Why Current Ranked Doesn't Work (and How to Fix It)
This season is the first time in years my friends and I have largely stopped playing Apex. It's hard to pinpoint the exact reason why, but we're all souring on the shift in Apex's design over the past year, and especially the past few seasons.
Overall, Apex still has many great things going for it. However, with the current state of ranked, the increasingly slow rollout of playable content (not cosmetics), and unrewarding gameplay, there are few compelling reasons to spend time in the outlands.
What's so bad about the new ranked?
First, let's ruffle some feathers. Whoever thought that adding hidden MMR to ranked BR, after it failed Arenas, is dumber than a sack of bricks. The system, as implemented in Apex, is a textbook case of poor design (see Characteristics of Games, chp. 6: Player Effort).
Strict hidden MMR-driven SBMM, with small cohorts and dynamic reward heuristics, has three glaring faults: it largely decouples player skill from match outcome, trashes overall effort/reward balance, and hamstrings emergent progress and accomplishment.
Given a wealth of telemetry, players are being matched too closely. In any given engagement, as relative player skill approaches equality, the potential outcome of that engagement approaches 50/50 (a coin toss). Beyond homogenizing the play experience, this kills the effort/reward balance by minimizing the effect of skill, reducing gameplay outcomes to random chance.
Second, whoever designed the RP system appears to have more math cred than game experience. It's far too complex, and doesn't relate to casual players' mindset. The hidden adjustments and weights obscure the effort/reward picture. Unpredictable, often nonsensical, "skill bonuses" (and penalties) do not motivate player achievement.
Lastly, there's no sense of progress. It's clear that in lower ranks, like bronze and silver, that we're competing against (and matching with) gold and platinum players. And then we rank up (really slowly), and... we're still playing with/against the same cohort. No change, no progress, no fun. Just one long, hard slog, with slow achievement and low variance over the course of a season.
So, where does this leave us?
Imagine, that no matter how much time you put in, how much skill you develop, you will never be rewarded with in-game advantage (at least in BR). Ranking up doesn't materially impact the difficulty/quality of the game (the "scenery" doesn't change). Your team can't settle on play strats because the points system is gibberish.
The old ranked system naturally pooled players over the course of a split. Match difficulty increased organically over time, and player skill distributions were emergent (demarcated by rank value). In new ranked, players are pre-emptively fit into [flatter] predicted skill distributions, which they may chose to fulfill (by grinding the game).
True competition relies on emergent outcomes. I.e.: when I show up for a race, I have no idea who I'm competing against, and that's thrilling. As I train harder, the nature and qualities of racing shift dramatically as I *work* my way up the ladder. The current hidden MMR system minimizes these effects, exchanging an earned progress for a dispensed one.
Fortunately, none of this is hard to fix. Keep the placement matches (to reduce smurphing), but stop forcing ranked players into MMR-cohorts. Once we're placed, let the ranks naturally sort themselves out. Quit with the skill-bonus-adjusted RP bulls***. Simplify RP. Reward points for placement, points for kills, and reasonable bonuses for killing *higher-ranked* players.
Folks hit it on the nose with the "let ranked be ranked" sentiment. Edge cases like ring-camping and ratting are red herrings. Hidden MMR simply isn't compatible with true competition. The over-emphasized placement points, tweaked "skill-based adjustment", and brutal ring adjustments, can't fix this fundamental flaw.
- neb
