@spartaxoxo There are two different point systems at work.

The highest tier is Rubedite.
In the tiers below that, you get 110, 210, 310 points for a win and a fixed -100 points for a loss. The points awarded for wins seem to ramp up with winstreaks and perhaps with some influence on your opponent's tier. When you reach 1000 points, you get promoted, but if you reach 0 nothing happens and you do not get demoted. Alternating wins and losses will still see you get promoted after 100 games (110 points per win and -100 per loss sees you at a nett +10 for every win/loss pair of games). In fact, you can lose more than you win as long as you string together a winstreak. This is the system @SilverBride has been discussing in this thread but it is NOT what other people have been complaining about. This system has no bearing on the leaderboard and as I've described is a weird hybrid xp/elo bar. ZOS has made this even more confusing by choosing to display it like an XP/progress bar. Some still see it as a tier system where not everyone 'deserves' to be promoted while some see it as a meter that should fill if they play enough games. For the most part, it is trivial to blast through all the lower tiers and reach Rubedite so you don't see a lot of discussion surrounding this.

The one that most other people are/were discussing and that was changed in u35 is the point/elo system in Rubedite.

Prepatch: After playing your first match after being promoted to Rubedite you are assigned a starting elo/point rating (1000 if you won, less if you lost). These points were the ones that swung wildly, people gained and lost anywhere between 0 and 1000 points after a single game! The point gain/loss was pretty obviously based on a variant of 'elo' where you gained less/lost more against a much lower rated player. Streaks did not affect this, unlike the other system in lower tiers. These are the points that determine the leaderboard ranking.

Postpatch: Point gain/loss was capped at 150 but there is still no minimum gain so people still gain 0 points for wins. You can have fewer points after winning 5 games and losing 1.

As you mentioned, you are now awarded 4 wins in your placements if you placed in Rubedite the previous season. That is the extent of the 'memory' and still has very little bearing on the outcome. Win or lose your 1 remaining placement match, you will get placed in Quicksilver. Even without the 'free' wins, a 3-2 placement record can see you placed in Quicksilver. It's really quite pointless.

Season 4: The starting elo/point assigned in Rubedite is now 250. Not too sure what bearing this will have on matchmaking/points.

I know you mean well in trying to help out someone frustrated with the game's systems but your lack of understanding of how things work currently has only added more confusion. I suspect @SilverBride 's source for a 550 point win might have confused the two systems as well, I don't believe there are any other points awarded for wins below Rubedite other than 110, 210 and 310.

EDIT: sorry I confused @spartaxoxo for another commenter in this thread

kevkj wrote: »

There are two different point systems at work.

The highest tier is Rubedite.
In the tiers below that, you get 110, 210, 310 points for a win and a fixed -100 points for a loss.

I very much doubt that the system is recording our previous systems ratings and not using it, as it's generally easier to climb through the ranks faster to Rubedite with the 110, 210, and 310 after the first time you reach Rubedite. For example, I know the first season I didn't even get Quicksilver. And the matchmaker didn't assign me bonus points and I got the occasional +0 for a win. I got significantly better at the game the next season (watching videos, playing against good players, etc), and placed in Ebony again. But the system started assigning me bonus points a lot, and I speed ran not only through Quicksilver, but all the way to Rubedite. It basically rained bonus points on my account. So, I know that this system works lower than Rubedite as well. It was pretty obvious to me that the system placed me in Ebony the second season because that's where I had climbed to the first season and had actually almost got to Quicksilver. And I don't think it would have placed me in Ebony again and then tossed a lot of bonus points my way to speed me through to Quicksilver if it hadn't remembered my performance from the previous season and wasn't trying to push me quickly through the second go-around.

At the very least, this was exactly how I presumed it would work based off other hidden MMR systems (the +110 points is SR, not MMR) and it's exactly what it did.

kevkj wrote: »

It is pointless trying to frame the point system below Rubedite as an elo system, because it is not. Everyone (bar those who lose more than they win) floats upwards and you cannot drop beyond a certain level.

What do you mean you can't drop below a certain level? Like you can't go from Ebony to Orichalcum? I wasn't winning at a significantly different rate from the first season, I just got bonus points for winning way more often. And I know some people who didn't get those points often and wondered how I was climbing so fast, so I seriously doubt the decision to assign bonus points isn't being made by the matchmaker.

kevkj wrote: »

Yes, exactly. If you want to think of Orichalcum to Voidsteel as an elo system, then it goes from 0 to 4000 but once you clear 1000, 2000, 3000 you cannot drop below that (once you hit 4000, you leave this system and move into the Rubedite system).

Veryamedliel wrote: »

You can de-rank as you call it until you hit voidsteel. Once there and above, I've never dropped back to another category. And yes, I've actually tried to drop in every category just to see what would happen. It has a few benefits, but I'm sure that'll get patched eventually. You still remain rankless on the leaderboard though while in voidsteel. Once you're Rubidite you're on the leaderboard and can't drop off it for the remainder of the season.

This is how I saw deranking reported, and I assumed it was just a bug you couldn't derank voidsteel. But I wouldn't know as I never had an issue with deranking. I had issues with being able to gain points in both Rubedite and Ebony (although that might have been bugs) but never hit a point where I'd derank.

Dragonnord wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I do have a knowledge of the game and all the decks. Sometimes I just can't get good cards. It happens.

Should a poker player in a tournament lose all the money they won on previous hands just because they lost one hand afterward?

Poker doesn't work that way, and yes, a player can lose all the money if they put it all on the table in a hand.

And that's a single Poker hand, you said it, but here in TOT we are talking about points towards rankings and leaderboards. It's something completely different.

Anyways, with all due respect, if someone can't get to Rubedite rank, they definitely don't have enough knowledge of the game yet. That's why you see mostly the same players in the rankings and the rest struggling to reach Rubedite.
 

That's just not true. There is a lot of luck that comes into play in these games. You could have all the knowledge of the game in the world but if the cards don't fall your way, you're done.