards rank cause the server crashed).

(BerylRdm) #15

do you happen to have some screenshots of your scores?

Yes, I’ve found screenshots of 5 prerank matches (4 wins, 1 lose), plus one video when I’m going Godlike as Stoker - from the day I didn’t take any screens, so it’s a different match. You can’t see this on the video, because it’s only 5 mins long, but it’s obvious that we won this match too. So I’ve documented 5 wins and 1 lose :wink: No way to prove how other 4 matches ended up and how good I was doing, but I can show you what I’ve got, if you want.

(bontsa) #16

Smooth stated somewhere afaik that Silver something is the highest rank people can now score after their replacements matches, climbing the ladder from there then. And that if they do considerably worse, it is possible they’re put to Bronze even.

While at pre-season it was something like high Silver as lowest possible starting rank and high Gold as the highest option, without anyone ever put to Bronze. So I think current ranking system is major step forward really. Not without flaws, but direction is right.

(BerylRdm) #17

So I think current ranking system is major step forward really

I agree. I was just a little disappointed that with better stats I got lower rank, that’s all.
I don’t like whiners, but with my last comments I feel like I sound like one, so I’m shutting up :slight_smile:

(bontsa) #18

@Beryl Nah by no means I thought of it as a whine. Just stating some reasons why rank distribution is how it is currently. Basically, everyone starts one “rank set” lower than previous season because of Bronze ranks now being really the lowest and attainable. I for one was gold 5 as first rank in PS, now Silver…3 or something was what I got after placement matches.

(kibloy) #19

If you’re content with being, by definition, as good as the average player, then you shouldn’t be ashamed of it.

(blonk) #20

Possibly, I’m not familiar with CSGO’s ranking system, but I’m not ashamed of being in silver, not at all. I like to think that I’m improving my competitive play and ethics all the time, but I don’t see that being reflected in my progress because the progress gets hampered by factors present at my rank that are beyond my control.

That sounds like I’m claiming excuses but it’ll be ones we’re all hearing: people leaving, people taking two rhinos, hopeless sparks players, sologunning it for objectives etc. These things can tank a game and I’m simply not good enough to carry it all yet, and I highly doubt I’ve got the patience to learn how to do so in the current environment. If that’s what you need to do, the early ranking process is less of a gradual curve and more of a membrane, you’ve got to bust through it to even make progress. That’s not right.

It might come across as arrogant and I suppose there’s no getting around that, but there’s no way I’m supposed to be in some of the games I get every other night. Essentially I’m stuck hoping for a string of good games long enough that I may climb out of this mess, and what a crappy outlook that is.

Edit: Changed some wording since the games last night were actually not filled with “clowns”, even had a celebrity appearance by @ArsonistCow! I’d happily take that team again, even if we did get smashed to a pulp.