Can someone please explain how Ranked works?

[DNineD]

First ten matches determines your rank if you haven't played one yet this season.

Then it becomes a running average. So if ranking up is determined by win/lose streaks, no matter how good or bad you performed in the team, you still can lose rank? I mean, true enough not all matches are balanced accordingly; there will be those that will experience technical problems, performance anxieties, and mid match collapse, or just plain d i c k s who vote to surrender when they got the chance to see the surrender option for lack of skill. But how does ranking up and down work if you're matched with a bad team of randoms?

It doesn't... you end up carrying the burden of being ammo supplier, objective specialist and medic all in one session and this is not what the game is about. Teamwork is not there and why should rewarding be made proportionate to those who drag the team down? Sure, there will always be top scorers and least ones, but the difference in team score might be because a Sparks player chose to hang back and revive team mates and at the right moment deliver the objective.

Can someone please elaborate the mechanics of how ranking works?

[jemstar]

I would love to know also!

[JonBongNoJovi]

Also like to know or understand how it calculates your rank when people constantly quit leaving it 4v5 or surrender within 2 mins and do nothing all map except grief and teamkill to make game end quicker , woudl say 10 losses easy are from quitters , took me a lot of effort to finally rank up yesterday i lost 66% of rank in 2 losses thru quitters , beyond a joke to put so much effort into rankign up only to have it mugged from you .

[Mustang]

It's not really a "running average" as it doesn't always go up or down by the same amount.

The gist is correct, if you win you go up, if you lose you go down.

Things that vary the amount up/down are team balance and personal performance.

By team balance I mean it does try to give balanced teams, however it's never going to be perfect, so if you win against a weak team you go up less than if you win against a strong team. i.e. It's proportional to the relative team strengths, or another way of saying it would be it takes into account your likelihood to win. And obviously vice versa for losing.

For the personal performance effect this is to do with how much XP you earn, and therefore correspondingly your position on the scoreboard. If you position near the top of the scoreboard you go up more for winning, or down less for losing, than if you position at the bottom of the scoreboard. But a win will still always move you up and a loss will still always move you down.

I'm pretty sure if you have leavers and still go on to lose/surrender then it still counts as a lose, the problem with doing something like "well just give the winners the win, and the losers with the leaver stay the same" is that it's opening the system up for abuse/farming, so I'd think that they'd never do that. What does happen is leavers accrue ever increasing penalties so they can't keep ruining it for everyone else, and if they're causing real problems then they get banned. Personally I think the penalties should probably last a bit longer than they currently do, but I've also heard from several people that they are getting penalties for doing nothing wrong. So I'd hope once some of the bugs are ironed out they'll think about increasing penalties.

[Chronicler]

It's not really a "running average" as it doesn't always go up or down by the same amount.

The gist is correct, if you win you go up, if you lose you go down.

Things that vary the amount up/down are team balance and personal performance.

By team balance I mean it does try to give balanced teams, however it's never going to be perfect, so if you win against a weak team you go up less than if you win against a strong team. i.e. It's proportional to the relative team strengths, or another way of saying it would be it takes into account your likelihood to win. And obviously vice versa for losing.

For the personal performance effect this is to do with how much XP you earn, and therefore correspondingly your position on the scoreboard. If you position near the top of the scoreboard you go up more for winning, or down less for losing, than if you position at the bottom of the scoreboard. But a win will still always move you up and a loss will still always move you down.

I'm pretty sure if you have leavers and still go on to lose/surrender then it still counts as a lose, the problem with doing something like "well just give the winners the win, and the losers with the leaver stay the same" is that it's opening the system up for abuse/farming, so I'd think that they'd never do that. What does happen is leavers accrue ever increasing penalties so they can't keep ruining it for everyone else, and if they're causing real problems then they get banned. Personally I think the penalties should probably last a bit longer than they currently do, but I've also heard from several people that they are getting penalties for doing nothing wrong. So I'd hope once some of the bugs are ironed out they'll think about increasing penalties.

How is it measured though when it tries to balance? Is k/d ratio or accuracy etc taken into account? Or what?

[Mustang]

How is it measured though when it tries to balance? Is k/d ratio or accuracy etc taken into account? Or what?

You mean when it creates the teams in the first place?

It's based only off your current rank.

[Chronicler]

You mean when it creates the teams in the first place?

It's based only off your current rank.

What about those with no rank yet? Is there a max rank they can't play with? These people seem to be randomly inserted into games, I've played with gold and gotten no-ranked people. (Many real nubs).

[Zar.]

What about those with no rank yet? Is there a max rank they can't play with? These people seem to be randomly inserted into games, I've played with gold and gotten no-ranked people. (Many real nubs).

Just because they have no visible rank does not mean they don't have an ELO rating. Before their first ever game they have the ELO of a silver recruit. During their first 10 matches they rank up and down more rapidly so they can end up anywhere between bronze recruit to gold agent after the placements.

[Mustang]

What about those with no rank yet?

It's as Zar said, I say "rank" because it's an easier concept to understand, in reality this is equivalent to a hidden "rating" numerical value behind the scenes, including players that are "unranked".

Is there a max rank they can't play with?

Nope, it's on a "best effort" basis, meaning it'll try to match you with people close to you, but once it reaches full "search range" (notice the blue bar increasing in size) then all bets are off. I don't necessarily agree with it, but at the same time I do get why they decided to do it like that.

These people seem to be randomly inserted into games, I've played with gold and gotten no-ranked people. (Many real nubs).

Most "unranked" are actually mid-range silvers in the background, so it's entirely possible for this to happen, if there aren't many people searching at a given time then it's actually quite likely. Although there were reports of edge cases where very high ranks and very low ranks were getting matched together when there were people inbetween it was missing out, pretty sure this has already been fixed, or is going to be very soon.

[Glottis-3D]

Is there a rank difference that leads to ZERO plus points after win? like in quakelive
I mean when cobalts win vs bronze will they still go a little bit up?

[JonBongNoJovi]

So for placement no matter your skill your placed in silver bracket ?

So correct me if i'm wrong silver is then screwed over with both over and underskilled players making it the worst bracket to actually play in.

Playing with 2 people on your team who go 5-20 (being kind here ) make its unenjoyable and usually leads to someone quitting or crying surrender. I have more losses to uneven sides and unbalance on this scale than i do from legit games when everybody stayed and fought with honour till the end.

[Szakalot]

So for placement no matter your skill your placed in silver bracket ?

So correct me if i'm wrong silver is then screwed over with both over and underskilled players making it the worst bracket to actually play in.

Playing with 2 people on your team who go 5-20 (being kind here ) make its unenjoyable and usually leads to someone quitting or crying surrender. I have more losses to uneven sides and unbalance on this scale than i do from legit games when everybody stayed and fought with honour till the end.

i played all 10 placement matches yesterday, and got 'gold recruit' after winning 9/10 (sadly, had a personal troll in me team)

[JonBongNoJovi]

Sorry Szakalot fresh out of goldfish , but thanks for letting us know this

[Mustang]

So for placement no matter your skill your placed in silver bracket ?

For your very first game as unranked you start somewhere in silver, I think silver recruit, then if you win a few you go up to silver agent, if you lose a few you go down to bronze master. However all of this is in the background until it's getting a clearer idea of what your actual ability is. Then after 10 games it shows you where you ended up.

So correct me if i'm wrong silver is then screwed over with both over and underskilled players making it the worst bracket to actually play in.

Hmm, maybe a little, although it's not like silvers only get matched against other silvers, and likewise there is nothing stopping a gold getting an unranked either. Personally I'd rather it started you at bronze recruit, then you had to work your way up from there. However there are probably complicated maths reasons for not doing this, the one that springs to mind is that it would take much longer to determine what your "starting rank" should be, and they felt like 10 placement matches was as high as they wanted to go.

Playing with 2 people on your team who go 5-20 (being kind here ) make its unenjoyable and usually leads to someone quitting or crying surrender. I have more losses to uneven sides and unbalance on this scale than i do from legit games when everybody stayed and fought with honour till the end.

It'd probably be like this even if you started at bronze recruit, as I suggested above. You'd still have to fight your way though the rabble and it also takes a while for everyone to spread out a bit. Although this is one of the reasons I'd rather the seasons were a bit longer, it's a balancing act for sure.

[Glottis-3D]

one of the reasons for ranks to seem incorrect is that, well, they are ranks, not numbers.
in quakelive during qlranks times all started at 1200, and then good players got up to 2500+ and bad players got to 800-
it did have masters and golds and silvers, but you first saw the number, which is a perfect way to describe a quantity, unlike ranks.

my point is. ranks do work as intended (apart from bugs), but may not seems to, because they as a representation of skill are not as precise as numbers.

[montheponies]

I've had some odd (read bad) mm, example being two gold masters duo queuing and being matched to me and 4 other silvers. they reckoned they had queued for 10min whereas i had queued for 2min - the system tried to balance by shoving two bronzes onto their team, but they could easily carry, especially as silver is a car crash of a bracket. Happened again later that night, again with me only queuing for 2min and getting matched into a game this time with one cobalt in my team - really doesn't work, especially as ranks are being manipulated through dodges (still) at the lobby and inherent advantage that duo and 5man brings.

Anyway, nothing is ever going to be perfect, but would like SD to look at making sure I dont get matched into a random skill game simply because someone else has been waiting ages...

[AssortedStuff]

I've had some odd (read bad) matchmaking,...
...I would like SD to look at making sure I don't get matched into a random skill game simply because someone else has been waiting ages...

Was only able to get this screenshot (2 days ago I think) but I had a few of those matches. Utter sh_it experience.

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