Forum Discussion

5 years ago

Get rid of Rank Decay

Look, it doesn't matter how many people achieve Galactic Ace Rank but having to win more fleet battles then to loose in order to advance then to loose isn't a good idea. I don't wish losing battles ...

Darth_GrumpyCat

5 years ago

@SecforceTraesha 100% this.
Nothing more frustrating then playing 1v5 with 4 morrons as a "team" yet giving the opponents a hard fight, and still getting rewarded with rank loss, just because someone has a real life and simply no time to find a clan or sth. forcing one to play on a schedule. That's plain stupid and so early 2000's.

Me_mumblecake

5 years ago

Fully appreciate what you are saying here. Let's take into account though that ranking is currently totally broken. Assuming this will get fixed this week the system is supposed to work as follows:

rank is supposed to be skill based. You should reach a rank ceiling which corresponds with your skill ceiling. Only the best will reach ace
assuming for a second that you have an "ace" skill level and assuming that you were in maverick in the moment and also assuming that you would be constanty matched against opponents from Ace league you would need a win rate of far below 50% to advance as a maverick will gain a lot of rank points from winning against an ace and will lose very little from losing
assuming that you are constantly getting matched against mavericks you would need a win rate much higher than 50% to progress (as the inverse from my last point is true)
on average you should get matched predominantly against people with equal rank points (match making ranking: MMR) so a win rate of slightly over 50% is needed. The higher the win rate the quicker the progression.
playing with a coordinated team helps A LOT (surprise surprise). Not wanting to turn this into a recruitment post (but doing it slightly anyway) at AOD (and I'm sure other clans as well) we take tthing super casual. You can only come online once every fortnight to play for 45 min? We have you covered. You would be invited to clan events but not necessarily expected to take part. Application is super easy. Have a look at this post and have a think if a higher win rate (and loads of fun with our clan members) is worth the 2 min to fill out the application form. Here are some details: https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Pilots-Wanted-Recruiting-Academy/m-p/9588626#M4672

Darth_GrumpyCat
5 years ago
@Me_mumblecake appreciate your effort, yet that wouldn't be a solution for me (and I assume many other after work pilots with limited and not plannable time slots). Everykind of coordinated gaming requires some kind of preparation. Been there in many other games over the past 20 years, it's always the same, no matter how nice the guild/clan/squad -call it what you want- is in general. I don't want to spend half the time finding others or having that one special snowflake going 10 mins afk just when the others are about to start, etc.
I just want to press the play button, have a more or less good fight and have the certainty to make somekind of progress that doesn't get devaluated. If others with more time or willing to invest more non-game time make bigger progress- totally fine. If I can't reach a seasons top tier that way- also totally fine.
But rank decay is just a terrible design choice for many games for so many reasons, it would allow for a separate thread.
- Darth_GrumpyCat
  5 years ago
  @Darth_GrumpyCat*bump* since this is still a thing. This game will only survive if people have some motivation to keep playing. Now we all knew there would be only a few maps with even fewer game modes, but either people were fine with that or didn't inform themselves before hand.
  But being stuck with a stupid early 2000's e-sports rank system is just so bad I really have to hold myself back to not let go an avalanche of swear words.
  Dear EA, dear Motive, IT IS NOT FUN TO BE TOP 3 IN EVERY FOXTROTT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO FLEET BATTLE YET LOSING RANK CAUSE THERE'S THAT ONE IDIOT IN YOUR TEAM THAT JUST FEEDS AND YOU CAN'T DO JACK ABOUT IT.
  It just can't be so hard to change the system in a way that it scores personal performance > team performance, put it in relation to other players and then adjusts the pace of climbing.
  Totally fine if it's balanced in a way that only allows for a minority (let's say 10% or sth.) to reach the peak, if it's the dedicated above average skilled people. But for the sake of all that's good, get rid of that stupid, totally demotivational, decay mechanic.
  - TrichorTTV
    5 years ago
    Without a loss of rank when you lose and/or do poorly, the skill rating system would be meaningless and would be even WORSE at matching similarly skilled players.
    
    There are MAJOR problems with how it is adjusting ranks right now, but I am hopeful they will address those so that the system can get better at matching players of similar skill levels together.
    
    As it is right now, I'm winning around 85-90% of my matches and my rank is barely even moving. And I'm not even teaming up - the vast majority of my games are solo queue. This is a problem for two reasons:
    
    ⚽ I can't progress to the higher ranks that I wish to attain, despite clearly belonging at a higher rank (name another MOBA where at 90% win rate results in your rank staying stable)
    🏈 I am being matched with players of much lower skill level. It's not fun for them to get shredded 15-20 times every match.
    
    Assuming that EA/Motive can fix the skill/mmr system so that it can more quickly sort folks into the right skill tiers, this will have a BIG improvement on match quality for all players, regardless of where they fall on the skill spectrum.