Ranked seems broken for bad players

@eyemessiah 

You are absolutely correct; ranked is broken in a negative way for players that arent as skilled when it comes to the fighting part of the game (aim, movement, game sense etc).  To sum it up; almost any player regardless of his fighting skill can climb up to at least Plat 4 without having to prove himself when it comes to fighting. Up to platinum, you literally just have to jump safe and avoid fights and you will be gaining RPs... 

Im in the same situation, but in Diamond 4. I recently got from Gold 2 (reset from last seasons diamond) to Diamond 4 in 70 games, with a K/D of >3, 15% winrate and 60% top 5. Needless to say, Gold and Plat was super easy for me. But now Im literally hard stuck at Diamond 4. I might go +6, +10 a couple of games, and then BOOM, I get instakilled by a top 20 predator team at drop, -48 RPs and im back at square one. 

I dont know what Respawn is thinking tbh. I would have paid money to just be a spectator on their meetings when they decide things like that. How can they decide NOT to have demotions between divisions? How can they decide to have a min level requirement of  lvl 10, which is an invitation to smurf? Ranked could be the solution to all sbmm/matchmaking related issues people have with this game if it was designed properly. Then casual and unskilled players could play at low divisions forever or until they get good enough for next division. But instead, they will keep progress because the system is so grind compatible, until they reach a rank where they get totally stuck.

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. 

@eyemessiahAgreed on the issues with ease in ranking up. The only two things I'll mention are when you're being carried, you're going to rank up regardless, but those carrying you will eventually outpace you and you should be able to de-rank (they seriously need to add this), and you are 100% right, survivability is rewarded too much in the game at lower ranks, they should decrease the amount of RP earned from squad placement in Bronze and Silver, hell maybe even Platinum, but at higher ranks keep it where it's at (mostly because the cost to play).

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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.

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@S8N_Spawn wrote:

@eyemessiahAgreed on the issues with ease in ranking up. The only two things I'll mention are when you're being carried, you're going to rank up regardless, but those carrying you will eventually outpace you and you should be able to de-rank (they seriously need to add this), and you are 100% right, survivability is rewarded too much in the game at lower ranks, they should decrease the amount of RP earned from squad placement in Bronze and Silver, hell maybe even Platinum, but at higher ranks keep it where it's at (mostly because the cost to play).

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I like those Survival points. They are the occasional backdoor. If everything else fails. I like the freedom of choice in there, how to play the game, also as a team.

Placement matters. And how you get there, is up to you. And might differ from match to match. 

@Babbediboopi
@Cabowse
@Tamyndris
@TheJumpingJawa
@S8N_Spawn

Thank you for your thoughtful & insightful comments.  I almost forgot I was on the internet for a moment!

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.