'm sure people read what I write and prefer to believe I undeservedly got to the S 90's multiple times, or just played better than I normally do, than to accept that the system sucks to such an extent that I will have repeated losses down to the low A's and not be doing something wrong.
I think the reason is that we all want to feel like we win because of our own skill. My experience casts doubt on how good we actually are, and it shows more clearly that it is the matchmaking that is the biggest influence on whether we win or lose.
Right now I hate Splatoon and I only continue playing hoping the matchmaking will fix itself and the game might become fun again. I foolishly thought it was fixing itself last night when I got to A 16 and suddenly started winning. I had consecutive wins up to A+. I stopped because it was late, and I started playing today again and had mostly losses again back down to A 50. I've been matched on the noticeably weaker team for four days resulting in a drop from S 90s to low A, and two days (so far) stuck in the A rank. That's a compete joke. I may or may not be S+ quality but I'm certainly better than being stuck in the A's...
I think people apply 1 player game logic to the whole thing. As it's a team game it needs true team cohesion to work. Whichever team is working better as a team is simply going to win, hands down, no exceptions. The whole "you just need to do better" and "you need to figure out what the team needs and do it" advice is a little half hearted since no one has any more ability to do that than anyone else. If the difference is close matches, then, yeah, you can try to cover for teammates somewhat, but if it's shutouts, that's not going to work. The rest of the team is bad enough that you can't save them. They're not even necessarily bad players in all cases, but they're bad at working as a team, and while they may be great at aiming and shooting, they may not focus on the real objective and accept that a good k/d isn't always ideal. I'll often use myself as bait/sacrifice myself for a trade against a high priority target. Taking me AND the enemy ace out should give my team the time to advance. But not all teams get that memo. TW in warehouse yesterday, pretty tough match, tough enemies, they had us spawncamped and we actually pushed back and made it back to mid. I went out and got a triple kill (twice no less) sacrificing myself to take out #3, I watched the map waiting for my team to press forward, but they were too afraid to and didn't know they had only one opponent. They didn't move. These guys weren't bad players. They weren't getting relentlessly splatted by rushing headlong into danger like most of my teammates. They were vital in overturning the spawncamp. Most of them were in the A's & S's. But they are unaware of the map, what's going on around them, and how to play key sections. I can't fix that. Nobody on the other team outskilled me - they were tough, but I could take any of them. But I couldn't do it all myself with an ok team that didn't understand their situation.
When people say "it puts you where it should be" and "you can make it to the appropriate skill for you" etc, I think they're forgetting that your own performance is only 25% of the result. You can't "git good" and fix it if you're already playing exceedingly well but your team can't balance out the other 75%. And you feel this more when you play weapons like eliter - if your team lets you down, you're going to get flanked, and it's almost impossible to recover. No charger can take 3 squids at once. Hydra can manage that. Eliter can not. Especially when the enemy is intentionally taunting/tricking, hopping back and forth, faking advances, spinning a roller in circles so you don't know which to aim for and end up getting it wrong. Which they can only do if you're the only enemy they're worried about.
The other group of people are the ones that are clan-good - the ones for whom "S+" is really too low a rank and they belong in something higher. The squids who can individually dominate any S+ match with double digit kills. Their viewpoint is that you make it to the top by dominating and getting THAT good. But it negates the fact that if everybody at that top were that kind of skill, no one would dominate.
It goes with the same kind of logic I have with eliter. More than any other weapon, eliter is dependent on your team. It's not "weak" on its own of course, but it has a certain expectation that that team has your back either through directly defending it, or hopefully through a solid front offensive line. When I start doing badly I start thinking I'm missing too many shots, I'm screwing up. It took a long time to accept that it wasn't me, it was that I didn't actually have a team because they keep getting themselves splatted, so when all pressure is squarely on me, of course I"m going to end up going 2/5. When I have to laugh though is when it fell apart so bad, I went 2/5, then I look at my team and see 0/7s. I feel a little better knowing I'm the only one who really played at ALL, so it wasn't me who lost it.
I've posted in the salt thread some of my team matchups from TW. My favorite being S+, S+, S, S against me, a B-, a C something, and an unranked. That's the same kind of logic that goes on in ranked too, no doubt. Yesterday was BRUTAL. For some reason I was just losing, losing, losing all day. I could suck with eliter, get flanked, and lose. I could dominate with carbon or go into double digit kills with hydra, hold my ground, still lose. Enemies seemed 2x tougher than most for most matches. And then it lets up and is fine. That seems to happen sometimes where some days are simply bad, and others are the opposite. I feel I'm playing consistently with my mains, but the matches are just unbalanced. matches where the enemy is in our base in 30-40 seconds, specials charged and simply dominating from the start. Those are not well matched teams.
I'm at the point that all I'm interested in is my own 1 player performance. If I'M getting splatted relentlessly I get furious at the overpowered opponents, or furious at my own performance. If I'm playing well and my team is sucking, oh well. I don't get mad at that anymore. Heck I've had a lot of rounds, mostly with JP players where it felt like we played well, and just lost (again and again) it's still fun really. I just hate when it's so bad I'M getting splatted so much.
I just think, naysayers of "it's just the rank you deserved!" aside, we have to accept ranked for what it is and stop taking the letter seriously. It's NOT a progressive ladder, and it doesn't indicate your actual player skill. If that's what's important, then joining a clan where there's real tournament ladders is probably a better (and more fun, if you have the time/schedule for it) way to go. If the team loses there, it's because the team lost, not because of weird mismatches. I don't like scheduled play time so I don't do clans anymore, but they can be pretty neat having a real team of known players where everyone knows each others role. As I understand it, clanners aren't too fond of random ranked either, it's kind of a pale immitation of the real deal. Most don't play it much. Most clanners I find are low ranked, B's, A's, sometimes C's. They outplay most S+'s though, particularly in the teamwork element. I got to accidentally participate in a few clan practices the other day (must have been a friend lobby for their practice, there were 4-5 of them in there), and they were GREAT to play with. Brutal. But it was a great game.
Bad matchmaking system aside, a sliding ladder system rather than a progressive ladder will never really indicate skills, especially one that never resets. And once I found out about squads carrying people, my faith in the system went out the window. Why are squads ranked at all?? They shouldn't be, that's idiotic. That broke the whole thing right there once the pools were polluted. And the ladders ought to be reset. Often.
So as I see it now, the problem is in how we view ranks. It's not a letter of achievement. It never was, and never will be. It's just a sorting system for the other 3 game modes. Nothing more. It could have been better, but it's not, so it is what it is.
TW is for a general mismash of crazy play. Ranked is for slightly better filtered gameplay with different modes. Private squads/clans is where the real action is if you want serious competition. This thread has me half tempted to organize creating some of us into an actual SQB Clan but the trouble is I just can't be bothered with scheduled events - I did that long ago and don't want to reduce my gaming to that again, so we'd have to agree to a when/if one of us is online at the moment type of system, no voice comm, etc.. It wouldn't be too competitive with the serious clans with mandatory scheduled practices and such. It'd just be a slightly more organized "Randoms among Suidboards goers" where we'd all know each others' general roles rather than "RAAAAAHGGGHHH KIIILLLL!!!" randoms. :D
First, he's a cat. Cats are all little liars. Even if they can't talk, they TELL you what they want you to think. I had an
owner cat once. I know these things :p The moment they said a cat was going to be the judge, I knew the game was rigged right then and there. :p
Seriously, though, not for the ranked modes since they have very specific objective countdowns, but there's so many times in TW that you can't tell me that team B had more ink than team A, it's just not possible, Judd is lying! While I'm sure it's numerically a win on the other side, the ink tallies for some reason just get weird sometimes. It's almost as though it somehow counts for more adding to an existing patch of your ink than carving a line into enemy ink.
Also he's in the bag for Callie, or Marie ticked him off one too many times, so he makes Callie win every Splatfest. You just KNOW she sits there with a can of Tuna under that pink dress of hers. She buys the judge!
;)
