Hey everyone!
As we discussed in our previous update, Patch 5 sees two big changes to our ranking system: League Demotions and the Dynamic Ranking system. These are aimed at making sure that your Rank actually matters and represents your real skill level. If you're curious about the latest Patch Notes, you can read them here!
LEAGUE DEMOTIONS
- After reaching 0 RP at the bottom of a league (Division 3), players will enter a “Risk of Demotion” state and lose their first “Shield”
- Players will have two total “Shields” protecting them from a demotion
- After each loss at 0 RP, the player will lose a Shield
- After losing all “Shields”, players will enter “Last Chance” and their next loss will result in a demotion to the lower league
- A win while in “Risk of Demotion” state will take the player out that state, give them the win’s RP, and restore 1 shield
We want to add more stakes to the Ranked system, but also want to take some of the tension off the demotion experience. Having multiple chances to stay in the current league should allow players to avoid suffering too much from the natural variance of game results.
DYNAMIC RANKING
- On top of their normal RP gains and losses at the end of a game, a player’s RP will be slightly adjusted according to their MMR and the expected MMR of their current Rank
- This adjustment does NOT depend on the MMR or Rank of the other players in the game
- The MMR system we use allows to estimate your skill level and create balanced matches, and our data shows that it is efficient at doing so in sufficiently populated regions
- Dynamic Ranking will adjust your Rank at the end of games, to place you over time in a league and division that more closely represents your actual skill level
- These adjustments will be small to begin with, 3 points maximum per game. We will be closely observing the impact of this system to determine if these adjustments should be bigger in the future.
- For example: if I am in the Platinum Division, but my hidden MMR value is closer to the average of Elite players’ MMR, I will gain more RP after wins and lose less after losses.
- The Dynamic Ranking system is a part of our ranking system that we wanted to have at launch but had to push back to focus on the more pressing issues of stability and performance. It is very similar in logic to the systems in other games like League of Legends for example.
- Its absence meant that some players could exploit the ranking system to get to higher Ranks than they should be, but also meant that some players had a very hard time reaching their real rank. We expect it to have a significant impact on player distribution across rank and should, over time, ensure that Ranks are a much better representation of player skill.
RANKING AND MATCHMAKING NEXT STEPS
This update should deeply change the Ranking experience for all players, and we will give it a bit of time to settle. We do already have next steps in mind to make it feel more fair and rewarding, and are looking at the subject of “Solo queue vs Premade” issues specifically.
Allowing Premades in ranked, whatever the difference in skill between players, is better for the player and social experience in general, by reducing friction to play with your friends, but it does have a big impact on the disparity of skill levels you will see in games.For the moment, our data surprisingly doesn’t show a huge impact on win rate when playing as a premade rather than a solo player, and we are working on improving our data tracking tools to have better insight into the subject and make the right decisions going forward.
Once again, thank you all for playing Rematch, and see you next time!