Ranked mode too punishing?

[BlackZero]

Thinking about this in depth, it makes it a lot more complicated to figure out how to fix it. That Elo & lobby system would be core to the entire system, they're not going to change it.

I think the TrueSkill algorithm (or a derivative), while not perfect, would be a huge step in the right direction as it actually factors in individual performance as well as team performance. They would just have to configure the stats they want to use as a basis for establishing a player skill value to reflect Splatoon's unique mechanics.

That would be good. I'm thinking a player that sees more beginners and few lv40-50, who is a bad player that mostly inks but sometimes splats if someone turns up (and gets splatted often, though sometimes has positive k/d.) is paired with lower levels, then, not because it's keeping them with unskilled noobs, but because lower leveled players are more likely to focus entirely on inking?

Yep. If people want to win TW matches, they have to pull their weight in the coverage department. Thus, a high level player who focuses on inking turf would likely see more low-level players who pretty much have to ink turf to win their games. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of low-level killers though.

There is the other possibility though, which is applying k factor to the lobby building sequence. I mention that because of the the 2.4 patch notes for Turf Wars:

• In Regular Battle and Splatfest, players of similar skill will be matched more often.

IF the system works the way we think, that would imply they have introduced k into the lobby builder, at least in TW. Maybe they can apply that to ranked (or already have?) as well if so. Though if ranked worked correctly you wouldn't need to as rank would be a better indicator anyway.

The K factor is already implemented in Ranked. You gain and lose rank points with each win or loss. This is the K factor. In chess, a new player starts with a value (let's say 800). To move up to the next tier of chess players, let's say they need to increase their value to 1000. As they play other people at their own level, they gain points. In the "provisional match" phase, it's really high (24-32) compared to what they'll get in a non-provisional match (8-12). It's the same thing in Ranked mode, only you don't have a provisional phase (or if you did, it was Turf Wars). A beginner chess player works their way up to the next tier 8-12 points at a time with every win. It's the same thing in Ranked, only the tiers are C,B,A, and S instead of 800,1000, etc.

I think it would help Turf a lot if they implemented a "hidden F factor" to group players based on past performances. It wouldn't count towards rank, and would create a tighter grouping of player values to choose from. I think the devs worried that this would make the "casual" mode too competitive though, as I'm sure people would pick up on the hidden ranking system eventually. Personally, I think it would help a lot, but a skilled player would find themselves stuck playing the same caliber of players in TW as they do in Ranked if they played too well in that mode. That may not be very casual for A or S rank players.

 

[Holidaze]

I think it would help Turf a lot if they implemented a "hidden F factor" to group players based on past performances. It wouldn't count towards rank, and would create a tighter grouping of player values to choose from. I think the devs worried that this would make the "casual" mode too competitive though, as I'm sure people would pick up on the hidden ranking system eventually. Personally, I think it would help a lot, but a skilled player would find themselves stuck playing the same caliber of players in TW as they do in Ranked if they played too well in that mode. That may not be very casual for A or S rank players.

So you'd want a casual elo? Trying to get a grasp of what was said here, but yeah, most games that use 'casual' elo are pretty helpful, due to them being casual, but still maintaining a competitive edge masking over the game.

It'd be helpful for players who care about being competitive, but for some reason can't do the actual thing, I used to do the same in MOBAs (Smite, League and Dota,) and it did help me get competitive, while also maintaining that learning/fun environment of a "casual."

 

[StayPuft]

 

[BlackZero]

So you'd want a casual elo? Trying to get a grasp of what was said here, but yeah, most games that use 'casual' elo are pretty helpful, due to them being casual, but still maintaining a competitive edge masking over the game.

It'd be helpful for players who care about being competitive, but for some reason can't do the actual thing, I used to do the same in MOBAs (Smite, League and Dota,) and it did help me get competitive, while also maintaining that learning/fun environment of a "casual."

The devs said they created Turf Wars to be the casual or "fun" mode. I do believe Turf should remain as the "just for laughs" mode, but I also think a random grouping does not result in fun matches because player ability is so scattered that winning can easily become a crapshoot and people might feel cheated when they lose. So, I don't know what the answer is. A rank system in TW would help limit the lobbies to people of similar skill, but S rank players just wanting to have a low-stress game without any competitive pressure would have to hold back a lot lest they end up the hardcore tier in what is supposed to be chill mode.

 

[Holidaze]

The devs said they created Turf Wars to be the casual or "fun" mode. I do believe Turf should remain as the "just for laughs" mode, but I also think a random grouping does not result in fun matches because player ability is so scattered that winning can easily become a crapshoot and people might feel cheated when they lose. So, I don't know what the answer is. A rank system in TW would help limit the lobbies to people of similar skill, but S rank players just wanting to have a low-stress game without any competitive pressure would have to hold back a lot lest they end up the hardcore tier in what is supposed to be chill mode.

Very true, very true. However, there's always going to be those outliers, so there's nothing anyone can do to remedy that. But if it fixes something, and the majority has no qualms about it, what could possibly go wrong in trying it?

Edit: If it flops, they can always go back right?

 

[BlackZero]

Very true, very true. However, there's always going to be those outliers, so there's nothing anyone can do to remedy that. But if it fixes something, and the majority has no qualms about it, what could possibly go wrong in trying it?

Edit: If it flops, they can always go back right?

Yup. It may not hurt. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll implemented that in the last update. I'm in the B's in Ranked, so my TW games would probably still be pretty casual.

 

[Holidaze]

I would imagine they'd follow other games that use both ranked and casual elo. If the theory is correct, in that they actually use an elo system. And have both forms of elo completely separate. So your casual elo and competitive elo do not coincide with each other.

 

[BlackZero]

I would imagine they'd follow other games that use both ranked and casual elo. If the theory is correct, in that they actually use an elo system. And have both forms of elo completely separate. So your casual elo and competitive elo do not coincide with each other.

Shooters aren't my genre so I may be way out of the loop, but I don't think most online shooters separate a competitive mode from a casual mode. They just have online matches with different rules. With that said, there wouldn't be a need to chance the Elo system for a casual mode: they just need to implement a rank system to limit the range of player performance levels that get grouped together and make that rank a hidden stat with no bearing on a player's profile.

 

[Holidaze]

Shooters aren't my genre so I may be way out of the loop, but I don't think most online shooters separate a competitive mode from a casual mode. They just have online matches with different rules. With that said, there wouldn't be a need to chance the Elo system for a casual mode: they just need to implement a rank system to limit the range of player performance levels that get grouped together and make that rank a hidden stat with no bearing on a player's profile.

Oh, my apologies, I was talking about MOBAs, since off the top of my head I know League and Smite calculate both ranked and casual elo. I couldn't say about other shooters, since the last shooter I played was Borderlands. And I believe the way the casual+ranked elo works in Smite, is that they're counted separately, and depending on your elo level, 1500 being average, you're grouped up with players with similar elo level also queued at the time. It not only saves time by trying to group together similarly elo'd groups, but tries to balance it out, by individually calculating elo for every player. i.e. having a team of 4, Elo consisting of 1409, 1520, 1459, and 1801, if they win, the three lower elo levels will rise considerably, by about 15~20 points for a win, while only losing 5~10 for a loss. And the higher elo level player will win approximately 4~8, but loses 20~27.

But again, it's all theoretical, I've honestly forgotten how much Elo I would lose and gain in matches, it's been so long since I've touched League, Smite or Dota.

 

[Award]

A beginner chess player works their way up to the next tier 8-12 points at a time with every win. It's the same thing in Ranked, only the tiers are C,B,A, and S instead of 800,1000, etc.

I think it would help Turf a lot if they implemented a "hidden F factor" to group players based on past performances. It wouldn't count towards rank, and would create a tighter grouping of player values to choose from. I think the devs worried that this would make the "casual" mode too competitive though, as I'm sure people would pick up on the hidden ranking system eventually. Personally, I think it would help a lot, but a skilled player would find themselves stuck playing the same caliber of players in TW as they do in Ranked if they played too well in that mode. That may not be very casual for A or S rank players.

Except the rank system here naturally creates gaps of no players by sliding players from the bottom to low mid, and sliding high mid to either high or low mid.

The "hidden F factor" may be exactly what 2.4 has just implemented in the "improved match making more likely to match players with similar skill." And I'd point out that TW hasn't been casual for a while. It's brutal most of the time, even before 2.4 I haven't seen most high grade players play it "casually" unless they're just trying out weapons they suck with.

 

[Fightersword]

Does anyone think ranked mode is too punishing? Like suppose you gain ten points by winning a match and lose ten points when you lose the next match, you basically lost a match worth of progress. Shouldn't it be that when you lose a match you only lose half the points that you would have got if you won the match? That way you still have a chance to gain back points plus a little more even if you won a match only to lose the next. What do you guys think?

there's a problem with that, it goes against the point of ranking.

IE: say you gained 20 and lost 10, or gained 10 and lost 5, throughout the whole thing.

That means you stay neutral going a 33% win rate. 1 win for every 2 losses is neutral. That's a bad ratio to be neutral at higher ranks.

10 and 10 is a 50% win rate to stay neutral. this is about what you should expect in a skill based game in terms of win ratios for an average player playing another average player, so it should be where the middle is at. Higher tiers need to ask more of a win rate, so even scoring 5 per win 10 per loss, which demands a 66% win rate to stay neutral, would be where a good player is at. Of course you also have to play against presumably better players, which the higher ratio need causes most of your opponents to (allegedly) be. (Note this contrasts with more luck based games, like deckbuilding games, TCGs, and Poker, in which around a 70% win rate is indicative of a master at the game, as well as with games where you play against more than one player/team, which will also have a smaller win rate required to be expert because you're playing against more teams). In games like Splatoon where luck is much less a factor, a 70% win rate, while still a mark of a good team, is less remarkable.

 

[Award]

I think the TrueSkill algorithm (or a derivative), while not perfect, would be a huge step in the right direction as it actually factors in individual performance as well as team performance. They would just have to configure the stats they want to use as a basis for establishing a player skill value to reflect Splatoon's unique mechanics.

I'm assuming that replacing the actual heart of the matchmaking system is a non-possible fix at this point. It's to embedded and built into the system, so I'm trying to think of "quick band-aid fixes" they could instead quickly and cheaply apply to mitigate the damaging results. Replacing the actual matchmaking/skill tracking would require not just different algorithms, but also a whole new database structure, server work on the backend, etc. Thats way too big a project for a balancing patch. What they could do is something like the 4x to 6x multiplier to somehow skew things in the direction desired. In this case, changing rank points scoring in a way that causes better groomed pools in spite of the matchmaking, or just including a few more variables to the metrics of the existing matchmaking based on data from the current round (without having to retrieve stored data from the DB.) Something cheap & fast but still more effective than what we have now.

Also, I was thinking about the problem with the ladders with the situation we've theorized and realized one of the core problems. The most average players within the rank are then the MOST likely to be promoted out of it. If the highest and lowest skilled players are often paired on the losing team, then the middle most players are the ones with the best win rate and the ones promoted out. Which means for most ranks the best players of a given rank are likely superior players to average players of the rank above them since the average players of the next rank are made up of the average or slightly above average players from their current rank. That would mean the best S players are probably superior to the average S+ player, the best A+ superior to average S, etc. A ladder can't get much worse than that.

image

LOL, except since Splatoon's matchmaking, like our old friend Cranky, is trapped in the 8-bit era, what we really need is to "git ungood" if we want to improve our matchmaking! ;)

there's a problem with that, it goes against the point of ranking.

IE: say you gained 20 and lost 10, or gained 10 and lost 5, throughout the whole thing.

That means you stay neutral going a 33% win rate. 1 win for every 2 losses is neutral. That's a bad ratio to be neutral at higher ranks.

10 and 10 is a 50% win rate to stay neutral. this is about what you should expect in a skill based game in terms of win ratios for an average player playing another average player, so it should be where the middle is at. Higher tiers need to ask more of a win rate, so even scoring 5 per win 10 per loss, which demands a 66% win rate to stay neutral, would be where a good player is at. Of course you also have to play against presumably better players, which the higher ratio need causes most of your opponents to (allegedly) be. (Note this contrasts with more luck based games, like deckbuilding games, TCGs, and Poker, in which around a 70% win rate is indicative of a master at the game, as well as with games where you play against more than one player/team, which will also have a smaller win rate required to be expert because you're playing against more teams). In games like Splatoon where luck is much less a factor, a 70% win rate, while still a mark of a good team, is less remarkable.

That's why one of my earlier ideas was to remain punishing with scores but less punishing with deranking. We don't want to make it easier to ascend the ranks, but what we need is to make it harder to descend based on the randomness. Short of fixing the actual matchmaking problems, one way to do that would be to allow your score to drop to 0 pts (current rank) just as easily as now, but to HOLD players there without deranking you aren't actually playing badly in that round. That's just a loose concept that I'm sure many flaws can be pointed out with, but it would be at least a quick way of trying to keep the skill pools within a rank actually a closer skill pool. In fact if implementing something like that we could say a rank up requires 200 pts rather than 100 since it would be a lot harder to drop below your current rank, only tread water instead.

However ideally one thing I would love to see in ranked is a system that requires 300pts. Specifically 100 in EACH DISCIPLINE. But would also have to make it harder to drop below if requiring that much work. It's too easy right now for even really good players to grind to S by playing only their best game type with their best weapon. Say TC with a 96 Gal. Then when they get to S they bring an Eliter to RM and have no idea what's going on at all, bringing their team mates down. It's hard to say a player is X rank, when it hasn't been proven they're X rank in all 3 ranked skill types.

 

[Holidaze]

That's why one of my earlier ideas was to remain punishing with scores but less punishing with deranking. We don't want to make it easier to ascend the ranks, but what we need is to make it harder to descend based on the randomness. Short of fixing the actual matchmaking problems, one way to do that would be to allow your score to drop to 0 pts (current rank) just as easily as now, but to HOLD players there without deranking you aren't actually playing badly in that round. That's just a loose concept that I'm sure many flaws can be pointed out with, but it would be at least a quick way of trying to keep the skill pools within a rank actually a closer skill pool. In fact if implementing something like that we could say a rank up requires 200 pts rather than 100 since it would be a lot harder to drop below your current rank, only tread water instead.

However ideally one thing I would love to see in ranked is a system that requires 300pts. Specifically 100 in EACH DISCIPLINE. But would also have to make it harder to drop below if requiring that much work. It's too easy right now for even really good players to grind to S by playing only their best game type with their best weapon. Say TC with a 96 Gal. Then when they get to S they bring an Eliter to RM and have no idea what's going on at all, bringing their team mates down. It's hard to say a player is X rank, when it hasn't been proven they're X rank in all 3 ranked skill types.

So you would want a promotion based ladder? Nice. I've only had experience using Smite, but I'll try my best to get around this. Okay, so with Smite, the promotional ladder system works as such Start from, I believe 10 points, work your way up to 100. Once you reach 100, your next ranked game is a promotion game. And vice versa, if you manage to reach 0, your next game, iirc, is your demotion game. Or they give you x amount of game to get out of 0. I really don't know which, since I stopped playing ranked in that game for the longest. And the system repeats itself with every rank up.

And could you elaborate on your 'ideal' ranked system, I'm curious to know what it would be fleshed out.

 

[BlackZero]

The "hidden F factor" may be exactly what 2.4 has just implemented in the "improved match making more likely to match players with similar skill." And I'd point out that TW hasn't been casual for a while. It's brutal most of the time, even before 2.4 I haven't seen most high grade players play it "casually" unless they're just trying out weapons they suck with.

This is likely due to something called "devaluation." As more people play the game and improve, the average rank goes up. People at the top can't go any higher, so they soon find their top rank getting flooded with more and more people who are good, but not as good as the people who stay at the top tier of the rank. This means that the upper echelon of players get grouped with average or above-average players instead of the elites simply because the ranking system allows the average player rank to increase as the majority get better, but doesn't allow the best players to climb any higher to remain in a proportionally higher rank.

I think the "better matchmaking" improvement was more aimed at rebalancing the ranking system so that the average rank dropped. This raised the rank ceiling for top tier players so that they could more accurately establish themselves as well above the average. TW doesn't use ranks, so that rebalancing didn't change anything about TW matchmaking, nor does it mean the average player skill stopped increasing. They simply raised the "rank ceiling" so top players could climb out of the oversaturated upper ranks to establish a new upper rank and make the old upper rank mid-tier.

 

[Award]

This is likely due to something called "devaluation." As more people play the game and improve, the average rank goes up. People at the top can't go any higher, so they soon find their top rank getting flooded with more and more people who are good, but not as good as the people who stay at the top tier of the rank. This means that the upper echelon of players get grouped with average or above-average players instead of the elites simply because the ranking system allows the average player rank to increase as the majority get better, but doesn't allow the best players to climb any higher to remain in a proportionally higher rank.

I think the "better matchmaking" improvement was more aimed at rebalancing the ranking system so that the average rank dropped. This raised the rank ceiling for top tier players so that they could more accurately establish themselves as well above the average. TW doesn't use ranks, so that rebalancing didn't change anything about TW matchmaking, nor does it mean the average player skill stopped increasing. They simply raised the "rank ceiling" so top players could climb out of the oversaturated upper ranks to establish a new upper rank and make the old upper rank mid-tier.

Yes, that devaluation is exactly why @Holidaze and I were endorsing a ladder reset for ranked in a different thread (and why most ladder based games do so.)

When you say re-balancing the ranking system do you mean the "invisible ranking system in TW"? Or do you mean the ranked ranking system? The 2.4 improved matchmaking applies to "Regular Battles" (TW) only and does not apply to ranked at all (or so they say.)

I can say in TW I'm still matched with S often, but not almost exclusively as i did before. However I've seen an introduction of a few S+ players which I previously saw none of, so I don't know exactly what it's trying to do. I can say fewer of these S/S+ battles end in shutouts as severely as B ranked did unless a player d/cs :p

So you would want a promotion based ladder? Nice. I've only had experience using Smite, but I'll try my best to get around this. Okay, so with Smite, the promotional ladder system works as such Start from, I believe 10 points, work your way up to 100. Once you reach 100, your next ranked game is a promotion game. And vice versa, if you manage to reach 0, your next game, iirc, is your demotion game. Or they give you x amount of game to get out of 0. I really don't know which, since I stopped playing ranked in that game for the longest. And the system repeats itself with every rank up.

And could you elaborate on your 'ideal' ranked system, I'm curious to know what it would be fleshed out.

Yes, exactly! That kind of system, particularly one that allows some leeway between derankings to me seems essential instead of flooding the skill pools like it does now. I don't know if the promotional game is even essential or not, but it couldn't hurt. The demotional game, or having a few retries to get out of 0 etc, something to keep that placeholder in rank so the rank shifting isn't so fluid, making ranks meaningless. That part is a must!

The ideal ranked system, IMO there's not just one ideal system, there's numerous ways of achieving the same end result. But I think there are some ideal attributes it must consider that it currently does not. The big one is the 3 disciplines. We have 3 ranked modes, each unique that play differently that may require different skills, individually and as a team. We have a letter rank that supposedly tells us what skill bracket we're playing with. But right now that letter represents not the combined effort of all 3 disciplines determining the actual player skill in overall play, but potentially a cherry picked skill set of just one mode of play. We don't have individual ranks for each game mode, we have overall ranks for all of them. But we don't take all of them into account. Is an S ranked player that seldom played RM and isn't very good at it REALLY an S ranked player compared to someone who can? There's a gap in their skills compared to their opponents. The current system is a better rank for deathmatch.

So the ideal system, above all, would enforce rank-level skill for all play modes before giving you an overall rank. The only simple to implement, simple to understand system would be to have sub-ranks for each game mode. The sub-ranks could be scored the same way the main rank is scored, within that skill (hopefully with the promotional ladder!) you play RM as a C+. You play, you win, you lose, etc. You get your 100 point system you do now. Congratulations, you're now still a C+ rank, but you've achieved B- in RM (or just a C+ with 100 RM points.) Now you need to do the same for SZ & TC. Once you do, you rank up to B-. in letter.

Need 100 points in all 3 is arbitrary, but anything less doesn't demonstrate skill. If I spend a 4 hour rotation on a pair of maps in one mode and rank up, currently, that means I've demonstrated 100 points of skill (luck) in that mode. But what about the other 2 modes? I bypassed them completely in that rank. Why is that allowed? I got out of B- fast, having never once played B- level Rainmaker. That doesn't make sense. Similarly if I played B level Rainmaker badly as a result, and got demoted to B- for it, then I'd be playing B level Splat Zones in B-, because I can't play B level Rainmaker. That's bad. Why wouldn't I need to spend equal time in all 3 modes of a given rank before moving to the next rank?

So the only real challenges there are how to handle a C+ 100/30/60 RM/TC/SZ in main rank. If they go down to 0 in RM but still have 30/60 in TC/SZ, you can't derank them. Theyr'e still a C+. They're a C+ forever unless they drop to 0 in all 3. That could be an issue. But then they had to demonstrate B- skill in all 3 to get there at all. So maybe it's fair. Promotion is simple though. 100 in all 3, you move on. IMO the triathlon scoring system inherently builds a promotional system into it. If you got to 100 through luck in SZ, you've at minimum demonstrated a heck of a lot of luck doing it twice more in TC & RM.

The only serious challenge would b e how to handle deranking, and how to handle continued play of the same mode after 100pts. Do you play into the next rank, making essentially every mode it's own rank and making the overall rank meaningless? Do you get prevented from playing it? Do you get to play unranked skirmish games in your rank? Or do you get to play, can still lose your points, but can't gain any over 100? Deranking would seem to be useful, and yet I don't see how it could be managed in that system.

Alternately the 3 modes can just each have their own ranks and eliminate the overall rank (or make it an average of the 3.)

 

[97Stephen]

Yes, that devaluation is exactly why @Holidaze and I were endorsing a ladder reset for ranked in a different thread (and why most ladder based games do so.)

When you say re-balancing the ranking system do you mean the "invisible ranking system in TW"? Or do you mean the ranked ranking system? The 2.4 improved matchmaking applies to "Regular Battles" (TW) only and does not apply to ranked at all (or so they say.)

I can say in TW I'm still matched with S often, but not almost exclusively as i did before. However I've seen an introduction of a few S+ players which I previously saw none of, so I don't know exactly what it's trying to do. I can say fewer of these S/S+ battles end in shutouts as severely as B ranked did unless a player d/cs :p



Yes, exactly! That kind of system, particularly one that allows some leeway between derankings to me seems essential instead of flooding the skill pools like it does now. I don't know if the promotional game is even essential or not, but it couldn't hurt. The demotional game, or having a few retries to get out of 0 etc, something to keep that placeholder in rank so the rank shifting isn't so fluid, making ranks meaningless. That part is a must!

The ideal ranked system, IMO there's not just one ideal system, there's numerous ways of achieving the same end result. But I think there are some ideal attributes it must consider that it currently does not. The big one is the 3 disciplines. We have 3 ranked modes, each unique that play differently that may require different skills, individually and as a team. We have a letter rank that supposedly tells us what skill bracket we're playing with. But right now that letter represents not the combined effort of all 3 disciplines determining the actual player skill in overall play, but potentially a cherry picked skill set of just one mode of play. We don't have individual ranks for each game mode, we have overall ranks for all of them. But we don't take all of them into account. Is an S ranked player that seldom played RM and isn't very good at it REALLY an S ranked player compared to someone who can? There's a gap in their skills compared to their opponents. The current system is a better rank for deathmatch.

So the ideal system, above all, would enforce rank-level skill for all play modes before giving you an overall rank. The only simple to implement, simple to understand system would be to have sub-ranks for each game mode. The sub-ranks could be scored the same way the main rank is scored, within that skill (hopefully with the promotional ladder!) you play RM as a C+. You play, you win, you lose, etc. You get your 100 point system you do now. Congratulations, you're now still a C+ rank, but you've achieved B- in RM (or just a C+ with 100 RM points.) Now you need to do the same for SZ & TC. Once you do, you rank up to B-. in letter.

Need 100 points in all 3 is arbitrary, but anything less doesn't demonstrate skill. If I spend a 4 hour rotation on a pair of maps in one mode and rank up, currently, that means I've demonstrated 100 points of skill (luck) in that mode. But what about the other 2 modes? I bypassed them completely in that rank. Why is that allowed? I got out of B- fast, having never once played B- level Rainmaker. That doesn't make sense. Similarly if I played B level Rainmaker badly as a result, and got demoted to B- for it, then I'd be playing B level Splat Zones in B-, because I can't play B level Rainmaker. That's bad. Why wouldn't I need to spend equal time in all 3 modes of a given rank before moving to the next rank?

So the only real challenges there are how to handle a C+ 100/30/60 RM/TC/SZ in main rank. If they go down to 0 in RM but still have 30/60 in TC/SZ, you can't derank them. Theyr'e still a C+. They're a C+ forever unless they drop to 0 in all 3. That could be an issue. But then they had to demonstrate B- skill in all 3 to get there at all. So maybe it's fair. Promotion is simple though. 100 in all 3, you move on. IMO the triathlon scoring system inherently builds a promotional system into it. If you got to 100 through luck in SZ, you've at minimum demonstrated a heck of a lot of luck doing it twice more in TC & RM.

The only serious challenge would b e how to handle deranking, and how to handle continued play of the same mode after 100pts. Do you play into the next rank, making essentially every mode it's own rank and making the overall rank meaningless? Do you get prevented from playing it? Do you get to play unranked skirmish games in your rank? Or do you get to play, can still lose your points, but can't gain any over 100? Deranking would seem to be useful, and yet I don't see how it could be managed in that system.

Alternately the 3 modes can just each have their own ranks and eliminate the overall rank (or make it an average of the 3.)

One problem with that idea is people who can't play that much. Because of school I can play splatoon about once or twice a week. If they implemented this it would kill my rank. I can't really control when I get on, it's just when I have the time. So if say rainmaker was never on rotation when I played, I would never go anywhere. It's not that I am cherry picking, it's just that I get what's on, when I get on. I am assuming that this doesn't apply to most people though. I would probably be for it if it improved ranked, but it would definitly not help me.

 

[Holidaze]

@Award Seems arduous, but it makes sense.

 

[maui9]

I think the rank is fine but man sometimes ill win a ton and then bam get a terrible team and lose a ton.

 

[Award]

One problem with that idea is people who can't play that much. Because of school I can play splatoon about once or twice a week. If they implemented this it would kill my rank. I can't really control when I get on, it's just when I have the time. So if say rainmaker was never on rotation when I played, I would never go anywhere. It's not that I am cherry picking, it's just that I get what's on, when I get on. I am assuming that this doesn't apply to most people though. I would probably be for it if it improved ranked, but it would definitly not help me.

Well, that has to do with the ridiculous notion that game mode rotates with maps, which is a different problem. It might not hurt to instead of 2 maps, 1 game mode, have 2 maps 2 game modes (EG, this rotation has Splat Zones on Hammerhead and TC on Mahi.) If you already have your 100pots on Splat Zones, the system makes sure you only get on Mahi lobbies...or something. That's rough but you get the idea. 2 game modes and 4 maps would be better but I understand why they can't do that.

It would take longer to climb the ranks in that system, but it would also be harder (if not impossible) to descend the ranks (you'd have to suck SO badly to get to 0 points in all 3 modes, and actively no avoid the last one with points you can't afford to lose!) So once you GOT to A+ you'd only stay in A+ until you got to S, more or less. So it would slow down your progression, but you WOULD progress if you're good without much risk of losing rank and having to maintain it like you do now. Going up would be harder, going down would be much harder. And the player base should be a lot better.

 

[97Stephen]

Well, that has to do with the ridiculous notion that game mode rotates with maps, which is a different problem. It might not hurt to instead of 2 maps, 1 game mode, have 2 maps 2 game modes (EG, this rotation has Splat Zones on Hammerhead and TC on Mahi.) If you already have your 100pots on Splat Zones, the system makes sure you only get on Mahi lobbies...or something. That's rough but you get the idea. 2 game modes and 4 maps would be better but I understand why they can't do that.

It would take longer to climb the ranks in that system, but it would also be harder (if not impossible) to descend the ranks (you'd have to suck SO badly to get to 0 points in all 3 modes, and actively no avoid the last one with points you can't afford to lose!) So once you GOT to A+ you'd only stay in A+ until you got to S, more or less. So it would slow down your progression, but you WOULD progress if you're good without much risk of losing rank and having to maintain it like you do now. Going up would be harder, going down would be much harder. And the player base should be a lot better.

Yeah, I guess that wouldn't be so bad. Making it harder to derank would be nice. I do disagree about random modes in the rotation.The weapon and load out I bring to splat zones is not what I use for Tc.