Re: Ranked seems broken for bad players

I agree, It does feel as though ranked is created for players that are particularly good!

I've had another issue is that because of this low level players are not trying it, therefore when I queue up as gold, I get matched up in Diamond lobbies.

IMO this is an intrinsic flaw with the BR genre; what is fun (fighting) is not what is successful (surviving).

The RP reward system is necessarily weighted towards the latter, which inevitably means those who play intelligently (to survive) will rank up to the point where the fun aspect of the game (the fighting) becomes impossible.

So don't feel bad; this effects all players, not just those lower down the skill track.

As to what Respawn can do to rectify it, I've no idea; they've clearly put some effort into the problem;

- the current respawn system

- the Halloween event

- the automatic respawning after each ring closure 2-day event

They're all attempts to mitigate the downside of fighting; the fun aspect of the game.

@Tamyndris 

Yes, exactly. Then it just means that Overwatch has a well designed ranked system where a players current rank reflects well on his current skill. If you have a  win/loss ratio of 1 at your current rank just means that you reached your  "equilibrium", i.e. you are exactly at the rank where you should be, based on your current skill. If you improve, your win ratio would increase and you would start to advance until it reaches another "equilibrium".

This is not the case in Apex ranked system. A guy like you with 0.22 K/D could grind your way up to an ELO/rank where the average player has way higher K/D than you until the ability to get kills (i.e. the RP entry cost) start matter so much that you literally wont gain a single RP and you get stuck in the 4th tier of that division.  This is not possible in LoL for instance, another game with a "good" ranking system; If you are a gold skilled player, you wont be able to grind your way up to platinum and remain there, because even if you get lucky/get a carried and just manage to win your promotion games, you will quickly get demoted back to gold after a few games, which is good for your sake. 

Imagine if the rank system in Apex were more "dynamic". Then your current skill might be suitable for, lets say, silver 4 and thats where you would remain, playing v equally skilled players, until you become better and slowly advances to silver 3 where you remain until you get better etc etc. 

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@Babbediboopi wrote:

@Tamyndris 

Yes, exactly. Then it just means that Overwatch has a well designed ranked system where a players current rank reflects well on his current skill. If you have a  win/loss ratio of 1 at your current rank just means that you reached your  "equilibrium", i.e. you are exactly at the rank where you should be, based on your current skill. If you improve, your win ratio would increase and you would start to advance until it reaches another "equilibrium".

This is not the case in Apex ranked system. A guy like you with 0.22 K/D could grind your way up to an ELO/rank where the average player has way higher K/D than you until the ability to get kills (i.e. the RP entry cost) start matter so much that you literally wont gain a single RP and you get stuck in the 4th tier of that division.  This is not possible in LoL for instance, another game with a "good" ranking system; If you are a gold skilled player, you wont be able to grind your way up to platinum and remain there, because even if you get lucky/get a carried and just manage to win your promotion games, you will quickly get demoted back to gold after a few games, which is good for your sake. 

Imagine if the rank system in Apex were more "dynamic". Then your current skill might be suitable for, lets say, silver 4 and thats where you would remain, playing v equally skilled players, until you become better and slowly advances to silver 3 where you remain until you get better etc etc. 

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Right. What I am looking for are matches, I have the chance to win a fight in (not the match), once in a while. That's the reason I do only ranked, because I think ranks are helping me there. At least sort of.

It's as you say: I need to be careful, not to ascend into the wrong tier in APEX : ) ... staying with the team, leaving none behind, trying to keep up, handing over better equipment to the ones who probably put that to better use, generally doing what I do is slowly bringing me through Silver. Depending on pure luck (team compositions, enemy movement, drop point heat, adversary lottery, ...), there are more "big leaps" in points than the 12-points losses for fast wipes can compensate, so to say. Last season I thus happily entered Gold. Without sneaking there, btw. And then, as you predict, I got pinned there not collecting more than 30 or so good points, for weeks. 

I indeed would have gladly opted to fall back to Silver.

Its interesting to hear that a similar version of the same problem exists in higher brackets also.  Its strange that they don't allow down-ranking between tiers - seems like that would help.  I suppose its demoralising though.  In Dota, for instance, players constantly complain about how punishing losing streaks can be. 

The more I think about it the more I reckon this whole design is to give the illusion of progress so that players who overestimate how good they are at the game (the norm in Dota - don't know about Apex!) will feel like they either in the "right" tier or at least moving towards it.  The thing that bad Dota players find intolerable is reaching their true MMR fairly quickly after calibration and getting "stuck" there.  If you read reddit\dotabuff etc. many people are convinced that their MMR is thousands higher than the place where their win-rate hits 50% and therefor the matchmaking is just broken (which then leads to all kinds of conspiracy theories about how the matchmaking essentially "fixes" the results of games to keep people "in their place" etc.).  I suppose on the bright side the Apex model sort of works-around this issue by allowing players to rapidly climb - and the point where they get "stuck" happens much later. 

I can't help but feel though that this is at the expense of the overall match quality - at least in terms firefights etc.  Less skilled players in a more punishing ranked implemntation might get demoralised because they don't feel like they are making progress fast enough but at least they'd be squaring off against players of similar mechanical skill - maybe they'd win more or at least even if they weren't they'd feel like the were achieving more within matches.  Currently its often a case of "you run around looting for 20 minutes and then get headshot by an enemy squad while you panic spray them and inevitably go down first - but never mind you survived long enough to get a decently positive score so here is some RP - and oh yay, you ranked up!" - which does nothing for me personally.

Yes - for me the ideal would be playing in bronze either forever and having fun occasionally holding my own in firefights.  Maybe I'd get better at aiming & movement over time and creep up into Silver but at least in that case I'd feel more like I was "ready" for it.

@Babbediboopi

@TheJumpingJawa 

I think there is something to the idea that BR's are different and maybe wide variance in mechanical skill is just part of the game and also to some extent its possible for "strategic" skill to win out of mechanical skill and thats a good thing.

Just accepting this is probably a good idea but... I don't know, maybe its also arguably a flaw in the genre?

Last night I got a win with a Nox and a Mirage.  We spent most of the game looting and didn't encouter other squads.  We ended up in the middle of final rings by chance - inside the harvester.  At one point we got pinned between three squads comming from different directions.  The Mirage got downed and we couldn't safely get to him to the Nox and I went out a side door and healed up while hiding.  Then we took a few more shots while moving and again, ducked into a hidden spot to heal.  The ring was closing so we were forced to take the steps down into the lowest bit of the harvester and basically got stuck under the stairs while the other squads fought it out above us.  The nox surrounded us with gas traps.  Eventually the last remaining enemy who had fought his way through (at least) a three way cross fire (we heard a lot of grappling) was forced to limp down stairs to get into the ring - I panic sprayed him, but with some nice movement he evaded my (poorly aimed) fire and knocked me down with some very clean head shots while the nox was trying to get more traps down.  The pathfinder seeing the nox at that point backed off (I think he was somehow still just inside the ring but somehow out of sight - maybe he grappled away for a moment to a different level?) and the nox tried to get me back up.  I think this was the pathfinders plan because he appeared out of no-where and killed me and interrupted the rez.  The Nox tried to fire but maybe need to reload so either started the reload or weapon switch animation and I thought we were done for but the pathfinder died to gas and we won.  On the summary screen we had 2 kills (the other from the fight where the Mirage went down) and maybe 300 damage between us.  I ranked up after that.

Its a long story but for me its a great example of a scenario where I won but didn't feel like I contribute.  In this case, though, I also felt like our team didn't really deserve the win?  In some crude sense we did of course.  The Nox used his area denial strength in the exact right spot.  The other teams, seeing the ring collapsing & knowning that harvester is awkwardly multi-level shouldn't have gotten into a multi-party shoot out and at least one of them should have used their probably superior mechanical skill to kill us and take the low ground for themselves before stairs etc. were outside of the ring.  A win is a win. 

All the same...

If gunplay isn't the be-all-end-all though then why do we spend so much time gathering, equiping and swapping weapons and weapon mods?

@Tamyndris 

Another thing that occurs to me is though you and I, and others in this thread, seem to want a 50% win rate (in games where that is possible - not sure what the BR appropriate equivalent is, average K/D of 1?) - in other games at least - this seems to be a source of common complaints.  E.g. many players can't accept that they aren't just inherently better at the game than most other people (reguardless of their actual mechanical skill) and in cases where flat MMR systems eventually result in them settling at 50% is always taken as evidence that the matchmaking is garbage.  Again - I sort of wonder if one reason that de-emphasising mechanical skill in RP calculations has some appeal for the developers because it pushes the point where progress seemingly ends (and for most players this will happen eventually - whether they like it or not!) further into the future.

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@eyemessiah wrote:

@Tamyndris 

Another thing that occurs to me is though you and I, and others in this thread, seem to want a 50% win rate (in games where that is possible - not sure what the BR appropriate equivalent is, average K/D of 1?) - in other games at least - this seems to be a source of common complaints.  E.g. many players can't accept that they aren't just inherently better at the game than most other people (reguardless of their actual mechanical skill) and in cases where flat MMR systems eventually result in them settling at 50% is always taken as evidence that the matchmaking is garbage.  Again - I sort of wonder if one reason that de-emphasising mechanical skill in RP calculations has some appeal for the developers because it pushes the point where progress seemingly ends (and for most players this will happen eventually - whether they like it or not!) further into the future.

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You say, developers want to sort of even the odds, in favor of mechanically not so skilled players? If yes, I find this a good thing, game is not so one-dimensional, widens the possibilities on how to play the game.

Mechanical skill stays the top thing in APEX, I think. Right, you need to be smart, too, you need positioning and movement, reading/knowing the map, reading your enemy, killer instinct AND some sense for your team. But, in the end, all that won't make much difference when you're hitting nothing with your gun or present yourself clumsy in close encounters. Thus, mechanical skill will always have the advantage. Which is totally okay.

fighting is successful if you win, cause you get way higher boost of RP surviving is good up till around diamond. sure its BR flawl, but thats the point, games like overwatch has its flawls as well ranked will never be flawless. I bet you can't name a game with a perfect ranked system. unlike Overwatch, apex forces you to get better or keep getting stomped, there is very little room for participation awards when u hit diamond or even higher plat. u have to play hard.