Why Ranked is unpopular, and how we can make it popular

(bgyoshi) #1

This is an idea post. For the TLDR, scroll down, it’s in bold.

What’s wrong with Ranked play?
[spoiler]There’s a unique issue with Ranked play, and trying to get casual pub players into playing it. First off, you have to understand the difference in playing pub and playing “Competitive.” People playing pub games are playing Objective, Execution, and Stopwatch, in either 6v6, 7v7, or 8v8. This is the vast majority of DB players, with actual Competitive players being a harsh minority. Pub players are playing to have fun. Competitive players are trying to turn gaming into their life. Pub players want to play for fun whenever they want. Competitive players are meeting each other and only playing their competitive format. Pub players aren’t dedicating most of their free time to improve their play. Competitive players are. Understanding this, why would you expect players that are used to playing 6v6 or higher with 3 modes to suddenly want to only play Stopwatch in a 5v5 format? A format they can’t access or practice without playing in a high risk ladder based system, or without a scrim queue? Team dynamics in 5v5 are night and day different from even 6v6. 5 is an odd number, which makes duo queues a bit awkward to pair.

Furthermore, since players can load into Competitive play (after Season 1) with a pre-set 5 man team, why should the casual solo player, or someone playing with a friend or two, want to try and play with some random new players to face a steamroll that they’re forced to endure for the full 15 minutes of their round, just to lose their ranks anyway? [/spoiler]

Considering these things…what should we do?

[spoiler]Well, ranked game play needs to be made more attractive to the majority of its users. Since these are solo/duo/three man players looking to have fun, enforcing a very time committed, unfamiliar format and game dynamic on them is less than ideal. The game they play should be almost identical to their pub experience, with key changes to make it definitely feel more competitive. But, it should also feel entirely different from Tournament Competitive play, which, 5v5 Stopwatch seems to be just that format. Tournament competitive players and casual competitive players are on completely different levels, and the goal here seems to be making casual players into casual competitive players… and from there, they can decide to be tournament competitive or not. There’s some problems implementing the other game modes, however.

It’s easy to see why Objective isn’t viable in ranked/competitive play. Biases to attacking or defending positions lead to predictable game outcomes and angry players who are tired of losing by being put on the wrong side.

Execution mode is just DB’s version of Counterstrike, so why doesn’t it work well? Considering the speed of the format at higher skills, not to mention the mode being a best 7 of 12 instead of a best 7 of 13, the game wouldn’t last long enough to feel satisfying… and could lead to a draw.

This is stuff to consider even before looking at all the team-killing trolls and absent-minded new players. The game-play transition from casual 6v6/7v7/8v8 to ranked 5v5 is too jarring and unfamiliar to get the common pub player to change over. We need to make the actual game-play of ranked more familiar, more enticing, and strictly set aside from the players that have a semi-pro/pro 5v5 team. Nobody wants to look at the eminent steamroll coming their way as the round timer counts down.

  1. Ranked team formats should be identical to casual formats (6v6, 7v7, 8v8). Obviously, these formats will need individual ladders.
  2. Ranked game types should be slightly altered from casual game types to function in a high risk environment
  3. The Ranked system should appeal to the every day casual player trying to skill up; not the hardcore 5-man tournament team trying to win $10,000.[/spoiler]

Making Objective mode viable:
[spoiler]You absolutely HAVE to give both teams an attacking and defending round. This should function similar to Stopwatch, but with a few key differences. Like Stopwatch, the team that completes the most objectives or completes the map fastest will win. But, the timers will be increasing just like they already do. If you complete more objectives than the other team, you win on the spot. If you don’t, you lose. If the first team completed all the objectives, then the timer can never increase beyond the amount of time it took to do. Comparing this to Stopwatch, if a team in Stopwatch wins in 12 minutes, the other team has 12 minutes to do all objectives. In this mode, if a team completes everything in 12 minutes, the other team still only has the initial amount of time to complete the first objective, AND a maximum total of 12 minutes to complete the map.[/spoiler]

Making Execution mode viable:
[spoiler]This mode cannot end in a tie. Ever. Play a max of 13 rounds. If the final round is a draw (say a player suicides with an explosive and gets the enemy as well), then you play it again, until there is a victor. Or, make it a best 5 of 9 per match, and play 3 matches. Obviously, an odd number of rounds means one team will be attacking/defending one round longer than the other. This round can either be a flat TDM Sudden Death round, or, make sure the teams play the extra round on the opposite side the next match.[/spoiler]

TLDR; Most people play Dirty Bomb without having 4 other players to form a 5-man team. They’re more used to 6v6/7v7/8v8 formats. The 5v5 format is so vastly different that it’s off-putting. Most players don’t have the time it takes or the desire to be a tournament competitive player, and don’t want to be forced to play against tournament pros and semi-pros.

TLDR; All game modes and team sizes should be the same between Ranked and casual. Objective, Execution, and Stopwatch, with 6v6, 7v7, and 8v8, and a different ladder for each game mode. Objective and Execution will have to be altered to reflect a higher skill level of play.

What do you guys think? Do you want to be rewarded in Ranked for personal play, or do you prefer it how it is now? Do you think Objective and Execution, with changes, should be in Ranked? I’ll cover two other topics in the next post down.

(bgyoshi) #2

Two other issues are determining a player’s rank, and continuing the high competition tournament ladder.

The Issue with Determining Rank:
[spoiler]The final problem is rewarding players based on their skill, and not their W/L record. There is already metric data for almost every aspect of how a player gains XP. Why not use these metrics to mitigate losses and increase success? For example, imagine these arbitrary stats for an Aura:

  • K/D is 2/23 (3 from being team killed)
  • Out of 40 combined team deaths, they have 15 revives (40-23=17 possible revives)
  • No objectives completed personally
  • 8k support XP
  • 470 combat XP
  • 1200 game mode XP (From round bonuses, etc)
  • Lose the round
    The Aura lost the round, but performed pretty well. Since the class is a medic, Support XP is perhaps more heavily beneficial their ranking than a Proxy would be. Since the class is not an assault or kill oriented class, the low K/D would not hurt them as much. Maybe the deaths caused by their teammates weigh less heavily on the K/D. Engineers might be based more on Game Mode XP. Perhaps gun accuracy should be taken into some small account, comparing them to metric data from Tournament competitive players as a ceiling. Maybe this player is a Silver league player, and though they lost, they demonstrated skill above their league level, so they gained points. There’s a lot of complicated math and philosophy that goes into making a balanced rating system, and I won’t pretend to know much about it. These are just suggestions on how to more broadly determine a player’s skill to reward their individual play when stuck on a team of non-contributing players, or trolls. The important thing is that skill should be attributed to more than just one metric, like wins, or K/D. A strong performance in all areas should be taken into account, and the Merc’s class should be a factor in determining the weight of these metrics.[/spoiler]

Regarding Tournament level competitive players:
[spoiler]They should have their own, very glorified and semi-exclusive ladder. This should be a ladder that requires a 5 man team to register for entry into the current Season. Players should only be allowed to queue with the team(s) that they’re registered with, and ELO is gained and lost based on team metrics, and not individual metrics. Competitive queues will be more controlled with specific queue times, a game browser. For example, instead of queuing and waiting for a match, teams will look at a list of waiting 5 mans, and join one. Or, they can create a scrim request and be put onto the list. However, on Wednesday and Saturday, these matches will be RANKED, and not just scrim practice. If a team misses a ranked day, they will be penalized. If they miss a certain number of ranked days, either in a row or overall, they’re removed from the ladder.

This is just an example. The point is, the Competitive ladder should be strictly for players actively trying to improve their tournament play. You have to have a full team to enter the ladder or queue. Something has to be done to encourage teams to all be present for ranked play on specific days to minimize waiting in a matchmaking lobby for 45 minutes. Players should not be stuck on just one team so that individuals that quit playing don’t screw the other 4 players out of being able to play until the next season. This will be the place where you’ll find the high-level pro and semi-pro teams to play against. If done correctly, the seasonal ladder data could be used to determine official tournament seeding and ELO. The competitive ladder should look far more glorified than the ranked ladder, and a reliable place for players that want to be tournament players to find one another, avoiding the trolls and new players.[/spoiler]

[b]TLDR; The current way of calculating a player’s individual rank is too heavily reliant on the team and very susceptible for punishing player rank due to trolls and inexperienced players. Individual players already have a lot of metrics tracked, and these metrics can easily have weight applied to a player’s rank, with the Merc’s class type taken into account.

TLDR; There seems to be a strict interest in encouraging Competition play in a 5v5 format, and obviously my suggestions eliminate that. To keep this up, a competitive ladder should be separate from the Ranked ladder. The competitive ladder requires a 5 man team to play in, and has specific ranked days so that teams have an easier time finding each other for ranked play. This is also where players will be able to truly test their skill![/b]

(srswizard) #3

How to fix ranked, by Dr. S. Wizzle:

Remove bugs (unlikely)
Remove cheaters (easier said than done)
Offer real rewards based on ranking at the end of the season, but let people know in advance
Increase level requirement
Improve matchmaking
Introduce leaderboards
Advertise the game
Don’t do stupid patches based on steam forums feedback

(bgyoshi) #4

[quote=“srswizard;155644”]How to fix ranked, by Dr. S. Wizzle:
Increase level requirement
[/quote]

Level 10 sounds good to me. It takes more investment than level 7, without feeling like you have to play a ton as you’d need to if the requirement was like, level 12 or 15.

(BerylRdm) #5

Offer real rewards based on ranking at the end of the season, but let people know in advance
Increase level requirement

I approve.

(Jostabeere) #6

[quote=“MidnightButterSweats;155645”][quote=“srswizard;155644”]How to fix ranked, by Dr. S. Wizzle:
Increase level requirement
[/quote]

Level 10 sounds good to me. It takes more investment than level 7, without feeling like you have to play a ton as you’d need to if the requirement was like, level 12 or 15.

[/quote]

If it was for me, I would block people off of ranking till level 20 or if they have a certain Elo. And have a visible Elo all the time. Oh, and never put people with the lowerst Elos on the same team because one guy has a high Elo.

(blonk) #7

[quote=“MidnightButterSweats;24753”]http://i.imgur.com/P0GPM.gif
[/quote]

This is a really great discussion of ranked and where it sits. Seeing people drop into ranked play as Phantom saying “gotta do my missions lol” is not what people trying to improve their ranks and have tight competitive gameplay want to see, though I do wonder if this could be helped with ingame hints or minor changes. Raising the level requirement would also be good. Would you keep FF on? Do you still envisage people would queue up in a similar manner to how they do at the moment, or would it be more like “ranked servers”?

(Litego) #8

6vs6, 7vs7, and 8vs8 Objective, Stopwatch and Execution? Not only is that shit, but it also splits the player pool for matchmaker to create matches with. 5vs5 Stopwatch is fine. Higher player numbers are shit and Objective is unbalanced. I wouldn’t mind having a 5vs5 Execution mode later when we get more players even though I personally would never play it.

(blonk) #9

Maybe people in the queue don’t get to choose these parameters then? Or they only get a limited number of things they can remove (like the way maps work), can only disable execution, not two game modes for example. Not sure I entirely agree about the higher player numbers, it can get a bit mental sure and some maps visibly strain, but it also means that one really useless/awesome player’s impact is watered down a bit

(Sir_Slam) #10

For me the biggest problem is fucking accountability.

Right now theres no reason not to walk into a comp lobby, TK your way to bronze 5 in LOL, literally team fragging all the way to another game’s bottom tier, screaming obscenities in the mic for the next 10 minutes and then finally going AFK after smoking off the enemy team’s defuse attempt.

Nothing. That player wont be punished. You can imagine the horror stories.

(Kingsley) #11

Being that I’ve played almost 130 ranked matches since the last update I have to sing a different tune. But in doing so I expect to offend people here. I do enjoy the reality that more players are interested in learning how to play this game better. Its uplifting that more players are diving into MM to improve their gameplay and the new changes definitely help with that. And being apart of it makes me feel great about this game.

Because of my history with other FPS games, I wanted to struggle and lose to learn as much as possible. And as soon as I was eligible to MM (I think at the time it was level 5). MM was all I did because I knew it would accelerate the quality of my performance (and it did, there was a huge difference from MM and Pubbing). Now that more people are better committed competitively rather than crying for changes to make this game easier for them. I have hope that the pool of “elite” players will rise and will certainly make this game more lovely than it has been for me as a competitor.

And now it’s a waiting game for people to flag me for abuse. I just don’t think people here have the capacity to appreciate the genius in some of SD changes and decisions. And it’s frustrating. The poor attitudes towards MM is definitely something that eats at me. Other than competitions/scrims/pugs, it’s become the sole source of entertainment for players like me.

(Glot) #12

-Ranked pub servers.
-Ranked PUB Servers, are you kidding me??
-No, i kid you not. Ranked Pub servers.

  1. Ranked PUB 5v5 servers with ELO based auto shuffle. At the end of the map.
  2. Show Average ELO(or rank, ELO is just better) in the Browser, SHow Every player ELO(or rank, ELO is just better) in the Browser.
  3. Spec slots on those servers, so that spec-ppl will be able to fill the quitter’s places.

How is it anybetter?
Well, you will not wait for Matchmaking to find a match. Once you play in the Ranked Pub, you can play map after map after map after map.

(Ritobasu) #13

Matchmaking is confirmed bugged right now by shoe

Fix the stupid bug that makes people queue for 1+ hours for no games, and we can come back to OP’s suggestions later

(bgyoshi) #14

FF forces players to play a lot more tactically, ESPECIALLY explosives classes like Nader and Fletcher. The problem with FF is the trolls. So there has to be some way to determine whether a TK was accidental or intentional. Obviously you can’t look at individual TKs, but noticing someone is getting a TK a few times a minute should raise ban flags. Players will queue just like they do now. They’ll select Objective/Execution/Stopwatch, and the queue will find other players waiting for the same game mode, then put them together. You should be able to deselect 6v6 if you dislike it, or 7v7, or 8v8, but if the game can’t find enough players for a mode, it will pop up with a message saying like “No 8v8 matches available. A 7v7 queue is waiting. Join? Y/N” Or something, instead of forcing you to play a player count you don’t like.

The problem with queuing now is there isn’t enough players to make the queues faster. If more people were playing, queues should cycle much faster.

[quote=“Kingsley;155702”]Being that I’ve played almost 130 ranked matches since the last update I have to sing a different tune. But in doing so I expect to offend people here. I do enjoy the reality that more players are interested in learning how to play this game better. Its uplifting that more players are diving into MM to improve their gameplay and the new changes definitely help with that. And being apart of it makes me feel great about this game.

Because of my history with other FPS games, I wanted to struggle and lose to learn as much as possible. And as soon as I was eligible to MM (I think at the time it was level 5). MM was all I did because I knew it would accelerate the quality of my performance (and it did, there was a huge difference from MM and Pubbing). Now that more people are better committed competitively rather than crying for changes to make this game easier for them. I have hope that the pool of “elite” players will rise and will certainly make this game more lovely than it has been for me as a competitor.

And now it’s a waiting game for people to flag me for abuse. I just don’t think people here have the capacity to appreciate the genius in some of SD changes and decisions. And it’s frustrating. The poor attitudes towards MM is definitely something that eats at me. Other than competitions/scrims/pugs, it’s become the sole source of entertainment for players like me.[/quote]

I don’t think your story is cause for insult, but I think you’re missing the larger issue. In almost every update about Ranked, Nexon makes it clear they’re unhappy with low ranked numbers and want to change it. Trolls are a universal issue everyone complains about, and many people complain about not enough individual skill tracking and too much team tracking. And I personally find it a bit counterintuitive to make competitive a game mode that you literally cannot practice without finding 10 people yourself. Not to mention it limits playability, as players used to 5v5 will no longer see a point to playing any other mode, and players that don’t play 5v5 will also be far less inclined to play it. It’s much better to keep game play familiar between casual and ranked, but different enough to definitively feel like you’re playing a Ranked match.

The other problem is Competitive mode is clearly targeted only to players that want to be tournament competitive and play 6-8 hours every day, which most gamers are not. But I also feel players like you need their own ladder. 5v5 should be the holy grail ladder of play. Move everyone into Ranked, and keep the strict 5v5 players in a very glorious ladder of their own.

Personally, I will never play 5v5 Stopwatch again. I despise Stopwatch as a mode, and I can’t stand the limited dynamic of 5v5 game play. But, casual game play has lost it’s touch, it’s not challenging any more, and I hear the same sentiment from many players.

(blisteringOwlNest) #15

Isn’t there a /p to punish or /f to forgive if your FFd upo? Does that actually do anything?

(Jostabeere) #16

[quote=“Kingsley;155702”]
And now it’s a waiting game for people to flag me for abuse. I just don’t think people here have the capacity to appreciate the genius in some of SD changes and decisions. And it’s frustrating. The poor attitudes towards MM is definitely something that eats at me. Other than competitions/scrims/pugs, it’s become the sole source of entertainment for players like me.[/quote]
[spoiler]It’s amazing how a person with rational competitive thinking thinks people flag him for abuse because of SD changes, and not for him being a massive dick to them breaking DBs rule #1 and various others. You call people names like special self-entitled snowflakes, “btch” “fggot” “unthankful fck” and then you’re wondering if people flag you?
And after that you play the victim and make a disagree spree while lying you did it over time? If you’re a representative of DBs comp playerbase, I’m happy to call myself a public scrub.
Thanks.[/spoiler]
Ranked has objective issues that need to be taken out or changed. Period.

(bgyoshi) #17

Expand on this topic! I’d rather keep discussion on topic and off of any kind of assholery that happens in other threads.

What objective issues need fixing?

(Jostabeere) #18

Expand on this topic! I’d rather keep discussion on topic and off of any kind of assholery that happens in other threads.

What objective issues need fixing?[/quote]

Like I said in the first post, things like an unclear Elo ranking. People should see the exact ranking of their teammates and opponents. In addition to this the MM system shouldn’t place all potatoes in one team because one guy happens to have a high Elo, dooming him to to carrying a 4 man team against probably not so high players, but ones who can work as a team.
The current giving of a rank is flawed in my opinion. A rank shouldn’t be given until a player actually WINS an amount of games. Right now I can enter 10 games, and camp in my base to get to Silver or something without actually doing much.
And maybe cutting the 50% rewards before a player get to his rank, while increasing the reward the more a player climbs up the ranking ladder. So people have an incentive to actually win competitive games, so they get more out of it. Maybe special cases which contain a single random loadout based on the rank per season. Bronze for Silver, Silver for Gold, Gold for Cobalt and a Cobalt card for Elites.
The punishments are too forgiveable. Timeouts for leaving games should extend to normal mode aswell, eliminating the incentives to leave the game.
Oh yeah. And level 7 is too low to enter competitive. I played with a guy who is actually pretty good, and every game we had 3 potatoes against 5 people with a 3-digit-playitime counter. Spoiler alert, they were over 200. 10 is probably low aswell. 15 isn’t that much if you can play, but will keep bad players out for long enough so they can learn the game.

(kibloy) #19

[quote=“Jostabeere;155763”]
Oh yeah. And level 7 is too low to enter competitive. I played with a guy who is actually pretty good, and every game we had 3 potatoes against 5 people with a 3-digit-playitime counter. Spoiler alert, they were over 200. 10 is probably low aswell. 15 isn’t that much if you can play, but will keep bad players out for long enough so they can learn the game.[/quote]
That’s not really the problem though. It’s just a symptom of the game’s shitty rank distribution and balancing in MM. Bad players will eventually end up in low ranks.

I wouldn’t want to restrict anyone from playing MM if that’s what they want to play. 5v5 with friendly fire is a lot more fun than your average 7v7 nade spam fest. Forcing anyone to grind through 50 hours of casual matches is only going to make them learn bad habits.

(Terminal_6) #20

I might be able to provide an interesting perspective:
I just read through this thread, and then decided to go play ranked, for the first time in months, after another first time in months. I don’t remember much from those earlier iterations of Comp, but clearly, they didn’t retain my interest.

Story mode:
[spoiler]So I’ll start with why less than 10 (an estimate) of my 424 hours of this game are in ranked matches.
First off, I don’t have a team or friends who play DB, I did have some who played at the beginning of open beta, and I did my first comp matches with them. I’m kind of a social outlier, so going into comp with no one I know wasn’t very enticing, and I pubstomped for months. I would like to be better at DB, and ranked is probably the way to go, but it doesn’t offer a lot of tangible feedback out of the box. You really have to invest in it to determine your own relative skill and how you can improve.

Then I played two matches. After a 6 min queue, my first match provided not the most severe, but the most consistent rubber-banding and input lag I’ve ever had in the game. The game felt oddly… standard. It felt like frustrating pub match. I rolled my eyes as my team avoided the objective, or peppered my backside with lead, and especially when a Proxy and Bushwhacker sat side-by-side repairing the EV. We got pushed through in about 6 minutes, my team switched mercs often, but I stayed as Sawbonez because I was commonly our only medic. There was one Skyhammer when the opposite team was pushing the EV, and not often an accommodating roster of mercs.
It was all pretty off-putting, but I figure there are always going to be crappy games, so I played again.

Next game seemed like the same thing, but I wasn’t on the receiving end. Played Bushwhacker on Underground, successfully defended the first obj the whole 15, and nothing remarkable happened, except our top kill-farmer revealed himself to be a complete d!ck at the end.[/spoiler]

TL:DR
It feels just like public matchmaking, because it is. Sometimes I’m dealing with idiots, sometimes I’m turret farming. There isn’t anything particularly attractive (except a common trinket at the end) and I don’t feel like I’m learning anything. On the other end, it’s rested my fears of it being too different, tryhards yelling at me and playing against highly organized groups. Still, I’m not terribly interested in playing 8 more matches to get a badge. I’ll probably do it anyway.

Anyway, I’ll report more after I’ve played more matches to focus my likely biased and ill-informed perspective.

EDIT: I have no doubt that the more I play, the better chance I’ll have of a truly informative match that can show me the “errors of my pubstomping ways.” But I have to wonder if its worth slogging through the rest of it.