Upcoming ranked changes

In general the chances looks amazing.

More ways to gain RP so teamwork is rewarding.

I love the K/A Multiplier, so just engaging in gunfights is rewarded.

I think they could still change the piggybacking strategy.
A lot of people just hide till they are in the top X to gain "free RP" without firing a bullet.

I know this is a banable tactic but maybe with some more game rules this can be stopped.

Maybe a damage done requirement before the RP place is awarded to avoid this.

@Zeelmaekers Hiding is NOT a bannable tactic (I still don't get where you got that idea). That's just playing right by the rules in place.

And piggybacking is not hiding to gain rank points - it's doing absolutely nothing and watching your teammates get you points - "riding on their backs" (e.g., go afk, die and wait until teammates get some placement points). The "good" old getting carried by others "strategy". You're not "piggybacking" anyone if you're doing it all by yourself.

Hiding to get placements and not engaging in ANY fights was just one of the best strategies based on the points system in place in Series 1.

My thoughts on the new system:

The new system, while it will not be much different overall (good, because the current system DID work), but it does address the above mentioned tactic in a major way.

It shifts the weight away from 0-kill placement points and yet still does not support hotdropping by making kill points also scale with placements. It will be much harder to progress by not engaging in absolutely any fights at all (so just hiding to get to diamond will not be an option anymore, unless you're actually capable of defeating at laest 1 enemy squad).

But what's wirth noting is that with 5 kills+assists max, it will also shift the gameplay to an even more conservative one (if you're playing to win, then most likely you'll get your 5 points from defeating last 2 squads alone - no point to fight earlier if you don't have to). So I'm happy to say that the super-aggressive players will be disappointed with the new system even more 🙂. I on the other hand, really do like this aspect - BR is all about trying to be that one last squad standing, not about killing everyone and dying in 5th place.

As for hotdropping enthusiasts, the optimal strategy will be - hotdrop, get your 5 k/a and then hide for placements, avoiding any further fights. But that only works as long as you're VERY confident in your ability to win those early fights.

Also, if 1-2 teammates die and your team already has kills, it will still be VERY important for that 1 survivor to hide as long as possible.

In general, the optimal playstyle in series 2 should actually resemble quite closely the gameplay of high level competitive (e.g., the final of invitational).

Maybe the cap on K+A should be raised to 10, since 5 team-kills is a rather low cap, but overall it's not a huge difference. The low 5 cap capitalizes on importance to take only necessary fights and still rewards ability to win those. You will have to get to good positions in the circle for successful placements, but you will also need to be able to actually defend them successfully to get at least some kill points.

I do think that it will actually be easier to get carried by much higher players (well as long as the one carried manages to git at least one shot into some targets to get the assist points) in the new system, but I don't think that many ppl enjoy carrying dead weight and won't just play extended parties with them. It should not be a problem in random queue, since sometimes you'll get carried, sometimes you'll have to carry.

P.S. From my initial calculations, I do think that the new system will be a little stricter (due to increased entry cost), but it may also be a lot more consistent (most of the high place finishes will not "cover" as many 0 point finishes (although a max-points win is actually worth more than in series1), but the points from assists will also ensure that 0 point games are rarer).

My overall verdict: The scoring changes for series2 are subtle, but they should make the ranked play in it a lot better. It will probably still need some adjustments, but I feel the changes are really going in the right direction. Series 1 system addressed the hotdropping and mass killing problem (ignoring placements and not striving to win - not right), series 2 will address the other side of the spectrum of going strictly for placements while not even being capable to win fights.

My main takeaway points after looking at series 2 scoring system: 1) focus fire is highly encouraged (to get the assist points) - a core skill any Apex player should learn well, so great incentive; 2) you should be able to win any fights (because you absolutely must gain some kill points to progress), but at the same time you should want to AVOID any fight (which to me is the essence of BR genre) (because the cap for kills is low).

P.S. I do hope that shooting the target only when it's already downed will not award an assists, since that would incentivize a flawed tactic of collecting assists this way instead of actually helping the teammate with his next target.

Yeah I don't like the idea of leaver penalties when there's no reconnect function in place.

At the very least the punishment should not be so strict. A 30-minute cap on the penalty would stop any intentional leaving as effectively as a 7-day one. But it would not punish ppl who get occasional code:net's and crashes as much.

The game is stable enough to play and have fun for now, but it's definitely not stable enough to support severe ramping up leaver penalties.

Penalty for leaving at character select.

Sometimes i get matched with only 1 person, so I ussually leave before the game starts. It feels pointless to begin a game handicapped. 

You should fix this issue before penalizing at this stage or make a banner ingame at drop ship saying: "No penalty for leaving before jump" if the issue is not solveable.

Rank points - EDIT: I forgot you did make a multiplier by placement and it will reward kills better. Just ignore like 60% of my post.

Great improvements overall. Still think you should do something about camping to the top. I think this is the main reason for I don't enjoy ranked as much as casual games.

I play random teammates mostly and can't dictate the tactics. So most of the time we just end up in a house waiting for the timer to end, relocate to next circle, wait for timer again.

Fun the first time, but harvesting points this way is soul depleting. Your max kill of 5 to prevent hot drop was a good thing but it tweaked the balance over to camp placement points. You could differentiate it by rewarding more points for killing people in top 10, and then remove the limit. It is afterall harder to kill a squad/person fully equipped than a squad/person in the beginning with no armor. Example: 5 points for killing people outside top 10, and 20 points for killing people inside top 10. Another idea could be a multiplier increasing when fewer players are left.. this way you could also abandon placement points. Perhaps still give points for the champion, but the rest can only earn by killing... You can still camp and earn high amounts of points by killing the last, but if you don't make an effort and you still fail killing the last guy, then you get 0 points.

It should be balanced so people killing the last 5-10 squads (mostly the best players left in the server) get rewarded more.

It could be just an inverse table of the placement, so killing a squad member and 20 squads left = 1 point, 19=2 points....... and a member from the last 2 squads = 20 points or 25 points or something...

Think a cool scoring system would be dependend on the player level... so if I kill TSM_ImperialHall and im Platinum with x points, then I get 50 points, and if I kill a random bronze player with x points then I get 10 points. This way would maybe not work so well with my previous idea, but theres infinite ways of balancing it in other ways than static placement points.

Just get to diamond+ games and you'll feel the difference then. It's MUCH harder to get high placements doing nothing when EVERYONE is doing it. Getting kills is not and should not be incentivized, but if you think about it - to get higher placements, some1 has to die. If noone wants to die, then fights eventually happen, no matter they want it or not. And here comes the fun part - in order to not be forced into fights where you're at a huge disadvantage, you sometimes have to take fights on your own terms - just to actually get those placement points, not for the kill points. And that's the correct gameplay for ranked BR. Fighting just for the sake of fighting is not and SHOULD NOT be incentivized.

And as I already said, the camping without any intention to kill anyone at all strategy should be stopped by adjustments in the series2, so even lower ranked games should feel a little bit more like diamond games.

P.S. A BR is slower-paced survival game by definition. Don't expect hardcore ranked BR to EVER be action packed slaughterfest.

As for adjusting points based on opponent level, it's basically what any ELO system does. The problem is, it's really really hard to implement and balance correctly in a multi-team game.

E.g., let's say that being killed by much higher-ranked team reduces your overall loss significantly, then it would mean that seeking out and dying to that team is generally a worth risk. So then think of this: does 5-th partying that high ranked team make you worthy of the significantly higher points gain? (because you can be damn sure that team would be massively hunted if that was the case) Which goes totally against logic (generally you should want to avoid the better opponents and hunt the lesser ones). Also the mere presence of differently ranked opponent in the game affects everyone, not just the ones they come in contact with. How do you balance everyone else then?

I think starting with this much simpler points based system for a BR is really a very good start. At least we already HAVE a working ranked system in Apex. If you look at PubG, they've been working on an ELO-based system since the very beginning and still have absolutely nothing to show for it... It's just THAT hard.

Regarding your ELO system comments.

You should still be matched in your league if it's possible. But take Predator league, sometimes they match them with plat players. So less points for killing a plat player.

If the higher ranked team is significantly better point wise. let's say they have 100 points, and you have 10 points.. so 10 times better. The points should reflect the chance of whos winning like odds on a football game. So in this case the better team should win 9/10 times... So seeking them out wouldn't necessarily be worth the risk... Only if you are climbing the ranks and are better than your 10 points. This would also only be possible in a predator server with known nicknames from tournament teams... silver gold plat etc, don't know the other players rank points by looking at their nickname...

Chess has a working system i guess? I'm not familiar with pubg's issues.

How on earth is hiding "toxic"  ?? XD BR is a survival game: running, hiding and avoiding fights are huge parts of the game.

If hiding all the way to win the game seems like the best tactic - then sure go ahead and do it. The fact is, hiding in a terrible position is simply gambling. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If hiding becomes effective, then so does seeking out the hiders, especially ones that are easy to take out hiding in generally bad spots.

You're completely ignoring the "seek" part in a hide and seek game. And if everyone is ignoring that? Well, hide away!

Chess is a 1x1 game. There's not even a concept of 3rd party in such a game 🙂. The possibility of multi-way engagements is what makes balancing multi-way game unfit for the ELO system.

The only simple way I can think of to adjust for the uneven lobbies is to average the whole lobby and adjust by that. E.g., a predator in a diamond-average lobby would have <1 coefficient for positive result and >1 coefficient for a negative result; and a plat team in diamond1-average game would have the opposite adjustment, no matter how their game goes.

The problem I see though, is that it could feel extremely punishing when the high ranked team gets unlucky or runs into other team that is evenly skilled but is still ranking up.

I agree that predators in diamond games are a problem and can make the games vary in difficulty really wildly, but I really don't see a simple good solution for that. But IMO the most important function of a ranked system is to successfully make the highest calibre games possible and in that the current system is already successful. Differentiating players in that highest rank is really of lesser importance.

Also, the predator leaderboards will still be a measure of how many games they played - meh, but I'd say that's a problem for the future for now.