Editors Note - June 15th, 2022 The corrections to Rank Points noted below are now complete.
With the release of our Season One update and the launch of our first ever ranked ladder, it’s been an exciting couple of months for Age of Empires IV! We’ve enjoyed watching you all climb the ladders, and we’ve appreciated all your ideas about how we can continue to evolve the Seasons and ranked ladder experience.
Recently, you’ve told us that something feels off with the number of Rank Points assigned following victories and losses. We realize you haven’t heard back from us specifically on this topic just yet, and that as we enter the final weeks of Ranked Season One, understanding how the Rank Point calculations are working (and whether they’re working as expected) becomes increasingly important. While we’ve been quiet, the team has been looking into the issue and developing a plan forward.
In short, our investigations revealed that there is a bug impacting how Rank Points are assigned following Ranked matches; specifically, we’ve found that both the ranges and average number of Rank Points awarded or deducted for a win or loss don’t match our design intentions. Ultimately, this bug has resulted in a lower number of awarded Rank Points and a lower total Rank for participants. You can find some of the math provided by the team below.
Thankfully, this is something we can fix, and we plan to do so starting tomorrow, June 15th. We’ll not only be issuing a change that ensures the possible number of Rank Points received or deducted for a win or loss mirrors the intended design for ranked Season One, but we’ll be retroactively updating calculations from ranked Season One.
So what does this mean for your Rank? Starting tomorrow, you may notice a higher Tier or Rank than you have today. We’ll note that in some cases, this change could be slight – so individuals may not climb the ladder multiple tiers as a result of this change, or jump from Silver to Conqueror. We expect this will see more ranked players in Silver or higher.
Not only will Ranks be corrected tomorrow, but calculations should no longer fall out of sync through the remainder of Ranked Season One, set to end on June 30th. We’ll also be sure this bug fix carries over to future ranked seasons, and while we can’t share any information just yet on other ways Rank Point calculations may change in the future, we’ll be sure to follow up with any major changes coming in Ranked Season Two.