Ranked point system MUST change!

[CknSalad]

Alt account as others have pointed out is to practice certain weapons they want to learn or possibly try out new whacky builds/metas, but not risk losing points or their rank on their main account. Starcraft II pro players do it all the time and other games are no different really. Some also want to challenge themselves to see how fast they can get to S/S+ rank (level 20-25) or in like 3-5 days. Some want to blow off steam and maybe have fun blowing out lower-ranked players.

I think a really good solution would be to have unranked Tower/RM/Zones where you do not lose points. Right now, players that want to relax more or practice different weapons only have a choice of turf war, squads, or alt solo ranked. This additional mode would help mitigate the issue even further I feel. I think Starcraft II: HOTS implemented this a while back for the new/newer players to the RTS genre.

 

[Award]

It's just me, but why do people really use alts in the first place? I would think it is much easier to try to level up and gain more good gear by staying on one account, while pounding new/weak players can't be that fun.

It's sort of a cousin of scumming. Everything jsilva and cknsalad said is correct, and I see the appeal of it, but ultimately that's part of the problem. The rank is, in theory, there to represent your overall skill. That means your skill in SZ, RM, and TC across all maps. If you play multiple weapons it should represent your combined performance with all of them. Or that's what it proposes to represent.

The ones that want to "blow off steam" etc, is basically trolling when they should be playing TW, some of them are clanners that want to experiment but don't want to risk their rank. I can understand them doing that, especially where they have clan requirements for minimum rank, but it's stupid having clan players who are in most cases BETTER than non-clan S+ players due to the rigidity of practice etc masquerade as lower ranks. That actually probably affects squads more than solo though, which doesn't seem to be as broken for some reason.

But ultimately it lets people "scum" their rank by only playing their ideal modes on ideal map rotations with their ideal weapons to get their letter grade up while doing most of their otherwise ACTUAL play on a different account. So while they may be "S+ rank", they're only "S+ rank" on Mahi/Depot TC with a Luna Blaster and they may well stink horrendously when they play Zones. So that's another reason a rank doesn't mean so much. Does an A+ who plays ONLY zones on favorable rotations count as a better/higher rank player than an A- who plays EVERY mode and rotation on their main account? And it might explain a little of why some players in high ranks suck, and/or why some players in lower ranks don't suck. Some of the higher rank ones got there by cherry picking rotations but stink in others. Some of the lower ones are consistent no matter the rotation.

I don't like the idea - I just do all my experimentation on my main, rank be darned. If I drop to B which I did a few weeks ago (almost to B-!) so be it. I don't have patience to go play the campaign again to get my dynamo on an alt, anyway :p

The blame partly goes to Nintendo though, like I said, there's little incentive to play on your main account instead, and there's zero way to experiment with weapons, modes, strategies outside of the ranking system, so if you want to try something different and see how it works, you either get to tank your rank or create an alt. I'm re-learning sploosh atm. Loved it long ago but never played it right. I've learned some new techniques that are DEVASTATING in TW, but I'm injecting it into RM, where i really want it in my kit, piece by piece. I'm likely to lose when I do since I'm experimenting with approaches by map and there's no safe way to do it short of an alt. It won't replace my octobrush for RM but I'd like to have options for unfavorable rotations.

When you think about it it's actually a potentially effective way to balance the ranks in a floating system. By knocking players down in rank it reduces the amount of players who are not good enough to be in the rank, whether by undeserved winning streaks or a change of overall player skill. Extremely annoying for us, and perhaps the system (assuming that's what it's doing) overcompensates as well.

Even if rank balancing is part of what we see I feel like there's more going on though.

Oh I don't think there's any intent at "reducing the amount of players who are not good enough" That might be a side effect, but the only intent I suspect if that's being used is pure and simple list management. It needs a way to keep everyone from just moving upward indefinitely. The scoring should be enough for that. But the player base is never going to be even. Particularly there's likely to be a natural split between the group that simply sucks and will always suck, and the skilled group that will generally continue increasing in skill over time. The middle will always feature only transient passers by and become sparse. Brute force redistribution is almost the only way in a floating, non-resetting ladder to force that. That's why ladder resets are needed. It's ok if everyone just migrates up and up and up - it gets reset again and the skill level of each tier is redefined after each reset by the current meta.

I think a really good solution would be to have unranked Tower/RM/Zones where you do not lose points. Right now, players that want to relax more or practice different weapons only have a choice of turf war, squads, or alt solo ranked. This additional mode would help mitigate the issue even further I feel. I think Starcraft II: HOTS implemented this a while back for the new/newer players to the RTS genre.

Agreed entirely. That's kind of what I had in mind a while back that Nintendo should have done. I think the reason they didn't is the same reason as most of the rest of this mess: Not enough players. Not only would it split the ranks into an unranked version of those modes which could leave the pools thin in one or the other or both, it would also siphone some of the TW player base. A lot of ranked players would NEVER play TW if that existed. But I don't think they factored the idea of alts in at all.

A middle ground might have been an option to join ranked as "solo" or "participant" - where you play the exact same ranked pool exactly as if it were ranked, but you gain or lose no points. The downside is you'd get trolls that "camp" in a given rank even though they're top tier players. Alternately maybe squads could be entirely unranked. Just as it is for S/S+ - no points in squads either way. make squads like private battles - a mode that has nothing to do with rank.

Or just fix the ****** point system so it's a lot harder to arbitrarily derank due to luck or an off rotation! :D

 

[jsilva]

It's sort of a cousin of scumming. Everything jsilva and cknsalad said is correct, and I see the appeal of it, but ultimately that's part of the problem.

I think it's worth saying that in building up my two accounts I deliberately didn't dominate in the lower ranks. I for the most part adapted to their playstyle and only played well enough to win. Sometimes I'd have to up my game a lot to win because at the top end of a rank the matching system would predictably (over 90% of the time) match me on the weaker team, but overall my playing got lazy until I was up to A+ or so! :)

Oh I don't think there's any intent at "reducing the amount of players who are not good enough" That might be a side effect, but the only intent I suspect if that's being used is pure and simple list management. It needs a way to keep everyone from just moving upward indefinitely. The scoring should be enough for that. But the player base is never going to be even. Particularly there's likely to be a natural split between the group that simply sucks and will always suck, and the skilled group that will generally continue increasing in skill over time. The middle will always feature only transient passers by and become sparse. Brute force redistribution is almost the only way in a floating, non-resetting ladder to force that. That's why ladder resets are needed. It's ok if everyone just migrates up and up and up - it gets reset again and the skill level of each tier is redefined after each reset by the current meta.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but that sounds like what I meant. Am I missing something? What you said in your last sentence is what I meant—by forcing players down in rank each rank/tier is redefined according to the changing skill level. Those who aren't good enough in the current skill level, or who ranked up due to a 'lucky' winning streak, will stay down and balance the ranks. It seems to me that's a reasonable fix for the problem you describe which should abate the need for a ladder reset, however annoying it is to those who artificially get deranked. Is that not what you meant?

 

[Nero86]

There could be something interesting like used on Street Fighter IV using two different counters: BP and PP.
BP: Is character specific, for example: I'm an expert as Ryu player and I want to try Blanka, a new BP will start for that character and my rank is for that character. It's possible to rank down this one.
PP: Is player specific, whenever the character I use this one uses the same points, it's my overall skill. It's only deducted if I ragequit matches. It's like splatoon Level (in japanese version Level is Rank, and our Rank is Ability), useful to match overall skills of a player but it goes beyond 50.

Maybe putting more levels to raise and prizes to achieve would reduce alt accounts, people would be busy grinding :D

 

[Award]

I think it's worth saying that in building up my two accounts I deliberately didn't dominate in the lower ranks. I for the most part adapted to their playstyle and only played well enough to win. Sometimes I'd have to up my game a lot to win because at the top end of a rank the matching system would predictably (over 90% of the time) match me on the weaker team, but overall my playing got lazy until I was up to A+ or so! :)

How have you found the A's relative to those times in the recent times you've been deranked and migrated up again? That said it's kind of a lopsided question because I can't tell WHICH A is the REAL A. The A as it was on Sunday or the A as it was last night, which seem to play at two ENTIRELY different skill levels. On Sunday it played like S/S+. Yesterday it played like I'd expect A to play. I'm not sure which one is the "real" A in the current meta. Nor should there be different skill levels (and not subtly so) in a given rank on random days. That should be a questionaire for S players: Which A meta did you arrive in? :p A lot of my "unfavorable matchmaking" and disastrous rank changes are probably due to my play times. I seem to play mostly when the "brutal metas" are running and not when the "normal" ones are. The difference is STARK.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but that sounds like what I meant. Am I missing something? What you said in your last sentence is what I meant—by forcing players down in rank each rank/tier is redefined according to the changing skill level. Those who aren't good enough in the current skill level, or who ranked up due to a 'lucky' winning streak, will stay down and balance the ranks. It seems to me that's a reasonable fix for the problem you describe which should abate the need for a ladder reset, however annoying it is to those who artificially get deranked. Is that not what you meant?

I interpreted your meaning that that was an intentional goal for the forced deranking. I don't think it's intentional, maybe a side effect, but I think the intended point is pure and simple list management of the rosters without consideration of how it affects the skill levels.

That said, even as a side effect, it doesn't work well because it's selective. Certain people for unknown reasons are "picked" to derank. We know it's not based on fair reasons if the goal is to simply distribute lists where the matchmaking time limit requires it. So the net effect is, what if nobody played at B+ level at all. What if the skill jump was such that after B, everyone quickly learned to play on the same level of A-. If it needed a B+ it would just try to force two ranks out of the same pool of skill. Even if some players weren't lower skill than others they would end up arbitrarily divided into a "bettter" and "worse" group. It only "fixes" some players and not others (and then messes up other ranks.) The full reset resets EVERYONE to the same starting point. it lets the new meta develop organically as the ranks filter out rather than the awkwarness of forcing people to randomly adjust at different times in tainted player pools. A "floating" ladder can't really be taken seriously after it runs long enough. Especially not a ladder that wasn't reset after massive nerfs, new maps, new weapons, and entirely new MODES that were added since it started. The launch months were basically a beta and they never even reset the ladder for that.

CknSalad mentioned Starcraft II - Blizzard games are a great example of very serious, very competitive ladders. One of those companies with rarefied actual pro ($$) tournament games with actual full-time professional players. All Blizzard ladders are reset periodically (Diablo, Starcraft, etc.) Ladders run anywhere between 2 weeks to 4 months depending on tournament schedules and the like, and were reset frequently during betas. The goal is to always aim to climb the ladder which always gives a goal to try to achieve rather than the very awkward "I hope I can tread water and stay in place" that Splatoons floating ladder offers. I think that's why people get confused with Splatoon's ranks - they're used to resetting progressive ladders in other games where the letter means more. It shows how high you've achieved in the last 2-16 weeks, not "last 4 hours of performance." Selectively dropping players one at a time doesn't achieve the "candy scramble" effect a full reset does where everyone starts at the bottom and competes back to the top again. Imagine the Olympic Decathlon retaining he prior competition's finishing order as the starting order, but randomly taking the silver medalist and moving him to 4th to "make sure he can still earn it" versus the standard "everyone starts at 0" staggered timed start.

There could be something interesting like used on Street Fighter IV using two different counters: BP and PP.
BP: Is character specific, for example: I'm an expert as Ryu player and I want to try Blanka, a new BP will start for that character and my rank is for that character. It's possible to rank down this one.
PP: Is player specific, whenever the character I use this one uses the same points, it's my overall skill. It's only deducted if I ragequit matches. It's like splatoon Level (in japanese version Level is Rank, and our Rank is Ability), useful to match overall skills of a player but it goes beyond 50.

Maybe putting more levels to raise and prizes to achieve would reduce alt accounts, people would be busy grinding :D

That's a pretty good type of system. It's hard to fit into Splatoon since it's generally not rewarding individual points but team points, but I absolutely think that should factor in somehow. And the idea that individual win/loss doesn't affect your primary skill metric for matchmaking is a critical element there. I figure Street Fighter has been a successful ladder since the 80's - it's got to be doing something right! :) (The sound of Street Fighter will always be heard in my head in it's good old arcade cabinet days. That game WAS the sound of the arcade! ;))

That's a good point that a higher level cap would incentivize grinding on the main account. If it came with some sort of reward as well, that could go a long way to helping. At this point I imagine Nintendo doesn't want to do anything to increase replayability TOO much though, depending on when they want to launch a Splatoon 2 and/or NX :)

 

[jsilva]

How have you found the A's relative to those times in the recent times you've been deranked and migrated up again? That said it's kind of a lopsided question because I can't tell WHICH A is the REAL A. The A as it was on Sunday or the A as it was last night, which seem to play at two ENTIRELY different skill levels. On Sunday it played like S/S+. Yesterday it played like I'd expect A to play. I'm not sure which one is the "real" A in the current meta. Nor should there be different skill levels (and not subtly so) in a given rank on random days. That should be a questionaire for S players: Which A meta did you arrive in? :p A lot of my "unfavorable matchmaking" and disastrous rank changes are probably due to my play times. I seem to play mostly when the "brutal metas" are running and not when the "normal" ones are. The difference is STARK.

I know what you're saying and I'm not discounting your experience at all. When I started the two accounts I would say I experienced an occasional really excellent player through most of the ranks. I knew at the time they were not really that rank and I had to really up my game to better deal with them.

When I've deranked now I would say the players do seem very good and can be excellent at splatting, and of course I still see the occasional amazing player who doesn't belong at all in that rank, but the gameplay feels different in A+/A/A- lobbies. It usually feels slower and less efficient. I'm not sure how to describe it. Just my experience.

I interpreted your meaning that that was an intentional goal for the forced deranking. I don't think it's intentional, maybe a side effect, but I think the intended point is pure and simple list management of the rosters without consideration of how it affects the skill levels.

That said, even as a side effect, it doesn't work well because it's selective. Certain people for unknown reasons are "picked" to derank. We know it's not based on fair reasons if the goal is to simply distribute lists where the matchmaking time limit requires it. So the net effect is, what if nobody played at B+ level at all. What if the skill jump was such that after B, everyone quickly learned to play on the same level of A-. If it needed a B+ it would just try to force two ranks out of the same pool of skill. Even if some players weren't lower skill than others they would end up arbitrarily divided into a "bettter" and "worse" group. It only "fixes" some players and not others (and then messes up other ranks.) The full reset resets EVERYONE to the same starting point. it lets the new meta develop organically as the ranks filter out rather than the awkwarness of forcing people to randomly adjust at different times in tainted player pools. A "floating" ladder can't really be taken seriously after it runs long enough. Especially not a ladder that wasn't reset after massive nerfs, new maps, new weapons, and entirely new MODES that were added since it started. The launch months were basically a beta and they never even reset the ladder for that.

CknSalad mentioned Starcraft II - Blizzard games are a great example of very serious, very competitive ladders. One of those companies with rarefied actual pro ($$) tournament games with actual full-time professional players. All Blizzard ladders are reset periodically (Diablo, Starcraft, etc.) Ladders run anywhere between 2 weeks to 4 months depending on tournament schedules and the like, and were reset frequently during betas. The goal is to always aim to climb the ladder which always gives a goal to try to achieve rather than the very awkward "I hope I can tread water and stay in place" that Splatoons floating ladder offers. I think that's why people get confused with Splatoon's ranks - they're used to resetting progressive ladders in other games where the letter means more. It shows how high you've achieved in the last 2-16 weeks, not "last 4 hours of performance." Selectively dropping players one at a time doesn't achieve the "candy scramble" effect a full reset does where everyone starts at the bottom and competes back to the top again. Imagine the Olympic Decathlon retaining he prior competition's finishing order as the starting order, but randomly taking the silver medalist and moving him to 4th to "make sure he can still earn it" versus the standard "everyone starts at 0" staggered timed start.

I follow what you're saying although I'm not sure how I feel about it. Certainly for non-competitive players it would be unsatisfying to lose your progress every couple of weeks or months. Even for me, and I really like Splatoon, I would get frustrated. I won't always want to invest the time to rank up just so I can play better games with skilled players, so I could see myself not playing much at all knowing that I'd have to play a lot to rank up just so I could play with better players knowing I'd shortly lose all that progress when the ladder resets. Seems unrewarding to me. Surely there's a way to ensure a healthy represented skill base without resetting the ladder.

 

[Award]

When I've deranked now I would say the players do seem very good and can be excellent at splatting, and of course I still see the occasional amazing player who doesn't belong at all in that rank, but the gameplay feels different in A+/A/A- lobbies. It usually feels slower and less efficient. I'm not sure how to describe it. Just my experience.

Yeah I was just curious if you perceived it different in the current meta versus your first time through. I.E. is the new A the old S. Like I said, I perceived it as different yesterday versus Sunday, so it' really varies when you play. If it would consistently play like it played last night, especially with 2.6 no longer screwing me with S+ matches, and the fact that A-, A, A+ are not differentiated in any way, I'd get back to S in a few hours. I played triggerfish zones and barely had to try. It was almost boring. I had a rocky start but once I established a position that was the game. And the teams were decent. Ancho-V I was sucking more just because I haven't carved out any good way to play that map with any of my weapons without relying too much on lucky breaks. I love Ancho-V in TW, but so far I hate it in the ranked modes. But it felt very "average". Sunday... it was a whole different level of play even in rotations I would normally excel in the battle was the same every round: An early lead held about 2/3 through and then they'd massively push and get the 20-90 type counter down to a near-ko no matter the rotation, no matter the lobby the pattern always played the same. Like they were toying with us (like Birdiebee said he did in the Cs on his alt :p) If it played like it did Sunday consistently I'd end up in A- forever The battles were all excellent, and generally we'd prevent them from getting a ko, but 20 rounds worth of "fighting to prevent ko" rather than fighting to win isn't what you'd expect from all A rooms (and not how it behaves other times.) I've seen a similar pattern in my ever looping cycle enough times that's there's something to it. I'm not sure if it's the matchmaker curse or if there's certain days/times when everyone plays their alts at the same time for some odd reason. It's just weirdly inconsistent.

I follow what you're saying although I'm not sure how I feel about it. Certainly for non-competitive players it would be unsatisfying to lose your progress every couple of weeks or months. Even for me, and I really like Splatoon, I would get frustrated. I won't always want to invest the time to rank up just so I can play better games with skilled players, so I could see myself not playing much at all knowing that I'd have to play a lot to rank up just so I could play with better players knowing I'd shortly lose all that progress when the ladder resets. Seems unrewarding to me. Surely there's a way to ensure a healthy represented skill base without resetting the ladder.

Yeah, because this setup isn't frustrating at all ;)

IMO Nintendo made it fairly clear that ranked is competitive. So I don't think they were trying to keep "non-competitive" players in mind with it. The "non-competitive" players are mostly in the C's and low B's anyway and the reset wouldn't affect them too much. In a "properly functioning" ladder, and particularly a progressive ladder, I don't think you'd have to "invest time" to rank up so much. It SHOULD be quickly moving you through the system to an appropriate skill. Having to play again to progress again should be no different (and a lot more fair) than when you get thrown down to Aflat now and have to climb again. Except it would give you the date of when you're getting thrown back again and give you more chance on improving and working to S+ rather than always having to tread water. Your "bragging rights" wouldn't come from treading water in S forever, but from reaching S+ for 3 consecutive ladders, etc. Which in that type of ladder you'd have done by now. It works more like beating the game on Hard Mode for single player. Or posting the High Score in arcade type games. You get to then try to beat your score again. Heck, the Pac-man high score ladder's still running since the 80's :) And people are still posting new high scores! It's very rewarding still. More than the carousel here. It gives you something new to strive for each reset.

I think what you see before you is the "healthy skill base without resets." There's a reason the competitive games with paid pro players and million dollar sponsorship's reset the darned ladder. ;) You don't see people turning away from the uber-competitive highly addictive Blizzard games because of resets! It's just a more meaningful ladder overall.

 

[jsilva]

Yeah, because this setup isn't frustrating at all ;)

As frustrating as the current system is, whatever that system is, I just mean that I would end up playing a lot less if the ladder were reset periodically (maybe that's a good thing...). It didn't take me especially long to get up to S on my accounts, maybe a week or two, and if it reset every 4 months or so that'd be different. I did enjoy 'starting over' but only because it was a learning experience and it was my choice. If I were forced into that periodically I'd think twice before putting in the disc to play :) And I suspect there are a lot more Splatoon players with my mindset than the highly competitive mindset.

 

[Nero86]

Now I think that a rank reset every 4 months is a bit frustrating to me. That "sinking sand" feeling is something which I'm not attracted to. I would surely quit battling for it like I did for pokemon that resets every season.

 

[Award]

As frustrating as the current system is, whatever that system is, I just mean that I would end up playing a lot less if the ladder were reset periodically (maybe that's a good thing...). It didn't take me especially long to get up to S on my accounts, maybe a week or two, and if it reset every 4 months or so that'd be different. I did enjoy 'starting over' but only because it was a learning experience and it was my choice. If I were forced into that periodically I'd think twice before putting in the disc to play :) And I suspect there are a lot more Splatoon players with my mindset than the highly competitive mindset.

Not at the S/S+ level. I think the highly competitive types rule the roost there for the most part.

Just think about the situation with all the alts? Other than "to spare their rank" why would so many people want to create alts? To start over and play a different way with a different experience. In a lot of ways they're doing their own ladder reset. Doing it on a schedule makes it sort of like Splatfest. I think it fits in with the game's vibe. They could divide it into Ink Tournaments or something. Where you slot at the end of the tournament might yield a prize. Maybe...SNAILS! Or Custom gear. It's too late for that in Splatoon 1, but I don't see a reason to not add some competitive flair ala Splatfest to make the ladder resets an inviting part of the game when the game already features "festival days" with a time limited competition. And make a fun launch day for the start of the new tournament. I could see Callie & Marie announcing the start of a brand new tournament every so often. The emphasis would be "how high on the ladder can you get THIS time? Maybe there could be a status for "3 time champion" that sort of thing.

It's all just window dressing for how normal ladders work, but in a very Nintendo way. Starcraft/Diablo resets sort of irregularly and revolves around their real tournament schedule. Halo 5 resets monthly I think. Battlefield is I think quarterly. Not sure how COD handles it. Splatoon's pretty much the only competitive game with a ladder I can think of that doesn't reset. It also removes as much pressure from the less competitive. Getting higher than last time becomes a goal rather than "I neeed to get to S+" as it's less practical for a more casual player.

Also like Splatfests it encourages interest in the game. And nintendo loves scheduled interest. "Ohh the new Splatoon Tournament starts on the 19th. Maybe I'll play this one, I haven't played in awhile" Like the patch release today it keeps that "the whole community is new again" feeling in the game, long term.

As a result of it's time limited nature, it provides more upward momentum through the ranks - challenging upward rather than fighting in place.

Now I think that a rank reset every 4 months is a bit frustrating to me. That "sinking sand" feeling is something which I'm not attracted to. I would surely quit battling for it like I did for pokemon that resets every season.

How about with the "torurnament" idea above? I realize this is all nonsense theory talk for Splatoon 2 at this point, but does that make it more appealing? Instead of it being just a reset of ranks, if it was framed as a specific tournament where you get a reward based on how high you went, does that make it more interesting to want to keep participating in? (Since it seems like Nintendo reads these boards since everything we complain about is listed in 2.6 ;))

 

[Nero86]

Yes! Tournaments per season would be totally cool! A new meta borns each time that happens on pokemon, splatoon wouldn't be different!

 

[Dessgeega]

Tournaments done by clans don't interest me in the slightest. Tournaments that Nintendo is running? I'd be all over that.

 

[Nero86]

Tournaments done by clans don't interest me in the slightest. Tournaments that Nintendo is running? I'd be all over that.

In that example I was mentioning things they do like in pokemon, creating new game rules and restrictions to each tournament. I like all that "new quick rules" stuff :D

 

[Award]

In that example I was mentioning things they do like in pokemon, creating new game rules and restrictions to each tournament. I like all that "new quick rules" stuff :D

That's pretty cool. I've never played Pokemon competitively so I'm not familiar with they way they run their multiplayer systems but that actually sounds really fun! It's telling that IIRC, GameFreak and The Pokemon Company assisted with some development support on Splatoon, the same way Intelligent Systems and MonolithSoft lend support to games like Zelda etc. There's some Pokemon know-how behind Splatoon, so it would be very fitting to incorporate that kind of system since it's something they already do there. :)

 

[Nero86]

Now what do you think of the current matchmaking? I've played a few battles, it's working well and I've been playing more quality matches than before.

 

[Award]

I haven't played solo yet, just a few squads and some TW. However over thew weekend (in my epic losing streak) I was being matchmade in the same way the update claims to do (All A-, A, A+ in the lobby) which while better than before was still plagued by all the alts problems I mentioned (that problem seemed better on Monday.) I suspect the matchmaking fix actually took place last week since I stopped seeing B+'s and S's in A's matches starting Friday. It was a server-side change so it probably didn't need the patch to fix it. Squads don't appear to be changed by the update (which is as I expected.)

 

[jsilva]

I was seeing mixed S lobbies (S+, S, A+, A) occasionally up until the update, and now it's been exclusively S.

I haven't seen crazy weapon matchups which is great! I think that really helps with the balance. Even in games where the opposing team was better it felt different, more balanced ... there weren't games with three amazing snipers covering every angle of the map while my team has all short range weapons :)

However, I did have a series of 8 consecutive wins followed by 7 consecutive losses. It did start to even out after that though, and overall it did feel better. I still saw heavy skill balances, usually because of one or two super dudes, but it felt like the system was dealing with it differently. Just a feeling though, we'll see as more games are played.

 

[Award]

I was seeing mixed S lobbies (S+, S, A+, A) up until the update, and now it's exclusively S.

I haven't seen crazy weapon matchups which is great! I think that really helps with the balance. Even in games where the opposing team was better it felt different, more balanced ... there weren't games with three amazing snipers covering every angle of the map while my team has all short range weapons :)

However, I did have a series of 8 consecutive wins followed by 7 consecutive losses. It did start to even out after that though, and overall it did feel better. I still saw heavy skill balances, usually because of one or two super dudes, but it felt like the system was dealing with it differently. Just a feeling though, we'll see as more games are played.

That's good to hear. We'll see if I go in a losing streak down to B within a week or two to see if it's REALLY different :)

Though I laughed when your fear is the OTHER team having 3 chargers. I can deal with 3 opposing chargers. When there's 3 chargers (or dynamos) on my team, I know I'm in for pain. :) Heck, even two.

Have you seen sniper duos and dynamo duos yet, or has that been curbed in general?

 

[CknSalad]

Last night I could definitely see an improvement where matches were a lot closer for most of the time and there was good back and forth retakes for zones on d'Alfonsino and Underpass. Splat zones usually is a big hit or miss on solo q, but last night went pretty well albeit still the same issue of teammates not inking the point enough to prevent timer penalty (literally our timer was at 1 and trying to cover zone with my splattershot pro and splat bomb...) and taking too long to recapture after a wipe or pushing in general.

As others have said, the biggest change was more fair weapon compositions as I did not encounter three of the same weapons. The worst I encountered were two of the same weapon types (chargers, rollers, etc...). Keep in mind this is a small sample size of 4 matches (went even 2W/2L).

I watched an S+ rank brush player stream last night, and S+ only lobbies definitely made a difference and I could tell he was having a lot more fun being able to take more aggressive flanks as he did not have to worry about carrying S rank players. The only issue I see is lobbies filling up in S+ lobbies on certain times.

 

[jsilva]

That's good to hear. We'll see if I go in a losing streak down to B within a week or two to see if it's REALLY different :)

Though I laughed when your fear is the OTHER team having 3 chargers. I can deal with 3 opposing chargers. When there's 3 chargers (or dynamos) on my team, I know I'm in for pain. :) Heck, even two.

Have you seen sniper duos and dynamo duos yet, or has that been curbed in general?

The most I've seen is two of the same weapon on a team, and they were Octoshot/Tentatek. I saw two rollers but they weren't the same type. I saw two snipers but again different type (charger and elitre). And no change in matching time. I just went through 20 or so games of my notes and the weapon arrangement is actually really good!

I don't get worried when I see three snipers unless after the game starts I see my team being picked off and unable to push the objective :)

It occurred to me that with the matching within a rank it might help with the alt issue. The system will be less likely to match higher ranked players in order to compensate for the skill imbalance, so maybe the alts will rise faster and not pollute the rank they're in to the same degree?