Another Piece of Evidence Regarding the Absurdity of the Ranking System

Personofsecrets

That's right, this game took 20 minutes. I gained 18 points. Yes, 18 points. I surely would have lost 150 points.

If a game takes this long, doesn't it make sense that, oh, I don't know, there was some back and forth. Perhaps there was some skillful play, you know players duking it out. I can lose 150 points when someone, without the need for any sense whatsoever, greases me quickly via Pelin or Crow cards. But oh no, having a longer match isn't worth it from a rank perspective. This has always been one of the more unfun aspects of digital card game ladders and it's a shame that TOT doesn't improve on the age old system of fast senseless wins being the most incentivized form of gameplay.

spartaxoxo

I think that it's good long games aren't given bonus points. People would just wait forever to take their turn to draw things down on purpose for better ratings.

I am more troubled that a win was only 18 points period. If you win more than you lose you should climb.

Personofsecrets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I think that it's good long games aren't given bonus points. People would just wait forever to take their turn to draw things down on purpose for better ratings.

I am more troubled that a win was only 18 points period. If you win more than you lose you should climb.

I pretty regularly get 0 through 30 points for a win and most the time I lose 150 if I lose. So on a normal day I have to be winning 5 times more than I lose to climb. And that is difficult. For one, more and more players are using Pelin and Crow which I personally believe lend themseleves to minimizing the factor that skill may have on a game. On top of that, it takes the que forever to pop. So I can get 5 minute downtimes in between games and that is just incredibly demotivating.

As for the length of games being more rewarding, something like the loot from the box being improved would be appropriate. But really, there should just be balance changes that maximize the skill component of winning a game. In that way, my complaint of fast strategies being advantaged on ladder may be tended to somewhat.

WitchyKiki

whats even the point of ranked matches anymore?

NeKryXe

WitchyKiki wrote: »

whats even the point of ranked matches anymore?

Entertainment for players who enjoy competitive card games -- my case.

But I want fair competition, or else it'll not be entertaining, it'll be annoying.

WitchyKiki

NeKryXe wrote: »

WitchyKiki wrote: »

whats even the point of ranked matches anymore?

Entertainment for players who enjoy competitive card games -- my case.

But I want fair competition, or else it'll not be entertaining, it'll be annoying.

I only go on competitive for the coffers ._. gimme coffers.

Necrotech_Master

i wonder if it is making the determination based on leaderboard rank, since i see in your screenshot your ranked #3 out of all the competitive players, which means your likely being matched to players 10s or 100s of ranks below you if they are still in the rubedite bracket

Personofsecrets

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i wonder if it is making the determination based on leaderboard rank, since i see in your screenshot your ranked #3 out of all the competitive players, which means your likely being matched to players 10s or 100s of ranks below you if they are still in the rubedite bracket

Perhaps ladder position is a thing, but even when I'm ranked against other players that are highly ranked I can still lose 150 points. I made a post the other day after this happened with the rank 13 players who usually has a fair shot of beating me.

Someone else has mentioned, and I think this is a thing, but that there is some hidden ranking we carry with us, similar to what BGS has had, but unlike BGS, the ranking hasn't been reset. I even tried to lose purposely tons of games last season and it didn't really solve the issue of how many points I typically gain.

Jusey1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I think that it's good long games aren't given bonus points. People would just wait forever to take their turn to draw things down on purpose for better ratings.

I am more troubled that a win was only 18 points period. If you win more than you lose you should climb.

I'm more troubled about losing more than 100 points per lost. That's insanely high for no good reason, period.

spartaxoxo

Jusey1 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I think that it's good long games aren't given bonus points. People would just wait forever to take their turn to draw things down on purpose for better ratings.

I am more troubled that a win was only 18 points period. If you win more than you lose you should climb.

I'm more troubled about losing more than 100 points per lost. That's insanely high for no good reason, period.

It would be okay if you got 150 points per win, so that the only thing needed for climbing is winning more than you lose. Unfortunately, you need to win like 5x as much which isn't realistic for even some very good players.

fleetingyouth_ESO

This match took 43 mins and I got +83 points. Game time doesn't and should never have any relevance on point score.

The only thing that has any relevance to how many points you get is the hidden ranking system assigned to each player over the course of the season. If you win 2 times more than you lose or 10 times more, the points will vary based on how high your opponent is ranked skill-wise on this hidden mmr system. It's possible actual ladder rank makes a difference but I have seen no evidence of this as I rarely see matches against much higher-ranked players than myself.

There are some problems with the overall system but it's most likely not in the point system other than they chose to let you see how many points you get/lose and the total point each player has on the ladder.

For example, in the current system if you only ever saw how many places you moved up and down based on a win/lose you would realize just how many games you have to win to significantly move to the top regardless of the number of wins in a row. Because it is not about winning every game that moves you up the ladder it is about winning more games against equally or higher-ranked players than yourself on this hidden mmr scale. This is very evident if you play during prime hours vs in the late off hours. You are more likely to get a better match up in prime time resulting in better points. When I play late at night I almost never get good point gains and almost always win all my matches because I'm playing lower mmr ranked players.
During prime time I lose some matches but get more points for a lot of my winning matches because I'm being matched up better based on the mmr rank.

The games overall low player population playing ranked matches and the low number of players at any given time probably makes this even worse. This problem occurs in other card games like hearthstone in the ranked tiers but to a much lesser degree because that game has a very high player population.

Another issue is that ToT was designed slightly to appeal to and be slightly balanced for the large casual player base who probably has never played a deck builder/card game. Players who don't realize that there are actual game strategies and hidden mechanics/combos besides just using crow. That the higher you get on the ladder there is a meta and counter meta game play. That, knowing your opponents' strategy is just as important as having your own.

Jordan_Black

Getting to rubedite gets you a lot of transmutes and isn't difficult for a decent player, I do it every season. I did manage to get top 10% two seasons and I've tried it one other time and didn't quite make it, but the sheer amount of time you have to spend playing ToT to get in the top 10% (+2pts for a win and -150 for a loss, w00t) and then be rewarded with 10K gold (a joke considering what you could make farming something in that amount of time) and 100 transmutes - okay, but still not worth the time. You could easily do way more than 10 rando dungeons in the amount of time you'd spend playing ToT getting to top 10%.

So, the reward is being able to say "I got top 10% in the season."

Not worth it for me anymore but clearly worth it for some. All good, don't care. I like the game and I play it every day but I'm done with the competitive games after I get to rubedite.

Jordan_Black

Personofsecrets wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I think that it's good long games aren't given bonus points. People would just wait forever to take their turn to draw things down on purpose for better ratings.



As for the length of games being more rewarding, something like the loot from the box being improved would be appropriate. But really, there should just be balance changes that maximize the skill component of winning a game. In that way, my complaint of fast strategies being advantaged on ladder may be tended to somewhat.

I agree with you that gaining 0-30 for a win and losing 150 for a loss is demotivating, but better prizes for longer games is a bad idea. Any increased reward for length of game would just incentivize people to waste time.

Personofsecrets

fleetingyouth_ESO wrote: »

Another issue is that ToT was designed slightly to appeal to and be slightly balanced for the large casual player base who probably has never played a deck builder/card game. Players who don't realize that there are actual game strategies and hidden mechanics/combos besides just using crow. That the higher you get on the ladder there is a meta and counter meta game play. That, knowing your opponents' strategy is just as important as having your own.

Another few things that don't work well with TOT are the following. The -150 result is somewhat obnoxious when playing against not so good opponents who managed to get there. That is to say that the game isn't able to give score based on or lack thereof skillful play. It just looks at wins and losses. Adding to what you mention about the player population, it's also the case that playing more isn't incentivized for players sitting high on the leaderboard. It's a waiting game to see who else is going to get a lucky winstreak and then see if you can win one more game to climb over them again. It is irregular for me to be playing against the other players that are top 10. Like, I can't find them. So there becomes even more of this system of the game outcome being even more lopsided toward getting a game where not so many points can possibly be rewarded or 150 points can be deducted. And speaking to the meta, it's my observation that more average players are figuring out the things that they have to do to tighten up the game odds from the Patron selection. That dynamic too lends itself to chance playing a higher factor in determining if 150 points are about to be lost or not. Maybe it's not hugely important, but it is there nonetheless.

NeKryXe

Personofsecrets wrote: »

It is irregular for me to be playing against the other players that are top 10. Like, I can't find them.

Obviously. The ranking system is so badly designed that everybody stops playing after reaching top 10. This season I reached top 2 very fast, so I just quit playing and now I 'm just waiting to drop slowly to return. At top 10% most matches result in 0 points or -150 points, but at top 10 ALL matches result in 0 points or -150 points for sure, there's no other option. So, there's no point to play, unfortunately.

The difference should be way smaller, maybe 10 points on win and -50 on losses. So the game remains dynamic and all players keep playing. I would keep risking to lose -50, but not -150 because I know that I need to drop out of top 10% to be able to get a few points on win.

*edit* Oh! Another thing... The worst is in fact the 0 points on win. If I was sure that I would get at least 20 points on a victory, I wouldn't mind to risk -150 points at any position. The 0 points thing is hideous!

spartaxoxo

I was going through old video to delete off my hard drive off my PS5. And I remembered I had recorded this a while back. This match happened sometime between console's Firesong release and when I was able to acquire the Druid King deck. I was doing my placement matches to get back to Rubedite. I had won 2 games in a row, this was my third.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We30CHVIWe4