QoL changes ranked needs

General Discussion
1

I dont hate the new system but objectively it is a downgrade in many aspects, none of which have been thoughtfully explained.

  • Players should be able to see their own rank ingame, for content creation purposes, but also pride. I get it, maybe you don’t like seeing each others rank, but why hide our own? At the very least, make it a toggle. It’s stupid that people have to use third party asset packs for this in the sequel to a game that had it native.
  • Rank icons still way too small in your profile, can’t read the tier without squinting even at 1440p and 30+ inches.
  • Start of season decay was handled badly. If this trend repeats, e.g you finish placements and place 2-3 tiers below where you were previously, then you can get a lot of QoL mileage with a few simple changes.
    • Make it more obvious when starting your placements that you’re gonna be underplaced. Not a “bit”, a “lot”. If you want people to be motivated to grind their rank back, they need to understand why it was lost, not given the feeling that it’s bull :poop: or a bug or them sucking.
    • Give an indicator to people that they’re still experiencing a postdecay boost after they place and begin to regain rank. Again, motivation.
  • Subdivide bronze into more tiers, that way people in B5 can actually see progress. Same for GM1. Nobody wants to see the same rank after 5 updates and not know if they’ve moved at all.
  • De-obfuscate the skill tiers by showing your progress within an actual tier after each competitive update. Why not? Surely you haven’t removed SR. I think it’s more likely it’s hidden and rounded down to the nearest whole tier before sending to client. You don’t have to show it go up or down after every game.
  • If visible rank isn’t updating after 7 games, then neither should qualifications regarding grouping with friends. It leads to a lot of confusion. Top 500 probably shouldn’t either because it looks very broken seeing people sorted improperly.
  • Show the total number of games played in a set on the competitive update screen. This allows you to infer how many losses you have without giving an implied sense of danger through showing losses alongside wins.
  • Put an indicator next to people’s rank in their profile when they’re decayed. It causes too much confusion to see a spread of 3 brackets within a game and nobody knows why.
  • If you’re not going to show player ratings, then show the lobby spread on the pre competitive player screen. It’s important to know if you’re in for example a high diamond lobby or a low gm lobby. Ex: somewhere on the top of the screen, “Lobby: Gold 4-Plat 3”. You would probably want to use non-decayed sr for this, but that might not be possible. Getting verbage right to imply it’s “thru” and not “vs” also matters.

I know Blizzard doesn’t like suggestions as much as how it makes you “feel” but Blizzard isn’t very good at making people “feel” good. So those are my suggestions. Post yours if you have any :wave:

3 Likes
What would fix ranked for you?
2

Nice feedback imo, I think I can safely agree with all points you brought.

I’d add one : We do need a metric of performance to be shown after each game we play, we need feedback. Right now we have absolutely no way to determine if the last game had positive, negative or neutral impact on our next rank update.

I wouldn’t mind not having any feedback if a lose was always negative and a win always positive, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. And if it is actually the case, it means that wins/losses’s weight have a huge variation range, which would also warrant some feedback.

League of Legends is like that, when you lose you always lose LP (league points, equivalent of SR), when you win you always gain LP. But lost and won LP can vary from single digits to triple digits (effectively skipping leagues).
After each game you know where you are at, while in OW2 you are just left wondering.

1 Like
3

I share this view because it’s pretty odd that mostly positive w/l can lead to derank. Under the SR system where it updates after every rank, you’re aware of the trend. You’d see it happening. In this one it’s mostly a black box.

I considered also suggesting maybe they add an indicator after each round, showing you were likely to move up or down based on current status. But I figured, that seeing you’re likely to move down might be too demotivating.

But I do think there must be a way to provide better feedback in this area.

4

I can’t believe they didn’t do this. Either give Bronze 15 divisions, or add two more ranks. Encapsulating 500+ SR into one division is a mistake

And, nice post! This are all things that would be nice to have implemented.

2 Likes
5

That’s true, though imo the problem here is that we currently have no idea on what kind of data is used to rank us.
Given the past info from OW1, we could guess it’s a mix of :

  • win vs loss
  • player performance vs average performance on a hero at said SR
  • SR difference between player and lobby
  • SR difference between teams

Having a card saying stuff like “you were better than the average gold Zenyatta player”, “you lost a game against slightly lower ranked players” or “you won in a higher ranked lobby” wouldn’t hurt imo.

But well, I’d entirely be for a mostly transparent SR system :

  • 1 subrank is from 0 to 100 SR
  • win = gain SR / loss = lose SR
  • won/lost SR is determined by lobby/team SR, player performance, game duration…
  • won/lost SR has a multiplier depending on loss/win streak (doesn’t carry over when changing rank)
  • BO3 to rank up when hitting 100 SR
  • BO3 to prevent rank down when hitting 0 SR
  • start in each rank at 50 SR
  • possibility to skip rank(s) on ranking up/down depending on win-rate in past rank
1 Like