what do you think of the ranking system

[LaJoJoe]

they shouldn't deduct points from anyone imo because we all have things to do and they should be smart to add an exit button to the lobby
so if you missed and click"play again" you can exit out, or so you're allies wont lose.

 

[jsilva]

Well, I think something to incorporate into placement in the team is kills, deaths, ground covered, and time spent with or around the objective. If you hold the tower longer you do better, if you splat the zone more you do better, if you hold the rainmaker or protect whoever is holding it you should get more points.

My feeling is that would lead to even more unfair point distribution. For instance, suppose one team member picks up the rainmaker from near their own spawn point and takes it all the way for a knockout. And suppose that was really easy for them because their teammates were keeping the other team at bay somewhere else far away on the map for most of the time. How could the system measure the contribution of their teammates? It's easy for us as humans to see but not an easy algorithm to program into a system, especially one with limited resources. The person holding the rainmaker would end up getting more points for doing something easy while their teammates pulled off something difficult.

And then, you'd probably get people overly anxious to hold the rainmaker because they know they'll get more or lose less points. Or ride the tower with their teammates rather than flank the other team from a distance. The game would be less about team play and more about 'What actions can I take to get more or lose less points?'

I think that unless the gameplay could be assessed by someone/something who is capable of measuring it fully, and that's not possible, it would end up even more unfair than it is now and hurt gameplay.

 

[AspireArt]

My feeling is that would lead to even more unfair point distribution. For instance, suppose one team member picks up the rainmaker from near their own spawn point and takes it all the way for a knockout. And suppose that was really easy for them because their teammates were keeping the other team at bay somewhere else far away on the map for most of the time. How could the system measure the contribution of their teammates? It's easy for us as humans to see but not an easy algorithm to program into a system, especially one with limited resources. The person holding the rainmaker would end up getting more points for doing something easy while their teammates pulled off something difficult.

And then, you'd probably get people overly anxious to hold the rainmaker because they know they'll get more or lose less points. Or ride the tower with their teammates rather than flank the other team from a distance. The game would be less about team play and more about 'What actions can I take to get more or lose less points?'

I think that unless the gameplay could be assessed by someone/something who is capable of measuring it fully, and that's not possible, it would end up even more unfair than it is now and hurt gameplay.

Didn't I just say that kills, fewer deaths, and turf would also contribute to your score? Just because one person gets lucky with a knockout doesn't mean that the rest of the team should suffer. A knockout would give everyone on the team a large amount of rank points (like 10-12 or something). Another thing about balancing is when someone gets a knockout. If a team gets it in the first minute, the other team probably shouldn't suffer that much because they didn't have good members, other person quit or something. Later on it's most likely more fair to detract more points for a knockout.

 

[AspireArt]

And whats up with not being able to change weapons in the regular lobby?

 

[Ninwaifu]

I think it works great. Maybe less point deducted when you lose. But it feels rea!ly rewarding when you rank up. I actually wish Smash Brothers had something like it in "For Glory".

 

[Tyson TH]

Man, for the life of me I can't seem to understand it.

Ever since the 2.3.0 they stated it would be more fair and deduct the same amount of points won for S and S+ players. Yet, I'll be playing matches in S+ 30-40, and I earn 3 and lose 6 or 7 points, or sometimes earn 4 and lose 5. Teams are technically even in terms of rankings too. We could be two S+ and two S on both teams and I would still lose more points than normal. The only thing I could possibly suspect is that my win ratio is affecting my amount of points lost, but if that's the case why don't I get more points when I'm on a losing streak?

 

[LaJoJoe]

THE POINTS WILL BE DISTRIBUTED BASED WHOS REALLY HELPING THE TEAM SO EVEN IF YOU LOSE YOU'LL NOT LOSE MANY POINTS. IF HE CARRIES THE RAINMAKER AND I GET 25 KILLS, I'LL GET MORE POINTS OR LESS POINT DEDUCTED BECAUSE OF BACKING UP, INKING TURF AND GETTING THE MOST KILLS. I do agree with how you say just cause he went a far distance he'll get points unevenly but WE need to find a way to get Splatoon to make our decisions instead of just ranting about it man. We need to work together. We also need to realize that either way having a ranking system in the first place will have pros and cons and until we can find a solution to where we can accept the cons then we need to analyze. I'm not saying this to make anyone feel like I'm targeted them in fact I'm here to get us altogether so we can find a valid solution to the ranking system. Please guys try to think of little pieces at a time and well list out the possible benefits and downsides to it!

 

[DeeSqweeDee]

THE POINTS WILL BE DISTRIBUTED BASED WHOS REALLY HELPING THE TEAM SO EVEN IF YOU LOSE YOU'LL NOT LOSE MANY POINTS. IF HE CARRIES THE RAINMAKER AND I GET 25 KILLS, I'LL GET MORE POINTS OR LESS POINT DEDUCTED BECAUSE OF BACKING UP, INKING TURF AND GETTING THE MOST KILLS. I do agree with how you say just cause he went a far distance he'll get points unevenly but WE need to find a way to get Splatoon to make our decisions instead of just ranting about it man. We need to work together. We also need to realize that either way having a ranking system in the first place will have pros and cons and until we can find a solution to where we can accept the cons then we need to analyze. I'm not saying this to make anyone feel like I'm targeted them in fact I'm here to get us altogether so we can find a valid solution to the ranking system. Please guys try to think of little pieces at a time and well list out the possible benefits and downsides to it!

I really think that's the main point I wanted to post earlier on to make a post about actual Ranking definition. But first finding a solution besides just ranting about it would be more profitable. I mean, I've seen some broken FPS/3PS gauges A LOT in games. Having a good and if not great balancing act to judge people potential in a team centric game is frankly brainwrecking.

 

[Albatross]

It should be more expansive, my proposition

On a more serious note, I know people that have gotten to S+ numerous times on multiple accounts with little issue. So to say it's not a determination of skill because you get stuck at like A+ or S is a little silly.

 

[Aristeia]

I think it's saying the opposite, Albatross. If you're running therrands gamut all the way to S+ on multiple accounts, there's probably quite a bit of luck and a good internet connection to be found.

I myself am stuck at A-S, but I don't feel like I play at anything less than an S rank. I'm sure it doesn't help that I play late at night with Japanese gamers and that my school's connection is REALLY bad.

 

[Award]

That sounds like it could be good, but what metrics do you use to determine who placed first and who placed last? (As I understand it, currently the player order after a match has to do with how many games you've won in the last 10 games in comparison to your teammates, not who played the best or worst.)

Splatting or inking the most doesn't mean you deserve the most points. Suppose in match you had a K/D ratio of 12/2 but another teammate who had 1/10 and played poorly the entire match managed to navigate like superman past multiple members of the enemy team with the rainmaker to the pedestal for a win in the last 5 seconds? Who gets more points?

There are so many aspects to gameplay that can't easily be measured. For instance, sometimes even putting yourself in a position knowing you'll likely get splatted can benefit your team (in specific circumstances). How do you measure that contribution to the team?

Like in the other thread, I'm pretty sure Nintendo is ALREADY calculating some of this for matchmaking, but not using it for ranked point distribution. I imagine turf inked, kills, deaths, k/d ratio, win/loss ratio (already used for rank order), turf/kill ratio, and it should be very easy to tally who pushed the RM or tower x amount of points. And who got kills on the tower/RM close to a goal. And easy to tally who was seizing splat zones often. The metatada required should be very easy to capture. Likely easier than what seems like input/playstyle based metrics they capture for matchmaking where it knows the lvl3 should be paired with lvl35s. Additionally, for you last statement, win/loss and by how much could be used to determine if sacrificial deaths were beneficial. I'll kamakaze often enough and go for a trade if I know it's a worthwhile exchange to get that player off the map or push them back. Or even weaken them for a teammate to finish them.

IMO that kind of ranking is hardest for snipers which uniquely might pressure without measurable data. But then snipers should have very low deaths if they played well so that could factor in. In fact measurements by weapon would be useful since something like Luna will get splatted often as it's a high risk weapon. But I believe (in another thread) we've already determined there's metrics by weapon (using a weapon type you've never used it seems to briefly pair you with noobs before throwing you back to "your group.")

IMO, massive adjustments to ranked point distribution could only help. But an idea I had mentioned in another thread was to keep it the same but simply NOT drop the actual rank when you hit 0 points unless you're the worst or second worst player on the team determined by some of the metrics here. I.E. Keep everything the same, The idea would be not to break new things, but to prevent people who are otherwise decent and deserving of their rank from being forced down in rank through the fault of others (and encouraging more weapon experimentation in ranked), while avoiding the rank pool pollution that's occurring with very good players being dropped to ranks where they overperform, thus raising the skill cap to escape for that entire rank.

The way it is now, if Splatoon remained actively played for 10 years, in 10 year's time, rather than S rank becoming bigger with more skilled players, you'll just need to play at S rank level to escape C+.

 

[Award]

It should be more expansive, my proposition

On a more serious note, I know people that have gotten to S+ numerous times on multiple accounts with little issue. So to say it's not a determination of skill because you get stuck at like A+ or S is a little silly.

I'm guessing if your friends had enough free time to grind S+ on multiple accounts, they also had enough free time to play the RNG enough to win enough to get there in addition to being excellent players deserving of S+ rank. They may also have the advantage of playing during times of day that are opportune for them to get good teams. The time of day I play I get almost exclusively Japanese teams, hosted in Japan, with all the lag that goes with it. Yet I still tend to end the best on my team of all Japanese players (who don't have distance lag to the host!). And still tend to lose the match (I have enough salty posts elsewhere, I won't rehash!) ;)

No matter how good you are it's hard to lead a whole team of so-so players against a competent opponent. A player SO good they can reach S+ several times may just be good enough to routinely and consistently 1v4 teams in every other rank. But will you find many A+ level players who can consistently do the same? They're not as able to easily overwhelm an enemy team as completely and devastatingly all by themselves as someone good enough to repeatedly reach S+. But Ranked isn't intended to be a 1v4 gauntlet, it's supposed to be a team win, as reflected by scoring. If advancing requires a player so good they can 1v4 to S+ that's not a good thing. Players need to be efficiently moved (and kept on) whatever ladder run their player skill dictates so matches are between players of even skill. That's the whole point of a ladder. If good players are dropped to ladder rungs they are more skilled than, but kept there because of all the other good players moved there and don't move back to their real bracket, you end up with polluted pools of mixed skill levels like TW. The opposite of the point of a ladder, and a fun killer for everyone.

With the current scoring, you get amazing players who should be in A or S, in B fighting real B players that made it out of C, and then you get S players who play like B players who got lucky and were carried to S. Players aren't being efficiently moved in either direction as needed, breaking the ladder. With the probable exception of S+ that's SO difficult to achieve and hold only the truly best are there, all the ranks are muddled due to the team win/lose. And like jsilva said, it seems as though it's not quite random but as though it's trying to distribute wins & losses according to some master plan by rigging the matches.

I did get lucky and had my first balanced Ranked the other day where both teams were good, well balanced, and played on the same level with no terrible players, and positive k/ds all around on the winning team. Boy, that was a nice experience! It's the experience ladder mode is supposed to always provide (but doesn't.)

My feeling is that would lead to even more unfair point distribution. For instance, suppose one team member picks up the rainmaker from near their own spawn point and takes it all the way for a knockout. And suppose that was really easy for them because their teammates were keeping the other team at bay somewhere else far away on the map for most of the time. How could the system measure the contribution of their teammates? It's easy for us as humans to see but not an easy algorithm to program into a system, especially one with limited resources. The person holding the rainmaker would end up getting more points for doing something easy while their teammates pulled off something difficult.

And then, you'd probably get people overly anxious to hold the rainmaker because they know they'll get more or lose less points. Or ride the tower with their teammates rather than flank the other team from a distance. The game would be less about team play and more about 'What actions can I take to get more or lose less points?'

I think that unless the gameplay could be assessed by someone/something who is capable of measuring it fully, and that's not possible, it would end up even more unfair than it is now and hurt gameplay.

(Sorry for replying in a separate post!)

I agree and disagree. The scenario you described wouldn't be hard. Carrying the rainmaker would count positive by distance. Keeping the enemy at bay would include turfing and likely splats for the winning team. All members would get their points because all members played their role, measurably so. On the enemy team though, suppose all 4 players were A+5. After the loss they're all A+0. Right now they get dropped to A60. But what if one player was 8/2, one was 1/1 and carried the RM 20 pts, , and 2 were 0/6 with no RM time? Why would they be penalized equally? Clearly those last two players should be dropped a rank. Those first two played a fair A rank game but lost due to an inferior overall team. Right now win/lose is a result of the "random" matchmaking unless you're the hindrance or the rambo on the team. "Team ladder" with a random team needs to be more forgiving than an individual ladder. But I agree with the risk of it maybe making it less fair as a result of the attempt.

That's why I'm thinking the only win-win is keep the same system, record the metrics we're discussing, but keep players that aren't a real failure of the rank but just lost a team match at their same rank, but let their points fall to 0 and stay there. Getting to the next rank would still be RNG based like it is now, but they could continue fighting at their true skill rank. Meanwhile the bad players that might have been carried can filter back down the latter when they get to 0 and are the worst on their team (or worst for 2 rounds.) It would be a self correcting system over time. B would be B. B+ would be B+. Bad B's would go back to B-, and good B+'s wouldn't be bumped playing B. it would take a little while to filter the carried members back down in sufficient quantity but would prevent good players from filtering down unfairly. That sidesteps the disconnect issue too. It doesn't harm the team's rank. they still lose points like now, but can't be dropped a rank unless they were the worst of the remaining 3, win or lose.

I can see some exploits there too, but it's better than the muddled mess it is now without risking breaking much. An S player that's so undeserving of S they just can't play at the level of their teammates, will easily be filtered down.

 

[SCX|P7]

Getting deranked because your teammate disconnected is pretty ridiculous.

 

[jsilva]

But Ranked isn't intended to be a 1v4 gauntlet, it's supposed to be a team win, as reflected by scoring. If advancing requires a player so good they can 1v4 to S+ that's not a good thing. Players need to be efficiently moved (and kept on) whatever ladder run their player skill dictates so matches are between players of even skill.

That's a really good point and one I've been pondering too.

I remember when I was going from B to B+ (or something like that) in my second account and suddenly the players on the other team were repeatedly really good. If I had actually been a B in skill there's no way I would have ranked up.

I did get lucky and had my first balanced Ranked the other day where both teams were good, well balanced, and played on the same level with no terrible players, and positive k/ds all around on the winning team. Boy, that was a nice experience! It's the experience ladder mode is supposed to always provide (but doesn't.)

Those kinds of games seem too far between...but when they happen it's fantastic. It seems though that not everyone feels that way—rather they just want to win.

That's why I'm thinking the only win-win is keep the same system, record the metrics we're discussing, but keep players that aren't a real failure of the rank but just lost a team match at their same rank, but let their points fall to 0 and stay there. Getting to the next rank would still be RNG based like it is now, but they could continue fighting at their true skill rank. Meanwhile the bad players that might have been carried can filter back down the latter when they get to 0 and are the worst on their team (or worst for 2 rounds.) It would be a self correcting system over time. B would be B. B+ would be B+. Bad B's would go back to B-, and good B+'s wouldn't be bumped playing B. it would take a little while to filter the carried members back down in sufficient quantity but would prevent good players from filtering down unfairly. That sidesteps the disconnect issue too. It doesn't harm the team's rank. they still lose points like now, but can't be dropped a rank unless they were the worst of the remaining 3, win or lose.

Interesting idea :) If it were possible, losing streaks would certainly would be less frustrating. Though my guess is that the Splatoon developers think it all balances out in the end, and it probably does most of the time. But I do think since there is a random element to the matching there are failures in 'the agenda' that can't be corrected.

 

[Elecmaw]

The Ranked system is bad, not going to lie there. Even keeping in mind that it's impossible for the system to excellently judge every teammate how well they did during the match, it still needs a lot of work. The rotation system works against it aswell, someone could be very good at Zones but horrible at Tower meaning they'll drag down teams when Tower is in rotation or inflating their rank by only playing when Zones are on.

I've said it before, it should look at how teammates played during the match, not just the entire team. It should look at when important things are happening, like if a team clutches by securing a zone before the enemy gets the lead it should look at who inked the zone, who were alive at the moment who is close to the zone ect ect... and reward appropiately. Additionally, a teammate who got a 0/7 KD is pretty accurate of someone who didn't play well.

 

[jsilva]

The Ranked system is bad, not going to lie there. Even keeping in mind that it's impossible for the system to excellently judge every teammate how well they did during the match, it still needs a lot of work. The rotation system works against it aswell, someone could be very good at Zones but horrible at Tower meaning they'll drag down teams when Tower is in rotation or inflating their rank by only playing when Zones are on.

I've said it before, it should look at how teammates played during the match, not just the entire team. It should look at when important things are happening, like if a team clutches by securing a zone before the enemy gets the lead it should look at who inked the zone, who were alive at the moment who is close to the zone ect ect... and reward appropiately. Additionally, a teammate who got a 0/7 KD is pretty accurate of someone who didn't play well.

I think you're thinking too small. Yes a K/D ratio of 0/8 is pretty bad, but that doesn't mean that player didn't contribute something essential to the game.

When I think about all the ways a game could work out for the benefit of the winning team (or detriment of the losing team), there are countless aspects that can't be accounted for or easily measured. Why do I get 17/5 one game and 2/8 in the next game when my team loses the first but wins the second? My skill didn't necessarily change but the circumstances did. Why should I get credit for circumstances that favour my style of play, or that were 'luckily' presented to me by seemingly random events, etc.? There's just so much to how a game works out that can't easily be measured and by assigning points to certain aspects of gameplay it limits the value of gameplay to only those aspects. That's too small.

Further, if I deliberately sacrifice myself to help my team win and it works, how will I be rewarded for it? How do you accurately measure those situations from simply getting splatted because I was outplayed?

It just feels so limited to start assigning value to certain gameplay aspects. It seems to me the boring grinders who are already obsessed with splatting and inking will be rewarded. It drives me nuts when I see a player so itching to splat that they lose sight of the objective, and I've seen this in S-ranked games as well. Just today I saw some idiot who was very good at splatting who was also so itching to spawncamp that I let him take it out on me for a good 30 seconds while my team took the rainmaker for a knockout :)

 

[Elecmaw]

I think you're thinking too small. Yes a K/D ratio of 0/8 is pretty bad, but that doesn't mean that player didn't contribute something essential to the game.

When I think about all the ways a game could work out for the benefit of the winning team (or detriment of the losing team), there are countless aspects that can't be accounted for or easily measured. Why do I get 17/5 one game and 2/8 in the next game when my team loses the first but wins the second? My skill didn't necessarily change but the circumstances did. Why should I get credit for circumstances that favour my style of play, or that were 'luckily' presented to me by seemingly random events, etc.? There's just so much to how a game works out that can't easily be measured and by assigning points to certain aspects of gameplay it limits the value of gameplay to only those aspects. That's too small.

Further, if I deliberately sacrifice myself to help my team win and it works, how will I be rewarded for it? How do you accurately measure those situations from simply getting splatted because I was outplayed?

It just feels so limited to start assigning value to certain gameplay aspects. It seems to me the boring grinders who are already obsessed with splatting and inking will be rewarded. It drives me nuts when I see a player so itching to splat that they lose sight of the objective, and I've seen this in S-ranked games as well. Just today I saw some idiot who was very good at splatting who was also so itching to spawncamp that I let him take it out on me for a good 30 seconds while my team took the rainmaker for a knockout :)

Don't get me wrong, i'm not aiming for a system that's perfect. Right now there's a ton of factors that's unfair(teams w/ a bad mix of weapons not getting compensated, someone d/cing mid-match, 1-2 teammates playing poorly punishing the rest of the team), right now i'd love to have something better. Having a K/D ratio of 1/5 or lower or a teammate who did nothing to push the objective is a good measurement someone's being outplayed, or at the very least it's better than what we have right now.

But you have to assign different values to different aspects/preformances, i don't think there's another way to look at this problem. Ranked's a mess beyond A+, with a lot of players with varying skill levels either being carried by teams or squads. This creates another ripple effect, where eventually the new teams they'll end up in will still unfairly lose because they had that one guy who got in a rank higher than they should have been.

It might lead to some stupid situations like a person who trippled/quadded the enemy team and getting no bonuses for in favor of the person who dunked the rainmaker, but i'd rather look at it from an angle of "how are we going to fix this?" rather than just "how?".

 

[Award]

That's a really good point and one I've been pondering too.

I remember when I was going from B to B+ (or something like that) in my second account and suddenly the players on the other team were repeatedly really good. If I had actually been a B in skill there's no way I would have ranked up.

Exactly, and it's that inconsistency that's really key. It's caused by the bad matchmaking, but the bad matchmaking is caused by the skill pools being polluted with mixed skill levels. And the polluted skill pools are caused directly by the bad scoring & rank change system. You can't judge a team win in B rank based on a mix of players who's real skills are S and C+. You were an S (or A+, or S+ or whatever rank) player playing in a B pool and overskilled for the pool. A properly designed system would quickly and efficiently pass you up the ladder rungs rather than pollute the B pool by sticking a player of your skill against properly B skilled players for more than a handful of rounds as you pass through.

My experience was similar. A losing streak in B with terrible, terrible teams. Opponents that were at, above, or just below my own skill level, but a team that was worse than my C rank teams. Some of these were B- rank. Meanwhile when I was in C+ I was fighting B...not B-, B! opponents exclusively!) I had to pass B to get out of C+, but then in B, I get B- players? Paired against B players who certainly play at least an A- game. That dropped me to B-. Then I quickly got back to B in a half hour or so. Then a couple of wins gained me points. Then a few losses (my fault - eliter in moray RM which I hadn't played RM in Moray before.) Then from B to B+ in an hour or so when I finally got a team where we all played well. Only a single loss (and that loss was due to a clearly over-skilled opponent.) Matchmaking should never make winning and losing so random that a player that makes it from C+ to B- by playing all B opponents in an hour, and can make it from B to B+ by playing with all solid teammates in an hour should struggle for hours and hours up and down and losing streaks in B. A rank should mean you're all of a similar skill. That's the whole point of ladder systems.

Those kinds of games seem too far between...but when they happen it's fantastic. It seems though that not everyone feels that way—rather they just want to win.

I think the drive to win, other than nobody ever wanting to lose, of course, comes from the bad scoring system. An MLB baseball team doesn't loose a few games in a row and get told they're now an AA minor league team. They just lose and re-evaluate strategies to win because they're playing as well as other teams in their same rank (but already proved they're capable of doing so.) Similarly, a 3rd rate Major League team such as the Nintendo owned Seattle Mariners (Fun trivia if you don't follow Nintendo history: Nintendo bought the Marlins because Hiroshi Yamauchi was a huge baseball fan and wanted a team. It's currently managed by Howard Lincoln - the guy that had Reggie's job in the 90's, and was the lawyer that won the case against Universal for the Donkey Kong name which is what got him the job.) that doesn't win all that much isn't generally as good as other Major League teams, it's toward the bottom of said teams. But it's still a Major League team that outperforms AAA teams. The bottom of it's ladder rung. Like a low end S player. Based on current Splatoon matchmaking the Little League World Champion team would be paired against the Mariners. :p Wonder how the Little League MVP batter would fare against a 115MPH fastball thrown by a "low end" MLB pitcher? :p (And I don't even like sports, but the analogy was apt, and it's Nintendo related...I think they had a Splatoon launch event during one of their games as well. I hope they didn't get matched against an S rank team that day! ;))

But I think the fear of unfairly losing your rank no matter how well you play is what drives the win mentality. It would be different if a loss was just a loss among similar ranked teams and you got held in place until you advanced (or did so terrible that you dropped.) The fact that every loss gets you closer to getting thrown out of your skill bracket, even if you lead the team makes play for irrational focus on winning. There's two teams. One MUST lose. How does that count as force dropping to a lower skill bracket?

In a proper ranked ladder, I think virtually every round would be a "too close to call" round. There would be a lot of last minute turn-arounds, back and forth coverage, specific moments that changed the game. I love TW games that I win/lose by 0.1-4%. That means everyone played well, everyone did their part, it was a fair fight. The battle was intense and meaningful for the whole match. There's that feeling "if only I'd fired one more shot at the end we could have won!" But I hate ranked battles when you lose because the enemy got the tower 1pt from the goal only because no one other than yourself is capable of stopping it. Or when they run the rainmaker in in 45 seconds because you happen to be the only one that seems to be at the base trying to stop the 4 players from entering it. or when the enemy outranks you so much they camp your base from the 2:30 mark to the end. You don't end with the feeling of "that was a great match! If only I got that extra splat it could have been different!" You end with the feeling of "Well, that was pointless, I don't know why I bothered shooting at all! Next time I'll just start a squid party." My infamous 18/12 k/d with still a loss TC round is the standard bearer for what's wrong with the scores. When you have a player that can outperform the other 7 players in the lobby, in a big way, and still get, what 7, 8 pts stripped for a loss....that's a bad system. Outplaying your own team means you got a bad team (and shouldn't be punished for it.) Outplaying BOTH teams means you're probably playing below your rank. Isn't it better for everyone if that player gets ranked up asap? I wasn't having fun playing with a team that couldn't help and an enemy that could defeat me simply because it was 1v4 and I had no chance. And it couldn't have been fun for my opponents getting stomped over and over (and over (and over)) (that's over 4 times EACH) again by the same player. I've been there. It's not fun. Even if they did win they spent most of the round on the spawn (statistically I splatted each player every 40 seconds. The only people having fun were my 3 useless team mates that did...whatever they were doing, and maybe the 4 opponents seeing the victory screen thinking "HTF did we win? We didn't even do anything!"

Interesting idea :) If it were possible, losing streaks would certainly would be less frustrating. Though my guess is that the Splatoon developers think it all balances out in the end, and it probably does most of the time. But I do think since there is a random element to the matching there are failures in 'the agenda' that can't be corrected.

Random matchmaking with random skill levels should balance, but it doesn't because of whatever else they're doing in matchmaking. If you're designing a ladder and trust it to "random" that's a bad design. Which is surprising because Nintendo famously OVER thinks everything in minute detail. I have the unfortunate feeling that part of the problem here is a result of Iwata's absence. Splatoon, and the whole Splatoon team's creation were his projects more or less and he was always very personally involved in suggesting improvements and on top of the pulse of fans (though his critics always felt otherwise.) Ranked really got into the swing of things without him and bypassed his thinking. Additionally he was a competitive sort and I think had a grasp on competitive gaming. At present that aspect of Iwata's work goes through Miyamoto. And competitive play isn't Miyamoto's comfort zone as it was Iwata's. It's not that he's for all warm and fuzzy competition-less gameplay. More the opposite, he's an absolute sadist when it comes to games :p His games have been handing us our rear ends since the 80's (and we keep coming back for more!) So I imagine he'd favor a punitive rating system. Sure he adds the "anyone can play" mode these days to expend the audience, but the "anyone can play" mode makes sure to remind you you're not playing the real game, until you've completed EVERY impossible challenge. I'm a Miyamoto fan, and love Miyamoto game design. Heck, Miyamoto's the reason we have squidkids instead of just squids (or tofu.) His influence on Splatoon is significant in the most basic elements. But in this case, I think having Iwata's oversight as well would have already sorted out some of the scoring problems.

While I strongly doubt Nintendo will do ANYTHING to fix it, we do have one last hope. They ARE aware of the hard to calculate elements of performance. And they will end patches that update rules this month. Meaning they have one or two more patches where they ARE willing to modify rules. there's the off chance that Bill Trinnen stealthily reads these boards and can pass some of our suggestions along. It's not likely, but it genuinely IS possible! :D

 

[Holidaze]

The way Splatoon's ranking system currently is, is fine for now. If they were to remake the system, I'd be all for it. But for right now, leaving it the way it is has a majority of Ranked players satisfied, vs overly grumpy and quells any plans of burning Nintendo to the ground.

 

[Award]

The Ranked system is bad, not going to lie there. Even keeping in mind that it's impossible for the system to excellently judge every teammate how well they did during the match, it still needs a lot of work. The rotation system works against it aswell, someone could be very good at Zones but horrible at Tower meaning they'll drag down teams when Tower is in rotation or inflating their rank by only playing when Zones are on.

I've said it before, it should look at how teammates played during the match, not just the entire team. It should look at when important things are happening, like if a team clutches by securing a zone before the enemy gets the lead it should look at who inked the zone, who were alive at the moment who is close to the zone ect ect... and reward appropiately. Additionally, a teammate who got a 0/7 KD is pretty accurate of someone who didn't play well.

That's an element I thought of and forgot to touch on. You're very right about the rotation. I'm not sure how they'd address it, but you're right, your rank should either be separate by mode, or probably a better idea, rated kind of like the triathlon - it's a rating for those who excel in all disciplines. You don't make the next rank until you demonstrate sufficient skill in all 3 modes (different points for each.) But you also don't drop rank unless you fail sufficiently in all 3 modes, that way you can still keep working on improving in your current skill in your weak mode.

Actually that might be PERFECT. That could implement the core of my original idea of NOT dropping rank based on performance, but eliminate the performance monitoring metrics entirely (alleviating concerns about the metrics @jsilva had. If you make it from C to C+, it's because you got to 100 points each in Splat Zones, Tower Control, and Rainmaker. You demonstrated you can perform at C+ levels in all disciplines, and makes it less likely that you were carried, making it to 100 in 3 modes, so you move to C+. Now in C+, if you have a losing streak in Rainmker, you'll go to 0pts in Rainmaker, but you still have your 30pts in Splat Zones, so you're not going to be deranked, no matter how much you work on your Rainmaker gameplay. If you cap out at 100 on Rainmaker, you either can't gain more points (but can lose), or you can play into the next rank (but not gain said rank until you complete TC and SZ.) You'll remain a C+ player until you demonstrate similar skill in SZ and TC. Thus you can keep playing them and not worry about ranking down (but you still lose points to 0 in those disciplines) and you can keep playing at the C+ skill level in those disciplines until you improve your play (and until the RNG gods smile upon you.) Once you get 100/100/100, you're now B- and can work on all 3 modes in your new bracket.

If you're so awful you get to 0 in all 3 modes you'll still be deranked but it would never happen in practice because people would keep playing until they have SOME points in SOME mode. But that's not a bad thing because they already demonstrated they can be in the rank their in by excelling all modes of the previous rank.

The other side effect this would have is there would be many more people playing ranked, and many more willing to play all the modes, which would make lobbies more crowded. Right now people like me avoid ranked because of the issues, and avoid certain modes like rainmaker like the plague.

Some people would hate that it would slow down ranking, and existing players would have to be grandfathered into their ranks. But that shouldn't be an issue even with the bad players since competent players would be willing to play it more and just wait for the RNG to bring them up.

A better deranking system could be worked in. But this mode would make a lot of things better without risking breaking too much, and would benefit more playtime in all lobbies, making the online experience better.

Why do I get 17/5 one game and 2/8 in the next game when my team loses the first but wins the second? My skill didn't necessarily change but the circumstances did.


Further, if I deliberately sacrifice myself to help my team win and it works, how will I be rewarded for it? How do you accurately measure those situations from simply getting splatted because I was outplayed?

It just feels so limited to start assigning value to certain gameplay aspects. It seems to me the boring grinders who are already obsessed with splatting and inking will be rewarded. It drives me nuts when I see a player so itching to splat that they lose sight of the objective, and I've seen this in S-ranked games as well. Just today I saw some idiot who was very good at splatting who was also so itching to spawncamp that I let him take it out on me for a good 30 seconds while my team took the rainmaker for a knockout :)

Probably the second round your team shared in the splats leaving less for you and some riskier situations to jump into but the overall team won because you all participated well, while in the first one your team was useless leaving all the low hanging fruit for you, but the collective effort was dismal and you lost. :) In that second round, did you personally advance the objective at all? Splat the objective holder? Any assist kills you set up and your team mates knocked down? (That happens a lot for me, and hits are easily counted instead of splats.) Key choke points you were holding the enemy at? All of those would be easy to measure.

And self sacrificial moves I do often enough as well. That one would be hard to calculate, and may not make it into the metric. But wouldn't count against either, especially if it's a trade. If it's not a trade, there's always the consideration, if you were 2/8 but had x points on the tower, that's clearly contributing. If you were 2/8 but those 2 were against the Rm holder or tower rider, they count well. if you were 2/8 and stayed 2 miles from the tower and were NOT holding an eliter, down to C+ you go.

LOL about your RM spawncamper. In S rank! That's hilarious! You'd think by S rank he'd have figured out the place to camp is in the OPPOSITE direction if he wanted to camp where the enemy would be....

Don't get me wrong, i'm not aiming for a system that's perfect. Right now there's a ton of factors that's unfair(teams w/ a bad mix of weapons not getting compensated, someone d/cing mid-match, 1-2 teammates playing poorly punishing the rest of the team), right now i'd love to have something better. Having a K/D ratio of 1/5 or lower or a teammate who did nothing to push the objective is a good measurement someone's being outplayed, or at the very least it's better than what we have right now.

But you have to assign different values to different aspects/preformances, i don't think there's another way to look at this problem. Ranked's a mess beyond A+, with a lot of players with varying skill levels either being carried by teams or squads. This creates another ripple effect, where eventually the new teams they'll end up in will still unfairly lose because they had that one guy who got in a rank higher than they should have been.

It might lead to some stupid situations like a person who trippled/quadded the enemy team and getting no bonuses for in favor of the person who dunked the rainmaker, but i'd rather look at it from an angle of "how are we going to fix this?" rather than just "how?".

Unfortunately the idea above wouldn't do much to help the mess above A+ with carried team members, so it would need some mechanism of dropping people to fix that. And the only way to do that is performance metrics. jsilva is right that that would be really hard to do and could punish people still, but right now all 4 players get punished every loss rather than maybe one player getting punished for some losses....you're right it's still better even with flawed metrics. Preventing people from getting carried is harder than probably any other aspect of this.

I'd say it's a mess at all ranks though not just over A+. B is catastrophic. Being the centerpiece that gets both the really bad players that got carried from C- and the really good players that got dropped hard from the A's by the carried teammates. I think real B players make up probably 20% of the players in B. The thing to keep in mind is the longer time goes on the worse the pools get as they get polluted. They're worse now than they were in September. And with the current scoring they'll be worse in April than they are now. People that passed a rank months ago don't know how bad that same rank must be now!

The whole purpose of a ladder system is effectively to manually seed the matchmaking system. Rather than capture metadata of play, it lets players just demonstrate their skill over other players so it can slot them in the right queue for matchmaking. Ladders are guised as a competition tournament to make it fun, but in reality it's just a brute force matchmaker seeding system. The current team based scoring system prevents it from doing it's core function. it can't filter matchmaking based on rank performance if rank performance isn't actually a measurement of your performance. We're now many months into the ripple that prevents the ladder from seeding the system properly. The longer it goes on the more ranked becomes TW. There's about 3 weeks remaining (based on their own timeline) for them to fix it. Honestly I'd rather they just improve overall matchmaking, scrap ranked entirely and open the ranked modes in open rotation. It would be more fun than the current "ranked" system we have. TW matchmaking is awful, ranked matchmaking isn't any better (and that was supposedly the point of ranked), so why not just open the modes to all players above 10 and do away with ranks, and just put the effort into better matchmaking, sans rank, and improve TW too? (Unless they actually fix ranked scoring.)