This has been one of the major pain points since the beginning of Crystalline Conflict (ranked).
At first we had only crystal rank which encompassed every top ranked player to the bottom of crystal, and they would get games with diamonds all the time. Naturally this generated crazy skill gaps that only proved frustrating for everybody.
Now we do have Crystal split into Omega and Ultima ratings. Ultima cannot get games with Diamond anymore, which avoids putting Ultima players together with Diamond players.
This is a little better, but still suffers from a lot of issues:
- Ultima players don't stay ultima all the time, unless we're talking about the absolute top 5 at best. They drop down to Omega regularly, and end up in Diamond <> Omega games.
- The bracket is too bloated, and sucks every player from Diamond out of Diamond <> Platinum games (resulting in dead Platinum ranks over time on western DCs), and every player from Omega/Crystal out of Crystal <> Ultima games (resulting in dead Ultima ranks all the same). In short, everybody within the Diamond <> Omega bracket gets sucked into those games, and it becomes incredibly harder for the adjacent brackets to survive and get games (Platinum and Ultima).
- Since the system tends to push players upward not only through the ratchet system preventing people to derank below platinum, but also because of rank inflation over time in a season (the more a season goes, the more the ranking spreads and dilutes upward), we end up with depleted low ranks and the people that pushed through serving as cannon fodder for higher ranked games.
Why are Diamond <> Omega games bad?
One word: skill gaps.
It's not even a gap at this point it's a literal chasm. The difference in skill between a Diamond and an Omega+ player is colossal.
One, this tends to generate games that are extremely coin flippy because skill play gets drowned into a huge amount of white noise caused by skill differences. It often turns into who gets the players that are impossible to carry on top of other factors. This compounded by the fact that the system keeps pushing them up anyway so even if they drop back to plat, they come back soon enough.
Two, this tends to turn games into a toxic meta that constantly targets the weakest links because they're the easiest to get rid of. They will get bullied all game long, proving a miserable experience for the player, on top of making it extremely frustrating for everyone when the game turns into a constant 4v5 because one person keeps exploding. Community toxicity ensues.
Three, players that have no business being this high rated get carried by a system that doesn't want to let them derank and get a reality check because it doesn't want to hurt their expectations. In what other competitive online game do you even have systems where people cannot derank??
What's the solution?
The Japanese datacenters actually gets this treatment every season when they near the end: Omega cannot get games with Diamond anymore when this happen.
This is actually frustrating because in normal times, Diamond <> Omega games happen so little to begin with on JP precisely because their player pool is bigger, yet they are the ones where brackets get tightened near the end, which changes literally nothing for them anyway.
We do need this implemented on western datacenters, however.
Your system, CBU3, has caused no end of toxicity in the pvp community for years. Please, consider tightening the brackets at Diamond - Omega level.
Thank you.
Continue reading...
At first we had only crystal rank which encompassed every top ranked player to the bottom of crystal, and they would get games with diamonds all the time. Naturally this generated crazy skill gaps that only proved frustrating for everybody.
Now we do have Crystal split into Omega and Ultima ratings. Ultima cannot get games with Diamond anymore, which avoids putting Ultima players together with Diamond players.
This is a little better, but still suffers from a lot of issues:
- Ultima players don't stay ultima all the time, unless we're talking about the absolute top 5 at best. They drop down to Omega regularly, and end up in Diamond <> Omega games.
- The bracket is too bloated, and sucks every player from Diamond out of Diamond <> Platinum games (resulting in dead Platinum ranks over time on western DCs), and every player from Omega/Crystal out of Crystal <> Ultima games (resulting in dead Ultima ranks all the same). In short, everybody within the Diamond <> Omega bracket gets sucked into those games, and it becomes incredibly harder for the adjacent brackets to survive and get games (Platinum and Ultima).
- Since the system tends to push players upward not only through the ratchet system preventing people to derank below platinum, but also because of rank inflation over time in a season (the more a season goes, the more the ranking spreads and dilutes upward), we end up with depleted low ranks and the people that pushed through serving as cannon fodder for higher ranked games.
Why are Diamond <> Omega games bad?
One word: skill gaps.
It's not even a gap at this point it's a literal chasm. The difference in skill between a Diamond and an Omega+ player is colossal.
One, this tends to generate games that are extremely coin flippy because skill play gets drowned into a huge amount of white noise caused by skill differences. It often turns into who gets the players that are impossible to carry on top of other factors. This compounded by the fact that the system keeps pushing them up anyway so even if they drop back to plat, they come back soon enough.
Two, this tends to turn games into a toxic meta that constantly targets the weakest links because they're the easiest to get rid of. They will get bullied all game long, proving a miserable experience for the player, on top of making it extremely frustrating for everyone when the game turns into a constant 4v5 because one person keeps exploding. Community toxicity ensues.
Three, players that have no business being this high rated get carried by a system that doesn't want to let them derank and get a reality check because it doesn't want to hurt their expectations. In what other competitive online game do you even have systems where people cannot derank??
What's the solution?
The Japanese datacenters actually gets this treatment every season when they near the end: Omega cannot get games with Diamond anymore when this happen.
This is actually frustrating because in normal times, Diamond <> Omega games happen so little to begin with on JP precisely because their player pool is bigger, yet they are the ones where brackets get tightened near the end, which changes literally nothing for them anyway.
We do need this implemented on western datacenters, however.
Your system, CBU3, has caused no end of toxicity in the pvp community for years. Please, consider tightening the brackets at Diamond - Omega level.
Thank you.
Continue reading...