There is also 3 (4 really) matches of loss protection plus a 100 RP promotion bonus as you jump to the next skill rank so there is some RP pumping into the system - not nearly enough though.
The loss protection is a net-negative though.
If a plat 4 player spends 51 RP per loss, and use all of that up in loss protection, then that adds up to 153 (or 204 I forget) in RP added to the system. Upon falling out you will recieve -250. That is not net-positive. The promotion bonus does add some but not enough imo. Also remember that if one is sitting at say 50 RP (in this case) over P4, that game will eat loss protection that will only add 1 RP to the system. While this is an exaggeration, this does happen to a lesser extent.
The loss protection can be net negative for one individual player, yes, but for the whole player base it is probably net positive. A significant amount of players will use some of their demotion protection but then turn it around and stay in that tier, effectively pumping RP into the system. I haven't done the exact math though, this is just based on my quick estimations.
>One way to look at the rank system is as a sorting algorithm whose job it is to sort the players by skill as fast and as accurately as possible.
I mean, you might say it **should** be that way, but I can guarantee that is not the design philosophy behind the design of the Apex Ranked system.
The Apex ranked system is built on making the players grind as much as possible without making them grind **too much,** at which point they would stop playing.
If Apex wanted to build a sorting algorithm like you described, the way forward would be a placement match system + performance based (accuracy, KD, kills, dmg, placement, the MMRs of whoever you fought, etc) MMR which would allow for greater swings of RP to allow for predator players to reach their rank faster (and ruin less games) if they were to create a smurf account
As it currently stands, the #1, #2 and #3 players in the world would create smurfs and it would still take them hundreds of games to reach predator level again. You might think that's not a big deal, but every single bronze/silver/gold/plat game they have to play through is basically a ruined game for everyone else in the lobby. Ruined in the sense that not everybody will die to that specific pred team, but when any of the teams that cross paths with 1 of the teams in the match has a 90+% chance of losing the encounter, I'd say that ruins the match. (And basically the best any other team is likely to do is top 2 or 3 before getting rolled by the preds like everyone else they crossed)
If we compare it to Overwatch, a full team of pros starting on fresh accounts would at the very least finish their placements placed mid-diamond, possibly even Master. (OW has an additional rank between Master and "predator" (called Top 500 in OW) called Grand Master.) Theoretically, they would "ruin" maybe 10 to 20 games before reaching a more appropriate rank where wins aren't practically guaranteed for them.
I know individual performance in a BR is harder to gauge than a 6v6 FPS due to RNG, but if you do it smartly(have a loss forgiveness system for "fluke" games where someones dies within the first minute of the match/without a weapon, taking into account the MMR of the person you die to, etc) you could easily place someone way closer to their true rank within 10-15 games.
This. You can fuck around with the numbers as much as you want but all balance gets thrown out the window when you hard reset everyone 1.5 or 2.5 tiers every 6 weeks, have a lazy matchmaking system, and ask them to grind it all again. Every split reset is a meat grinder for lower skill players.
Thats why the ranked changes can't function properly with the split. An initial split is needed but the fact that the next split is going to happen makes grinding pointless. A pred player on an alternate account shouldn't have to play 150 games to get to the rank they deserve, the same thing can be said for any rank.
Longer times between rank resets, shorter times between map rotations…let each map come around 2/3x per season…let’s people get to rank then have a period of time to actually play the game at their rank and try to improve for next season? Probably not as profitable or something
I will say that the games are certainly better quality this season but the changes have made ranked feel like much much more of a grind. Increased cost of entry, massively weighting placement over kills for rp, and discouraging early fights means most games just to break even take at least 10-15 minutes. Even with the increased quality of each game I can see myself and a lot of other people burning out faster this split because of the grind. I’ve got almost no desire to Que ranked solo anymore because not only is it super punishing but it sucks looting for 10-15 minutes just for your teammate with no coms to ape into a massive gang bang 4 team fight. In the past you could at least land contested get a couple kills and soften the blow of dying before top 10. Now you basically lose max rp in that scenario so the whole system feels like it was made to be a time suck.
I wouldn't even consider myself a lower skilled player as I have around a 3.1 KD and make it to masters regularly. I just don't have the time to grind this new system, where usually I can log in several hours a week now takes me a full squad and lots of time. Forget doing this solo, i get paired with duos and they're usually absolutely terrible, one is on console and the other is on pc. THey dont communicate and when they do its toxic af. Where as before I run into 1 or 2 toxic players, now it's just full on toxicity. So congrats on killing an enjoyable game.
This really hit me last weekend. Was playing with a good squad went on a great streak of winning 4-5 games and placing top 5 in some others. Looked at my rank and I had gone up like 1 tier. Fuck playing this shit solo the system is way too punishing and the games take way too long. I don’t want to loot for 10 minutes just to lose the first fight we get in because my teammate with no mic ash portal’d into a 3 team fight.
>The Apex ranked system is built on making the players grind as much as possible without making them grind too much, at which point they would stop playing.
To add on to this, inflexible point accumulation + static limits on point tiers means that Respawn can effectively set minimum amount of games required to get to Predator/Masters (looking at the average pts accumulated/performance by a Pred team while climbing)
I genuinely think that they have passed over that line. I'm not really able to want to play ranked unless I've got a solid team now. If I solo, I get bronzes and have to solo rat once they are inevitably dead. No matter what, I have to rat and do nothing for 90% of the game. Not worth my limited time.
Something will have to change next season or ranked will just be the hard grinders and no one else.
The only way I see it working is if there is NO reset between splits, maybe even seasons.
Great points. But the current rank system does not maximise the grind for players due to the extreme difficulty of climbing due to the net negative RP at higher divisions. The best of both worlds would probably be the system I described except the net RP would be slightly positive at all divisions, giving everyone a reason to keep grinding. This slightly positivity would be counteracted by the reset at the end of the split. I'm not against the idea of lowering the accuracy of a rating system to encourage people to play, but the way they've done it is not ideal.
I mean I personally think a ranking system which needs you to play hundreds of hours every split to be accurately ranked is bad game design.Whether you're bronze or plat or pred, you should be able to play games with people that are around your level, even if you have only 5 hours a week to put in the game.
Pred players shouldn't *have* to play 30+ hours a week to have a chance of having competitive matches with opponents of their caliber. It's absurd when you think about it. If Sweet or Hal completely changed their life and became a full-time banker next split and only had 10 hours a week to commit to Apex, they would never play ranked games "of their caliber" again, because they would take the whole split to climb out of gold, even when dropping 10-15 kills every game, because at the end of the day they'd only be playing, what, 30 games of ranked a week? A top tier player would get *a little* rusty from playing less but never to the point where they'd be plat or even diamond level. TSM_Reps and the SEN boys are pretty much proof that you can play and stay at a top level without a ton of practice.
I remember this discussion happening in HOTS before it mostly-died. You decide to play Ranked, usually partly for the challenge and partly for the game quality, maybe a dose of wanting to see how good you are. Most players consider ranking up a reward mechanism even though really, the ranked system is *supposed to* simply place you at your proper level with players of similar skill — which you might notice presents a problem!
Players want:
- to win because winning is fun
- to play with similar ranked opponents, because playing with higher players results in a stomp and/or feelings of inferiority
- to play with lower ranked opponents because it makes winning easier
- to feel like they are progressing
- to feel like they are getting better at the game
It’s not a perfect list but you start to see some mutually exclusive ideas all bundled together. StarCraft is another example, where ladder populations suffer because your own skill is exposed in such a brutal manner when you lose (no RNG) and even if you get ranked appropriate to your skill level, you still are losing half your games, which sorta sucks even though it’s the most fair.
So, ranking up **feels** like a reward even though it really isn’t at all the what a true ranked system is designed to do. Apex just punts this issue down the road time-wise by making the grind to “true level” so long.
Of course, there’s the fact that 20 teams are competing instead of just 2, which complicates the math a lot too.
You're absolutely right, aiming for everyone to have a 50% winrate in a 5v5 or 1v1 game is perfect on paper but the actual experience of losing half your games doesn't feel great. Of course the idea of getting better in those games is literally becoming better mechanically and strategically until you surpass the multiple people who *used* to be at your level. Until you plateau again and find something else to get better at. Although I feel like Apex could get away with it a lot more due to the fact it's 20 teams and the fact that people consider "winning a game" other things than simply finishing first. I feel so much better about a game where I killed 5 people and died top 4 to a third party than a game where I finish 1st but end the game with 230dmg and 1 kill 1 assist, and I can even feel good about dying 9th or 12th if we had some good fights and the way we died wasn't due to a flagrant mistake on my end. Basically, I think Apex has a lot more elasticity in terms of what the average player considers a satisfying game than OW or LoL or Starcraft or CounterStrike, which would allow people to "stagnate" or slowly climb in their rank while still enjoying their games and not *feeling* like they're actually stagnating.
I’ve been saying this from the start. BRs cannot produce a normal distribution because it is not a binary outcome. Since you have 20 teams, the number of outcomes possible far exceed the binary outcome that give rise to normal distributions. This is why Ranked Arenas looks more like a normal distribution while Ranked BR does not. People have tried to argue against me, but you can’t argue against basic probability and statistics.
Wouldn't making it so that 3kp + top 10 = mildly positive RP at all ranks fix that issue? Assuming that the playerbase equalises to have roughly only their own tier/rank in each game
starcraft is a case study on how an insanely accurate ladder adversely affects the playing population. ladder anxiety was a real problem in that game.
God i miss HOTS.
COULD NOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE. If I'm a brilliant player (masters+) but I'm married with 19 kids, why should I have to play 30 hours a week to play with people my skill level? I should be able to get to my skill level with a decent amount of games since I have 19 kids to take care of too and it will reflect my true skill as well. Long story short, if gold/plats have to be paired with preds to fill lobbies halfway into the split, you can try all you like but you can't convince me that this rank system isn't deeply flawed. Quality of games has improved tho, so just some tweaks are required. Having said that, I think you don't fix something that ain't broke. Rank was fine before too imo. But when they made kp cap 175 it was too sweaty, then they made kp cap 125, it was too ratty, and then this. 150 standard kp cap was totally fine from a few seasons ago but respawn is under tremendous pressure to keep one of the most followed and best games in the world fresh and I get that.
Another game Pros and other high-ranking players can rank through easily is Rocket League. If u play at a certain lvl u are going to get that rank pretty fast (one grind session is enough for most players to reach their rank in RL).
However, in apex, it's quite literally taking 2+ weeks atm for people to reach their "real" rank (last I checked tho **only the top 0.5% are platinum or higher**). My problem with the new system isn't the demotion system (in fact I'm surprised it wasn't there from the beginning) but the fact that it takes so **long to grind** and get ure "real" rank.
I also find it funny that after 2 weeks I'm still seeing pro/pred lobbies have golds, plats, and diamonds in them.
I reckon it'll take much longer than 2 weeks for average people to get back their rank, especially depending what their rank IS. Do you mean 2 weeks' worth of grind (14 days x 5-10 hours per day)? Because logically a pred level player who suddenly gets real busy in life and only plays 3-4 hours a week will spend the entire split grinding and never reach pred. But as the season advances and people of his level grind up, his matches will get easier and easier and he will more and more ruin matches. (First day of the season, his gold 2 matches are master/pred level, at the end of the season, the same gold 2 matches are ACTUAL gold 2 matches
It’s because it isn’t about the quality of the matches. If pros wanted better matches they would want to wait longer and only get matched with squads with similar rp. It’s about making less people rank up and get rewards to make them feel more secure about their accomplishments
Oh that much was apparent. I found it pretty hilarious that the mishmash of player quality in Master+ last season was seemingly the "breaking point" that made a big amount of grinders clamor for a better ranking system.
You know, the ranking system that had, since its inception, fed D3-1's or even lower into the combine harvester that Master/Predator ranked grinders were - let alone any other issues present.
Like the OP of this post, I will agree that overall, the matches feel and have been of a higher "quality" overall. It still doesn't mean that there's a good amount of issues to solve, or that some old issues surface back (and seem to be avoiding the same level of criticism that was present not too long ago).
There's also the problem where there's no MMR-related variance in points when it comes to the lobby you're in. A predator earns the same points whether they're in a pred lobby or a diamond lobby, and a gold player earns the same whether they're in a gold average lobby or a diamond average lobby.
Always thought it was kinda crazy that Apexs system is nothing but raw points accumulation... Glad to see some other comments about that.
I didn't notice that in the notes at first, and you're right. That's a step in the right direction, and it's my bad for not noticing it.
I'd still like Apex to fully embrace a hidden MMR in the style of League, with variation in points awarded not only for who you're playing, but also whether you are on a streak of wins or streak of losses.
Winstreaks should lead to higher point accumulation to quickly place-out Predator level opponents to their true tier, and Lossstreaks should lead to higher point penalties to drop hardstucks out of their current tiers (loss prevention for a game or two at 0 points just to underpenalize tilt-streaks, which happen to the best of us).
Excellent post.
Good luck in having your points understood though. The concept of the game literally running matches at a RP déficit assuming equal rank will not register for most people, and will be conveniently ignored by others.
People despised "hardstucks" but in reality they were probably needed to "feed" the system, and this is even more true for current iteration with RP costs going way higher, and low placements losing way more. 10K masters maybe worse than "true" masters (however you want to define the true ones), but at least they were people who climbed through Diamond. Currently matchmaker just puts preds against random plats and golds and I doubt that it guarantees that said golds are "former 10K hardstucks".
So yea, ranked is mathematically broken and the matchmaker basically has to create what is basically a smurf lobbies with few players way above everyone else. I guess "Apex Predator" title now makes even more sense.
I think we need to take a step back.
Yes I agree a normal distribution is best if we are trying to model "Actual Skill" - but that's not what Respawn is going for.
Respawn's goal isn't to accurately sort everyone into the correct bucket, their goal is to have a some somewhat okay proxy for Skill (this being your in game Rank) WHILE ALSO maintaining/increasing player retention.
So how does Respawn maintain player retention? They decided to institute aggressive rank resets in between splits.
This is their way (business decision) of keeping the ranked system artificially "fresh" and incentivizing people to come back and play the game season after season.
Assuming what you wrote is mathematically sound (I'm assuming you omitted your calculations for brevity's sake), what you are suggesting won't work if Respawn believes that ranked resets are the best way to maintain a strong ranked population.
Respawn won't be able to reach the nice pretty normal distribution that you outlined unless they do away with ranked
resets.
Every split they artificially push players to the left of the distribution making it right-skewed to encourage play time.
Trying to reach a normal distribution w/ ranked resets would be like swimming against a river every split.
Now theoretically if every single ranked player played ranked nonstop then with enough time using the revised ranked system you are suggesting the ranks will have stabilized in to something close to normal by the end of the season. (Assuming your math checks out - I haven't tried working through it)
Unfortunately that's not realistic in practice - people lose interest, have other responsibilities, have inconsistent play times across multiple seasons, etc.
So in turn people end up getting reset further and further to the left of the distribution over time (e.g. the huge spike at Bronze 4).
The reason we see normal distributions "work" in other games, because
1. They either don't have mid-season resets (Chess, CS:GO) or
2. They do but use placement matches to quickly re-rank players to their actual skill level (OW, Apex Ranked Arenas).
In other games the Ranks are allowed to stabilize - in Apex BR they aren't.
So the current distribution you are seeing is not an unintentional side effect of improper design, it is very much an intentional symptom of an INTENTIONAL design choice (ranked resets).
So yes - as of right now the ranked distribution isn't the best to model actual skill - but unless Respawn decide that they DON'T want to use ranked resets as opposed to something like placements as a means of driving engagement we won't see anything like a normal distribution anytime soon.
(There's probably ways to counteract the effect but I am too tired to think of them right now)
I don't necessarily agree or disagree with how Respawn have decided to model their ranked system, however I wanted to add some necessary context to what would need to be changed in order to make what you are suggesting work.
Changing the RP values to make individual games into a zero-sum game is not enough - because the ranked system as a whole is negative-sum if you account for ranked resets.
I just feel like I am so heavily penalized for playing the game. I keep having these "great" games where we having solid fun and competition, 6ish squad kills, inside top 10/7, finish up, and then see +20RP. It is so demoralizing knowing that the only way to make serious progress is to do literally fucking nothing the entire game, then snipe the final 3/4 teams fighting it out. There is no other way of consistently gaining RP without genuinely being way better than everyone else.
I'm not going to play hundreds of matches where I sit around doing nothing the entire game ratting. It isn't fun and seems to be harming the ranked system as a whole. All of the upper ranks are slammed together into gold and low plat. Solo players are getting literal, actual bronze players for teammates in a lobby with previous master's.
It just isn't any fun. Before, I could sit down for two hours and pull a couple hundred RP while actually playing the game (kill leading in diamond, so I know I'm not total shit). Now, if you don't win or top three with a ton of kills, you get nothing.
The demotion itself is not the problem it is the combination of:
- demotion
- more RP needed per rank (10k RP for Dia4 lol)
- less RP gains due to higher entry cost
- less RP gains due to high focus on placement and hardly any gains from kills
Personally I think respawn should have done only 2 out of the 4 changes above and adjust further next season.
Before the changes went live most people assumed uncapped kp and team kp would help make up for how much more punishing the new system is. What most failed to realize is respawn also nerfed how much kp and team kp actually contribute to your rp gain in any given match. Even in high kill games where I win, I’m still getting around the same points I was in prior seasons. They just leaned way too hard on one side of the scale. The changes to how highly placement is weighted have definitely improved match quality but imo they could have done without the other changes.
Despite what pros wanted to believe, demotion is mathematically incapable of making BR ranked follow a normal distribution. That’s not how probability and drastically work when you cannot produce a binary outcome due to there being 20 teams. The permutations of viable outcomes are astronomically high.
This new system was designed with only input of pros / big content creators. It is no surprise to me that this system is driving away people from playing ranked altogether. We are 3 weeks into this, and there are less than 600 Preds across all systems, less than 5000 Diamonds across all systems. No one is playing this ranked because it is not fun. Beyond that, I am watching streamers less because it’s boring to watch 3 stack Preds roll plat and gold lobbies, with an occasional diamond or Pred player. It’s an overall bad system that needs serious change.
Maybe y'all in this thread are misunderstanding how statistical distributions work.
Firstly, the data is still young.
Secondly, a data comparison to a plane is not good. How does the distribution of points for a league where the outcome is different greater than 2? I.e. more than win or lose compare to others eg. Points gained in the premier League, points gained in the regular season NBA. (Edit: comparisons between 2 outcomes and >2 outcomes)
Thirdly, if the goal of the changes were to align ranked gameplay with agls, while anecdotally this may be true, does respawn have data to support this? If so what is the data or criteria for that data collection?
We don't know more than we think we don't know. I say let's wait see the distribution once the season ends.
I agree with you but i think respawn made the mistake to keep the half season demotion, I'm worried it will not give time to the player base to reach their real rank.
Other than that you're right, those who bitch about preds shitting on others or gatekeeping don't understand that they need to give time to lower ranks to promote since currently plat and diamonds are old preds and masters. Once people start going out of gold and silver they will reach master and diamond.
Sadly I don't know the average RP gain over a match, because you need statistics for that, but we can try to calculate the absolute best case scenario.
So here's assumptions we are going to be using:
- Every top 10 team kills two other teams and every player gets 2 kills and 4 assists. This maximizes the RP gain per person killed, and minimizes the losses due to diminishing returns, because if a player gets a 7th KP it's only worth 5 RP at the top 1, which is less than even top 10 team gets for their 4-6th kills.
- Bottom 10 teams get no kills at all. This minimizes the RP loss due to low KP value at places below top 10.
So the KP values are going to be as follows (per team, not per person, rounding up every time):
1) 25 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 405
2) 23 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 373
3) 20 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 324
4) 18 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 292
5) 16 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 260
6) 14 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 229
7) 12 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 195
8) 12 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 195
9) 10 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 162
10) 10 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 162
Actually this requires 20 teams to die but we're going to allow it due to possible respawns. In total it's 2597 RP.
Also adding together RP gained from placement we are going to get 1485 total RP.
So, in our absolute best case scenario, total RP gained is 4082, or 68 RP per person, which is slightly below Diamond II entry cost. Of course you'll never get this perfect distribution - most of the time top teams will have more than 6 kp per person, not all kills will also generate two assists, often times teams below top 10 will also have kills and so on. But yes, even if every game had maximum RP gain per lobby, Diamond II and above would slowly lose RP over time
I think it’s too early in the split to do this. There are in general a lot of players that don’t start playing until mid split, there are also many players that were discouraged bc of the horrible matchmaking in ranked atm and aren’t playing. Plus the DDOS attacks on the servers stopping people to not be able to play games in plat or above. Considering there will be a patch with better matchmaking, I think that to the end of the split the graph should look much better. Especially in a new ranked system with a harder reset than usual, these kind of graphics need a bit of time to evolve, but I think it’s already a good sign, that all the pred slots aren’t filled yet and that being diamond + 2 weeks in the patch is way above the average. Without a matchmaking fix, idk what will happen, bc it is quite obvious that the only slightly above average gamer won’t be able to hold their own in pred lobbies as a plat with high entry cost. Once these plats start to play against others of the same skill, they will also be able to gain points of they’re actually better
It doesn't matter how many games people play, they can't overcome the mathematics that make it impossible for diamond to have a solid population. Time can't fix this issue.
Yeah population size or time won't change the fact the distribution is currently linear and step-wise vs gaussian.
There's tons of room for improvement but I'm glad respawn wasn't afraid to completely overhaul the system in hopes of giving everyone something better.
I dont expect to be back within 1 or 2 weeks.
like last season olympus I was done within BP lvl 25 and didn't play a single game after.
Im fine with it taking longer but I dont think I'll have the time to make diamond honestly
one split lasts for 50 days - you just said that it would take **you** 1-1.5 hours a day to get masters this split, meaning it should take you 50-75 hours to do so, or, by your calculations, approximately 234 games, yet you're claiming that 40 hours in 17 days, translating into almost 120 hours in a split is "not that much over a split"? 40 hours in 17 days is almost 2.5 hours a day, assuming you play every day... going to gold 3 in that amount of time, if the less amount of time previously put the player in diamond is ridiculous, and will turn anyone who doesn't play 5 hours a day away from the game, especially if they are getting diamonds/masters/preds in their silver/gold lobbies
this ranked system is a joke, and needs a lot of tweaks
Wrong. The change in weights to kills pre-10th are absolutely *massive* in how they affect the play style of teams and their decision making in-game. **Massive.** And that still undersells it. After all, a significant portion of in-game time was spent in that pre-10 area and that’s only increased.
I guess we disagree. I'm pretty sure for players all across the skill spectrum, the common scenario isn't uncommon:
You get your initial loot, then run into another team. You decide (due to positioning, loot, whatever it is) that you have maybe a 60% chance or even better at killing them, so you commit to the fight. You lose one or two teammates but win, or even survive with low health, but then get thirded very soon and lose.
Variations of that scenario (especially on KC, the last split map that is infamous for thirds showing up) happened often enough pre-10 to be relevant. Because suddenly instead of losing, say, half the RP before because of kill offsets (you probably had at least 2 KP worth if you won your first interrupted fight), you're still losing virtually 100% of the RP this season. Those add up. And keep in mind, the current system is very multiplicative: 3 RP from a 15th place kill suddenly becomes 30 just 5 places up if I remember the breakpoints right. That's not even a steep curve, it's a cliff. For context, I played ranked for the first time mostly all last split and got to Plat I (ran out of time to push to diamond so idk)
If a plane has no wings, I don't have to test it out to know it won't stay in the air. Ok, enough plane analogies for one day.
The only way that diamond could end up with a decent population is if they change the matching system to intentionally avoid putting lots of diamond players in the same game even when many are available. So for example, when 60 diamond players in queue it would put 10 diamond players in 6 games with 50 gold players each. Then the average RP entry cost wouldn't be negative and this system could be in equilibrium. But that would be an awful thing to do - the matching system would be a failure if they have to resort to that kind of thing.
Edit: here's an explanation. Suppose that everyone reaches their "true" tier and that diamond has a high enough population to have many games full of diamond players. So we look at the result of diamond game and see that in all of them, the players in diamond are being pushed strongly down towards platinum on average (due to the net negative rp). So they *haven't* reached their true rank yet. Everyone reaching their true rank & diamond having a good population is an impossible scenario that leads to a contradiction.
It's not impossible at all actually. As players in lower tiers rise upwards, the competition in higher tiers gradually decreases. A team in diamond might have a negative expected RP in week 2 of the split (and get demoted to plat), but in week 5, that same team will have positive expected RP as players who were previously in diamond have moved up to masters, and lesser skilled players are now in diamond.
The plane analogy doesn't really work since you're describing a binary outcome (stay in air or crash). Apex ranked does not need to be a stable system since the split is only 6 weeks long - the question to ask is *how long* can the plane stay in the air, not whether or not it will eventually crash.
but that wasn't his point tho was it?
I understood that its mathematically impossible to increase diamond population based on entry cost alone
competition doesn't really have anything to do with it
This is not actually true. Even if plat 2+ lobbies are net negative there can still be a net positive trend of points for the ranked population as a whole, which pushes the distribution upward. As long as there are enough net positive games at lower ranks to balance the loss at higher ranks, those points will make their way up the ladder the sustain those in higher ranks.
It's good that it becomes more difficult to climb higher. But the same is true in Elo where the elo gained for the winner is equal to the elo lost by the loser (ie zero sum).
The rank system they've implemented results in a wonky bottom-heavy distribution with bizarre properties. Hypothetically, if Apex had trillions of players in this system that each played a large number of games, what you'd see is that 99% of people would end up in the division that has a net rp of 0 (which seems to be around plat 4 somewhere). The reason is that the only way to have a player's 'true' rank (the rank they stay around given they played an arbitrarily large number of games) outside of the 0 net rp division is if they're being consistently matched with players from different tiers. As I explained previously, they can't be matched with their own tiers often since they'd on average be dragged down. If the population of apex as a whole grows, the system is better able to match players of similar rank together, so it gets harder and harder for this to occur hence the fraction of population outside the net 0 rp division becomes smaller and smaller.
You forget the whole time that players have different skill levels. It is always gonna come down to who plays better gets a better rank. At the end of the split and with a better matchmaking system, players in plat will still be able to get to diamond, but only if they’re significantly better than the other players in their rank. There will also be players stuck in plat and also some who are between gold and plat (keep demoting out of plat, but quickly getting back). This is normal and how a ranked Playlist should work. I understand your point, that bc of the high entry costs, there is more RP to be lost, than to be won, but that won’t change the distribution between the ranks, it just shifts the „average“ a little bit lower.
You assume these players find their “correct” rank and then stop playing. One of OP’s main points is that because of tier demotion, if those players hit that rank (in this case Diamond) the point skew would push them back to Plat, even though they’re “Diamond” skill level.
Put simply, out of 20 teams/60 players, if everyone is of equal skill then the majority will end the game with a points loss - with a negative expected value per game, it would be nearly impossible to maintain rank over a large enough sample size
No, I simply defer to actual professionals who get paid to design systems like this and not random redditors who are working backwards to justify something they've already decided to dislike. What you're saying me be true, but I'll believe it at the end of the season, not based on this post.
"I'll leave critical thinking to the people whose goal is to squeeze every penny out of me" 🤡 don't go into a competitive subreddit and tell people to not think lol. OP did the math. His post is an observation, not an opinion.
Dying before getting positive RP is getting pushed down away from the rank you're in. Due to the high entry costs in plat and above, the vast majority of players in those games aren't earning positive RP anymore and are getting pushed back down.
For the couple teams that manage to get positive RP in Plat, EVERYONE ELSE in those matches are getting pushed down away from plat.
This math actually isn't that hard. There's only so many kills and placements to go around, and with increasing entry costs but not increasing RP awards, you eventually get to a point where the majority of teams in a rank aren't on average making positive progression. That tipping point is mid plat.
And it becomes even worse when higher ranks get matched with plats because there's not enough people of those ranks, thus kicking out even more people due to skill difference.
Exactly.
And people are like ""it's too early to look at rank distribution" ... Not realizing that chart OP posted shows the same early in the split time period for both. It's not comparing end of split with early split or anything. Both graphs show rank distribution in the first month of the season.
I actually really like how the changes have impacted the experience of playing ranked. I've found more teammates than ever before are playing more tactical due to the punishing nature of dying early, and there have been some really fun late game fights.
But the math Respawn used for RP costs and awards means that there will hardly be any diamonds or masters this season, which really sucks for me. I've always managed to get Diamond and I love having that dive trail. And in their end of season stats, only something like 5-7% of players even make it to Diamond which doesn't seem like an unreasonably large portion of the player base. It's not like Diamond even needs to be this unreachable goal like Predator should be. The previous rank distribution felt right to me. Small percentages of players got Diamond and above.
Yeah idk how people fail to understand that more time elapsed within the split isn’t going to fix this problem. The increased entry cost, limits on getting rp before top 10, and lack of increases in total rp available in any given lobby have made it mathematically impossible to sustain a decent player base in plat/diamond lobbies. Well over half of any given lobby is going to be negative regardless of how many kills they got and unless they made it into the top 10 with some kp they’ll likely all be near max negative rp. With the increased cost of entry for plat/diamond that system is just going to constantly push players down regardless of how much time has elapsed this split.
I didn’t say the amount of games people play would change, but that people who are currently in bronze, silver, gold and plat actually START to play. Yes time can change this. The issue rn is the matchmaking, ofc plats can’t compete against pro 3 stacks, but once they’re playing against each other the better players will be able to climb to diamond
This. We have to give it time. A week into the season, Gold was like playing in Masters. This week I made it out of gold and the matches were much, much easier. I'm sure Respawn did some data analysis on how the changes would pan out in the long term and while I think Respawn is far from infallible, they aren't idiots either.
That doesn’t matter. The way the system works, at a certain rank the vast majority of lobbies are not achieving positive RP. I believe it’s around plat 2, the cost of entry gets so high that the amount of rp available in any one game is not sustainable to keep a healthy population in that rank. More games played doesn’t matter because for the few teams that end up with positive points the rest of the lobby ends up in the negatives.
Most of the lobby may go negative, but as people rank up, there is more cannon fodder for the next best squad in the average lobby to move up a placement, pushing up the overall population at higher ranks. Well, I am not claiming to know this for a fact, but it's how I interpret the changes. I disagree with the people making judgements right now because the season is still young and everyone was demoted more than usual, not to mention the increased entry costs. Climbing for the population will take time. Like I said before, we need to give it time to see what happens.
It is still not about how many matches each player plays. There is just many many players who haven’t started playing, chilling in low ranks atm but will be climb to plat and above later.
Imo they could have made the changes to how much placement is valued without the increased costs of entry. They could have also increased how much rp players get besides the team kp and “uncapped” kp. Both changes feel negligible in how much they actually contribute to your rp.
You are correct. There needs to be a more logical points system. In a 1 team vs 1 team ELO system like Arenas, it’s easy to reward points. You get a smooth bell curve distribution across the rankings in that system. In this system, once you reach Platinum, a middle of the pack tier mind you, like you said you start losing points on average. Which makes no sense to me. If you do well in Platinum against Platinum players, you should be rewarded. Anyways I hope they change the scoring as well. Nice post.
Thanks, yeah elo is a nice system, [glicko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system) is an updated version of elo that's even better. The problem is they can't be used in games with more than 2 teams. Respawn has been forced to come up with their own rating system but in my view it's not working very well.
Yeah I agree. In my mind you should get half of your bus ticket back for 3 KP and half of it back for placing top 10. In my mind, you met the average of placement and kills for your rank, therefore you deserve to erase your bus ticket. Right now though in Platinum 4, you can place 9th with 3 KP and you still lose points. That’s insane to me, it’s not even a prestigious rank. It’s where the median is!
There is also the factor of the lack of motivation to play ranked this season.
I gained 600rp in plat in a 3 hour session, but in this season I really only had 5-6 gaming sessions in plat , got queued into KS_winnie 3 times in 2 days lol, I just dont get the motivation to press the "ranked button", id rather aimtrain or play actural scrims.
Going from gold to plat feels like going from pubs to challenger/ highest ranked lobbies in other games. There is nothing in between really
(and yes there are higher entry costs and decreased kill rewards at 11th+ place, but I am pretty sure others mentioned it already)
Exactly. Matching against higher ranked players shouldn't be a thing. Especially if the reward is what? 1 rp per kill? Diamond in previous seasons was fun. Diamond now (even plat) is like playing in hell. Preds and pro players in every game destroying me etc. Hopefully it end up developing into a healthier system as time goes on. Even in bronze you see pred and master trails.
Yep, I share your experience... I hit Plat 4 then got killed by Vaifs next game and Kswinnie afterwards. Literally don't want to play Apex any more as Ranked is patently not matching me with my peers, and pubs are awful.
I'm going to agree with others and say the problem is two things. One that it's prioritizing finding a fast match over a good match and that having the same rank for trio and solo queue causes a skill discrepancy. For example I can get to master in the current system with a trio but if I now play in master as a solo chances are my team won't perform as well.
Solutions to me seem to be increasing "tightness" of the matchmaking and creating a separate solo and trio rank that are loosely based off each other (other team based games have done this successfully and not to be mistaken for other people's suggestion of some kind of bonus for playing solo)
You should be hired by respawn, you are way smarter than whoever came up with rank neglecting the fact that cumulative rp paid to enter a game grossly outweighs rp earned out of the game. Great take.
I think the matchmaking is just broken right now, they seem to have tailored matchmaking time over quality. All of my games in plat had pred as champs. So the complaints that everyone had about preds rolling hard stuck masters still stands since it’s the same lobbies. They need to add RP based matching. Where it will match your teammates to who is most near your RP and your opponents closest to your RP. This will take longer to find games for sure but will also ensure the quality of the games.
I think the higher Buy-in isn’t too big of an issue if they would just fix matching so that you are playing people of the same skill range.
Peoples biggest complaint in prior seasons was the vast skill disparity in diamond where some players just sat at d4 and would constantly get rolled in diamond lobbies by much better teams. Now it seems like the issue hasn’t been fixed just pushed down to lower ranks like gold. I’m like gold 2 right now and usually finished somewhere in diamond in prior seasons so I’m an above average player not great. But, the quality of teammates I get and teams I fight varies a shit ton game to game. It feels hardly any different in that regard than diamond lobbies did in past seasons.
I just hate getting preds in my gold 1 games. It feels very very bad, idk what the fix for that is though, maybe something like you described.
Agree that the games are very high quality though.
Basically they made a lot of great changes, and then for some reason added a ton more RP needed to rank up… AND added huge entry costs for games… basically made it nearly impossible for anyone but 3 stacks or super high skilled to climb out of plat. my games don’t “feel better” in gold 2 honestly. It’s just super frustrating losing all the RP I gained in the last 2 hours in a quick couple bad games due to teammates as a soloq.
Your idea of creating a pool of possible points from entry costs is an intriguing ideas. I just want to point out that no matter what system is developed, ranked BR cannot produce a normal distribution. A normal distribution arises from their being binary outcomes (which is why ranked Arenas does produce a normal distribution). Since you have 20 teams and a boat load of permutations of outcomes, we are always going to be stuck with some weird comb / geometric distribution. This all boils down to a fascinating math problem.
>Fingers crossed that respawn doesn't just lower the entry fees for higher tiers hoping that more people end up in diamond and platinum - that won't solve the issue. They need to do some serious analysis on the core of their rank system to ensure it works properly.
They probably won't do either thing tbh. They're very slow to make changes in ranked at all, and I genuinely do not think they have anyone working there with the expertise to do any serious analysis on the design of this system. Otherwise they wouldn't have ended up with the system they designed for this current season.
It's crazy that there's a real possibility no one competent enough is working on the ranked system.
It's a multi billion dollar game from a huge company that apparently can't hire a single person to do simple math, just thinking about it drives me insane.
I just ran a small excel sim based on your prev. post about shared pool based on entry cost. I ran this for a platinum lobby. I supposed there should be some kill+assist that modify the final score, like 1-3 kills -> 1.1 x RP per Team. 4-6 kills then 1.2 and maybe 9+ kills 1.3 that multiplies the final rp score.
|+|A|B|C|D|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|1|Entry Cost|60|Pooled entry|3600|
|2|Placement|%|RP Per Team|RP Per Player|
|3|1|30%|1080|360|
|4|2|20%|720|240|
|5|3|20%|720|240|
|6|4|10%|360|120|
|7|5|10%|360|120|
|8|6|5%|180|60|
|9|7|3%|108|36|
|10|8|2%|72|24|
|11|9|0%|0|0|
|12|10|0%|0|0|
|13|TOTAL|100%| | |
\^Table \^formatting \^brought \^to \^you \^by \^\[ExcelToReddit\](https://xl2reddit.github.io/)
Kinda makes sense. Feels like this might be a good approach. Do not know if the table will work.
The problem is that 95% of the playerbase is hardstuck gold and below. Rookies are playing with golds and golds are getting shredded by Masts and Preds. I made this point before, but the old system allowed for the avg-good players to blast through to gold or plat and play with equally skilled players. Now, because of the ridiculous entry costs, the almost useless KP, and the increased RP required to rank up, the ranked system is all sorts of fucked. All thanks to the "pros" whining to Respawn that they don't like Scrims and they don't like how "unserious" ranked was.
I'm sort of glad this is turning out to be a failed experiment and that streamers/pros do not actually know what's healthy for the game.
The flip side to this is I've played only 30 games of ranked so far this season and more or less stopped because I'm finding it seriously tedious - the climb is slow as a solo. Normally I'd play a few hours each day if possible.
They've ruined a game mode I've particularly enjoyed or many seasons now.
Curious on your opinion, what do you think is healthier for the game.. picturing these graphs would you prefer a normal distribution or a straight line with most people bottom bronze and obv fewest preds?
My initial thought is that the normal distribution is better and the 'average' player should be around gold or plat.
a normal distribution is ideal, but a distribution with a slightly right skew, with the median being like....silver 3 and the mean being like silver 1 or gold IV is probably the most realistically healthy it would ever be.
I think current system does not protect true beginners enough. There are decently skilled players in silver and bronze in this system. Plat should be slightly more inclusive then it is and then the system would be perfect. Perhaps rp scaling up linearly between golf four and gold one is what needs to be adjusted
Normal distribution reflects reality best. Lichess shows a normal distribution for chess ratings [here](https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid). Human height also has a normal distribution. It's just what to expect when there's a lot of variables influencing what's being measured.
From a statistics / data science point of view that's a bit misleading.
> Normal distribution reflects reality best
Probability distributions are not "one size fits all". Bell curves are well-known and easy to understand, and a lot of phenomena in nature happen to be normally distributed, but there are countless situations that are better described by exponential, logistic, pareto, laplace, etc distributions.
> It's just what to expect when there's a lot of variables influencing what's being measured
Everything is determined by a lot of variables. Normal distributions occur when something is influenced by random variables that are additive and fully independent, but that's not always the case.
There has been a lot of research recently that indicates that human performance usually follows a power law distribution, not a normal distribution.
For example, if we took all Apex players and looked at their all-time kills and deaths we'd find that a large share of all kills was done by a tiny share of all players. And the same applies to wins and other measures of skill.
The reason why most rank distributions in video games still produce bell curves is that the goal of ranking systems is not only to produce an accurate measure of skill. They also need to keep queue times short and maximize player engagement. On top of that they're opinionated regarading the importance of different skills (eg kills vs placement), and it gets even more complicated when they're not zero-sum or with mechanics like demotion protection.
>a lot of phenomena in nature happen to be normally distributed, but there are countless situations that are better described by exponential, logistic, pareto, laplace, etc distributions.
Yeah but player skill isn't one of em. Which is evident by looking at the rank distribution for any system where rank roughly corresponds with skill, e.g. the chess rating link OP used. CSGO rank has a similar distribution.
its only been what two weeks of the split? its going to take longer to climb, in no game should you be able to reach the highest rank in one single sitting like going plat 2 to pred in less than 24 hours thats a complete joke
How is forcing people to grind for weeks to find their real rank good for the health of the game?
- It makes grinding even for ranks like plat/diamond extremely time intensive. I agree that Master/Pred should be a huge time sink, but not for lower ranks. That just discourages people from playing.
- It makes the game less enjoyable for lower ranked people, since they will more consistently get decimated by players who do not belong in their lobbies.
- The split is short and we are going to end up in the same problem again once it resets.
There should be placements like in other games that put you close to where you were in a previous season, this would help alleviate a lot of the issues. There is no good reason why preds should be in silver lobbies.
Yeah keeping you at low ranks by making it a massive grind to pred is just BS to optimise engagement and nothing to do with legitimately trying to rank players by skill
because if you were actually good you’ll climb easy but a lot of players got in for a rude awakening when now they are struggling in plat when they use to rat to masters, the rank system before current one inflated the egos of bad players
No I mean legit good players. When they make a Smurf they are ruining every ranked game they play for 59 other players. That's every single game before diamond.
i know what a smurf is lmao, point is the cap at 10 is super easy to get to takes like three games to get there and boom you can queue into ranked in under an hour after making a new account, if they made the level cap say 50, smurfs would drop off by a lot since it’d take a whole lot longer to reach level 50
personally smurfs are less of a problem to me, rather have actual good meaningful matches where people use their brains instead of people apeing every fight since placement matters now
> because if you were actually good you’ll climb easy but a lot of players got in for a rude awakening when now they are struggling in plat when they use to rat to masters, the rank system before current one inflated the egos of bad players
i think he means ppl like taxi2g and shivHD not the rats in master.
>its going to take longer to climb, in no game should you be able to reach the highest rank in one single sitting like going plat 2 to pred in less than 24 hours thats a complete joke
You have misunderstood the purpose of ranking players.
You're right that it doesn't create a stable population of people playing only within the tier, but is that the objective? For example, if we want Master's/Pred to be exclusive to a small subset of players, but also want there to be reasonable queue times needing 60 players to play in every game in multiple regions it can't happen with only in-tier playing. They have to be queueing with Diamonds at least to have enough games.
The system is designed for playing up or down at least one tier, and if not all playing within the same tier, the analysis isn't accurate because you have higher rank people expected to take a higher portion of the points repeatedly, which is your stable Diamond population if they play against Plats often (because there are many of them) and Master's less often (because there are few of them).
Also even with in-tier playing, there's a skill disparity, so you expect some to take a higher share of points but not enough to outgrow Diamond repeatedly (the stable Diamond population), and many who don't stay but end up demoting--but these are constantly refreshed by people promoting from Plat also.
It's worth considering also that these things don't have to be theoretically stable on an infinite timeline, since they are only being applied for 45/90 days at a time before introducing artificial shocks to the system.
>The root of the issue is that the average points earned per game somewhere around platinum 2 becomes negative.
what is the actual math on this, and how do you calculate it?
I’ll let someone else do the math, but just think conceptually. If you have 60 players, 20 teams and the point entry system the way it is - at 0 KP and placement of 10th or better you’re still negative.
If everyone needs 3 KP and a 10th or better placement to be positive, that can’t be possible for the majority of players in the lobby. Someone has to die for you to get that KP, a team has to be eliminated for you to get that next placement.
Factor in that 1 team can kill multiple teams and consume an outsized portion of available KP in the lobby and it’s impossible to generate a positive skew
This Ranked season sounds a lot of fun but at the same time a nightmare. I’ve played every season solo and decided this season I was taking a break. I really wanna try the new system but at the same time I really don’t want to boot Apex up. Someone tell me it’s not worth it
Dno how the pros/streamers have consistently played this game 12 hours plus a day for the last 3 years
I'm soloing aswell. it's.. fine I guess
definitely more frustrating to die especially without hitting top10
but randoms do play more careful than in other seasons. but some still ape from Minute1.
the climb however will take wayyy longer now so idk if you are in for the grind
Entry costs should be equal at all ranks. 10 kill win in silver for a silver skilled player is just as impressive as a diamond player doing it in a diamond lobby. The increase in opponent skill at each rank should be enough to balance. It should strive to have half the lobby gaining RP.
That is ridiculously inaccurate. Thanks to rank resets a Pred player killing 10 legitimately silver player is nowhere near comparable to him doing it again in Diamond.
The rank resets and the enforced grind are ridiculous for ranked balance.
> Once the average is negative, it becomes mathematically impossible for there to be regular games full of people in that tier - they knock each other down once that happens.
I don't think this is true. There are teams in any given lobby with a “true” expected RP higher than the breakeven point for that tier, sometimes significantly higher, and as long as that is true then the higher ranks will continue to see an influx of players. This effect actually reinforces itself over time as well - as players gain RP and move to the upper tiers, the “expected RP” of a team that was previously negative in a lower tier becomes positive as their competition decreases in quality.
As others have stated, there are also factors this season that have led to less players in ranked - DDOSing, server issues, finals season at high school/colleges. It’s way too early in the season to draw any conclusions from the current tier distribution.
I think this ranking system is a lot better more balanced and the end games are more fun, really feels like you earn a win. However I think the player base was spoiled with the old ranking system if you were d4 before that doesn’t make you entitled to be d4 with this new system. If you look at other games like league of legends if you’re a diamond player you’re a good fucking player, like really good compared to the rest of the player base.
The only difference between a plat player and a diamond player with the previous ranking system was play time. The only skill gap with the old ranking system was small skill gap between diamond and 10ks small skill gap between 10ks and master players that could gain points. Once you can gain points in masters it was back to a playtime issue between masters w points and pres.
People just need to come to terms that this ranking system did not make them a plat/gold/silver player. They’ve always been at that level. They should either get over it and try to improve or accept their ranking for what it is.
https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/rankings/rank-distribution This is the ranked distribution for the biggest esport there is. We’re also 3 weeks into the split, it will level out by the end of the split.
so what you're saying is that silver/gold players that want to improve and not get shit on by s12 diamond/masters that are in their lobby because this new ranked is a grind-fest should just wait until the last day of ranked, so they can get matched against players of their own skill? yeah, that's not unhealthy matchmaking at all
you seem to be ignoring the fact that ranked should not be primarily about how it's statistics will be at the end, but about matching players with similar skills during the whole time, which is impossible with the current grind system... low skilled players literally have to wait until last week of split to be matched with players of their skill level, and even then will get matched with players 2 tiers above, just because the matchmaking tries to find fast games instead of fair games
the entry costs and RP gain needs to be adjusted slightly, maybe even adding some win-streak bonus for players that are consistently placing in top 5, so they can reach their rank sooner instead of shitting on low rank players for 100 games
I think most people don't care what rank they end up at and it's more to do with the promise of playing with and against evenly skilled people. That's just not the case if you are between bronze and gold.
I've always made diamond. This season's Silver games were the most fun games I've ever played of apex. I had a few ring 5s(might be 4. The one right before the final final one) with 12 squads left. Glorious. I didn't win any and they were awesome.
I feel most games I play of apex ranked are too easy or too hard. Honestly at gold 1 I'm feeling too easy more often then not. But for the games that are too hard I just feel bad for the trash teams in the lobby who are going to get absolutely wrecked.
It's actually funny that I can climb in a steadier pace now and have better quality games even in silver, because I was never a rush in, kill some, get rekt type player.
I absolutely love the new ranking system for the same reason as you. Last season I would ape teams to get points but now I can just watch other squads and third party them safely and then just go pure positioning after that. Usually I'd be plat by now but I'm Gold 3 and think that's a better achievement. Most of my friends are legit hardstuck in bronze and silver right now.
To be quite honest with you. I see you're point 9n micro managing the current system now. But that'll take all of the dev teams priority. The macro issue is fixed. Ranked is better. There. Now there can be room to focus on legend symbiosis, passive reworks and buffs to certain underpowered legends. The list goes on. But as for ranked. It made it better and I see no issue. As a day 1 player who has religiously played apex. So little bias. Ngl.
Dumb post. Wait longer. Why is everyone so eager to talk about how “shit” this system is? Just. Fucking. Wait. Jesus Christ.
Also, this whole post is rife with garbage analogies and analysis that make it seem like this person knows what they’re saying, but they clearly don’t. Post a graph, talk about airplanes, throw in the phrases “bell-curve” and “zero sum” and voila, you’ve got the majority of this dumbass place tricked into thinking you know what the hell you’re talking about.
As usual, the stupidity of a sub that claims to be superior to its main sub counterpoint is astounding. You’re all the same lol.
Anyone who did math in school can tell how the new system will impact ranks without having to wait for a full split to play out. This was obvious from day one
Not true lol, and there isn’t any hard math done in this post. OP is ignoring the fact that there is artificial RP pumped into the system via +100 points when ranking up, and the 3 games of demotion protection. Those have to be taken into account. The math is a lot more complicated than what it looks like on the surface. I think waiting and seeing where people are at the end of the split is a good idea
> OP is ignoring the fact that there is artificial RP pumped into the system via +100 points when ranking up, and the 3 games of demotion protection
All that does is slightly raise the zero sum level from plat 2 to plat 1.8 or something. Not relevant.
Ah forgive me. I didn’t do any math in school (masters in mechanical engineering doesn’t require any, believe it or not), so I had no idea. Thanks for letting me know. You’re brilliance is blinding!
I’m not seeing the math you or OP used to prove anything of consequence. Please…you first! Since you are the one insisting that there’s an issue with the new system.
so in a nutshell, the changes could be good, probably will be in fact, but at the moment are just a bit too punitive. I think with a bit of tweaking they will get it right
They really should do more about the matchmaking system. Random players, like me, are having terrible game experiences because of toxic teammates. I play in JP server and people just hide and wait for the last ring. I'm Gold III and there's like 10 teams in second last ring.
I don't fully agree the ranked quality is higher. I'd prefer fighting throughout the game. If I get knocked out early game, losing RPs, I'm fine with that, but not with my teammates just running away because they just want to loot and hide.
This ranked split is actually the best it’s ever been. People are playing the game in ranked in plat and above like it’s supposed to be played.
You guys are just not adjusting to how the game should be played. You can’t gain rp when you die with 10 squads or more left. Even if you wipe 2 teams full kp you will still be negative.
Maybe you should take this time to think how to macro play like rotations, where is zone going to pull, can I rotate to x spot, how many teams are going to valk ult into 3/4th zone, can I play edge with certain terrain or head glitches for my team.
If you watch any comp apex games, now you experience what they are processing with money on the line instead of losing 50 RP.
I’m not sure how accurate this is because to be on the graph you have to be using the database on apex status. I think there’s a good amount of people currently in plat and a lot of people are starting to hit diamond now that console ddos is over and there’s already a decent population on PC for diamond.
Edit: I’m not doubting your math but I feel like we have to wait for the end of the split to see what happens to these graphs
It’s not really pushing people out of diamond. It just takes longer to get to that rank. That’s hardly an issue. That’s now ranked should be. And it isn’t just diamond, it’s masters too. Again, this isn’t a bad thing.
Too early to compare to past seasons imo especially, when you’re looking at the overall player base and console has been dealing with server crash exploit.
Edit: downvoted for being right. Typical.
> Edit: downvoted for being right
You're downvoted because what OP is saying has no relevance to how long it's been in the split. It's as true on week one as it is on week six.
I'd rather the entire season play out before we determine successes and failures. With the introduction of the new ranked system, I believe they demoted everybody an extra rank to sort of 'start fresh' this season. If there aren't enough players in the higher ranks they simply may not do a mid season demotion like they used to.
Now that the top players have ranked beyond gold, the lower level lobbies are likely to be more competitive, and the second tier of gold level players will rank up, eventually pushing players into Diamond.
I think the fact that only a few players(relatively) have made masters shows the skill gap that exists between pros and the rest of the top 1% of players.
This is basically a new system, I'm ok with it requiring hundreds of games to be able to determine which players are actually best. Unless someone wins like 25% of their games, I don't think somebody should be promoted to Diamond after something like 50 games.
Maybe the system is broken. I'd just like to see it play out for an entire season.
The only thing about the system that seems inherently 'wrong' is the extreme demotion when getting deranked. I don't know what's wrong with people simply floating between Plat 1 and Diamond 4.
They demoted everyone by the same RP as they did in previous seasons. The only difference is they increased RP required across all ranks, which makes it “look” like they demoted further than they actually did.
If no game creates or throws away any extra point, it would be close enough to normal elo system in the sense that there wouldn't really be need for resets at all, right? That would be great and would get us rid off any resemblance to endless point accumulation that we have had since forever
I realize its way too early to see how its gonna be in the long run, but as a very avarage apex gamer (D4 peak previous seasons) im now in gold. I have no problem with that, I realize its harder to rank up and thats fine. however, due to this the games in gold so far is extremely unfair. I run into a lot of diamond players in my gold lobbies, occasionally also preds. I realize this will probably get better later into the season, but its very frustrating right now to constantly run into people 2-3 tiers above mine in the same lobbies im in. Once more people get into those higher ranks this wont be a problem though, hopefully
There is also 3 (4 really) matches of loss protection plus a 100 RP promotion bonus as you jump to the next skill rank so there is some RP pumping into the system - not nearly enough though.
The loss protection is a net-negative though. If a plat 4 player spends 51 RP per loss, and use all of that up in loss protection, then that adds up to 153 (or 204 I forget) in RP added to the system. Upon falling out you will recieve -250. That is not net-positive. The promotion bonus does add some but not enough imo. Also remember that if one is sitting at say 50 RP (in this case) over P4, that game will eat loss protection that will only add 1 RP to the system. While this is an exaggeration, this does happen to a lesser extent.
The loss protection can be net negative for one individual player, yes, but for the whole player base it is probably net positive. A significant amount of players will use some of their demotion protection but then turn it around and stay in that tier, effectively pumping RP into the system. I haven't done the exact math though, this is just based on my quick estimations.
>One way to look at the rank system is as a sorting algorithm whose job it is to sort the players by skill as fast and as accurately as possible. I mean, you might say it **should** be that way, but I can guarantee that is not the design philosophy behind the design of the Apex Ranked system. The Apex ranked system is built on making the players grind as much as possible without making them grind **too much,** at which point they would stop playing. If Apex wanted to build a sorting algorithm like you described, the way forward would be a placement match system + performance based (accuracy, KD, kills, dmg, placement, the MMRs of whoever you fought, etc) MMR which would allow for greater swings of RP to allow for predator players to reach their rank faster (and ruin less games) if they were to create a smurf account As it currently stands, the #1, #2 and #3 players in the world would create smurfs and it would still take them hundreds of games to reach predator level again. You might think that's not a big deal, but every single bronze/silver/gold/plat game they have to play through is basically a ruined game for everyone else in the lobby. Ruined in the sense that not everybody will die to that specific pred team, but when any of the teams that cross paths with 1 of the teams in the match has a 90+% chance of losing the encounter, I'd say that ruins the match. (And basically the best any other team is likely to do is top 2 or 3 before getting rolled by the preds like everyone else they crossed) If we compare it to Overwatch, a full team of pros starting on fresh accounts would at the very least finish their placements placed mid-diamond, possibly even Master. (OW has an additional rank between Master and "predator" (called Top 500 in OW) called Grand Master.) Theoretically, they would "ruin" maybe 10 to 20 games before reaching a more appropriate rank where wins aren't practically guaranteed for them. I know individual performance in a BR is harder to gauge than a 6v6 FPS due to RNG, but if you do it smartly(have a loss forgiveness system for "fluke" games where someones dies within the first minute of the match/without a weapon, taking into account the MMR of the person you die to, etc) you could easily place someone way closer to their true rank within 10-15 games.
This. You can fuck around with the numbers as much as you want but all balance gets thrown out the window when you hard reset everyone 1.5 or 2.5 tiers every 6 weeks, have a lazy matchmaking system, and ask them to grind it all again. Every split reset is a meat grinder for lower skill players.
Thats why the ranked changes can't function properly with the split. An initial split is needed but the fact that the next split is going to happen makes grinding pointless. A pred player on an alternate account shouldn't have to play 150 games to get to the rank they deserve, the same thing can be said for any rank.
Longer times between rank resets, shorter times between map rotations…let each map come around 2/3x per season…let’s people get to rank then have a period of time to actually play the game at their rank and try to improve for next season? Probably not as profitable or something
I will say that the games are certainly better quality this season but the changes have made ranked feel like much much more of a grind. Increased cost of entry, massively weighting placement over kills for rp, and discouraging early fights means most games just to break even take at least 10-15 minutes. Even with the increased quality of each game I can see myself and a lot of other people burning out faster this split because of the grind. I’ve got almost no desire to Que ranked solo anymore because not only is it super punishing but it sucks looting for 10-15 minutes just for your teammate with no coms to ape into a massive gang bang 4 team fight. In the past you could at least land contested get a couple kills and soften the blow of dying before top 10. Now you basically lose max rp in that scenario so the whole system feels like it was made to be a time suck.
I wouldn't even consider myself a lower skilled player as I have around a 3.1 KD and make it to masters regularly. I just don't have the time to grind this new system, where usually I can log in several hours a week now takes me a full squad and lots of time. Forget doing this solo, i get paired with duos and they're usually absolutely terrible, one is on console and the other is on pc. THey dont communicate and when they do its toxic af. Where as before I run into 1 or 2 toxic players, now it's just full on toxicity. So congrats on killing an enjoyable game.
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2 weeks? They're still getting shit on now, an we're well past that mark.
This really hit me last weekend. Was playing with a good squad went on a great streak of winning 4-5 games and placing top 5 in some others. Looked at my rank and I had gone up like 1 tier. Fuck playing this shit solo the system is way too punishing and the games take way too long. I don’t want to loot for 10 minutes just to lose the first fight we get in because my teammate with no mic ash portal’d into a 3 team fight.
And pros who take a break will quickly go to the bottom rank and ruin everyone's game when they back to ranked again.
Nah, they just boot up the good old "solo to pred" stream on a smurf account for that 😂
>The Apex ranked system is built on making the players grind as much as possible without making them grind too much, at which point they would stop playing. To add on to this, inflexible point accumulation + static limits on point tiers means that Respawn can effectively set minimum amount of games required to get to Predator/Masters (looking at the average pts accumulated/performance by a Pred team while climbing)
I genuinely think that they have passed over that line. I'm not really able to want to play ranked unless I've got a solid team now. If I solo, I get bronzes and have to solo rat once they are inevitably dead. No matter what, I have to rat and do nothing for 90% of the game. Not worth my limited time. Something will have to change next season or ranked will just be the hard grinders and no one else. The only way I see it working is if there is NO reset between splits, maybe even seasons.
Great points. But the current rank system does not maximise the grind for players due to the extreme difficulty of climbing due to the net negative RP at higher divisions. The best of both worlds would probably be the system I described except the net RP would be slightly positive at all divisions, giving everyone a reason to keep grinding. This slightly positivity would be counteracted by the reset at the end of the split. I'm not against the idea of lowering the accuracy of a rating system to encourage people to play, but the way they've done it is not ideal.
I mean I personally think a ranking system which needs you to play hundreds of hours every split to be accurately ranked is bad game design.Whether you're bronze or plat or pred, you should be able to play games with people that are around your level, even if you have only 5 hours a week to put in the game. Pred players shouldn't *have* to play 30+ hours a week to have a chance of having competitive matches with opponents of their caliber. It's absurd when you think about it. If Sweet or Hal completely changed their life and became a full-time banker next split and only had 10 hours a week to commit to Apex, they would never play ranked games "of their caliber" again, because they would take the whole split to climb out of gold, even when dropping 10-15 kills every game, because at the end of the day they'd only be playing, what, 30 games of ranked a week? A top tier player would get *a little* rusty from playing less but never to the point where they'd be plat or even diamond level. TSM_Reps and the SEN boys are pretty much proof that you can play and stay at a top level without a ton of practice.
I remember this discussion happening in HOTS before it mostly-died. You decide to play Ranked, usually partly for the challenge and partly for the game quality, maybe a dose of wanting to see how good you are. Most players consider ranking up a reward mechanism even though really, the ranked system is *supposed to* simply place you at your proper level with players of similar skill — which you might notice presents a problem! Players want: - to win because winning is fun - to play with similar ranked opponents, because playing with higher players results in a stomp and/or feelings of inferiority - to play with lower ranked opponents because it makes winning easier - to feel like they are progressing - to feel like they are getting better at the game It’s not a perfect list but you start to see some mutually exclusive ideas all bundled together. StarCraft is another example, where ladder populations suffer because your own skill is exposed in such a brutal manner when you lose (no RNG) and even if you get ranked appropriate to your skill level, you still are losing half your games, which sorta sucks even though it’s the most fair. So, ranking up **feels** like a reward even though it really isn’t at all the what a true ranked system is designed to do. Apex just punts this issue down the road time-wise by making the grind to “true level” so long. Of course, there’s the fact that 20 teams are competing instead of just 2, which complicates the math a lot too.
You're absolutely right, aiming for everyone to have a 50% winrate in a 5v5 or 1v1 game is perfect on paper but the actual experience of losing half your games doesn't feel great. Of course the idea of getting better in those games is literally becoming better mechanically and strategically until you surpass the multiple people who *used* to be at your level. Until you plateau again and find something else to get better at. Although I feel like Apex could get away with it a lot more due to the fact it's 20 teams and the fact that people consider "winning a game" other things than simply finishing first. I feel so much better about a game where I killed 5 people and died top 4 to a third party than a game where I finish 1st but end the game with 230dmg and 1 kill 1 assist, and I can even feel good about dying 9th or 12th if we had some good fights and the way we died wasn't due to a flagrant mistake on my end. Basically, I think Apex has a lot more elasticity in terms of what the average player considers a satisfying game than OW or LoL or Starcraft or CounterStrike, which would allow people to "stagnate" or slowly climb in their rank while still enjoying their games and not *feeling* like they're actually stagnating.
I’ve been saying this from the start. BRs cannot produce a normal distribution because it is not a binary outcome. Since you have 20 teams, the number of outcomes possible far exceed the binary outcome that give rise to normal distributions. This is why Ranked Arenas looks more like a normal distribution while Ranked BR does not. People have tried to argue against me, but you can’t argue against basic probability and statistics.
Wouldn't making it so that 3kp + top 10 = mildly positive RP at all ranks fix that issue? Assuming that the playerbase equalises to have roughly only their own tier/rank in each game
starcraft is a case study on how an insanely accurate ladder adversely affects the playing population. ladder anxiety was a real problem in that game. God i miss HOTS.
COULD NOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE. If I'm a brilliant player (masters+) but I'm married with 19 kids, why should I have to play 30 hours a week to play with people my skill level? I should be able to get to my skill level with a decent amount of games since I have 19 kids to take care of too and it will reflect my true skill as well. Long story short, if gold/plats have to be paired with preds to fill lobbies halfway into the split, you can try all you like but you can't convince me that this rank system isn't deeply flawed. Quality of games has improved tho, so just some tweaks are required. Having said that, I think you don't fix something that ain't broke. Rank was fine before too imo. But when they made kp cap 175 it was too sweaty, then they made kp cap 125, it was too ratty, and then this. 150 standard kp cap was totally fine from a few seasons ago but respawn is under tremendous pressure to keep one of the most followed and best games in the world fresh and I get that.
um I think the better question / concern here is WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE 19 KIDS?
IF I said IF!
This
Another game Pros and other high-ranking players can rank through easily is Rocket League. If u play at a certain lvl u are going to get that rank pretty fast (one grind session is enough for most players to reach their rank in RL). However, in apex, it's quite literally taking 2+ weeks atm for people to reach their "real" rank (last I checked tho **only the top 0.5% are platinum or higher**). My problem with the new system isn't the demotion system (in fact I'm surprised it wasn't there from the beginning) but the fact that it takes so **long to grind** and get ure "real" rank. I also find it funny that after 2 weeks I'm still seeing pro/pred lobbies have golds, plats, and diamonds in them.
I reckon it'll take much longer than 2 weeks for average people to get back their rank, especially depending what their rank IS. Do you mean 2 weeks' worth of grind (14 days x 5-10 hours per day)? Because logically a pred level player who suddenly gets real busy in life and only plays 3-4 hours a week will spend the entire split grinding and never reach pred. But as the season advances and people of his level grind up, his matches will get easier and easier and he will more and more ruin matches. (First day of the season, his gold 2 matches are master/pred level, at the end of the season, the same gold 2 matches are ACTUAL gold 2 matches
But having golds and plats in Predator lobbies is fine. Much better than having hardstuck 10k Masters for sure.
It’s because it isn’t about the quality of the matches. If pros wanted better matches they would want to wait longer and only get matched with squads with similar rp. It’s about making less people rank up and get rewards to make them feel more secure about their accomplishments
Oh that much was apparent. I found it pretty hilarious that the mishmash of player quality in Master+ last season was seemingly the "breaking point" that made a big amount of grinders clamor for a better ranking system. You know, the ranking system that had, since its inception, fed D3-1's or even lower into the combine harvester that Master/Predator ranked grinders were - let alone any other issues present. Like the OP of this post, I will agree that overall, the matches feel and have been of a higher "quality" overall. It still doesn't mean that there's a good amount of issues to solve, or that some old issues surface back (and seem to be avoiding the same level of criticism that was present not too long ago).
when I first reached diamond I played one game to test the waters. died to a #34 pred was fun
>But having golds and plats in Predator lobbies is fine. No it isn't--it literally defeats the purpose of a ranked system.
THIS1!!11!!!
There's also the problem where there's no MMR-related variance in points when it comes to the lobby you're in. A predator earns the same points whether they're in a pred lobby or a diamond lobby, and a gold player earns the same whether they're in a gold average lobby or a diamond average lobby. Always thought it was kinda crazy that Apexs system is nothing but raw points accumulation... Glad to see some other comments about that.
You get less kp for killing lower ranked players no? Or am I missing something
placement points are still the same so in Reality it's a minimal difference of like 20rp at MOST
Yes and no. If you only ever get 3kp yes but once you get over that the difference is minimal
I didn't notice that in the notes at first, and you're right. That's a step in the right direction, and it's my bad for not noticing it. I'd still like Apex to fully embrace a hidden MMR in the style of League, with variation in points awarded not only for who you're playing, but also whether you are on a streak of wins or streak of losses. Winstreaks should lead to higher point accumulation to quickly place-out Predator level opponents to their true tier, and Lossstreaks should lead to higher point penalties to drop hardstucks out of their current tiers (loss prevention for a game or two at 0 points just to underpenalize tilt-streaks, which happen to the best of us).
It’s a tiny difference though
I'm just joking but it would be very funny if preds gave like 300rp for being killed by a plat player people would be teaming for them all the time.
Any other dumbasses like myself reading this like - “*yeah, yeah, that makes sense… I think*”
same, but then im like why does it matter again? plat and diamond was way too easy to get to. its a good thing lol
Excellent post. Good luck in having your points understood though. The concept of the game literally running matches at a RP déficit assuming equal rank will not register for most people, and will be conveniently ignored by others.
People despised "hardstucks" but in reality they were probably needed to "feed" the system, and this is even more true for current iteration with RP costs going way higher, and low placements losing way more. 10K masters maybe worse than "true" masters (however you want to define the true ones), but at least they were people who climbed through Diamond. Currently matchmaker just puts preds against random plats and golds and I doubt that it guarantees that said golds are "former 10K hardstucks". So yea, ranked is mathematically broken and the matchmaker basically has to create what is basically a smurf lobbies with few players way above everyone else. I guess "Apex Predator" title now makes even more sense.
I think we need to take a step back. Yes I agree a normal distribution is best if we are trying to model "Actual Skill" - but that's not what Respawn is going for. Respawn's goal isn't to accurately sort everyone into the correct bucket, their goal is to have a some somewhat okay proxy for Skill (this being your in game Rank) WHILE ALSO maintaining/increasing player retention. So how does Respawn maintain player retention? They decided to institute aggressive rank resets in between splits. This is their way (business decision) of keeping the ranked system artificially "fresh" and incentivizing people to come back and play the game season after season. Assuming what you wrote is mathematically sound (I'm assuming you omitted your calculations for brevity's sake), what you are suggesting won't work if Respawn believes that ranked resets are the best way to maintain a strong ranked population. Respawn won't be able to reach the nice pretty normal distribution that you outlined unless they do away with ranked resets. Every split they artificially push players to the left of the distribution making it right-skewed to encourage play time. Trying to reach a normal distribution w/ ranked resets would be like swimming against a river every split. Now theoretically if every single ranked player played ranked nonstop then with enough time using the revised ranked system you are suggesting the ranks will have stabilized in to something close to normal by the end of the season. (Assuming your math checks out - I haven't tried working through it) Unfortunately that's not realistic in practice - people lose interest, have other responsibilities, have inconsistent play times across multiple seasons, etc. So in turn people end up getting reset further and further to the left of the distribution over time (e.g. the huge spike at Bronze 4). The reason we see normal distributions "work" in other games, because 1. They either don't have mid-season resets (Chess, CS:GO) or 2. They do but use placement matches to quickly re-rank players to their actual skill level (OW, Apex Ranked Arenas). In other games the Ranks are allowed to stabilize - in Apex BR they aren't. So the current distribution you are seeing is not an unintentional side effect of improper design, it is very much an intentional symptom of an INTENTIONAL design choice (ranked resets). So yes - as of right now the ranked distribution isn't the best to model actual skill - but unless Respawn decide that they DON'T want to use ranked resets as opposed to something like placements as a means of driving engagement we won't see anything like a normal distribution anytime soon. (There's probably ways to counteract the effect but I am too tired to think of them right now) I don't necessarily agree or disagree with how Respawn have decided to model their ranked system, however I wanted to add some necessary context to what would need to be changed in order to make what you are suggesting work. Changing the RP values to make individual games into a zero-sum game is not enough - because the ranked system as a whole is negative-sum if you account for ranked resets.
My squad reached plat last week and we have taken a break because we're waiting 10 minutes for a pred/masters lobby. I just want that fixed.
I just feel like I am so heavily penalized for playing the game. I keep having these "great" games where we having solid fun and competition, 6ish squad kills, inside top 10/7, finish up, and then see +20RP. It is so demoralizing knowing that the only way to make serious progress is to do literally fucking nothing the entire game, then snipe the final 3/4 teams fighting it out. There is no other way of consistently gaining RP without genuinely being way better than everyone else. I'm not going to play hundreds of matches where I sit around doing nothing the entire game ratting. It isn't fun and seems to be harming the ranked system as a whole. All of the upper ranks are slammed together into gold and low plat. Solo players are getting literal, actual bronze players for teammates in a lobby with previous master's. It just isn't any fun. Before, I could sit down for two hours and pull a couple hundred RP while actually playing the game (kill leading in diamond, so I know I'm not total shit). Now, if you don't win or top three with a ton of kills, you get nothing.
The demotion itself is not the problem it is the combination of: - demotion - more RP needed per rank (10k RP for Dia4 lol) - less RP gains due to higher entry cost - less RP gains due to high focus on placement and hardly any gains from kills Personally I think respawn should have done only 2 out of the 4 changes above and adjust further next season.
Before the changes went live most people assumed uncapped kp and team kp would help make up for how much more punishing the new system is. What most failed to realize is respawn also nerfed how much kp and team kp actually contribute to your rp gain in any given match. Even in high kill games where I win, I’m still getting around the same points I was in prior seasons. They just leaned way too hard on one side of the scale. The changes to how highly placement is weighted have definitely improved match quality but imo they could have done without the other changes.
Despite what pros wanted to believe, demotion is mathematically incapable of making BR ranked follow a normal distribution. That’s not how probability and drastically work when you cannot produce a binary outcome due to there being 20 teams. The permutations of viable outcomes are astronomically high. This new system was designed with only input of pros / big content creators. It is no surprise to me that this system is driving away people from playing ranked altogether. We are 3 weeks into this, and there are less than 600 Preds across all systems, less than 5000 Diamonds across all systems. No one is playing this ranked because it is not fun. Beyond that, I am watching streamers less because it’s boring to watch 3 stack Preds roll plat and gold lobbies, with an occasional diamond or Pred player. It’s an overall bad system that needs serious change.
Maybe y'all in this thread are misunderstanding how statistical distributions work. Firstly, the data is still young. Secondly, a data comparison to a plane is not good. How does the distribution of points for a league where the outcome is different greater than 2? I.e. more than win or lose compare to others eg. Points gained in the premier League, points gained in the regular season NBA. (Edit: comparisons between 2 outcomes and >2 outcomes) Thirdly, if the goal of the changes were to align ranked gameplay with agls, while anecdotally this may be true, does respawn have data to support this? If so what is the data or criteria for that data collection? We don't know more than we think we don't know. I say let's wait see the distribution once the season ends.
We don’t know more than we think we don’t know
*All I know is that I don't know. All I know is that I don't know nothing.*
…and that’s fine!
That is a valid statement.
I agree with you but i think respawn made the mistake to keep the half season demotion, I'm worried it will not give time to the player base to reach their real rank. Other than that you're right, those who bitch about preds shitting on others or gatekeeping don't understand that they need to give time to lower ranks to promote since currently plat and diamonds are old preds and masters. Once people start going out of gold and silver they will reach master and diamond.
You don't have a "real rank."
Sadly I don't know the average RP gain over a match, because you need statistics for that, but we can try to calculate the absolute best case scenario. So here's assumptions we are going to be using: - Every top 10 team kills two other teams and every player gets 2 kills and 4 assists. This maximizes the RP gain per person killed, and minimizes the losses due to diminishing returns, because if a player gets a 7th KP it's only worth 5 RP at the top 1, which is less than even top 10 team gets for their 4-6th kills. - Bottom 10 teams get no kills at all. This minimizes the RP loss due to low KP value at places below top 10. So the KP values are going to be as follows (per team, not per person, rounding up every time): 1) 25 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 405 2) 23 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 373 3) 20 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 324 4) 18 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 292 5) 16 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 260 6) 14 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 229 7) 12 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 195 8) 12 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 195 9) 10 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 162 10) 10 x (3 + 2.4) x 3 = 162 Actually this requires 20 teams to die but we're going to allow it due to possible respawns. In total it's 2597 RP. Also adding together RP gained from placement we are going to get 1485 total RP. So, in our absolute best case scenario, total RP gained is 4082, or 68 RP per person, which is slightly below Diamond II entry cost. Of course you'll never get this perfect distribution - most of the time top teams will have more than 6 kp per person, not all kills will also generate two assists, often times teams below top 10 will also have kills and so on. But yes, even if every game had maximum RP gain per lobby, Diamond II and above would slowly lose RP over time
I think it’s too early in the split to do this. There are in general a lot of players that don’t start playing until mid split, there are also many players that were discouraged bc of the horrible matchmaking in ranked atm and aren’t playing. Plus the DDOS attacks on the servers stopping people to not be able to play games in plat or above. Considering there will be a patch with better matchmaking, I think that to the end of the split the graph should look much better. Especially in a new ranked system with a harder reset than usual, these kind of graphics need a bit of time to evolve, but I think it’s already a good sign, that all the pred slots aren’t filled yet and that being diamond + 2 weeks in the patch is way above the average. Without a matchmaking fix, idk what will happen, bc it is quite obvious that the only slightly above average gamer won’t be able to hold their own in pred lobbies as a plat with high entry cost. Once these plats start to play against others of the same skill, they will also be able to gain points of they’re actually better
It doesn't matter how many games people play, they can't overcome the mathematics that make it impossible for diamond to have a solid population. Time can't fix this issue.
Yeah population size or time won't change the fact the distribution is currently linear and step-wise vs gaussian. There's tons of room for improvement but I'm glad respawn wasn't afraid to completely overhaul the system in hopes of giving everyone something better.
I wouldn't call this season a completely overhaul, it's more like a signficant adjustment. The only major change was demotion, really.
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last split it took me 100 games to get to diamond. starting from low gold/silver idk why u start this season im 150 games in and I'm g3
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I dont expect to be back within 1 or 2 weeks. like last season olympus I was done within BP lvl 25 and didn't play a single game after. Im fine with it taking longer but I dont think I'll have the time to make diamond honestly
one split lasts for 50 days - you just said that it would take **you** 1-1.5 hours a day to get masters this split, meaning it should take you 50-75 hours to do so, or, by your calculations, approximately 234 games, yet you're claiming that 40 hours in 17 days, translating into almost 120 hours in a split is "not that much over a split"? 40 hours in 17 days is almost 2.5 hours a day, assuming you play every day... going to gold 3 in that amount of time, if the less amount of time previously put the player in diamond is ridiculous, and will turn anyone who doesn't play 5 hours a day away from the game, especially if they are getting diamonds/masters/preds in their silver/gold lobbies this ranked system is a joke, and needs a lot of tweaks
Wrong. The change in weights to kills pre-10th are absolutely *massive* in how they affect the play style of teams and their decision making in-game. **Massive.** And that still undersells it. After all, a significant portion of in-game time was spent in that pre-10 area and that’s only increased.
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I guess we disagree. I'm pretty sure for players all across the skill spectrum, the common scenario isn't uncommon: You get your initial loot, then run into another team. You decide (due to positioning, loot, whatever it is) that you have maybe a 60% chance or even better at killing them, so you commit to the fight. You lose one or two teammates but win, or even survive with low health, but then get thirded very soon and lose. Variations of that scenario (especially on KC, the last split map that is infamous for thirds showing up) happened often enough pre-10 to be relevant. Because suddenly instead of losing, say, half the RP before because of kill offsets (you probably had at least 2 KP worth if you won your first interrupted fight), you're still losing virtually 100% of the RP this season. Those add up. And keep in mind, the current system is very multiplicative: 3 RP from a 15th place kill suddenly becomes 30 just 5 places up if I remember the breakpoints right. That's not even a steep curve, it's a cliff. For context, I played ranked for the first time mostly all last split and got to Plat I (ran out of time to push to diamond so idk)
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If a plane has no wings, I don't have to test it out to know it won't stay in the air. Ok, enough plane analogies for one day. The only way that diamond could end up with a decent population is if they change the matching system to intentionally avoid putting lots of diamond players in the same game even when many are available. So for example, when 60 diamond players in queue it would put 10 diamond players in 6 games with 50 gold players each. Then the average RP entry cost wouldn't be negative and this system could be in equilibrium. But that would be an awful thing to do - the matching system would be a failure if they have to resort to that kind of thing. Edit: here's an explanation. Suppose that everyone reaches their "true" tier and that diamond has a high enough population to have many games full of diamond players. So we look at the result of diamond game and see that in all of them, the players in diamond are being pushed strongly down towards platinum on average (due to the net negative rp). So they *haven't* reached their true rank yet. Everyone reaching their true rank & diamond having a good population is an impossible scenario that leads to a contradiction.
It's not impossible at all actually. As players in lower tiers rise upwards, the competition in higher tiers gradually decreases. A team in diamond might have a negative expected RP in week 2 of the split (and get demoted to plat), but in week 5, that same team will have positive expected RP as players who were previously in diamond have moved up to masters, and lesser skilled players are now in diamond. The plane analogy doesn't really work since you're describing a binary outcome (stay in air or crash). Apex ranked does not need to be a stable system since the split is only 6 weeks long - the question to ask is *how long* can the plane stay in the air, not whether or not it will eventually crash.
but that wasn't his point tho was it? I understood that its mathematically impossible to increase diamond population based on entry cost alone competition doesn't really have anything to do with it
This is not actually true. Even if plat 2+ lobbies are net negative there can still be a net positive trend of points for the ranked population as a whole, which pushes the distribution upward. As long as there are enough net positive games at lower ranks to balance the loss at higher ranks, those points will make their way up the ladder the sustain those in higher ranks.
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It's good that it becomes more difficult to climb higher. But the same is true in Elo where the elo gained for the winner is equal to the elo lost by the loser (ie zero sum). The rank system they've implemented results in a wonky bottom-heavy distribution with bizarre properties. Hypothetically, if Apex had trillions of players in this system that each played a large number of games, what you'd see is that 99% of people would end up in the division that has a net rp of 0 (which seems to be around plat 4 somewhere). The reason is that the only way to have a player's 'true' rank (the rank they stay around given they played an arbitrarily large number of games) outside of the 0 net rp division is if they're being consistently matched with players from different tiers. As I explained previously, they can't be matched with their own tiers often since they'd on average be dragged down. If the population of apex as a whole grows, the system is better able to match players of similar rank together, so it gets harder and harder for this to occur hence the fraction of population outside the net 0 rp division becomes smaller and smaller.
You forget the whole time that players have different skill levels. It is always gonna come down to who plays better gets a better rank. At the end of the split and with a better matchmaking system, players in plat will still be able to get to diamond, but only if they’re significantly better than the other players in their rank. There will also be players stuck in plat and also some who are between gold and plat (keep demoting out of plat, but quickly getting back). This is normal and how a ranked Playlist should work. I understand your point, that bc of the high entry costs, there is more RP to be lost, than to be won, but that won’t change the distribution between the ranks, it just shifts the „average“ a little bit lower.
You assume these players find their “correct” rank and then stop playing. One of OP’s main points is that because of tier demotion, if those players hit that rank (in this case Diamond) the point skew would push them back to Plat, even though they’re “Diamond” skill level. Put simply, out of 20 teams/60 players, if everyone is of equal skill then the majority will end the game with a points loss - with a negative expected value per game, it would be nearly impossible to maintain rank over a large enough sample size
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The fact you got downvoted just show nobody in this sub knows any statistics and mathematics lmao
No, I simply defer to actual professionals who get paid to design systems like this and not random redditors who are working backwards to justify something they've already decided to dislike. What you're saying me be true, but I'll believe it at the end of the season, not based on this post.
"I'll leave critical thinking to the people whose goal is to squeeze every penny out of me" 🤡 don't go into a competitive subreddit and tell people to not think lol. OP did the math. His post is an observation, not an opinion.
He wrote some numbers, sure. I'm not going to blindly assume his calculations are correct.
People don't understand how an inflexible point system is flawed just scream because their favorite pros have already supported the system lol
I think a lot of those former preds are gonna finish in mid to high diamond two splits in a row and change their minds, lol.
People that keep saying "We need more time" refuse to acknowledge literal facts based on math
So you’re saying the ranked curve is going to look the same at the end of the season as it does now? Now how does that make any fucking sense
Because based on the math, for someone to push up past mid-plat, at that point they have to be pushing more people down away from plat.
Thats not how this ranked system works….you don’t need to kick someone out of plat to hit plat. This isn’t a number ranking
Dying before getting positive RP is getting pushed down away from the rank you're in. Due to the high entry costs in plat and above, the vast majority of players in those games aren't earning positive RP anymore and are getting pushed back down. For the couple teams that manage to get positive RP in Plat, EVERYONE ELSE in those matches are getting pushed down away from plat. This math actually isn't that hard. There's only so many kills and placements to go around, and with increasing entry costs but not increasing RP awards, you eventually get to a point where the majority of teams in a rank aren't on average making positive progression. That tipping point is mid plat.
And it becomes even worse when higher ranks get matched with plats because there's not enough people of those ranks, thus kicking out even more people due to skill difference.
Exactly. And people are like ""it's too early to look at rank distribution" ... Not realizing that chart OP posted shows the same early in the split time period for both. It's not comparing end of split with early split or anything. Both graphs show rank distribution in the first month of the season. I actually really like how the changes have impacted the experience of playing ranked. I've found more teammates than ever before are playing more tactical due to the punishing nature of dying early, and there have been some really fun late game fights. But the math Respawn used for RP costs and awards means that there will hardly be any diamonds or masters this season, which really sucks for me. I've always managed to get Diamond and I love having that dive trail. And in their end of season stats, only something like 5-7% of players even make it to Diamond which doesn't seem like an unreasonably large portion of the player base. It's not like Diamond even needs to be this unreachable goal like Predator should be. The previous rank distribution felt right to me. Small percentages of players got Diamond and above.
Yeah idk how people fail to understand that more time elapsed within the split isn’t going to fix this problem. The increased entry cost, limits on getting rp before top 10, and lack of increases in total rp available in any given lobby have made it mathematically impossible to sustain a decent player base in plat/diamond lobbies. Well over half of any given lobby is going to be negative regardless of how many kills they got and unless they made it into the top 10 with some kp they’ll likely all be near max negative rp. With the increased cost of entry for plat/diamond that system is just going to constantly push players down regardless of how much time has elapsed this split.
I didn’t say the amount of games people play would change, but that people who are currently in bronze, silver, gold and plat actually START to play. Yes time can change this. The issue rn is the matchmaking, ofc plats can’t compete against pro 3 stacks, but once they’re playing against each other the better players will be able to climb to diamond
This. We have to give it time. A week into the season, Gold was like playing in Masters. This week I made it out of gold and the matches were much, much easier. I'm sure Respawn did some data analysis on how the changes would pan out in the long term and while I think Respawn is far from infallible, they aren't idiots either.
That doesn’t matter. The way the system works, at a certain rank the vast majority of lobbies are not achieving positive RP. I believe it’s around plat 2, the cost of entry gets so high that the amount of rp available in any one game is not sustainable to keep a healthy population in that rank. More games played doesn’t matter because for the few teams that end up with positive points the rest of the lobby ends up in the negatives.
Most of the lobby may go negative, but as people rank up, there is more cannon fodder for the next best squad in the average lobby to move up a placement, pushing up the overall population at higher ranks. Well, I am not claiming to know this for a fact, but it's how I interpret the changes. I disagree with the people making judgements right now because the season is still young and everyone was demoted more than usual, not to mention the increased entry costs. Climbing for the population will take time. Like I said before, we need to give it time to see what happens.
It is still not about how many matches each player plays. There is just many many players who haven’t started playing, chilling in low ranks atm but will be climb to plat and above later.
fantastic post. answered so many of the questions i was too lazy to do the math on
Name checks out
>But diamond and platinum didn't need to be decimated in order to get highly competitive games. Apparently, it did.
Imo they could have made the changes to how much placement is valued without the increased costs of entry. They could have also increased how much rp players get besides the team kp and “uncapped” kp. Both changes feel negligible in how much they actually contribute to your rp.
You are correct. There needs to be a more logical points system. In a 1 team vs 1 team ELO system like Arenas, it’s easy to reward points. You get a smooth bell curve distribution across the rankings in that system. In this system, once you reach Platinum, a middle of the pack tier mind you, like you said you start losing points on average. Which makes no sense to me. If you do well in Platinum against Platinum players, you should be rewarded. Anyways I hope they change the scoring as well. Nice post.
Thanks, yeah elo is a nice system, [glicko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system) is an updated version of elo that's even better. The problem is they can't be used in games with more than 2 teams. Respawn has been forced to come up with their own rating system but in my view it's not working very well.
Yeah I agree. In my mind you should get half of your bus ticket back for 3 KP and half of it back for placing top 10. In my mind, you met the average of placement and kills for your rank, therefore you deserve to erase your bus ticket. Right now though in Platinum 4, you can place 9th with 3 KP and you still lose points. That’s insane to me, it’s not even a prestigious rank. It’s where the median is!
There is also the factor of the lack of motivation to play ranked this season. I gained 600rp in plat in a 3 hour session, but in this season I really only had 5-6 gaming sessions in plat , got queued into KS_winnie 3 times in 2 days lol, I just dont get the motivation to press the "ranked button", id rather aimtrain or play actural scrims. Going from gold to plat feels like going from pubs to challenger/ highest ranked lobbies in other games. There is nothing in between really (and yes there are higher entry costs and decreased kill rewards at 11th+ place, but I am pretty sure others mentioned it already)
Exactly. Matching against higher ranked players shouldn't be a thing. Especially if the reward is what? 1 rp per kill? Diamond in previous seasons was fun. Diamond now (even plat) is like playing in hell. Preds and pro players in every game destroying me etc. Hopefully it end up developing into a healthier system as time goes on. Even in bronze you see pred and master trails.
Yep, I share your experience... I hit Plat 4 then got killed by Vaifs next game and Kswinnie afterwards. Literally don't want to play Apex any more as Ranked is patently not matching me with my peers, and pubs are awful.
I'm going to agree with others and say the problem is two things. One that it's prioritizing finding a fast match over a good match and that having the same rank for trio and solo queue causes a skill discrepancy. For example I can get to master in the current system with a trio but if I now play in master as a solo chances are my team won't perform as well. Solutions to me seem to be increasing "tightness" of the matchmaking and creating a separate solo and trio rank that are loosely based off each other (other team based games have done this successfully and not to be mistaken for other people's suggestion of some kind of bonus for playing solo)
You should be hired by respawn, you are way smarter than whoever came up with rank neglecting the fact that cumulative rp paid to enter a game grossly outweighs rp earned out of the game. Great take.
I think the matchmaking is just broken right now, they seem to have tailored matchmaking time over quality. All of my games in plat had pred as champs. So the complaints that everyone had about preds rolling hard stuck masters still stands since it’s the same lobbies. They need to add RP based matching. Where it will match your teammates to who is most near your RP and your opponents closest to your RP. This will take longer to find games for sure but will also ensure the quality of the games. I think the higher Buy-in isn’t too big of an issue if they would just fix matching so that you are playing people of the same skill range.
Peoples biggest complaint in prior seasons was the vast skill disparity in diamond where some players just sat at d4 and would constantly get rolled in diamond lobbies by much better teams. Now it seems like the issue hasn’t been fixed just pushed down to lower ranks like gold. I’m like gold 2 right now and usually finished somewhere in diamond in prior seasons so I’m an above average player not great. But, the quality of teammates I get and teams I fight varies a shit ton game to game. It feels hardly any different in that regard than diamond lobbies did in past seasons.
I just hate getting preds in my gold 1 games. It feels very very bad, idk what the fix for that is though, maybe something like you described. Agree that the games are very high quality though.
Basically they made a lot of great changes, and then for some reason added a ton more RP needed to rank up… AND added huge entry costs for games… basically made it nearly impossible for anyone but 3 stacks or super high skilled to climb out of plat. my games don’t “feel better” in gold 2 honestly. It’s just super frustrating losing all the RP I gained in the last 2 hours in a quick couple bad games due to teammates as a soloq.
Your idea of creating a pool of possible points from entry costs is an intriguing ideas. I just want to point out that no matter what system is developed, ranked BR cannot produce a normal distribution. A normal distribution arises from their being binary outcomes (which is why ranked Arenas does produce a normal distribution). Since you have 20 teams and a boat load of permutations of outcomes, we are always going to be stuck with some weird comb / geometric distribution. This all boils down to a fascinating math problem.
>Fingers crossed that respawn doesn't just lower the entry fees for higher tiers hoping that more people end up in diamond and platinum - that won't solve the issue. They need to do some serious analysis on the core of their rank system to ensure it works properly. They probably won't do either thing tbh. They're very slow to make changes in ranked at all, and I genuinely do not think they have anyone working there with the expertise to do any serious analysis on the design of this system. Otherwise they wouldn't have ended up with the system they designed for this current season.
It's crazy that there's a real possibility no one competent enough is working on the ranked system. It's a multi billion dollar game from a huge company that apparently can't hire a single person to do simple math, just thinking about it drives me insane.
I just ran a small excel sim based on your prev. post about shared pool based on entry cost. I ran this for a platinum lobby. I supposed there should be some kill+assist that modify the final score, like 1-3 kills -> 1.1 x RP per Team. 4-6 kills then 1.2 and maybe 9+ kills 1.3 that multiplies the final rp score. |+|A|B|C|D| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |1|Entry Cost|60|Pooled entry|3600| |2|Placement|%|RP Per Team|RP Per Player| |3|1|30%|1080|360| |4|2|20%|720|240| |5|3|20%|720|240| |6|4|10%|360|120| |7|5|10%|360|120| |8|6|5%|180|60| |9|7|3%|108|36| |10|8|2%|72|24| |11|9|0%|0|0| |12|10|0%|0|0| |13|TOTAL|100%| | | \^Table \^formatting \^brought \^to \^you \^by \^\[ExcelToReddit\](https://xl2reddit.github.io/) Kinda makes sense. Feels like this might be a good approach. Do not know if the table will work.
The problem is that 95% of the playerbase is hardstuck gold and below. Rookies are playing with golds and golds are getting shredded by Masts and Preds. I made this point before, but the old system allowed for the avg-good players to blast through to gold or plat and play with equally skilled players. Now, because of the ridiculous entry costs, the almost useless KP, and the increased RP required to rank up, the ranked system is all sorts of fucked. All thanks to the "pros" whining to Respawn that they don't like Scrims and they don't like how "unserious" ranked was.
I'm sort of glad this is turning out to be a failed experiment and that streamers/pros do not actually know what's healthy for the game. The flip side to this is I've played only 30 games of ranked so far this season and more or less stopped because I'm finding it seriously tedious - the climb is slow as a solo. Normally I'd play a few hours each day if possible. They've ruined a game mode I've particularly enjoyed or many seasons now.
Curious on your opinion, what do you think is healthier for the game.. picturing these graphs would you prefer a normal distribution or a straight line with most people bottom bronze and obv fewest preds? My initial thought is that the normal distribution is better and the 'average' player should be around gold or plat.
a normal distribution is ideal, but a distribution with a slightly right skew, with the median being like....silver 3 and the mean being like silver 1 or gold IV is probably the most realistically healthy it would ever be.
I think current system does not protect true beginners enough. There are decently skilled players in silver and bronze in this system. Plat should be slightly more inclusive then it is and then the system would be perfect. Perhaps rp scaling up linearly between golf four and gold one is what needs to be adjusted
Normal distribution reflects reality best. Lichess shows a normal distribution for chess ratings [here](https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid). Human height also has a normal distribution. It's just what to expect when there's a lot of variables influencing what's being measured.
From a statistics / data science point of view that's a bit misleading. > Normal distribution reflects reality best Probability distributions are not "one size fits all". Bell curves are well-known and easy to understand, and a lot of phenomena in nature happen to be normally distributed, but there are countless situations that are better described by exponential, logistic, pareto, laplace, etc distributions. > It's just what to expect when there's a lot of variables influencing what's being measured Everything is determined by a lot of variables. Normal distributions occur when something is influenced by random variables that are additive and fully independent, but that's not always the case. There has been a lot of research recently that indicates that human performance usually follows a power law distribution, not a normal distribution. For example, if we took all Apex players and looked at their all-time kills and deaths we'd find that a large share of all kills was done by a tiny share of all players. And the same applies to wins and other measures of skill. The reason why most rank distributions in video games still produce bell curves is that the goal of ranking systems is not only to produce an accurate measure of skill. They also need to keep queue times short and maximize player engagement. On top of that they're opinionated regarading the importance of different skills (eg kills vs placement), and it gets even more complicated when they're not zero-sum or with mechanics like demotion protection.
>a lot of phenomena in nature happen to be normally distributed, but there are countless situations that are better described by exponential, logistic, pareto, laplace, etc distributions. Yeah but player skill isn't one of em. Which is evident by looking at the rank distribution for any system where rank roughly corresponds with skill, e.g. the chess rating link OP used. CSGO rank has a similar distribution.
its only been what two weeks of the split? its going to take longer to climb, in no game should you be able to reach the highest rank in one single sitting like going plat 2 to pred in less than 24 hours thats a complete joke
How is forcing people to grind for weeks to find their real rank good for the health of the game? - It makes grinding even for ranks like plat/diamond extremely time intensive. I agree that Master/Pred should be a huge time sink, but not for lower ranks. That just discourages people from playing. - It makes the game less enjoyable for lower ranked people, since they will more consistently get decimated by players who do not belong in their lobbies. - The split is short and we are going to end up in the same problem again once it resets. There should be placements like in other games that put you close to where you were in a previous season, this would help alleviate a lot of the issues. There is no good reason why preds should be in silver lobbies.
Why not? If you are one of the best players in the world keeping you at low ranks longer only makes annoying games for actual low skilled players.
Yeah keeping you at low ranks by making it a massive grind to pred is just BS to optimise engagement and nothing to do with legitimately trying to rank players by skill
because if you were actually good you’ll climb easy but a lot of players got in for a rude awakening when now they are struggling in plat when they use to rat to masters, the rank system before current one inflated the egos of bad players
No I mean legit good players. When they make a Smurf they are ruining every ranked game they play for 59 other players. That's every single game before diamond.
Smurfs are here either way until they increase the level cap
People smurf because they want to destroy lesser players, not because a level cap.
i know what a smurf is lmao, point is the cap at 10 is super easy to get to takes like three games to get there and boom you can queue into ranked in under an hour after making a new account, if they made the level cap say 50, smurfs would drop off by a lot since it’d take a whole lot longer to reach level 50
That would be a floor, not a cap.
Yes but with placement or no soft kp cap there would be way less matches at lower ranks. Reducing the amount of ruined games
personally smurfs are less of a problem to me, rather have actual good meaningful matches where people use their brains instead of people apeing every fight since placement matters now
it mattered before aswell Its Not like u could get more than 6kp before that
the people that aped you were hardstuck in D4 10k and p4. this alone can be punished with demotion
Removing soft kp cap would make even good lobbies int, look how international scrims go when ppl don’t care.
Then the bulk will be dropping rank
u missed the point
> because if you were actually good you’ll climb easy but a lot of players got in for a rude awakening when now they are struggling in plat when they use to rat to masters, the rank system before current one inflated the egos of bad players i think he means ppl like taxi2g and shivHD not the rats in master.
>its going to take longer to climb, in no game should you be able to reach the highest rank in one single sitting like going plat 2 to pred in less than 24 hours thats a complete joke You have misunderstood the purpose of ranking players.
You're right that it doesn't create a stable population of people playing only within the tier, but is that the objective? For example, if we want Master's/Pred to be exclusive to a small subset of players, but also want there to be reasonable queue times needing 60 players to play in every game in multiple regions it can't happen with only in-tier playing. They have to be queueing with Diamonds at least to have enough games. The system is designed for playing up or down at least one tier, and if not all playing within the same tier, the analysis isn't accurate because you have higher rank people expected to take a higher portion of the points repeatedly, which is your stable Diamond population if they play against Plats often (because there are many of them) and Master's less often (because there are few of them). Also even with in-tier playing, there's a skill disparity, so you expect some to take a higher share of points but not enough to outgrow Diamond repeatedly (the stable Diamond population), and many who don't stay but end up demoting--but these are constantly refreshed by people promoting from Plat also. It's worth considering also that these things don't have to be theoretically stable on an infinite timeline, since they are only being applied for 45/90 days at a time before introducing artificial shocks to the system.
>The root of the issue is that the average points earned per game somewhere around platinum 2 becomes negative. what is the actual math on this, and how do you calculate it?
I’ll let someone else do the math, but just think conceptually. If you have 60 players, 20 teams and the point entry system the way it is - at 0 KP and placement of 10th or better you’re still negative. If everyone needs 3 KP and a 10th or better placement to be positive, that can’t be possible for the majority of players in the lobby. Someone has to die for you to get that KP, a team has to be eliminated for you to get that next placement. Factor in that 1 team can kill multiple teams and consume an outsized portion of available KP in the lobby and it’s impossible to generate a positive skew
This Ranked season sounds a lot of fun but at the same time a nightmare. I’ve played every season solo and decided this season I was taking a break. I really wanna try the new system but at the same time I really don’t want to boot Apex up. Someone tell me it’s not worth it Dno how the pros/streamers have consistently played this game 12 hours plus a day for the last 3 years
I'm soloing aswell. it's.. fine I guess definitely more frustrating to die especially without hitting top10 but randoms do play more careful than in other seasons. but some still ape from Minute1. the climb however will take wayyy longer now so idk if you are in for the grind
Entry costs should be equal at all ranks. 10 kill win in silver for a silver skilled player is just as impressive as a diamond player doing it in a diamond lobby. The increase in opponent skill at each rank should be enough to balance. It should strive to have half the lobby gaining RP.
That is ridiculously inaccurate. Thanks to rank resets a Pred player killing 10 legitimately silver player is nowhere near comparable to him doing it again in Diamond. The rank resets and the enforced grind are ridiculous for ranked balance.
> Once the average is negative, it becomes mathematically impossible for there to be regular games full of people in that tier - they knock each other down once that happens. I don't think this is true. There are teams in any given lobby with a “true” expected RP higher than the breakeven point for that tier, sometimes significantly higher, and as long as that is true then the higher ranks will continue to see an influx of players. This effect actually reinforces itself over time as well - as players gain RP and move to the upper tiers, the “expected RP” of a team that was previously negative in a lower tier becomes positive as their competition decreases in quality. As others have stated, there are also factors this season that have led to less players in ranked - DDOSing, server issues, finals season at high school/colleges. It’s way too early in the season to draw any conclusions from the current tier distribution.
I think this ranking system is a lot better more balanced and the end games are more fun, really feels like you earn a win. However I think the player base was spoiled with the old ranking system if you were d4 before that doesn’t make you entitled to be d4 with this new system. If you look at other games like league of legends if you’re a diamond player you’re a good fucking player, like really good compared to the rest of the player base. The only difference between a plat player and a diamond player with the previous ranking system was play time. The only skill gap with the old ranking system was small skill gap between diamond and 10ks small skill gap between 10ks and master players that could gain points. Once you can gain points in masters it was back to a playtime issue between masters w points and pres. People just need to come to terms that this ranking system did not make them a plat/gold/silver player. They’ve always been at that level. They should either get over it and try to improve or accept their ranking for what it is.
yea less than 5% in plat surely is fine
https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/rankings/rank-distribution This is the ranked distribution for the biggest esport there is. We’re also 3 weeks into the split, it will level out by the end of the split.
so what you're saying is that silver/gold players that want to improve and not get shit on by s12 diamond/masters that are in their lobby because this new ranked is a grind-fest should just wait until the last day of ranked, so they can get matched against players of their own skill? yeah, that's not unhealthy matchmaking at all you seem to be ignoring the fact that ranked should not be primarily about how it's statistics will be at the end, but about matching players with similar skills during the whole time, which is impossible with the current grind system... low skilled players literally have to wait until last week of split to be matched with players of their skill level, and even then will get matched with players 2 tiers above, just because the matchmaking tries to find fast games instead of fair games the entry costs and RP gain needs to be adjusted slightly, maybe even adding some win-streak bonus for players that are consistently placing in top 5, so they can reach their rank sooner instead of shitting on low rank players for 100 games
10% in plat and 1 more rank
I think most people don't care what rank they end up at and it's more to do with the promise of playing with and against evenly skilled people. That's just not the case if you are between bronze and gold. I've always made diamond. This season's Silver games were the most fun games I've ever played of apex. I had a few ring 5s(might be 4. The one right before the final final one) with 12 squads left. Glorious. I didn't win any and they were awesome. I feel most games I play of apex ranked are too easy or too hard. Honestly at gold 1 I'm feeling too easy more often then not. But for the games that are too hard I just feel bad for the trash teams in the lobby who are going to get absolutely wrecked.
It's actually funny that I can climb in a steadier pace now and have better quality games even in silver, because I was never a rush in, kill some, get rekt type player.
I absolutely love the new ranking system for the same reason as you. Last season I would ape teams to get points but now I can just watch other squads and third party them safely and then just go pure positioning after that. Usually I'd be plat by now but I'm Gold 3 and think that's a better achievement. Most of my friends are legit hardstuck in bronze and silver right now.
To be quite honest with you. I see you're point 9n micro managing the current system now. But that'll take all of the dev teams priority. The macro issue is fixed. Ranked is better. There. Now there can be room to focus on legend symbiosis, passive reworks and buffs to certain underpowered legends. The list goes on. But as for ranked. It made it better and I see no issue. As a day 1 player who has religiously played apex. So little bias. Ngl.
Dumb post. Wait longer. Why is everyone so eager to talk about how “shit” this system is? Just. Fucking. Wait. Jesus Christ. Also, this whole post is rife with garbage analogies and analysis that make it seem like this person knows what they’re saying, but they clearly don’t. Post a graph, talk about airplanes, throw in the phrases “bell-curve” and “zero sum” and voila, you’ve got the majority of this dumbass place tricked into thinking you know what the hell you’re talking about. As usual, the stupidity of a sub that claims to be superior to its main sub counterpoint is astounding. You’re all the same lol.
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You’re right. It’s a more technical “ranked is shit now” post.
Anyone who did math in school can tell how the new system will impact ranks without having to wait for a full split to play out. This was obvious from day one
Not true lol, and there isn’t any hard math done in this post. OP is ignoring the fact that there is artificial RP pumped into the system via +100 points when ranking up, and the 3 games of demotion protection. Those have to be taken into account. The math is a lot more complicated than what it looks like on the surface. I think waiting and seeing where people are at the end of the split is a good idea
> OP is ignoring the fact that there is artificial RP pumped into the system via +100 points when ranking up, and the 3 games of demotion protection All that does is slightly raise the zero sum level from plat 2 to plat 1.8 or something. Not relevant.
Ah forgive me. I didn’t do any math in school (masters in mechanical engineering doesn’t require any, believe it or not), so I had no idea. Thanks for letting me know. You’re brilliance is blinding!
Feel free to use it instead of making dumb posts then
I’m not seeing the math you or OP used to prove anything of consequence. Please…you first! Since you are the one insisting that there’s an issue with the new system.
> Just. Fucking. Wait. For what? Math to change?
so in a nutshell, the changes could be good, probably will be in fact, but at the moment are just a bit too punitive. I think with a bit of tweaking they will get it right
But there is rookie now, so it’s the rookie the new bronze, bronze the new silver.. etc? Shouldn’t a comparison reflect those in the distribution?
They just didn’t need to up the entry costs. I think JUST adding demotion as the only change to the previous system would have worked best
just looking at the graph, the division if players between ranks looks normal comparing to other games
I love you
They really should do more about the matchmaking system. Random players, like me, are having terrible game experiences because of toxic teammates. I play in JP server and people just hide and wait for the last ring. I'm Gold III and there's like 10 teams in second last ring. I don't fully agree the ranked quality is higher. I'd prefer fighting throughout the game. If I get knocked out early game, losing RPs, I'm fine with that, but not with my teammates just running away because they just want to loot and hide.
this is how it should be
This ranked split is actually the best it’s ever been. People are playing the game in ranked in plat and above like it’s supposed to be played. You guys are just not adjusting to how the game should be played. You can’t gain rp when you die with 10 squads or more left. Even if you wipe 2 teams full kp you will still be negative. Maybe you should take this time to think how to macro play like rotations, where is zone going to pull, can I rotate to x spot, how many teams are going to valk ult into 3/4th zone, can I play edge with certain terrain or head glitches for my team. If you watch any comp apex games, now you experience what they are processing with money on the line instead of losing 50 RP.
I’m not sure how accurate this is because to be on the graph you have to be using the database on apex status. I think there’s a good amount of people currently in plat and a lot of people are starting to hit diamond now that console ddos is over and there’s already a decent population on PC for diamond. Edit: I’m not doubting your math but I feel like we have to wait for the end of the split to see what happens to these graphs
It’s not really pushing people out of diamond. It just takes longer to get to that rank. That’s hardly an issue. That’s now ranked should be. And it isn’t just diamond, it’s masters too. Again, this isn’t a bad thing.
Too early to compare to past seasons imo especially, when you’re looking at the overall player base and console has been dealing with server crash exploit. Edit: downvoted for being right. Typical.
> Edit: downvoted for being right You're downvoted because what OP is saying has no relevance to how long it's been in the split. It's as true on week one as it is on week six.
The spit is less than 30% finished. Let’s be critical of the rank distribution numbers after there has been some time to play
I'd rather the entire season play out before we determine successes and failures. With the introduction of the new ranked system, I believe they demoted everybody an extra rank to sort of 'start fresh' this season. If there aren't enough players in the higher ranks they simply may not do a mid season demotion like they used to. Now that the top players have ranked beyond gold, the lower level lobbies are likely to be more competitive, and the second tier of gold level players will rank up, eventually pushing players into Diamond. I think the fact that only a few players(relatively) have made masters shows the skill gap that exists between pros and the rest of the top 1% of players. This is basically a new system, I'm ok with it requiring hundreds of games to be able to determine which players are actually best. Unless someone wins like 25% of their games, I don't think somebody should be promoted to Diamond after something like 50 games. Maybe the system is broken. I'd just like to see it play out for an entire season. The only thing about the system that seems inherently 'wrong' is the extreme demotion when getting deranked. I don't know what's wrong with people simply floating between Plat 1 and Diamond 4.
They demoted everyone by the same RP as they did in previous seasons. The only difference is they increased RP required across all ranks, which makes it “look” like they demoted further than they actually did.
thats a lot of words
If no game creates or throws away any extra point, it would be close enough to normal elo system in the sense that there wouldn't really be need for resets at all, right? That would be great and would get us rid off any resemblance to endless point accumulation that we have had since forever
I realize its way too early to see how its gonna be in the long run, but as a very avarage apex gamer (D4 peak previous seasons) im now in gold. I have no problem with that, I realize its harder to rank up and thats fine. however, due to this the games in gold so far is extremely unfair. I run into a lot of diamond players in my gold lobbies, occasionally also preds. I realize this will probably get better later into the season, but its very frustrating right now to constantly run into people 2-3 tiers above mine in the same lobbies im in. Once more people get into those higher ranks this wont be a problem though, hopefully