what do you think of the ranking system

[Award]

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.

LOL, all the more reason for Nintendo to change it. When was the last time Nintendo left anything as-is in fear of sparking controversy? Maybe it's good Miyamoto's in charge - there's time for him to "upend the tea table" and enrage all the fans as has been tradition since 1985! :D

The majority of roller players were happy with the steamrollers. The majority of eliters were happy with the 50% charge ohko. I don't think the Splatoon team has been too shy about fixing things that are broken. I still don't think they're going to fix this. But it's not unreasonable to think the possibility exists.

 

[Holidaze]

LOL, all the more reason for Nintendo to change it. When was the last time Nintendo left anything as-is in fear of sparking controversy? Maybe it's good Miyamoto's in charge - there's time for him to "upend the tea table" and enrage all the fans as has been tradition since 1985! :D

The majority of roller players were happy with the steamrollers. The majority of eliters were happy with the 50% charge ohko. I don't think the Splatoon team has been too shy about fixing things that are broken. I still don't think they're going to fix this. But it's not unreasonable to think the possibility exists.

In seriousness, to fix this, we'd all have to start over again. Completely wipe everyone's ranked data and use a new method to calculate ranked games. Would i be opposed to it? nah, would everybody else? that depends on the individual. Although i don't see what the problem is, the "if you were able to hit x-rank before, why can't you do it again?" Argument is always a valid one.

but that's just my two cents.

 

[DeeSqweeDee]

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.

Welllll... that's not the philosophy of the game right there. When the three conceptors of the game wanted a team played based game, they didn't want another COD or a standalone gamer with medals earned from a team. They've actually played those PC games to remove any "conflicts" to team play and that includes personal performance. That is why the rank system is qualibrated by the teams and not just selected teams but shuffled teammates at the very first introduction of Ranked Battles.
Most of the other 3PS games tend to be selfish in the end and only ends in PVP. Sometime surviving servers with some specific maps, modes and high class profile matches. Don't think that's where the Sploon's headed for...

 

[Elecmaw]

Welllll... that's not the philosophy of the game right there. When the three conceptors of the game wanted a team played based game, they didn't want another COD or a standalone gamer with medals earned from a team. They've actually played those PC games to remove any "conflicts" to team play and that includes personal performance. That is why the rank system is qualibrated by the teams and not just selected teams but shuffled teammates at the very first introduction of Ranked Battles.
Most of the other 3PS games tend to be selfish in the end and only ends in PVP. Sometime surviving servers with some specific maps, modes and high class profile matches. Don't think that's where the Sploon's headed for...

But that's not what my intention is, but it could be an unfortunate side-effect. The reason why i'd like to have the system look upon individual teammates and see how they preform is to improve matchmaking, so that equally-skilled teams will fight eachother more frequently. Not so that people can look upon themselves as the best of the team.

If someone wants to advance their rank they more-or-less have to start carrying games, the side-effect of this is that your teammates will rise in rank in a match they'd otherwise could have botched, which eventually gives them rank higher than their normal rank. This causes them in turn to underpreform in games untill they dropped back to their 'normal' rank again, aggravating it for the teams who are at that actual skill level. This is not to diss on weak teammates, but to argue that the matchmaking as-is is very flawed.

 

[Nagastrike]

The only complaint I have about ranked matchmaking is that when 8 players are in a lobby (2 S+,2 S, 4 A+) you might end up with this:

Team1 (S+,S+,A+,A+)
Team2 (S,S,A+,A+)

It could obviously be equalized (S+,S,A+,A+)x2
I realize sometimes this becomes unavoidable due to Duo Queue, however it is unlikely that is the case to be happening at the rate it does.
When you get those unbalanced teams even though the other team outranks you, (say you're one of the S rank from team 2) you can lose like 6 points! If you lobby up same teams again and win you would only get 3 points because of the A+ ranks.

Why is this a big deal? When this happens, the wins can come easy because the lower ranked people are so easy to abuse (sorry, it's true) However this goes double for the enemy team as well. Any small mistake from you or a team member (which you can't rely on. Ever.) will result in you losing too many points for your effort! If you do pull out the win, it will yield too few points for your efforts!

What's My Advice? LEAVE THE LOBBY!

TLDR: Playing against a team with a higher rank than you doesn't benefit the effort involved.

 

[97Stephen]

The only complaint I have about ranked matchmaking is that when 8 players are in a lobby (2 S+,2 S, 4 A+) you might end up with this:

Team1 (S+,S+,A+,A+)
Team2 (S,S,A+,A+)

It could obviously be equalized (S+,S,A+,A+)x2
I realize sometimes this becomes unavoidable due to Duo Queue, however it is unlikely that is the case to be happening at the rate it does.
When you get those unbalanced teams even though the other team outranks you, (say you're one of the S rank from team 2) you can lose like 6 points! If you lobby up same teams again and win you would only get 3 points because of the A+ ranks.

Why is this a big deal? When this happens, the wins can come easy because the lower ranked people are so easy to abuse (sorry, it's true) However this goes double for the enemy team as well. Any small mistake from you or a team member (which you can't rely on. Ever.) will result in you losing too many points for your effort! If you do pull out the win, it will yield too few points for your efforts!

What's My Advice? LEAVE THE LOBBY!

TLDR: Playing against a team with a higher rank than you doesn't benefit the effort involved.

The thing is, is that doesn't work. I am A rank but I fight S ranks all the time. Do I want to? No, of course not. But it means they couldn't find enough A ranks to start a game so they had to pull in S ranks. The thing is, if I leave the lobby, that doesn't fix the lack of A ranks, meaning I will probably get some S ranks next time anyway.

 

[97Stephen]

In seriousness, to fix this, we'd all have to start over again. Completely wipe everyone's ranked data and use a new method to calculate ranked games. Would i be opposed to it? nah, would everybody else? that depends on the individual. Although i don't see what the problem is, the "if you were able to hit x-rank before, why can't you do it again?" Argument is always a valid one.

but that's just my two cents.

I don't get this. Why would they have to wipe everyone's ranks? If they kept the ranks and the points and only changed the way the points are calculated, they wouldn't need to remove everyone's ranks. The people who are in the wrong ranks will slowly be filtered out anyway. I can see a wipe if they completely revamped the system, but why would they do that? I would think they would work with what they have, it would be a lot easier than redoing it from scratch. I wouldn't mind losing my rank if they did redo it, since it would probably be a better experience anyway, I just don't see that happening.

 

[Holidaze]

I don't get this. Why would they have to wipe everyone's ranks? If they kept the ranks and the points and only changed the way the points are calculated, they wouldn't need to remove everyone's ranks. The people who are in the wrong ranks will slowly be filtered out anyway. I can see a wipe if they completely revamped the system, but why would they do that? I would think they would work with what they have, it would be a lot easier than redoing it from scratch. I wouldn't mind losing my rank if they did redo it, since it would probably be a better experience anyway, I just don't see that happening.

It would be similar to a ladder reset in mobas, but i get what you mean. In my honest opinion, i don't like how the current system works opposed to how they work in other shooters, or team oriented games, but is it one that works for what the intented goal is? Of course. But the way it is now does more harm than good, if they fix the point distribution there won't be any changes, leaving a lot of people satisfied. But i personally would want a complete overhaul with how rank is done.

And just to add a preferential thing to spice this up, I would like Splatoon to have somewhat of a ladder system resetting every "whatever they're called" (season?)

 

[97Stephen]

It would be similar to a ladder reset in mobas, but i get what you mean. In my honest opinion, i don't like how the current system works opposed to how they work in other shooters, or team oriented games, but is it one that works for what the intented goal is? Of course. But the way it is now does more harm than good, if they fix the point distribution there won't be any changes, leaving a lot of people satisfied. But i personally would want a complete overhaul with how rank is done.

And just to add a preferential thing to spice this up, I would like Splatoon to have somewhat of a ladder system resetting every "whatever they're called" (season?)

I have never played any other shooters so I don't quite know what they use. I think a overhaul would be nice, but I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe(hopefully) they'll change it in Splatoon 2. I'm trying to be realistic in my expectations, a point distribution change is something they could actually implement now. What does a ladder reset do? (As I said, I don't really play that many games).

 

[Award]

In seriousness, to fix this, we'd all have to start over again. Completely wipe everyone's ranked data and use a new method to calculate ranked games. Would i be opposed to it? nah, would everybody else? that depends on the individual. Although i don't see what the problem is, the "if you were able to hit x-rank before, why can't you do it again?" Argument is always a valid one.

but that's just my two cents.

It depends on the fix. The ground-up fix would require resetting everything, yes. I can't imagine complaining though. Anyone that made it to S can probably due it again, true. But more importantly it would make playing in S a lot better than what tons of S & S+ players complain about now which is matches with unskilled players that compromise their rank (and make S+ a revolving door.) High rank players get their fix that stops bad player pools at the top, and everyone else gets rid of the bad matchmaking and corrupt skill pools. It's a win for everyone.

But the tamer approaches we've discussed in a few threads of just changing how it deranks, or just improving the matchmaking in general by tracking more metrics, etc wouldn't require a reset, it would just be more likely to keep people from descending as quickly as they do now (and make gameplay a lot more enjoyable.)

Welllll... that's not the philosophy of the game right there. When the three conceptors of the game wanted a team played based game, they didn't want another COD or a standalone gamer with medals earned from a team. They've actually played those PC games to remove any "conflicts" to team play and that includes personal performance. That is why the rank system is qualibrated by the teams and not just selected teams but shuffled teammates at the very first introduction of Ranked Battles.
Most of the other 3PS games tend to be selfish in the end and only ends in PVP. Sometime surviving servers with some specific maps, modes and high class profile matches. Don't think that's where the Sploon's headed for...

The concept is all fine and good, but sometimes when you try too hard to prevent a particular result from occurring, you actually facilitate its occurrence. History is littered with such tragedies.

In this case in their effort to strip away individuality from the team and force everything to be team-only, they've created precisely what they are trying to avoid. By giving everyone a pass or fail by group score, they have player pools that are disparate mixes of poor players that advanced due to the few better players they were mixed with, and excellent players that were held back from advancing (or demoted) due to poor players they were mixed with. Combining that with the poor matchmaking system that then takes these two groups and joins them leads to the current environment where it's in fact not team based at all. In order to advance you have to assume your team is incompetent and selfishly run a 1v4 match as the very medaled COD PvP that they tried to prevent, while the team sits back and gets carried to the next rank BECAUSE of the PvP hero. Ranked has become a solo game where a support role is a liability. if you try to work as a team, you're likely to get flattened. You must BE the team, with a handful of exceptional matches where the whole team is good.

What @Elecmaw is suggesting isn't medaling and promoting individual players based on solo play. It's fixing the promotion/deranking system by adjusting points distribution based on individual performance so that teams will ultimately be more well matched and the competition will actually be MORE team based and all players can contribute equally rather than the situation now where you have a hero and 3 scrubs and the whole game is really about the hero alone. The selfish super hero players will find themselves quickly in S rank where they're all selfish super hero players and end up working as a team anyway. Meanwhile the C+ players will have to work as C+ grade teams to advance rather than keep playing until an S type hero comes along to carry them (or while the opponent keeps getting S type heroes that hold them down even though they play a B- game.)

The thing is, is that doesn't work. I am A rank but I fight S ranks all the time. Do I want to? No, of course not. But it means they couldn't find enough A ranks to start a game so they had to pull in S ranks. The thing is, if I leave the lobby, that doesn't fix the lack of A ranks, meaning I will probably get some S ranks next time anyway.

That's kind of in line with my thinking on another thread. (@BlackZero has ideas on the (bad) matchmaking as well.)

http://squidboards.com/threads/ranked-mode-too-punishing.20731/#post-141671

 

[Holidaze]

I have never played any other shooters so I don't quite know what they use. I think a overhaul would be nice, but I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe(hopefully) they'll change it in Splatoon 2. I'm trying to be realistic in my expectations, a point distribution change is something they could actually implement now. What does a ladder reset do? (As I said, I don't really play that many games).

Ladder resets are just point resets. Iirc, the ladder is basically the ranks, organized in a ladder formation, Bronze 5 being at the bottom, climbing up to Bronze 1, moving to Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Masters. However, Like Splatoon, each rank requires 100 points, but the ladder system, at least to my knowledge has you winning an extra game to actually advance to the next rank. And this system occurs in what people in whatever game they play, call a Season, which means there's a time period of when this actually occurs, from blah blah month, to blah blah month.

The Ladder Reset happens at the end of every season to reset, you guessed it, points. I'm not entirely sure why myself, but it's something that works, It's something that I've seen use to determine how people develop over seasons, in laymen's terms, at least in my opinion it helps tell how skilled a person is at the game, if someone moves up in rank, it means they've improved, if they haven't, they're stagnant, and if they fall, I don't believe in people losing skill, but in the event they do fall, they either took a hiatus and are rusty, or the players around them vastly improved.

 

[Award]

It would be similar to a ladder reset in mobas, but i get what you mean. In my honest opinion, i don't like how the current system works opposed to how they work in other shooters, or team oriented games, but is it one that works for what the intented goal is? Of course. But the way it is now does more harm than good, if they fix the point distribution there won't be any changes, leaving a lot of people satisfied. But i personally would want a complete overhaul with how rank is done.

And just to add a preferential thing to spice this up, I would like Splatoon to have somewhat of a ladder system resetting every "whatever they're called" (season?)

I don't think I'd say the current one works for what the intended goal is. In fact I'd say it does mostly the opposite. It merely presents the illusion of a ranked ladder. It may even successfully present that illusion. But once the illusion can be seen for what it is the more clear it becomes it's not much of a ladder at all, and the intended result of grouping similarly skilled players for a competitive battle is not what is occurring. The design was to promote teamwork. That's not what ranked promotes with the current system. It's more like "tewamwork" as designed by a Soviet bureaucrat.

I'd prefer a full overhaul as well. But I also know that while anything being done is unlikely, there's almost zero chance of a total rewrite of ranked scoring. But I don't think they'd shy away from adjustments & balancing, including major rule changes to it, in one more patch. If they changed splatfest from x4 to x6, they're very open to big rule changes that swing the balance. They also just tweaked TW matchmaking to go from "entirely random" to having actual matchmaking (probably based on ranked.) If they made that huge a change for TW, an incoming ranked tweak is not out of the realm of possibility.

It's also very possible they made the change in TW first to gather metrics in bulk to use to create planned changes to ranked rules from a larger playerset. Similar to how, you'll notice they'll put a map in rotation a lot that they're evaluating for adjustments to gather data about how people use them. Look at the maps they changed in 2.4, and look at how often they ran them prior. They're running Piranha even more than most new maps now. It's a map with a few big flaws. I'm guessing 2.5 will fix that.

I have never played any other shooters so I don't quite know what they use. I think a overhaul would be nice, but I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe(hopefully) they'll change it in Splatoon 2. I'm trying to be realistic in my expectations, a point distribution change is something they could actually implement now. What does a ladder reset do? (As I said, I don't really play that many games).

The last shooter I played seriously was DOS Quake in the mid 90's (then WinQuake, then glQuake.) I played Quake II a bit, but it never held a candle to Quake 1 for multiplayer. Quake III Arena was a disgrace. That was back before ladders were a thing....when most of us played on dialup. And it worked fine. :) The game worked fine. In fact it's STILL played seriously. Ladder reset literally just erases the ladder data. Everyones C- again. I somehow don't think the real S+ people will have trouble regaining their rank. In fact I think it would be easier for them with a more balanced system. They could play 4v4 S to get there rather than 1v4 S+.

I also have my concerns for what shape Splatoon 2 will take. It's key franchise now so it needs to exist. But it depends so much on what NX is. If it's a hybrid handheld device as many theorize it could actually have less power than Wii U and Splatoon 2 might not be the way we imagine it will be. Splatoon as we know it could be a one time deal. (not that Splatoon in your pocket is something I'd reject....) :D

 

[Holidaze]

I don't think I'd say the current one works for what the intended goal is. In fact I'd say it does mostly the opposite. It merely presents the illusion of a ranked ladder. It may even successfully present that illusion. But once the illusion can be seen for what it is the more clear it becomes it's not much of a ladder at all, and the intended result of grouping similarly skilled players for a competitive battle is not what is occurring. The design was to promote teamwork. That's not what ranked promotes with the current system. It's more like "tewamwork" as designed by a Soviet bureaucrat.

I'd prefer a full overhaul as well. But I also know that while anything being done is unlikely, there's almost zero chance of a total rewrite of ranked scoring. But I don't think they'd shy away from adjustments & balancing, including major rule changes to it, in one more patch. If they changed splatfest from x4 to x6, they're very open to big rule changes that swing the balance. They also just tweaked TW matchmaking to go from "entirely random" to having actual matchmaking (probably based on ranked.) If they made that huge a change for TW, an incoming ranked tweak is not out of the realm of possibility.

It's also very possible they made the change in TW first to gather metrics in bulk to use to create planned changes to ranked rules from a larger playerset. Similar to how, you'll notice they'll put a map in rotation a lot that they're evaluating for adjustments to gather data about how people use them. Look at the maps they changed in 2.4, and look at how often they ran them prior. They're running Piranha even more than most new maps now. It's a map with a few big flaws. I'm guessing 2.5 will fix that.

I see, I didn't know they made changes to TW, after I hit level 10, it was Ranked City from there, except the occasional join a friend's TW. but other than that, it would be very interesting to see what "Big changes" they're willing to make for Splatoon's ranked mode. I guess the only thing to do now, is speculate and wait for them dataminers to strike digital gold.

 

[Award]

Ladder resets are just point resets. Iirc, the ladder is basically the ranks, organized in a ladder formation, Bronze 5 being at the bottom, climbing up to Bronze 1, moving to Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Masters. However, Like Splatoon, each rank requires 100 points, but the ladder system, at least to my knowledge has you winning an extra game to actually advance to the next rank. And this system occurs in what people in whatever game they play, call a Season, which means there's a time period of when this actually occurs, from blah blah month, to blah blah month.

The Ladder Reset happens at the end of every season to reset, you guessed it, points. I'm not entirely sure why myself, but it's something that works, It's something that I've seen use to determine how people develop over seasons, in laymen's terms, at least in my opinion it helps tell how skilled a person is at the game, if someone moves up in rank, it means they've improved, if they haven't, they're stagnant, and if they fall, I don't believe in people losing skill, but in the event they do fall, they either took a hiatus and are rusty, or the players around them vastly improved.

There's pros and cons to a reset. The down side is once you've reached your achievement, it's temporary, so you enjoy it while it's there, then it's wiped away and you're back to the beginning. That part sucks and I don't like it. But on the other hand Splatoon does that anyway with the bad deranking.

The point of the ladder reset is twofold. First, it cures the problem of the polluted pools we've been discussing. The pools must create themselves again, and while they will pollute over time, it keeps them from getting too polluted. The second is related. As time goes on, new content is released, experienced players gain experience and new players have been arriving, it creates an unavoidable pool pollution. The upper ranks might actually perform worse than the present skill in the lower ranks, but they made it to the top before the competition was too great. I.E. if everyone in S made it to S back in July when ranked was new and not even all the modes existed yet, certain weapons were more overpowered and exploitable, and maps had several exploits that ahve be resolved since. They had a far easier time getting to S with less intense competition than one of this month's Christmas noobs is going to have trying to get there, wading through all the skilled players even in B, including the alts for the S's. B, today, is a far more challenging rank than it was in July. And some of the people who escaped it back then might have a much harder time doing so now. So a ladder reset lets the ladder reform with everybody at the same start point and lets the ranks setting into their true meaning now using the current meta as the baseline. It basically means the ranks reflect player skill with the current meta and game balance rather than reflecting what the meta and game balance was back when they got to that rank.

I think Splatoon seriously needs at least one ladder reset, if nothing else, now that it has 3 game modes, not 1 on 14 maps (by month's end) rather than 6, with 70-something weapons and serious nerfing of several exploitable ones rather than a handful. That difference alone probably contributes to some of ranked's problems, at least in the upper ranks.

And going back to something @Elecmaw pointed out, ranked really needs a mechanism to enforce skilled play in all modes, rather than letting people rank by cherry picking only a single mode. I have a very strong feeling that when they designed the ranked point system they intended TW as the ONLY game mode, ranked and unranked, and someone else, probably Miyamoto told them they needed more modes, but they never updated the scoring accordingly. Think about it: The current scoring actually would make a lot of sense with a TW ranked mode.

I'm also not ruling out the possibility of another mode being added before month's end. Something the devs said in a Famitsu interview indicated the "last of the patches that would add maps, weapons, rule changes, new modes, things like that." It's been a while since a new mode was added.

 

[Award]

I see, I didn't know they made changes to TW, after I hit level 10, it was Ranked City from there, except the occasional join a friend's TW. but other than that, it would be very interesting to see what "Big changes" they're willing to make for Splatoon's ranked mode. I guess the only thing to do now, is speculate and wait for them dataminers to strike digital gold.

Yep, it's in the 2.4 patch notes:

Matchmaking Adjustments:

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

Since they cited early on (proudly) that regular battle was completely random, the inclusion of matchmaking in TW is a massive change. I've had mixed results with it. I think it didn't take effect on the first few days after the patch, or it needed time to gether metadata first. I was still getting only lv45-50 players. Then I've been seeing a lot more 30-something level players a few days after the splatfest. Though I still seem to get a lot of A+, S, S+ players. Somehow the game still seems to think that's my real skill level :( I'm also finding I'm getting more western players rather than exclusively Japanese players, though it's still majority Japan.

If you don't play TW much, you might be surprised. It's become significantly more competitive over time. People complain about TW "tryhards" but, other than bad players, of course, I've found most TW games are made of tryhards. It's not really any less competitive than ranked now, it's just that the pacing is different because of no confined objective in the center.

I think they added the matchmaking in TW before Christmas to better deal with the noob influx, but I do wonder if they did it to gather data for a ranked change, too.


The more I think about my previous post, I think that's one of the keys too. They really did intend TW, and ONLY TW to be Splatoon. The scoring reflects it, the design reflects it, the advertising reflects it, and it's by far the most unique and interesting mode in the game. Ranked is parodies of game modes that have been in many shooters. CTF, King of the Hill, Base Defense, etc. Turf War is the unique selling point of the game. I imagine a prototype of ranked TW existed. And TW is the only mode that makes full utilization of larger maps and requires total control of the full map. Narrow ones like Arowana, Hammerhead, etc don't change much, but Skatepark, Pirhana, Dome, Museum, Saltspray almost always have unused map sections in ranked.

 

[Holidaze]

I would enjoy a ranked TW, after all, it's the game's selling point. But according to that 2.4 note, seems like only in regular TW and Splatfests is where they applied the matchmaking fix. Wish they would apply a similar algorithm to ranked. And hold on, you're getting western players now? I've only gotten like 4 western/European players in ranked in the past 5 days. The rest were Japanese.

I do want to try the TW now, since you mentioned that hotfix, I wonder if I'd have to start out with lower levels, since I haven't touched TW by myself since August.

 

[Njok]

The upper ranks might actually perform worse than the present skill in the lower ranks, but they made it to the top before the competition was too great. I.E. if everyone in S made it to S back in July when ranked was new and not even all the modes existed yet, certain weapons were more overpowered and exploitable, and maps had several exploits that ahve be resolved since. They had a far easier time getting to S with less intense competition than one of this month's Christmas noobs is going to have trying to get there, wading through all the skilled players even in B, including the alts for the S's. B, today, is a far more challenging rank than it was in July. And some of the people who escaped it back then might have a much harder time doing so now.

This is so extremely far from the truth...

First of all, S did not even exist in July. A+ was the highest rank, which means B rank was literally a higher rank than what it is right now.

Second, for some reason you assume that everyone who got to "the top" has stopped playing solo ranked after that. Or else they would have ranked down following this logic.

And finally, a lot of players actually did go through it again on alt accounts. Be it for fun or to learn a new weapon. I seriously doubt any of them had any trouble in B rank.

I'm sure the ranking system isn't perfect, and the matchmaking is flat out stupid sometimes. But that factors in for everone and in the end luck evens out. One might be unlucky and have to suffer some more dumb matchmaking than another. But there is no way that someone who is playing at S rank level (what is that even?) gets stuck in B.

The ranking system is build on being able to maintain a certain win rate. Once you can, you will rank up to the next level where you need to maintain that same win rate against tougher opponents. I don't see anything wrong with that system tbh.

 

[Holidaze]

This is so extremely far from the truth...

First of all, S did not even exist in July. A+ was the highest rank, which means B rank was literally a higher rank than what it is right now.

Second, for some reason you assume that everyone who got to "the top" has stopped playing solo ranked after that. Or else they would have ranked down following this logic.

And finally, a lot of players actually did go through it again on alt accounts. Be it for fun or to learn a new weapon. I seriously doubt any of them had any trouble in B rank.

I'm sure the ranking system isn't perfect, and the matchmaking is flat out stupid sometimes. But that factors in for everone and in the end luck evens out. One might be unlucky and have to suffer some more dumb matchmaking than another. But there is no way that someone who is playing at S rank level (what is that even?) gets stuck in B.

The ranking system is build on being able to maintain a certain win rate. Once you can, you will rank up to the next level where you need to maintain that same win rate against tougher opponents. I don't see anything wrong with that system tbh.

But, there are people who don't belong in the higher ranks, I've seen very incompetent people in S rank queues, and it's not going away since there are few people who savescum ranks, to maintain their letter, or even go higher up the echelon.

Ranked is okay, but it's far from ideal.

 

[Award]

I would enjoy a ranked TW, after all, it's the game's selling point. But according to that 2.4 note, seems like only in regular TW and Splatfests is where they applied the matchmaking fix. Wish they would apply a similar algorithm to ranked. And hold on, you're getting western players now? I've only gotten like 4 western/European players in ranked in the past 5 days. The rest were Japanese.

I do want to try the TW now, since you mentioned that hotfix, I wonder if I'd have to start out with lower levels, since I haven't touched TW by myself since August.

Yeah, I'd enjoy a TW ranked as well. I still believe they really intended TW as the ranked mode too. I enjoy the ranked modes, but personally I feel that they feel very forced. I like playing them sometimes, but TW is everything Splatoon is supposed to be about, and I feel like the ranked modes try too hard to pull in fans of other shooters by being NOT Splatoon. The variety is fun, but it would be more fun if TW were always in the mix.

The 2.4 not indicates the matchmaking applies only to TW, but that's why it was big news. TW previously had zero matchmaking. From another post I think I've determined that it previously had TW matchmaking based on "playstyle" but not skill (I.E. matches all about inking versus matches all about killing, but not about how good anyone is at either.) 2.4 introduced skill based matchmaking to TW for the first time - something that previously existed only in ranked. Technically it's something that, assuming it really works, makes Ranked kind of irrelevant unless you want to play those 3 modes. Which is something I'm very happy about since well played TW is more fun than the other 3 more often than not. Gotta love those 0.1% losses where the ink around the spawn actually counted for the win!

LOL, yeah I'm getting some western players now, though that's in TW. I think I had some in ranked the other day too, though I imagine they're more elusive in S. It's still MOSTLY JP players, but prior to 2.4 I also saw virtually none. Come to think of it one of my western players in TW the other day was an S+ (I spent the whole match dogfighting his .52 gal & wall spams with a trislosher on Depot :p) , so they're out there!

Yeah, if you like TW in general, I think you'll really like it now. The past week or so you'll be more likely to get rooms of noobs, just becuase there's so many of them right now and if it can't find enough good players online they'll mix the pool, but don't be discouraged if you get some noob rooms. You will also get rooms almost entirely S rank (can check them in the plaza after). I most definitely do. Getting spawncamped and having only an eliter to break out with isn't fun :p And I do think it does some grade of matchmaking based on weapon too. I've found I get much tougher opponents when I use my various mains I'm more skilled with (anything I'll take into ranked: Splat charger, luna, carbon, splash-o) than the eliter which I'm less skilled with (am moving to make it main.) You may have to play through some "easy" rounds with all the noobs around to get to the tight matches (and the ones you're outgunned) but it's not like you don't have to sit through bad matches in ranked either ;) I've also noticed after the 9:00PM (ET) map change is when the truly brutal players are most likely to participate.

True enough the other day when I went back into ranked and ranked up in an hour, I did so because I was playing TW and getting owned by (Japanese) S's so badly over and over again I finally gave up and figured "ranked has got to be easier than this!" It was.

TW is the new hardcore when you don't get the noobs. Especially those ******* brush users.... ;)

This is so extremely far from the truth...

First of all, S did not even exist in July. A+ was the highest rank, which means B rank was literally a higher rank than what it is right now.

Second, for some reason you assume that everyone who got to "the top" has stopped playing solo ranked after that. Or else they would have ranked down following this logic.

And finally, a lot of players actually did go through it again on alt accounts. Be it for fun or to learn a new weapon. I seriously doubt any of them had any trouble in B rank.

I'm sure the ranking system isn't perfect, and the matchmaking is flat out stupid sometimes. But that factors in for everone and in the end luck evens out. One might be unlucky and have to suffer some more dumb matchmaking than another. But there is no way that someone who is playing at S rank level (what is that even?) gets stuck in B.

The ranking system is build on being able to maintain a certain win rate. Once you can, you will rank up to the next level where you need to maintain that same win rate against tougher opponents. I don't see anything wrong with that system tbh.

That's right, S wasn't around yet, though adding S really just separated the great A+'s from the other A+'s. That's kind of aside my point, though. I wasn't saying that's specifically the case for all S's currently, or that it specifically was Splatoon related. I was using Splatoon & S rank as an example of the types of reasons ladder resets are used in most games and the types of issues it would be very useful for in Splatoon. These issues do exist in Splatoon as it exists in every ladder based game (which is why nearly every other ladder gets reset.) The S's that play often, have created alts that are S, and maintain their S rank well without scumming, are all but certain to return to S with ease after a reset. The lousy S's that were carried, got there early before all the modes and maps were active, OP weapons were nerfed, and the skill pool advanced would probably not, making a much better player pool in S than exists now - a common complaint among high rank players. A reset isn't a theoretical feature with a theoretical benefit. It's a standard feature of most ladders for a very known reason. The meta changes, but not all players do. At all ranks there's players that got there on a prior meta that haven't adapted to the current one yet. I still see A- players that try to steamroll with a Krak-On. Current B rank has players worse than I saw in C+ rank. I've seen B- players play better than some A players. Going through the ladder again after a reset sorts it all out. Each player's actual skill doesn't change after a reset so they'll all get to the proper rung on the ladder quickly (well broken scoring/matchmaking in Splatoon aside.)

About your last paragraph, that's the point of all these ranked discussions. What you describe is the way it's supposed to work, but as many of us have seen that's not really how it does work. As a result of a variety of issues there are players in a given rank that play several ranks above the rank they're in, and there are players that play several ranks below. A rank doesn't currently represent an actual skill bracket, and the result is terrible lopsided matches (and damage/promotion of rank undeserved). A ladder reset is one of many ideas a number of people have about ways we hope they might improve it before they cut off patches at the end of this month and leave ranked, permanently, a broken mess.

 

[Njok]

So on the one hand you're saying terrible players get to S rank (which is true btw, hence my remark what even is S level) but on the other hand you're saying some great players who belong in S are stuck in B.

I'm sorry but I'm not buying it. A lot of people went through B multiple times without dropping a game. Must be a lucky bunch then. Not here to argue though so let it be. I merely wanted to make the point that the crappy matchmaking shouldn't be an excuse since everyone that plays splatoon has to deal with it.