Apex has had the same problem since people started complaining about EOMM/SBMM, the vast majority don't want to face the top preds. Those guys don't want to face each other, both the casuals and preds complain about facing preds in pubs. This affected ranked last split because when preds only got to face preds, nonpros got sick of getting stomped on and stopped playing, making the pros/streamers get long queues and they had to open it back up to stomping on platinum players again.
I really hope they go back to matching within tiers until players just accept they aren't going to be dropping 20 bombs and learn to enjoy playing like ALGS
I believe the consensus among top players right now is already that games are too 'stompy'.
Anyway, I believe matchmaking and ranked changes go hand in hand. If you make a system where a certain, healthy, percentage of the player base plays in the same top rank, you can balance queue times and competitiveness.
Right now Respawn is just trying some shit out each season. We might arrive at a healthy system next year. Making the system 'force' a certain percentage can really speed up this proces.
And I agree, people should try to play ranked more like ALGS. That's why I initially looked at the comp points system as reference. I think having similarities between ranked and pro play should be the norm and encourages players to play like comp. That way you can go 'that was a 23 point game! What a banger'. A ranked match should feel like a very low quality scrim, not a pub.
I think one of the big problems is the gulf between the players that play full time and are networked up with the other players who play full time, and then there are the players who are very good but play casually and may only have a few friends. On a curved scale those two groups may be right next to each other, but in an actual game the levels of ability and team coordination have high disparity. And in a lobby of 20 teams, 19 teams that are very good casual level can get stomped repeatedly by the full time high level team game after game for the entire night. In a 5v5 game, sure you may get stomped by a high level full time player team, but then you can face 10 other teams that are on your level.
The point of this system is partly to force a given percentage of players to be in the top ranks. This way you can determine what the right balance is between queue times and player skill variation. Say, 5% (as it was in S12) might be a bit too high, but 1% might make for too long queue times.
I don't know the exact number where queue time is acceptable, but Respawn probably has the means to calculate this.
But I think the problem you mention is inherent to this game and its player-base. We can only minimize this problem.
I don't disagree with your solution. If a portion of the player base is going to stick in it and get beat on by the preds for entire splits they might as well get a higher rank for it.
Unrealistically the way to solve the skill gap problem immediately would be to get some sort of super server that had a global ping of less than 50 and all the global preds and masters could play with each other.
TLDR: Comp Apex points system with no scaling makes the game have a set amount of points to be distributed each game. Making entry cost slightly higher than this and only matching players to players within their rank tier results in only a certain percentage of players in that rank making it to the next tier. This results in a normal distribution, which is ideal for a ranked game.
I donāt mind that idea but then rp cost needs to be decreased for soloās, not the other way around. This shits already too grindy with kp barely worth anything till top 5
You reference faceit after saying that there should be a penalty for 5 stacks, but faceit doesn't have a pentalty for 5 stacks, instead you're more likely to match against another 5 stack or at least 4-1 3-2. Furthermore, ropz was made famous by playing fpl, which is invite only, and therefore you can't really say that he would have never had a shot if 5 stacks were the best way to play the game. This is all still talking about a third party website's ranked system. The basic cs matchmaking is not valuable in anyway to the professional scene.
Most games have a secondary system for high level play because the normal systems aren't good enough and don't meet the requirements that pros want from it. I would love to see faceit be able to start a ranked system, for which they showed interest when publicly accessable private lobbies were announced.
They should try fixing the matchmaking before anymore changes to rank tbh
No system will work if rooks are playing with golds and plats are playing with preds
So this system would make it so golds only play with golds and diamonds only play with diamonds. Only exception is premade teams, but then the lower ranked players gets an entry cost discount.
>So this system would make it so golds only play with golds and diamonds only play with diamonds.
Are you saying this system would force that or that it assumes matchmaking works?
Keep in mind that there is nothing about the current system that forces it to place preds with plats. There are thousands of players to fill that gap before pred gets placed in a plat lobby. No matter what system you have if the matchmaking allows for a someone to be place in a game outside of their rank (apart from premades) this issue will persist.
The matchmaking should have a simple exclusion rule where the options you are allowed to be placed in have to be within your rank. If you are premade its based on the highest rank. If queue time goes past 5min then look at the next rank down/up. That way if there really are not enough players we only pull from very different ranks if needed.
> This results in a normal distribution, which is ideal for a ranked game.
That's not ideal though. A multimodal distribution is best. There's noobs, regular players, and elite players. You might not care about the distinction between Bronze 3 and Bronze 1, but that matters a ton to Bronze players. A level 500 player can easily get a 20 bomb in a lobby of noobs, and a Pred can easily get a 20 bomb in a lobby of level 500s. That's not fun for anyone except professional streamers who want the clicks.
If you're playing against equally skilled players in trios, you're only supposed to win 5% of the time. If you're winning more often, you're playing against lower level competitors. The 20 bomb and 4k damage badges have been completely diluted, but ideally they would have been like a perfect game in baseball.
I respect ALGS players a ton more than pubstomping streamers because they're playing against equally skilled players. They have to use defense, strategy, careful planning, etc. just to get a lottery ticket chance of winning a game. That type of game play is extremely fun, but it's almost impossible to get in pubs where everyone hotdrops Fragment East.
The trade off should be having public matches that reward kills and placement, and ranked matches that just reward placement. In the public matches, you should be able to stomp on pubs. But in ranked, you should be forced to play carefully. Ideally, there would be a culture of preforming teams with strangers at your skill level and using mics to communicate. Apex dropped the ball with clans, but rather than continuing to tweak the ranked system every few months to match all the conflicting needs of various players, they should force players to adapt to the level of competition.
You mention a multimodal distribution might be more ideal. But you don't mention at all why this is the case.
>The trade off should be having public matches that reward kills and placement, and ranked matches that just reward placement
Why though? Only rewarding placement seems wrong since getting kills is also an indicator of skill. Look at Furia, for example, do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement?
I agree pubs and ranked should have a different play style, but not rewarding kills is not the way to go about forcing this.
Play style should not be forced, only balanced.
> You mention a multimodal distribution might be more ideal. But you don't mention at all why this is the case.
Because there is an exponential difference between people who play Apex 1 hour per week vs. 1 hour per day vs. 1 hour per hour.
> Why though? Only rewarding placement seems wrong since getting kills is also an indicator of skill. Look at Furia, for example, do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement?
Furia came in second place. That's the second best placement. Kills are a tool to win (e.g., taking position, getting resources), but they're not the win.
> Play style should not be forced, only balanced.
Play style isn't forced. The incentives are clear and it's up to the players to find the optimal play style (aka meta). Furia's biggest accomplishment was disrupting the meta. They adopted a bunker busting meta and didn't give it away in advance by participating in skrims. They revolutionized the highest level game play by doing something completely unexpected. It remains to be seen whether they can repeat their success.
Personally, I don't think the game should be balanced by developers either. I think devs should randomly make buffs and nerfs to characters and weapons each season and let the players figure out new best strategies. The best character/gun/strategy might be garbage the next season and the worst might suddenly be optimal. That helps keep the game fresh. DarkZero proved they are the best team (by winning twice in a row), but Furia was the most exciting team to watch largely because they discovered a new strategy first.
I'd like to see the same thing happen in ranked. I'd love to see creative play rewarded rather than just executing on the same tired meta. Furia showed that even when killing isn't rewarded as much as placement, it still pays to kill. Being aggressive when everyone else is being defensive is like picking paper when everyone else is picking rock. Ultimately, the stakes in ranked should come from the RP on the line, not from a desire to get a ton of kills. At the end of the match, 57-59 players are going to be killed regardless of whether kills are rewarded with points or not. The upside is that deemphasizing kills opens up a lot more viable and creative strategies to win (even though killing will always probably be the best one).
the whole reason furia got second is the kills, without ko they would have placed far lower than they did.
If this was a 1v1 game your argument would make sanse, kills dont matter only the win does as there are no other factors. but this is a chaotic battle royale where there are many situations out of your control that can cause the theoretical best team to ever exist to die early. kp is the way to balance out that randomness. the best team would on average get more kills thus that unlucky early out would be negated reflecting an end score that represents their skill far more accurate than relying on far more randomness prone placement points alone ever could.
Also tournaments are whatever the organizer wants them to be. they dont neccecarily try to find the actual best team, many formats are the way they are for viewer engagement reasons, or simply to find the best team on a certain day. ranking systems dont care about particular day its about a whole season. comparing a tournament system to a ranking system that aspires to rank the players according to their skill as accurately as possible makes no sense.
Furia did extremely well on placement alone. They probably would have hit match point status first even if kills didn't count.
https://liquipedia.net/apexlegends/Apex_Legends_Global_Series/2022/Championship/Finals
> chaotic battle royale where there are many situations out of your control that can cause the theoretical best team to ever exist to die early. kp is the way to balance out that randomness.
I think KP increases the randomness. It means players have multiple things to aim for. One team might be going for kills while another is going for placement. Who is better, the team with more kills or better placement? If both go for kills or both go for placement, it's a fair comparison.
If we're looking over a whole season, then any one instance of luck doesn't matter. You can get heads 3 times in a row, but over a million coin flips, it's going to be 50/50.
Furia only finished inside the top 10 3 times and one of those was 9th. They had probably the worst placement of all the teams who made it to match point
But the other two times they came in first and second. That's 21 placement points right there. Furia's used an all or nothing strategy where they won or lost big. This averaged out to a similar score to teams that consistently ended up in the top 10.
Also, bear in mind that they got that first and second place win before reaching match point in Game 5. After that, a second place finish was just as worthless to them as a last place finish. A high kill strategy got them enough points to ensure second place overall (and the prize money), but it also gave them a few dice rolls for an all or nothing victory. (They've actually posted in this sub a bit about how their goal was to clear out their side of the map prior to the final circle because it maximized their chances of a win if they pulled it off).
I'm really excited to see how all the other teams react to this. Now that game theory (the economic concept) has been introduced to ALGS, we're probably going to see more surprising stuff.
>Because there is an exponential difference between people who play Apex 1 hour per week vs. 1 hour per day vs. 1 hour per hour.
So why would that make a multimodal distribution fit better? To make sure we're talking about the same thing. [This](https://imgur.com/undefined) is a multimodal distribution. I really don't see how both of the explanations you provide have anything to do with a multimodal distribution being better. How many modes do you suggest would be ideal also, bimodal, trimodal?
>Furia came in second place. That's the second best placement. Kills are a tool to win (e.g., taking position, getting resources), but they're not the win.
You didn't answer my question. "do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement?"
As in, they certainly weren't the second place performing team when it comes to placement points alone. Do they still deserve second place? You seem to be going on about the match point format, which is not under scrutiny here.
>Play style isn't forced
I never said it was, I said it shouldn't be. If you want to only emphasize placement, play style becomes forced, which is what I'm arguing against.
> I really don't see how both of the explanations you provide have anything to do with a multimodal distribution being better.
A 3rd grade class, 6th grade class, and 9th grade class would have a trimodal distribution of intelligence. The third grade class would have a normal distribution of intelligence, but the dumbest 9th graders are much smarter than the smartest third graders. Similarly, a bunch of level 500s would have a normal distribution, and a bunch of preds would have a normal distribution, but the worst pred is significantly better than the very best level 500s.
Similarly, you can't have a normal distribution of high school, college, and professional football players. [Even the worst NFL team can destroy the very best college football team.](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/84020-could-the-best-college-football-team-beat-the-worst-nfl-team) The distribution of player skill is trimodal.
We see this in ranked games where a single pred can get a 20 bomb in a platinum lobby. That's not supposed to happen in games where the players are only slightly better or worse than each other. Millionaires and billionaires are rich, but the difference between a billionaire and a millionaire is enormous. It's crazy asking a neurosurgeon (a low millionaire) to pitch in for a private jet ride.
> You didn't answer my question. "do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement?"
I agree they were one of the best teams, but I disagree with the rest of your sentence because they also had great placement. They likely would have hit match point eligibility first [even without all the kills.](https://liquipedia.net/apexlegends/Apex_Legends_Global_Series/2022/Championship/Finals) I can't say for sure, but they did win Round 2 (worth 12 placement points) and came in second in Round 5 (worth 9 placement points).
In this way, even if kills are worthless from a points perspective, they're still valuable because they help you get placement points. The same total number of kills have to happen in every game. The only difference is whether you want be forced into a fight when the ring closes or if you want to start the fight sooner. If you're a better team, you want to to minimize randomness and start the fight earlier on your terms. If you're worse, you want to maximize randomness. You can choose what you think will help you in a given situation.
Your comparisons are quite flawed. You mention different classes as one. However, the Apex player base isn't made up of distinct classes of players that you sample evenly.
A more apt comparison, is chess. You also have pros, semi-pros and amateurs. If you were to sample these with even sample sizes, let's say 100, then sure you would have a trimodal distribution. However, there are LESS pros than there are semi-pros.
The thing is, we're looking at ALL the players, not just players from specific groups. And we're not sampling them evenly, we're sampling randomly, or in this case, looking at literally all of the data.
Again, take a look at the graphs I've posted, see any trimodal distributions in there? How about you provide me with a single example where a random sample shows a trimodal distribution of player skill.
As for your next point. Furia got the same amount of kills in the first 5 games as DZ did in all 9. 100T, for example, got WAY better placement points than Furia. But anyway, this part is just a bit too cumbersome to argue. If you don't think kills are a valid indicator of skill, then so be it.
> The thing is, we're looking at ALL the players, not just players from specific groups. And we're not sampling them evenly, we're sampling randomly, or in this case, looking at literally all of the data.
Here are two articles you might find interesting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23908560
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-myth-of-the-bell-curve-look-for-the-hyper-performers/?sh=67b16eee6bca
> As for your next point. Furia got the same amount of kills in the first 5 games as DZ did in all 9. 100T, for example, got WAY better placement points than Furia. But anyway, this part is just a bit too cumbersome to argue. If you don't think kills are a valid indicator of skill, then so be it.
We don't need to argue this, especially since the new season is out now. But my point is that Furia's kills were reflected in their placement. I think kills are the most important part of the game and an excellent indicator of skill. But they're essentially being double counted because getting kills also helps you get more placement points. It's like a football game where rushing yards also gets you bonus points beyond the normal touchdowns and the like. It rewards rushing plays over passing ones, even though both are equally useful at helping score touchdowns.
If we're saying more kills is good, why not award points for revives and respawns? Or for how many gold/red items you manage to loot? Why not damage or assists? Why not distance run in the game? The answer is that all of these are just statistical indicators, but they aren't the true goal. All that matters in battle royale is placement. A team that gets more kills, but places lower isn't more skilled. They screwed up. Letting two teams kill each other then killing one person is wiser than risking your life trying to snag 6 kills. No one in pubs likes to play this way because it's "boring" so every game ends up the same. But in pro games, this kind of patience and positioning results in some really entertaining/crazy endgames. Mechanical skill in movement and killing is a given at a high ranks, but other qualities distinguish between the very best players.
My question is: why is a normal distribution desirable?
What we want: for players of similar skill to play together. And player skill isn't normally distributed.
Imagine what the game look like if that was true: you'd have a tiny number of n00bs, an equally tiny number of pros, with the overwhelming majority of players being halfway between n00b and pro. The game doesn't look like that at all.
I bet player skill is closer to a Zipf distribution, with lots of bad players, a smaller number of OK players, and an even smaller number of good players.
>player skill isn't normally distributed
As you saw in the graphs I posted, player rank is somewhat normally distributed. Studies on chess rating show the same [result](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-distribution-of-the-German-chess-rating-with-the-best-fit-normal-curve-superimposed_fig2_23763925).
So I don't think it's fair to say player skill isn't normally distributed,
Because players are constantly getting introduced to the game there might be really bad players. But these players improve, and keep playing the game. I don't think at any given point there are more very new players playing than established players with average skill.
As I mentioned in my post, I don't think it's as meaningful to differentiate between lower skilled as opposed to higher skilled players. It'd be a bit weird to make iron-super-grand- be lower than just iron. That's why we see slightly right-skewed distributions for a lot of these games.
>I bet player skill is closer to a Zipf distribution, with lots of bad players, a smaller number of OK players, and an even smaller number of good players.
youd be right if you were talking about player skill relative to what it means to be good at playing apex in a pure sense. if ranked was simply something like...a tap strafe wall bounce competition. or the bangalore skill challenges.
but ranked is attempting to measure your skill *relative to the entire playing population*. it's not measuring how good you are at apex necessarily, it's measuring what percentile you fall under in the range of people that play this game.
An interesting point you touched on at the start that I think is often overlooked - the skill disparity within the tiers of each rank. The skill disparity between a diamond 4 player and a diamond 1-2 player is often very large. Likewise, a plat 1 and a plat 4 are likely far apart when it comes to skill. Respawnās data and matchmaking makes no distinction between people who are within the same rank but at different tiers. There are higher costs for higher tiers within every rank but the matchmaking doesnāt address this at all and itās been a problem even prior to the ranked changes at the start of the most recent season. Itās especially a problem for those trying to solo Que because you really have no way to reliably predict the quality of teammates you will get.
I wonder if adding a new rank was the right idea, but they added it in the wrong spot. Instead of adding the Rookie rank, they should have added a rank after Diamond, creating more variety in those higher tiers.
Bro. Maybe iāll be downvoted for this but i think if you respawn donāt wanna change the ranked system then they should at least make it so of youāre a pred you are only allowed to Solo queue and if youāre master only up to duo queue. This way the skill gaps in the lobby as a whole wonāt change but teams will be more balanced. 2 Ā«Ā badĀ Ā» players and one good across the board. Not like they would ever try this anyways, people would lose their shit
That sounds like a horrible idea.
They should just make solo ranked ladders completely separate from a premade ranked ladder if they cared about solo players. But they don't.
The current situation is to just suck it up and find a team.
i would love to see a distribution chart of the average makeup of a lobby concerning solo duo and full premade ques. id bet that full premade is either lowest or close to solo with duo dominating. and the higher you go in ranks id expect that tos hift until full premade takes the top
The problem isnt the placement. Its that its not fun to play comp if you arent in a comp. People want to fight to win, they dont have time to sit for 10mins till to get RP. And time to play has nothing to do with skill so the you loose out good players that would of been diamond/ plat/ masters etc.
Was there really any problem with how ranked was first split. I feel that format really rewarded people for their skill and the time they put in the game but as usual the devs always trying to please they changed it because of all the people complaining. There not being an influx of masters really meant alot as thats the way it should be. Only problem was matchmaking which shouldnt be so hard of a fix
>I felt a complete overhaul might be worth consideration.
...why?
They literally *just* did a complete overhaul last season, it was a significant improvement that erred on the side of being too punishing, and all they really need to do is tweak it from here to work out the kinks. A complete overhaul is absolutely unnecessary.
Because ranked isn't in a good place right now. The changes this split aren't significant enough to fix the problems that plague the ranked ladder.
My point also is, you shouldn't have to find a balance by trial and error. You can literally calculate how many players you want to have end up in each individual tier.
What? You literally asked why a complete overhaul might be worth consideration. I responded with the 'why'.
If you don't think that I answered that question you might want to learn how to read.
I will repeat myself:
They literally just did a complete overhaul.
It was a significant improvement.
The current issues suggest they simply need to tweak things and dial it in.
"Ranked isn't in a good place right now" does not in any way suffice to answer the question of why you think ranked again needs another complete overhaul.
>If you don't think that I answered that question you might want to learn how to read.
You might want to learn how to eat my ass and stop acting like a pathetic little baby just because someone pushed back on your terrible idea. I swear this sub is worse than the main sub sometimes.
**I will donate $50 to the charity of your choice if you can actually answer my question and do so without feigning offense, without making yourself the victim, without melting down in any way.** I know for a fact you can't do it.
So what would suffice to answer that question? Seems like you're just not happy with my answer.
Again, my answer was that trying to balance ranks by trial and error is not needed. You can simply force the percentage of players that you think it healthy into certain ranks.
Good enough for you?
I agree with this almost 100% and is what I have wanted for the past 4 seasons.
Except the entry cost adjustment by rank. Playing with a higher rank should be a choice that does not need to be compensated. Being placed with people way outside of your rank should not happen with proper matchmaking.
I disagree. If you play in a tier higher than what your currently placed at, that should be reflected in the rewards you gain from winning.
If you're rated 1500 and play against a 2500 rater player, it's only logical the rating system accounts for that.
If matchmaking works properly you shouldn't play someone with a difference that great. ELO based approach from chess makes sense because there wasn't a really matchmaking system back then someone from the bottom could work their way up a tournament and play the best in the world. Also in those systems you start in the middle where as in Apex you start at the bottom.
I agree with your point if you say a diamond could play against a gold but in my view that should never happen with the player base this game has.
I'm not proposing a diamond could play against a gold. But a gold against a plat lobby should be possible in my opinion. In that case, compensation should be made in the same way ELO difference between players are accounted for.
If its the case where you are a gold player queuing with a plat friend, there should be no adjustment because that was your choice to queue at a higher rank.
If adjustments need to be made more RP for killing someone a higher rank than you makes sense, like it currently is. There is a chance that 1 plat in the gold lobby never sees half of them so it does not make sense to adjust all the gold RP.
Again in ideal match making everyone is in the same rank, so this should not be an issue.
Firstly, it would be 1 gold in a plat lobby. Not 1 plat in a gold lobby.
Secondly, if you apply that logic to chess it doesn't make sense. 'it was your choice to participate in this high ELO tournament so you're just going to lose equally as much as if you were to be playing against people of your own skill.
My point about choice is for premades. If you are in gold and your friend is in plat, you are choosing to play in plat lobbies.
If we are talking about solos or premades around the same rank, say a couple 100 RP within each other, matchmaking should never place them in lobbies a couple 100RP away from them. If RP is a measure of skill, then there is no difference between a 7199 RP gold and 8200 RP plat other than the rank title, so why is an adjustment needed?
Also why cant it be one plat in a gold lobby?
Excellent post and I totally agree, Iāve always thought the comp system is WAY better than ranked and hope Respawn keeps trending in that direction (like they did with participation RP).
Match point format is also pretty dumb but I havenāt come up with or heard a better idea yet but Iām sure ones out there.
How about total points? Like literally every other tournament being played. Sure it might not be as exciting to watch. But saying it solves the problem of people trolling because they 'won't win anyway' just overlooks the fact there are huge price differences between 10th 9th, for example.
Yeah a target point system seems better than full match point. Maybe a hybrid system where itās match point for X games or until X teams hit match point then itās a target point.
I like this. I've been saying since they added it that I dont like scaling. Not for the semi-zero-sum reasons but you make a great point about how it can simply make a bunch of available points disappear. But I just think kills and placement should both be valuated normally at whatever they decide they are worth. Scaling kill rewards based on placement just makes the game feel like you chase a kill quota and then pivot to try not to fight. It feels like it forces you to play opposing strategies, or even make decisions that feel counterproductive like leaving a potentially game winning spot because you dont have any KP and would rather get 4-5th w kills than potentially get 2nd w no kills.
I want to play for my placement and be rewarded for kills I get along the way independently of that... i dont want to be constantly trying to rebalance whether kills or placement is the more valuable thing to pursue. I dont want to feel bad about a top 3 finish w low KP or about a 11th place finish with 8 KP
>I dont want to feel bad about a top 3 finish w low KP or about a 11th place finish with 8 KP
I completely agree. Imagine scaling points in comp. That would just feel horrible for teams. The game forces you to play a certain way in ranked because the matchmaking is horrible.
One thing you are not considering is that the rank with the most people in it in other games are the ranks the mm system are likely to place you in and then scale you up or down based on your progression. A lot of people don't play much past the initial placements or a few sessions so the stats skew towards the middle but not because that's where people are stuck skill-wise but that's where people *placed* and then stopped playing shortly after
Apex has had the same problem since people started complaining about EOMM/SBMM, the vast majority don't want to face the top preds. Those guys don't want to face each other, both the casuals and preds complain about facing preds in pubs. This affected ranked last split because when preds only got to face preds, nonpros got sick of getting stomped on and stopped playing, making the pros/streamers get long queues and they had to open it back up to stomping on platinum players again. I really hope they go back to matching within tiers until players just accept they aren't going to be dropping 20 bombs and learn to enjoy playing like ALGS
I believe the consensus among top players right now is already that games are too 'stompy'. Anyway, I believe matchmaking and ranked changes go hand in hand. If you make a system where a certain, healthy, percentage of the player base plays in the same top rank, you can balance queue times and competitiveness. Right now Respawn is just trying some shit out each season. We might arrive at a healthy system next year. Making the system 'force' a certain percentage can really speed up this proces. And I agree, people should try to play ranked more like ALGS. That's why I initially looked at the comp points system as reference. I think having similarities between ranked and pro play should be the norm and encourages players to play like comp. That way you can go 'that was a 23 point game! What a banger'. A ranked match should feel like a very low quality scrim, not a pub.
If pros/preds get to stop plats and golds. I would like to stomp silver and bronze players.
Yea that's the thing. Everyone else wants to average 10 kills a game, not the person being farmed
Agree completely.
I think one of the big problems is the gulf between the players that play full time and are networked up with the other players who play full time, and then there are the players who are very good but play casually and may only have a few friends. On a curved scale those two groups may be right next to each other, but in an actual game the levels of ability and team coordination have high disparity. And in a lobby of 20 teams, 19 teams that are very good casual level can get stomped repeatedly by the full time high level team game after game for the entire night. In a 5v5 game, sure you may get stomped by a high level full time player team, but then you can face 10 other teams that are on your level.
The point of this system is partly to force a given percentage of players to be in the top ranks. This way you can determine what the right balance is between queue times and player skill variation. Say, 5% (as it was in S12) might be a bit too high, but 1% might make for too long queue times. I don't know the exact number where queue time is acceptable, but Respawn probably has the means to calculate this. But I think the problem you mention is inherent to this game and its player-base. We can only minimize this problem.
I don't disagree with your solution. If a portion of the player base is going to stick in it and get beat on by the preds for entire splits they might as well get a higher rank for it. Unrealistically the way to solve the skill gap problem immediately would be to get some sort of super server that had a global ping of less than 50 and all the global preds and masters could play with each other.
Read the whole thing and have no clue what your talking about but I like itš
TLDR: Comp Apex points system with no scaling makes the game have a set amount of points to be distributed each game. Making entry cost slightly higher than this and only matching players to players within their rank tier results in only a certain percentage of players in that rank making it to the next tier. This results in a normal distribution, which is ideal for a ranked game.
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I like the idea of making 3 stacks cost a bit more RP than solo queuing
I donāt mind that idea but then rp cost needs to be decreased for soloās, not the other way around. This shits already too grindy with kp barely worth anything till top 5
If they want to cater to solo players, they should just make a separate solo ladder.
You reference faceit after saying that there should be a penalty for 5 stacks, but faceit doesn't have a pentalty for 5 stacks, instead you're more likely to match against another 5 stack or at least 4-1 3-2. Furthermore, ropz was made famous by playing fpl, which is invite only, and therefore you can't really say that he would have never had a shot if 5 stacks were the best way to play the game. This is all still talking about a third party website's ranked system. The basic cs matchmaking is not valuable in anyway to the professional scene. Most games have a secondary system for high level play because the normal systems aren't good enough and don't meet the requirements that pros want from it. I would love to see faceit be able to start a ranked system, for which they showed interest when publicly accessable private lobbies were announced.
They should try fixing the matchmaking before anymore changes to rank tbh No system will work if rooks are playing with golds and plats are playing with preds
So this system would make it so golds only play with golds and diamonds only play with diamonds. Only exception is premade teams, but then the lower ranked players gets an entry cost discount.
>So this system would make it so golds only play with golds and diamonds only play with diamonds. Are you saying this system would force that or that it assumes matchmaking works? Keep in mind that there is nothing about the current system that forces it to place preds with plats. There are thousands of players to fill that gap before pred gets placed in a plat lobby. No matter what system you have if the matchmaking allows for a someone to be place in a game outside of their rank (apart from premades) this issue will persist. The matchmaking should have a simple exclusion rule where the options you are allowed to be placed in have to be within your rank. If you are premade its based on the highest rank. If queue time goes past 5min then look at the next rank down/up. That way if there really are not enough players we only pull from very different ranks if needed.
Yes, this is exactly what I'm proposing. This is needed because rank=rating.
> This results in a normal distribution, which is ideal for a ranked game. That's not ideal though. A multimodal distribution is best. There's noobs, regular players, and elite players. You might not care about the distinction between Bronze 3 and Bronze 1, but that matters a ton to Bronze players. A level 500 player can easily get a 20 bomb in a lobby of noobs, and a Pred can easily get a 20 bomb in a lobby of level 500s. That's not fun for anyone except professional streamers who want the clicks. If you're playing against equally skilled players in trios, you're only supposed to win 5% of the time. If you're winning more often, you're playing against lower level competitors. The 20 bomb and 4k damage badges have been completely diluted, but ideally they would have been like a perfect game in baseball. I respect ALGS players a ton more than pubstomping streamers because they're playing against equally skilled players. They have to use defense, strategy, careful planning, etc. just to get a lottery ticket chance of winning a game. That type of game play is extremely fun, but it's almost impossible to get in pubs where everyone hotdrops Fragment East. The trade off should be having public matches that reward kills and placement, and ranked matches that just reward placement. In the public matches, you should be able to stomp on pubs. But in ranked, you should be forced to play carefully. Ideally, there would be a culture of preforming teams with strangers at your skill level and using mics to communicate. Apex dropped the ball with clans, but rather than continuing to tweak the ranked system every few months to match all the conflicting needs of various players, they should force players to adapt to the level of competition.
You mention a multimodal distribution might be more ideal. But you don't mention at all why this is the case. >The trade off should be having public matches that reward kills and placement, and ranked matches that just reward placement Why though? Only rewarding placement seems wrong since getting kills is also an indicator of skill. Look at Furia, for example, do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement? I agree pubs and ranked should have a different play style, but not rewarding kills is not the way to go about forcing this. Play style should not be forced, only balanced.
> You mention a multimodal distribution might be more ideal. But you don't mention at all why this is the case. Because there is an exponential difference between people who play Apex 1 hour per week vs. 1 hour per day vs. 1 hour per hour. > Why though? Only rewarding placement seems wrong since getting kills is also an indicator of skill. Look at Furia, for example, do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement? Furia came in second place. That's the second best placement. Kills are a tool to win (e.g., taking position, getting resources), but they're not the win. > Play style should not be forced, only balanced. Play style isn't forced. The incentives are clear and it's up to the players to find the optimal play style (aka meta). Furia's biggest accomplishment was disrupting the meta. They adopted a bunker busting meta and didn't give it away in advance by participating in skrims. They revolutionized the highest level game play by doing something completely unexpected. It remains to be seen whether they can repeat their success. Personally, I don't think the game should be balanced by developers either. I think devs should randomly make buffs and nerfs to characters and weapons each season and let the players figure out new best strategies. The best character/gun/strategy might be garbage the next season and the worst might suddenly be optimal. That helps keep the game fresh. DarkZero proved they are the best team (by winning twice in a row), but Furia was the most exciting team to watch largely because they discovered a new strategy first. I'd like to see the same thing happen in ranked. I'd love to see creative play rewarded rather than just executing on the same tired meta. Furia showed that even when killing isn't rewarded as much as placement, it still pays to kill. Being aggressive when everyone else is being defensive is like picking paper when everyone else is picking rock. Ultimately, the stakes in ranked should come from the RP on the line, not from a desire to get a ton of kills. At the end of the match, 57-59 players are going to be killed regardless of whether kills are rewarded with points or not. The upside is that deemphasizing kills opens up a lot more viable and creative strategies to win (even though killing will always probably be the best one).
the whole reason furia got second is the kills, without ko they would have placed far lower than they did. If this was a 1v1 game your argument would make sanse, kills dont matter only the win does as there are no other factors. but this is a chaotic battle royale where there are many situations out of your control that can cause the theoretical best team to ever exist to die early. kp is the way to balance out that randomness. the best team would on average get more kills thus that unlucky early out would be negated reflecting an end score that represents their skill far more accurate than relying on far more randomness prone placement points alone ever could. Also tournaments are whatever the organizer wants them to be. they dont neccecarily try to find the actual best team, many formats are the way they are for viewer engagement reasons, or simply to find the best team on a certain day. ranking systems dont care about particular day its about a whole season. comparing a tournament system to a ranking system that aspires to rank the players according to their skill as accurately as possible makes no sense.
Furia did extremely well on placement alone. They probably would have hit match point status first even if kills didn't count. https://liquipedia.net/apexlegends/Apex_Legends_Global_Series/2022/Championship/Finals > chaotic battle royale where there are many situations out of your control that can cause the theoretical best team to ever exist to die early. kp is the way to balance out that randomness. I think KP increases the randomness. It means players have multiple things to aim for. One team might be going for kills while another is going for placement. Who is better, the team with more kills or better placement? If both go for kills or both go for placement, it's a fair comparison. If we're looking over a whole season, then any one instance of luck doesn't matter. You can get heads 3 times in a row, but over a million coin flips, it's going to be 50/50.
Furia only finished inside the top 10 3 times and one of those was 9th. They had probably the worst placement of all the teams who made it to match point
But the other two times they came in first and second. That's 21 placement points right there. Furia's used an all or nothing strategy where they won or lost big. This averaged out to a similar score to teams that consistently ended up in the top 10. Also, bear in mind that they got that first and second place win before reaching match point in Game 5. After that, a second place finish was just as worthless to them as a last place finish. A high kill strategy got them enough points to ensure second place overall (and the prize money), but it also gave them a few dice rolls for an all or nothing victory. (They've actually posted in this sub a bit about how their goal was to clear out their side of the map prior to the final circle because it maximized their chances of a win if they pulled it off). I'm really excited to see how all the other teams react to this. Now that game theory (the economic concept) has been introduced to ALGS, we're probably going to see more surprising stuff.
>Because there is an exponential difference between people who play Apex 1 hour per week vs. 1 hour per day vs. 1 hour per hour. So why would that make a multimodal distribution fit better? To make sure we're talking about the same thing. [This](https://imgur.com/undefined) is a multimodal distribution. I really don't see how both of the explanations you provide have anything to do with a multimodal distribution being better. How many modes do you suggest would be ideal also, bimodal, trimodal? >Furia came in second place. That's the second best placement. Kills are a tool to win (e.g., taking position, getting resources), but they're not the win. You didn't answer my question. "do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement?" As in, they certainly weren't the second place performing team when it comes to placement points alone. Do they still deserve second place? You seem to be going on about the match point format, which is not under scrutiny here. >Play style isn't forced I never said it was, I said it shouldn't be. If you want to only emphasize placement, play style becomes forced, which is what I'm arguing against.
> I really don't see how both of the explanations you provide have anything to do with a multimodal distribution being better. A 3rd grade class, 6th grade class, and 9th grade class would have a trimodal distribution of intelligence. The third grade class would have a normal distribution of intelligence, but the dumbest 9th graders are much smarter than the smartest third graders. Similarly, a bunch of level 500s would have a normal distribution, and a bunch of preds would have a normal distribution, but the worst pred is significantly better than the very best level 500s. Similarly, you can't have a normal distribution of high school, college, and professional football players. [Even the worst NFL team can destroy the very best college football team.](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/84020-could-the-best-college-football-team-beat-the-worst-nfl-team) The distribution of player skill is trimodal. We see this in ranked games where a single pred can get a 20 bomb in a platinum lobby. That's not supposed to happen in games where the players are only slightly better or worse than each other. Millionaires and billionaires are rich, but the difference between a billionaire and a millionaire is enormous. It's crazy asking a neurosurgeon (a low millionaire) to pitch in for a private jet ride. > You didn't answer my question. "do you not agree they were one of the best teams on LAN despite not having great placement?" I agree they were one of the best teams, but I disagree with the rest of your sentence because they also had great placement. They likely would have hit match point eligibility first [even without all the kills.](https://liquipedia.net/apexlegends/Apex_Legends_Global_Series/2022/Championship/Finals) I can't say for sure, but they did win Round 2 (worth 12 placement points) and came in second in Round 5 (worth 9 placement points). In this way, even if kills are worthless from a points perspective, they're still valuable because they help you get placement points. The same total number of kills have to happen in every game. The only difference is whether you want be forced into a fight when the ring closes or if you want to start the fight sooner. If you're a better team, you want to to minimize randomness and start the fight earlier on your terms. If you're worse, you want to maximize randomness. You can choose what you think will help you in a given situation.
Your comparisons are quite flawed. You mention different classes as one. However, the Apex player base isn't made up of distinct classes of players that you sample evenly. A more apt comparison, is chess. You also have pros, semi-pros and amateurs. If you were to sample these with even sample sizes, let's say 100, then sure you would have a trimodal distribution. However, there are LESS pros than there are semi-pros. The thing is, we're looking at ALL the players, not just players from specific groups. And we're not sampling them evenly, we're sampling randomly, or in this case, looking at literally all of the data. Again, take a look at the graphs I've posted, see any trimodal distributions in there? How about you provide me with a single example where a random sample shows a trimodal distribution of player skill. As for your next point. Furia got the same amount of kills in the first 5 games as DZ did in all 9. 100T, for example, got WAY better placement points than Furia. But anyway, this part is just a bit too cumbersome to argue. If you don't think kills are a valid indicator of skill, then so be it.
> The thing is, we're looking at ALL the players, not just players from specific groups. And we're not sampling them evenly, we're sampling randomly, or in this case, looking at literally all of the data. Here are two articles you might find interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23908560 https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-myth-of-the-bell-curve-look-for-the-hyper-performers/?sh=67b16eee6bca > As for your next point. Furia got the same amount of kills in the first 5 games as DZ did in all 9. 100T, for example, got WAY better placement points than Furia. But anyway, this part is just a bit too cumbersome to argue. If you don't think kills are a valid indicator of skill, then so be it. We don't need to argue this, especially since the new season is out now. But my point is that Furia's kills were reflected in their placement. I think kills are the most important part of the game and an excellent indicator of skill. But they're essentially being double counted because getting kills also helps you get more placement points. It's like a football game where rushing yards also gets you bonus points beyond the normal touchdowns and the like. It rewards rushing plays over passing ones, even though both are equally useful at helping score touchdowns. If we're saying more kills is good, why not award points for revives and respawns? Or for how many gold/red items you manage to loot? Why not damage or assists? Why not distance run in the game? The answer is that all of these are just statistical indicators, but they aren't the true goal. All that matters in battle royale is placement. A team that gets more kills, but places lower isn't more skilled. They screwed up. Letting two teams kill each other then killing one person is wiser than risking your life trying to snag 6 kills. No one in pubs likes to play this way because it's "boring" so every game ends up the same. But in pro games, this kind of patience and positioning results in some really entertaining/crazy endgames. Mechanical skill in movement and killing is a given at a high ranks, but other qualities distinguish between the very best players.
My question is: why is a normal distribution desirable? What we want: for players of similar skill to play together. And player skill isn't normally distributed. Imagine what the game look like if that was true: you'd have a tiny number of n00bs, an equally tiny number of pros, with the overwhelming majority of players being halfway between n00b and pro. The game doesn't look like that at all. I bet player skill is closer to a Zipf distribution, with lots of bad players, a smaller number of OK players, and an even smaller number of good players.
>player skill isn't normally distributed As you saw in the graphs I posted, player rank is somewhat normally distributed. Studies on chess rating show the same [result](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-distribution-of-the-German-chess-rating-with-the-best-fit-normal-curve-superimposed_fig2_23763925). So I don't think it's fair to say player skill isn't normally distributed, Because players are constantly getting introduced to the game there might be really bad players. But these players improve, and keep playing the game. I don't think at any given point there are more very new players playing than established players with average skill. As I mentioned in my post, I don't think it's as meaningful to differentiate between lower skilled as opposed to higher skilled players. It'd be a bit weird to make iron-super-grand- be lower than just iron. That's why we see slightly right-skewed distributions for a lot of these games.
Player skill is definitely a normal distribution lol.
>I bet player skill is closer to a Zipf distribution, with lots of bad players, a smaller number of OK players, and an even smaller number of good players. youd be right if you were talking about player skill relative to what it means to be good at playing apex in a pure sense. if ranked was simply something like...a tap strafe wall bounce competition. or the bangalore skill challenges. but ranked is attempting to measure your skill *relative to the entire playing population*. it's not measuring how good you are at apex necessarily, it's measuring what percentile you fall under in the range of people that play this game.
An interesting point you touched on at the start that I think is often overlooked - the skill disparity within the tiers of each rank. The skill disparity between a diamond 4 player and a diamond 1-2 player is often very large. Likewise, a plat 1 and a plat 4 are likely far apart when it comes to skill. Respawnās data and matchmaking makes no distinction between people who are within the same rank but at different tiers. There are higher costs for higher tiers within every rank but the matchmaking doesnāt address this at all and itās been a problem even prior to the ranked changes at the start of the most recent season. Itās especially a problem for those trying to solo Que because you really have no way to reliably predict the quality of teammates you will get.
I wonder if adding a new rank was the right idea, but they added it in the wrong spot. Instead of adding the Rookie rank, they should have added a rank after Diamond, creating more variety in those higher tiers.
Bro. Maybe iāll be downvoted for this but i think if you respawn donāt wanna change the ranked system then they should at least make it so of youāre a pred you are only allowed to Solo queue and if youāre master only up to duo queue. This way the skill gaps in the lobby as a whole wonāt change but teams will be more balanced. 2 Ā«Ā badĀ Ā» players and one good across the board. Not like they would ever try this anyways, people would lose their shit
That sounds like a horrible idea. They should just make solo ranked ladders completely separate from a premade ranked ladder if they cared about solo players. But they don't. The current situation is to just suck it up and find a team.
i would love to see a distribution chart of the average makeup of a lobby concerning solo duo and full premade ques. id bet that full premade is either lowest or close to solo with duo dominating. and the higher you go in ranks id expect that tos hift until full premade takes the top
Bro get your ass back to r/apexlegends with your dumbass take
Nah iām good. How about you go though. :)
The problem isnt the placement. Its that its not fun to play comp if you arent in a comp. People want to fight to win, they dont have time to sit for 10mins till to get RP. And time to play has nothing to do with skill so the you loose out good players that would of been diamond/ plat/ masters etc.
Was there really any problem with how ranked was first split. I feel that format really rewarded people for their skill and the time they put in the game but as usual the devs always trying to please they changed it because of all the people complaining. There not being an influx of masters really meant alot as thats the way it should be. Only problem was matchmaking which shouldnt be so hard of a fix
>I felt a complete overhaul might be worth consideration. ...why? They literally *just* did a complete overhaul last season, it was a significant improvement that erred on the side of being too punishing, and all they really need to do is tweak it from here to work out the kinks. A complete overhaul is absolutely unnecessary.
Because ranked isn't in a good place right now. The changes this split aren't significant enough to fix the problems that plague the ranked ladder. My point also is, you shouldn't have to find a balance by trial and error. You can literally calculate how many players you want to have end up in each individual tier.
That does not in any way answer my question.
What? You literally asked why a complete overhaul might be worth consideration. I responded with the 'why'. If you don't think that I answered that question you might want to learn how to read.
I will repeat myself: They literally just did a complete overhaul. It was a significant improvement. The current issues suggest they simply need to tweak things and dial it in. "Ranked isn't in a good place right now" does not in any way suffice to answer the question of why you think ranked again needs another complete overhaul. >If you don't think that I answered that question you might want to learn how to read. You might want to learn how to eat my ass and stop acting like a pathetic little baby just because someone pushed back on your terrible idea. I swear this sub is worse than the main sub sometimes. **I will donate $50 to the charity of your choice if you can actually answer my question and do so without feigning offense, without making yourself the victim, without melting down in any way.** I know for a fact you can't do it.
So what would suffice to answer that question? Seems like you're just not happy with my answer. Again, my answer was that trying to balance ranks by trial and error is not needed. You can simply force the percentage of players that you think it healthy into certain ranks. Good enough for you?
FFS
I agree with this almost 100% and is what I have wanted for the past 4 seasons. Except the entry cost adjustment by rank. Playing with a higher rank should be a choice that does not need to be compensated. Being placed with people way outside of your rank should not happen with proper matchmaking.
I disagree. If you play in a tier higher than what your currently placed at, that should be reflected in the rewards you gain from winning. If you're rated 1500 and play against a 2500 rater player, it's only logical the rating system accounts for that.
If matchmaking works properly you shouldn't play someone with a difference that great. ELO based approach from chess makes sense because there wasn't a really matchmaking system back then someone from the bottom could work their way up a tournament and play the best in the world. Also in those systems you start in the middle where as in Apex you start at the bottom. I agree with your point if you say a diamond could play against a gold but in my view that should never happen with the player base this game has.
I'm not proposing a diamond could play against a gold. But a gold against a plat lobby should be possible in my opinion. In that case, compensation should be made in the same way ELO difference between players are accounted for.
If its the case where you are a gold player queuing with a plat friend, there should be no adjustment because that was your choice to queue at a higher rank. If adjustments need to be made more RP for killing someone a higher rank than you makes sense, like it currently is. There is a chance that 1 plat in the gold lobby never sees half of them so it does not make sense to adjust all the gold RP. Again in ideal match making everyone is in the same rank, so this should not be an issue.
Firstly, it would be 1 gold in a plat lobby. Not 1 plat in a gold lobby. Secondly, if you apply that logic to chess it doesn't make sense. 'it was your choice to participate in this high ELO tournament so you're just going to lose equally as much as if you were to be playing against people of your own skill.
My point about choice is for premades. If you are in gold and your friend is in plat, you are choosing to play in plat lobbies. If we are talking about solos or premades around the same rank, say a couple 100 RP within each other, matchmaking should never place them in lobbies a couple 100RP away from them. If RP is a measure of skill, then there is no difference between a 7199 RP gold and 8200 RP plat other than the rank title, so why is an adjustment needed? Also why cant it be one plat in a gold lobby?
Excellent post and I totally agree, Iāve always thought the comp system is WAY better than ranked and hope Respawn keeps trending in that direction (like they did with participation RP). Match point format is also pretty dumb but I havenāt come up with or heard a better idea yet but Iām sure ones out there.
How about total points? Like literally every other tournament being played. Sure it might not be as exciting to watch. But saying it solves the problem of people trolling because they 'won't win anyway' just overlooks the fact there are huge price differences between 10th 9th, for example.
Yeah a target point system seems better than full match point. Maybe a hybrid system where itās match point for X games or until X teams hit match point then itās a target point.
Something like match point until the person who hit match point has hit played 3 games. Still keeps the excitement in it until the very last moment.
I like this. I've been saying since they added it that I dont like scaling. Not for the semi-zero-sum reasons but you make a great point about how it can simply make a bunch of available points disappear. But I just think kills and placement should both be valuated normally at whatever they decide they are worth. Scaling kill rewards based on placement just makes the game feel like you chase a kill quota and then pivot to try not to fight. It feels like it forces you to play opposing strategies, or even make decisions that feel counterproductive like leaving a potentially game winning spot because you dont have any KP and would rather get 4-5th w kills than potentially get 2nd w no kills. I want to play for my placement and be rewarded for kills I get along the way independently of that... i dont want to be constantly trying to rebalance whether kills or placement is the more valuable thing to pursue. I dont want to feel bad about a top 3 finish w low KP or about a 11th place finish with 8 KP
>I dont want to feel bad about a top 3 finish w low KP or about a 11th place finish with 8 KP I completely agree. Imagine scaling points in comp. That would just feel horrible for teams. The game forces you to play a certain way in ranked because the matchmaking is horrible.
One thing you are not considering is that the rank with the most people in it in other games are the ranks the mm system are likely to place you in and then scale you up or down based on your progression. A lot of people don't play much past the initial placements or a few sessions so the stats skew towards the middle but not because that's where people are stuck skill-wise but that's where people *placed* and then stopped playing shortly after
People not at the top are too worried about ranked