In depth thoughts on a possible competitive system
Xiniu
Member
I am well aware that this is not a priority compared to things like a spectator mode, but I think a good ranked system is necessary for a competitive PvP game to be successful.
The display of a rank: leagues, ranks or score?
There are plenty of ranked systems out there, there is the misty rank system of CS:GO that doesn't tell you where you are compared to other players of your rank and what you have to do to rank up;
another system that's considered by the community to be on the worse side is the Hearthstone system, with win streaks climbing faster than players that have a higher win rate overall but tend to not streak as much, and a shady rank system in the legend area;
next up is the first one that's considered to be good by most, the League of Legends system, splitting up players into Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master and Challenger, and each of these leagues is divided into 5 divisions(except for Master and Challenger), this system does a pretty good job at matching win rate to rank but promotions somewhat skew the accuracy of the system;
the last one is the most basic one, the DotA 2 mmr system, they just give you a flat number which increases or decreases after each win, it's really basic but it does the job just fine.
I don't think there is a reason to reinvent the wheel, a system that just shows an mmr score should be sufficient and most importantly the chance to be miss represented because of the advantage of having win streaks or the weird system of promotions doesn't exist.
Who can play with whom and how many?
No DuoQ!!
In a game that works with teams the size of 3, I feel like the best way to include a representative ranked ladder is to split it up between solo play and 3 man premade play.
The team ladder
The team ladder should be accessible without creating a team first, games that rely on creating teams don't have team ladders that are really active, most people will just not play the team ladder.
So what do we do to prevent that?
No restrictions on who can play with whom, you can just invite 2 friends and start queueing for team ranked.
Example on how that would work out for each players mmr rating:
we have 5 players: A, B, C, D, E. Each of our players start at 1500 rating.
Player A, B and C playing 3 games and win all 3 of them, they are now at 1560 rating, player B and C have to leave so player A queues up with player D and E, they win 1 more game, player A now is at 1579 rating, while player D and E are at 1521 rating.
"RTS games don't have a pick phase LUL"
The blind pick system currently in place has some flaws, you could just end up with out any long range to destroy purifiers for example, to prevent that we need a pick phase.
Pick pattern would be Team 1 > Team 2, Team 2 > Team 1, Team 1 > Team 2
Each hero can be once on each team, so you can end up having a hero on both teams.
Every pick is completely visible to the enemy team with all the selected units.
Thanks!
Thanks for getting this far into the thread, I already have posted some thoughts on a possible ranked system for this game earlier, but I thought I would expand on them and go a bit more in depth.
Comments
LoL's system is the absolute worse one just because of the promotion system. It mixes the hidden MMR used for matchmaking with the feel good system of progression and comparing yourself to other players. It creates silly extreme situations where someone is winning all the games outside of promotions, getting 1-2 or 2-3 in promotions and effectively being locked in the same place with a more than positive winrate.
Competitive players prefer showing the actual MMR without any kind of artificial sugary feel-good progression such as arbitrary tiers or MMR inflation. However, most players feel bad when they see their MMR decreasing, even when that's perfectly normal due to fluctuations.
It's in Artillery's interest reducing that irrational feel-bad. There's some alternatives to showing plain MMR to solve that:
Tiers. Instead of showing the exact MMR number, which constantly fluctuates, you just say that the player is Diamond, or Diamond 5, or Supreme Master First Class (CSGO got silly rank names
). That solves the feel bad problem, but it also removes the good feeling of seeing numbers go up. Also, players are frustrated by the fact that they don't know when they are going to get promoted or demoted (see old SC2 ladder or CSGO ladder).
Rank obfuscation, a.k.a, rank inflation. Examples of that are Hearthstone pre-legend, Splatoon, or old SC2 ladder points (actually SC2 made MMR based promotions, but they showed artificial ladder points inflated by a "bonus pool" and obfuscated rank with horizontal divisions of 100 players within each tier). I think this one is just silly. You have your rank as a function of not only skill, but also time played relative to other players. But only up to a point, the "competitive" rank breakpoint, such as Legend rank in Hearthstone, where rank is a function of skill alone. That's basically saying that given enough time you go up even with negative winrates. That makes everything before the competitive breakpoint officially a joke. It's implying that if you are below that breakpoint, you are bad or should grind more. It's also a lie. You can't really compare yourself to other players, because they may be higher than you for the sole reason of playing more (see Hearthstone).
Tiers + MMR. You show the actual MMR number, and also arbitrary tiers. For instance, Gold 3 may be 1500 to 1600. You get to the next tier as soon as your elo reaches the breakpoint (no frustrating promotion games). Benefits of this one is that competitive players can see their true MMR, while there's still a feeling of progression provided by the tiers. You can even add a demote threshold: let's say you reach Diamond by going above 2000 MMR, but you need to get below 1950 to be demoted from Diamond. This prevents the feel bad due to fluctations situation. Personally I think this is one of the best systems, as it combines the advantages of both plain MMR and tiers while minimizing their drawbacks.
Personally, all I care about, as a player, is knowing what percentile I'm in, i.e., top 10% of players. What does 2000 MMR in DotA mean? Is it better than 2000 MMR in Starcraft? Is Diamond in LoL better than Diamond in SC2? We don't know, because MMR and tiers are not normalized. It's different in each game. But if I'm in the top 2% in Starcraft and in the top 25% in DotA, then I know that I'm better at Starcraft than DotA.
That's the most sensible solution to premades, particularly if the player base isn't huge. Teamgames are better with friends. What's the point of making a teamgame and then preventing people from playing with their friends (LoL, CSGO and soon Overwatch)?
I agree with the league system not being good because you need to bump up your winrate to 66.7% for promos, but most still consider it good I think, it's definitely better than CS:GO and Hearthstone though.
I feel like an MMR number(not the real mmr probably) with some rank behind it would be the best, just like in season 1 of league of legends, were you would be 1500 mmr and gold, just as you said.
I agree with Sir´s third option. In CNC games they just had a list with all players, and it´s more fun to go from gold place 100 to gold place 50 then from global place 8750 to 8700. And i think a threshold is the best way to move up/down the tiers.
I think that the MMR should be hidden thou. Better to just show the player wich rank they are in their tier. I think showing the MMR would make me feel more like it´s one list rather then lets say 8 tiers with induvidual lists.
I strongly agree with this too. Important to format it so it doesnt take foreven thou.
Maybe you could even split up the picking of units, like first everyone picks heroes, alternating between teams, and then everyone pick 1/2/all unit(s) and so on.
I don't agree with picking the units later, you need to react to units they pick with your hero pick imo.
I agree with @angrySloth. Basically,
I think a system like this would be the most fair and transparent while avoiding "irrational feel-bad" as @Sir puts it.
Agree, the actual MMR could be hidden as long as the displayed rank is directly and exclusively obtained from MMR and nothing else.
Yes, the rank is inportant. I did not like the sc2 way where dimond "tier" was a bunch of groups of 100 players, and you could just see your rank among theese hundred people. I want to see my total rank (within my tier).
I disagree, for reasons I mentioned in my (now edited) post above. Not that I'm supporting SC2's division system - I'm not a fan of that either. Better to just have more tiers, if we want a more fine-grained idea of where we rank, and not show rank within tier.
Seems like people agree on different leagues (Carbon/Iron/Lead/Osmium/Unobtanium? :P) and maybe league tiers, while some want to be shown their actual rank and others want to only be shown the range you are in.
I am pretty sure that there are good arguments for both sides. Some Don't like seeing their rank go up and down after each game and others want to know exactly where they are placed.
I personally rather have my exact rank or mmr shown, but that doesn't mean everyone has to use that same system.
Maybe we can have different leagues divided into different tiers and everyone can see the tier you are in when he is looking on the profile, while additionally people can activate a "show rank" or "show mmr" option in order to be shown their rank/mmr and to show it to others who visit the profile.
That would allow both kinds of players to use the system they like. The only thing that has to be decided then, is what the default setting should be. And I am totally fine with the default not showing the exact rank/mmr, even though i'd definitely activate that option.
What do you guys think about that? Wouldn't that be a fair compromise?
Are you suggesting you shouldn't be able to play ranked at all in a party of 2? I disagree, I think it's fine to place duo-queuers with solo-queuers and keep 3-stacks for themselves.
I don't have any strong opinion about ranks or stuff, but in calculating the rating you could go full competative and just use Elo rating instead of calling it MMR))) It's at least important that the "mmr" is being calculated in a good way, so I'm not sure what's keeping games from just using good old Elo. Being a teamgame might make it harder, but perhaps it's fine to just compare with your enemies' average Elo.
I always used external ladder sites such as nios.kr for SC2 to see the most accurate rank info available. I knew, that the same way I happen to have good streak and gain few ranks, I can lose ranks on other days, so I didn't have any hard feelings about fluctuatinos. I was always quite high (masters, so top 2%), so the ranks were "reasonable" numbers, but I believe I would also prefer to see, If I were 20,251th rather then knowing I am somewhere in mid platinum.
MMR/rank/percentage has exact meaning and watching it actually lets you know, how you fare compared to others over time. This info is valuable for me as motivation. I always felt hyped, when I overcome my friends and rivals.
I understand, that some people would rather not know how they are ranked against others, though. So I don't really know about the perfect solution.
Enabling duoq devalues the work of soloq players in my opinion @HoolaBandoola
Well I just think it's too harsch if you have only 1 friend and want to play, that you wouldn't be able to play get ranking from it. I have a few points why it's not that bad to place solos with duos:
1. It's a 3v3 game like you said, so being 1+1+1 or 2+1 still won't reach to the level of competativeness and teamwork the game is designed for.
2. I don't think the difference between 2+1 and 1+1+1 is that big. Yes, on the one hand you have 2 people on a VoIP that might cooperate and strategize together better than any general 1+1 combo, but on the other hand you have 1 random guy in the dark which have to try to follow their lead. What I mean is that the 2 friends might rely too much on eachother that they don't cooperate with the last guy as much as people try to do when they are 1+1+1.
All in all I think the most plausible solution is to have a team rank for playing full party, and a less important and less competative non-team rank for soloq and duoq. Like in for example HotS.
Guys, what about a ranking combining the 2 approaches :
Using tiers (and sub tiers) for low and middle skill group : bronze (1,2,3), silver (1,2,3), gold (1,2,3), plat (1,2,3), dia (1,2,3,4,5) for example. And when you hit the last group which is for example "master" you start showing the mmr next to the tier : Master 4567, Master 6945.
What do you think ? with that, you can really tell "this players is a 7120 master, he is the best player"
It gives starting players the reward of ranking up and it gives the best players a clear and accurate way to see who is the best in town.
Yeah, I agree. That seems to be the best of both worlds. The top players will want to see their exact ranking among other players but it doesn't make much of a sense to show an ordinary player that they are 15.249th overall or to discourage them by showing that their ranking goes down with each loss. A system with 6 or so tiers and the top tier showing the exact place (97th, 44th etc.) of a player should work fine. SC2 system worked similarly but I think only Grandmaster league showing the exact rakings was too limited for the player size of that game. I would imagine there would be at least 1000 players in SC2 in each region who were competitive enough to want to see their exact rankings.
I feel like an mmr value(probably not the real one) should be shown to anyone, seeing progress is important
@Atimo @Spartak seems good to me as well - showing exact MMR for the top tier of players
MMR is the generic name by which all MMR implementations are called. Elo is just a specific implementation of a MMR. Microsoft's TrueSkill is a different implementation of a MMR. Though both are generically called MMR (Match Making Rating, as in, the number you get matched by).
You could always slightly penalize duo queues. For instance, a 1-1-1 stack with MMR's of 1500-1550-1600 (mean: 1550) would get matched with a 2-1 stack with MMR's of 1500-1500-1600 (mean: 1533) and considered as equally skilled for the purposes of MMR gain/loss.
Indeed. A similiar topic I've wondered about is if a team's MMR should be weighted; like if 1 person has 300 more MMR than the mean, is the mean value really the best representation of skill for this team? This depends on how the MMR is calculated I suppose. Simply using the mean is obviously easy and perhaps a desireable goal to be able to do(without creating unfair situations). But when implementing MMR and matchmaking there should be in consideration if a team with 2600-2000-2000 is better or worse than a team with 2200-2200-2200, and weigh the team's matchmaking accordingly.