How to fix Ranked battles?

[Catpain_Lucifurr]

Ranked battles can be very frustrating.

 

Teams can have very different skill levels and steamrolling one sided battles are far too common.

 

Play well and try to win, and you can lose a start more easily than if you just try to make as much xp as possible to protect yourself and hope to be on the winning team.

 

Play badly and don't care, you can get carried on the shoulders of giants.

 

Ranked battles feels tedious and unmotivating to play.

The new changes to Gold League where stars can not be saved seems to be particularly frustrating.

So, the question is, how to fix Ranked battles to make them something else than a more frustrating mode of Random battles? How to make Ranked more about skill and competition without sucking out even more fun?

Redo matchmaking. From scratch. Make a system more similar to games like Leage of Legends or DotA2. 

 

What does that mean you might ask? Crazy talk? Retard alert? 

Possibly both of those. However, also maybe something to consider. As I see it, the main problem is not the ships or the game mechanics, it is the players/teams in combination with the rules. Even good players can perform badly when put into a frustrating game mode where there are no plans, bad communication, few options, and too much random matchmaking. Bad results should not surprise anyone, it is almost a guaranteed result. Thus, all of this needs to be thrown into the sea never to return!

Replace this mode with a proper team game with selection and preparation. Maybe something like this:

 

1.) Pick a Tier, any Tier. Click "Search for players"
2.) A list of for example 6-7 vs. 6-7 players is put into a Lobby together.

3.) Each team can vote/select to ban 0-2 ships making it unavailable to the other team.

4.) Each player can select a ship fitting the criteria for the match and click "Ready".

5.) A chat-window in the Lobby should allow player interaction in this phase, maximum 60 seconds to prepare.

6.) Start combat!

This would slow down starting each battle. Step 2 could be removed, and automated processes must ensure slow/confused players auto-advance if they do not make choices.

Combine the above with following rule changes:

 

1.) In a 6-7 vs. 6-7 scenario, make sure the ship distribution always is 2-3 Destroyers, 2-3 Cruisers, 1-2 Battleships, 0-1 Aircraft Carriers, 0-1 Submarines, 0-1 Super Ships

2.) Bronze League qualification, win 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 3 base xp player list

3.) Bronze League advancement, +1 rank/star for each victory, -1 rank/star for each defeat, save rank/star if on the top of the base xp player list

4.) Silver League qualification, at rank 1 in Bronze you can not lose that rank, qualify for Silver League by winning 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 2 base xp player list

5.) Silver League advancement, +1 rank/star for each victory, -1 rank/star for each defeat, save rank/star if on the top of the base xp player list

6.) Gold League qualification, at rank 1 in Silver you can not lose that rank, qualify for Gold League by winning 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 1 base xp player list
7.) Gold League advancement, +1 rank/star for each victory, -1 rank/star for each defeat, save rank/star if on the top of the base xp player list

8.) At rank 1 in Gold League, you receive a special insignia, 3 rank 1 Gold League victories should give a more more grand insignia, and the same for 5.

 

What do you think? Yay or nay? I made a poll for quick feedback.

Other ideas how to fix Ranked battles?

[GarrusBrutus]

1 hour ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

What do you think?

You forget that 95% of the playerbase are really casual players who DGAF about performance.

Wargaming knows this, so they redesigned ranked not to long ago: 

The rework was especially aimed at the potato majority to make ranked more accessible for them and keep them at it. 

 

Would your suggestions make ranked actually...ranked? Yes. It would also get quite sweaty which the aforementioned 95% doesn't like. 

[Ocsimano18]

I’d like to see a better filter between the leagues. With the recent changes, it’s much easier to finish the bronze league and get into the same matches as silver league players leading to unenjoyable matches where your unskilled DDs die early and led to an unwinnable match. The qualification rounds should be played in the previous league, without the option to save stars. Alternatively, the qualifications should give you a fixed number of attempts (e.g. 10 matches) per sprint and only let you through if you win at least 6 of them).

[humpty_1]

IMHO it shouldn't be top 2 top 1 saving a star it should be the top 1 plus all others within say 20% 30% (whatever) to the person who's top. this way would be a lot fairer, and would be less anoying to us who miss out by 5 xp points etc ....

[_HomTanks_]

Bronze and silver are very good format wise as they are now. People including me having difficulties on moving forward consistently in Gold league (I went up to 5)  is not due to the format only. The pain in the gold league is caused from the noob player base, who don’t have the understanding of ships, mechanics, tactics or maps, but wanting to rank out in gold league. Player base is the problem. The qualification between silver and gold should be even further enhanced in a way to prevent all these unskilled players advancing to gold league IF we are talking about a really skill based gold league. The current format of gold league otherwise   is good. But only who really deserve should be able to reach this league, not the spammers. Of course sometimes you get a landslide victory or defeat but it has always been there in randoms and ranked. And saving a star never guaranteed your star actually. You could be a sunicum with a very unskilled suicidal teammates and think to play your best so you can save your star while another teammate with 46% wr could just keep spamming he from the borderline with his Smolensk or thunderer and take that star from you. Closest interpretation to a skill based league is how current Gold league is set but if everyone is welcomed to this league, then we can’t talk about skill here either.

 

tl;dr Current sprint ranked format is much better than the previous one with all the leagues but the qualification phase to gold league should be much more difficult to eliminate low skill game spammers jump there. 

[sublimeark]

Hi,

 

1 - Most of the players are casual, even those who play 8+ hours/day. They just want to press play with their chosen ship and play. So they really do not care about balance or to have a fair fight.

2 - I like your ideas, however that would slow down the amount of games per day, meaning less flags, ship's post battle cost, thus, less $$ for WG. This is the main reason the +2-2 MM still exists imo. Let's say, 1k less overall battles per hour can make a difference in their earnings.

3 - As it stands since subs came out I only play ranked and CB's. 90%+ of the community dislikes CVS and Subs and WG simply doesn't care, so they will keep doing whatever they want. The whole T9 new rank and out of nowhere a lighthouse Musashi it's showing that WG it's not even trying to hide the fact they're money hungry and constantly trying to milk their players.

 

Thank  you.

[tocqueville8]

12 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

 

1.) Pick a Tier, any Tier. Click "Search for players"
2.) A list of for example 6-7 vs. 6-7 players is put into a Lobby together.

3.) Each team can vote/select to ban 0-2 ships making it unavailable to the other team.

4.) Each player can select a ship fitting the criteria for the match and click "Ready".

 

Too complicated.

A lobby phase before the game is going to be useless on a server where a large % of people doesn't speak the same language, it's just going to annoy players with the extra wait.

Also, how is this "redoing the matchmaker", when you make no mention of how the players are actually selected to be on the same team? How would it prevent "steamrolling"?

 

12 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

2.) Bronze League qualification, win 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 3 base xp player list

 

To the average scrub, that means ~40 games just to get to Bronze, right? 40 games before he can even begin collecting some rewards. Think about it.

 

12 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

 

6.) Gold League qualification, at rank 1 in Silver you can not lose that rank, qualify for Gold League by winning 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 1 base xp player list

 

Again, that's a terrible idea.

 

You can play a flawless game in a DD where you kill the enemy DD, cap, spot, do a great job denying them map control...but you still come 2nd by XP. Or you play a secondary BB and the damage you do isn't worth the same XP, so you end up 3rd even though you did the push that won the flank and the game.

 

I know I'm not even the best player on this thread, let alone the server, but I've made it to Gold for the past several seasons, and my winrate there is definitely above average. The qualifiers only took maybe 10-15 games each time. With your proposed change, it would be about 40 or more. No, thank you. Some excellent players would get up there faster, no doubt, but who would they play with if it takes me ages to join them, even with a 60-65% winrate?

 

12 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

Ranked battles feels tedious

 

Not to me, they're not.

No subs, no superships, no potato divs, no tryhard divs, more brawling, different ships are strong compared to Randoms...

 

12 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

and unmotivating

 

They would feel unmotivating if I had to play a bunch of extra games just to get into each league and start playing for the rewards and further progress.

 

12 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

Play well and try to win, and you can lose a start more easily than if you just try to make as much xp as possible to protect yourself and hope to be on the winning team.

 

I try to play well and win, but sometimes that requires me to be in places where I won't get a lot of XP. Your reforms would punish me more than they'd help me. And you seem to be under the impression that good players take forever to progress, which they don't.

In the current system, good players progress because they win, whatever it takes. Sure, they often save a star if the team is really awful, but that's not their aim, nor should it be. But with your criterion for the Gold qualifiers, you're treating them like average players who play for the xp (hoping to save the star, or in this case, to get one) instead of good players who try to win, and do.

 

I can see cropping out the worst player if the winning team if he performs below a certain threshold, but only rewarding the 1st place to get to Gold is just unfair, anti-teamwork and potentially toxic.

 

I'm sorry, but I hardly see anything in this post that I find worth implementing.

You're surely putting a lot more hurdles to player progress, but with no mention of improved rewards, never mind the promise to reduce steamrolls. How this would "fix" anything is beyond me.

[Catpain_Lucifurr]

Thanks for the feedback. 

 

They are obviously not going to change anything based on these forum threads anyway, but it is interesting to see how people reason about Ranked battles.

@tocqueville8: 

Writing a complete set of new rules would be a bit counter-productive since I just wanted to get some idea about what others were thinking about Ranked battles. The forums are a good place to go for people with lots of experience, and thus a place to get a lot of valuable feedback. For the record, I agree with what you say about missing additional rewards and slowing down progression too much. I just think there should be a more competitive twist to make sure mostly those with the best skills can get to Gold league, not just those with enough time to try and try again. Even I reached qualifications for Gold league, and I am definitely not good enough.

@humpty_1:

I like your suggestion for saving a star/rank, this would in my opinion be a good change to Ranked battles just in itself.

 

@L8viathan:

The player base is maybe part of the problem, but blaming the state of Ranked battles on the players is like blaming the kids in a soccer match who are allowed to play with adults. The problem is not the players themselves, it is the setup. In my humble opinion.

[Takethatyoubeast]

3 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

The player base is maybe part of the problem, but blaming the state of Ranked battles on the players is like blaming the kids in a soccer match who are allowed to play with adults. The problem is not the players themselves, it is the setup. In my humble opinion.

Very well put 👍

 

If WG really wanted ranked to be taken seriously, they would put a minimum WR % from randoms in order to play ranked 

 

Unfortunately these are the very players that WG wants as they throw money at the game 

[tocqueville8]

5 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

Even I reached qualifications for Gold league, and I am definitely not good enough.

 

Well...your numbers are mediocre, but you're also playing a rather poor selection of ships, imho:

• Friesland struggles to use smoke with all the radar cruisers around, and has no torps to do quick, decisive, possibly lucky, often massive damage
• British CLs have the same problem, plus no HE to reliably damage nose-in enemies
• British CVs are arguably the weakest, at least in the hands of most players.

Basically, of your whole lineup I'd only bring to Ranked the Daring line (or Cossack) and the Queen Elizabeth, which was a pleasure in Bronze the first season we had subs.

 

But still, saying you reached the Gold qualifiers isn't too alarming, imho: you're about average in Ranked (49% WR despite questionable ships), and it's not like you reached Rank 1 in Gold...

Now, there are some bad players in Gold, but mostly, at least in the early sprints, it's people above 55%, lots of unicums or near so, and quite a few superunicums.

[The_Angry_Admiral]

While you can't fix ranked a simple change to the MM would be always 2 BB's, 2 cruisers, and 2 DD's.

[Andrewbassg]

Fix ranked? Easy, Remove the frakkin flying dishonesty, reinstitute 7v7, put in place a qualifying round before bronze. Did  I mention remove flying dishonesty? Just in case:

 

 

Remove the frakkin flying dishonesty!!

 

There you go you can thank me later.

[Catpain_Lucifurr]

13 hours ago, tocqueville8 said:

 

Well...your numbers are mediocre, but you're also playing a rather poor selection of ships, imho:

• Friesland struggles to use smoke with all the radar cruisers around, and has no torps to do quick, decisive, possibly lucky, often massive damage
• British CLs have the same problem, plus no HE to reliably damage nose-in enemies
• British CVs are arguably the weakest, at least in the hands of most players.

Basically, of your whole lineup I'd only bring to Ranked the Daring line (or Cossack) and the Queen Elizabeth, which was a pleasure in Bronze the first season we had subs.

 

But still, saying you reached the Gold qualifiers isn't too alarming, imho: you're about average in Ranked (49% WR despite questionable ships), and it's not like you reached Rank 1 in Gold...

Now, there are some bad players in Gold, but mostly, at least in the early sprints, it's people above 55%, lots of unicums or near so, and quite a few superunicums.

It is somewhat off-topic, but since you comment on it:
I am aware my ship choices are not optimal, but I started playing WoWs because I am really interested in WW2 British ships.

In the first year, I was doing all the possible n00b mistakes playing every line a little and learning slowly for each type with no team and no one to teach me. My WR, which I am not too obsessing about, suffers from this. Now, I can play Destroyers and CVs (yes, everyone can play CV, but not play well) fairly ok, but I still suck with Battleships and Cruisers. For Ranked, I try to bring ships that are well suited for ranked which to increase my random teams chances.

Back on topic:

My suggestions/comments was put in here to see what others were thinking about fixing Ranked battles, it seems few think it works well with the current rules/setup.

In my opinion, Ranked is a tedious and unfun game mode. This is such a shame, because it could be competitive and exciting if done well. Now, it is just a version of Random battles with fewer players - this is simply not good enough.

How to fix it? Well, this is a thread about how to do that. I would love to see more ideas/thoughts about this.

Does anyone actually think Ranked works well now?

[Estaca_de_Bares]

I know it's going to be unpopular, but back when ranked still wasn't divided in leagues I suggested substituting the "top loser saves star" system with a "get out of jail free" scheme for the top winner valid only on the following battle. The current rewards system, OTOH, works quite fine, although I think a tweaked hybrid of now and back then would work better: making the cammouflage gains from victories a single progress bar independent from leagues, doubloons a separated, league-dependent bar and steel threshold-dependent like the old rankeds (progressively increasing amounts for reaching certain ranks). By a combination of both things, bad players wouldn't advance but still get some candy if they put enough effort, while better players would go up to where they feel it's comfortable enough.

 

Salute.

[Takethatyoubeast]

8 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

Fix ranked? Easy, Remove the frakkin flying dishonesty, reinstitute 7v7, put in place a qualifying round before bronze. Did  I mention remove flying dishonesty? Just in case:

 

 

Remove the frakkin flying dishonesty!!

 

There you go you can thank me later.

You need to address the CV issue as well 👍

[tocqueville8]

5 hours ago, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

In my opinion, Ranked is a tedious and unfun game mode. This is such a shame, because it could be competitive and exciting if done well.

 

I don't understand what's "tedious" about it in your experience.

 

With fewer players per team, each carries a bigger share of responsibility, so one has to get busy quickly.

With fewer players per team, there are potentially fewer crossfires to worry about, so pushing and brawling becomes more common, at least more common early on.

It's also encouraged to maximize firepower and utility at the expense of endurance, which changes the meta in favor of ships that are less suited for Randoms.

So on the contrary, I find Ranked games quite intense.

 

I'm also not sure what you mean by "competitive".

 

In most competitions, losers are progressively kicked out until you're left with the winner(s).
But that's not the spirit of Ranked, as it's not a tournament like, say, the Champions League or some fencing specialty at the Olympiads.

Ranked is just Random's odd-looking brother, a similar mode with hurdles that somewhat restrict access to the better rewards to the better players. The smaller teams rule kills two birds with one stone: it creates a different meta and it makes the filtering down (not out) of weaker players more effective.

 

As long as one plays more or less with strangers, not division mates or clan mates, I think it would lead to too much toxicity if a loss resulted in being kicked out of the competition.

 

Other than that, even just increasing the requirements to qualify for each league would indeed make Ranked more tedious, possibly a lot more toxic, as well.

 

Frankly, I enjoy it the way it is, and I did even before subs began to appear in Randoms.

[Andrewbassg]

1 hour ago, Takethatyoubeast said:

You need to address the CV issue as well 👍

Well.....If spotting would be removed.....I wouldn't mind even the floating part of it. it would be still dishonest, don't get me wrong but.......tolerable.

[Escaam]

I refuse to answer in any meaningful fashion: UNINSTALL.

[Takethatyoubeast]

1 hour ago, Andrewbassg said:

Well.....If spotting would be removed.....I wouldn't mind even the floating part of it. it would be still dishonest, don't get me wrong but.......tolerable.

Wasn’t there some talk of getting rid of spotting a while ago 

[Andrewbassg]

1 hour ago, Takethatyoubeast said:

Wasn’t there some talk of getting rid of spotting a while ago 

Yes. Then we learned that Wedgie was testing stun bombs in the meantime. Or instead.

[Catpain_Lucifurr]

5 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

Well.....If spotting would be removed.....I wouldn't mind even the floating part of it. it would be still dishonest, don't get me wrong but.......tolerable.

In my opinion, spotting is not done well in general. :o
 

4 hours ago, Escaam said:

I refuse to answer in any meaningful fashion: UNINSTALL.

I expected more votes for that poll-option, I am disappointed. :D

 

6 hours ago, tocqueville8 said:

I don't understand what's "tedious" about it in your experience.

 

I'm also not sure what you mean by "competitive".

I filtered out your other text for brevity to explain what I mean.

 

Tedious: In simple terms it just feels like a task I have to do more than a fun and exciting competition. It is a bit endless +1 -1 game with no end. You might say that is because I don't have enough skill to advance, maybe so, but even when advancing well it doesn't feel rewarding. You want to play it for the steel because you want some ship, would you play ranked if there was no steel rewards?

 

Competitive: The current rule allow just about anyone to progress, even into gold league, just by playing many battles. This does something to the mindset of a lot of players and leads to a lot of careless play. Matches are often won or lost early with one side steamrolling the other. Skill is of course involved, but I would like to see some more focus on player skill than what you see today. Teams are randomly so different in quality. Sometimes you can sit in the corner and win, and other times you have to struggle for your life and try to sink half of the enemy team. I know that doesn't fit so well for Ranked battles, but I loved the 1 vs 1 Brawl. I also think Ranked has too little teamwork and too many yoloing single players, systems rewarding teamwork could change that behaviour.

[Andrewbassg]

Btw....

 

 

[jksoler]

On 6/2/2022 at 10:31 PM, Catpain_Lucifurr said:

Ranked battles can be very frustrating.

 

Teams can have very different skill levels and steamrolling one sided battles are far too common.

 

Play well and try to win, and you can lose a start more easily than if you just try to make as much xp as possible to protect yourself and hope to be on the winning team.

 

Play badly and don't care, you can get carried on the shoulders of giants.

 

Ranked battles feels tedious and unmotivating to play.

The new changes to Gold League where stars can not be saved seems to be particularly frustrating.

So, the question is, how to fix Ranked battles to make them something else than a more frustrating mode of Random battles? How to make Ranked more about skill and competition without sucking out even more fun?

Redo matchmaking. From scratch. Make a system more similar to games like Leage of Legends or DotA2. 

 

What does that mean you might ask? Crazy talk? Retard alert? 

Possibly both of those. However, also maybe something to consider. As I see it, the main problem is not the ships or the game mechanics, it is the players/teams in combination with the rules. Even good players can perform badly when put into a frustrating game mode where there are no plans, bad communication, few options, and too much random matchmaking. Bad results should not surprise anyone, it is almost a guaranteed result. Thus, all of this needs to be thrown into the sea never to return!

Replace this mode with a proper team game with selection and preparation. Maybe something like this:

 

1.) Pick a Tier, any Tier. Click "Search for players"
2.) A list of for example 6-7 vs. 6-7 players is put into a Lobby together.

3.) Each team can vote/select to ban 0-2 ships making it unavailable to the other team.

4.) Each player can select a ship fitting the criteria for the match and click "Ready".

5.) A chat-window in the Lobby should allow player interaction in this phase, maximum 60 seconds to prepare.

6.) Start combat!

This would slow down starting each battle. Step 2 could be removed, and automated processes must ensure slow/confused players auto-advance if they do not make choices.

Combine the above with following rule changes:

 

1.) In a 6-7 vs. 6-7 scenario, make sure the ship distribution always is 2-3 Destroyers, 2-3 Cruisers, 1-2 Battleships, 0-1 Aircraft Carriers, 0-1 Submarines, 0-1 Super Ships

2.) Bronze League qualification, win 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 3 base xp player list

3.) Bronze League advancement, +1 rank/star for each victory, -1 rank/star for each defeat, save rank/star if on the top of the base xp player list

4.) Silver League qualification, at rank 1 in Bronze you can not lose that rank, qualify for Silver League by winning 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 2 base xp player list

5.) Silver League advancement, +1 rank/star for each victory, -1 rank/star for each defeat, save rank/star if on the top of the base xp player list

6.) Gold League qualification, at rank 1 in Silver you can not lose that rank, qualify for Gold League by winning 10 ranked battles where you are on the top 1 base xp player list
7.) Gold League advancement, +1 rank/star for each victory, -1 rank/star for each defeat, save rank/star if on the top of the base xp player list

8.) At rank 1 in Gold League, you receive a special insignia, 3 rank 1 Gold League victories should give a more more grand insignia, and the same for 5.

 

What do you think? Yay or nay? I made a poll for quick feedback.

Other ideas how to fix Ranked battles?

The ONLY way to fix this game is to be able to quit a match and pay a gold penalty, or other way to avoid losing your star. If you have a team with half the members sucking rocks, and the other half rushing in to die, there is no way to fix it. I played four games tonight, lost all four (one with 109K damage in a DD), because the teams are made of [edited][edited]. A Cleveland firing AP against a DD, a BB hiding behind a CV, our CV not spotting DDs, a ship with 100HP left to live and regenerate with our CV ignoring it, etc etc etc.

There is no way to fix this. Let me pay 100 dubloons, or 10,000 silver, and save my star. That way I can play like a retard, not give a crap about capping and defending, and still rank out. I play the game to enjoy, not to rant and scream abuse all night as a Cleveland fires his radar from the red line, or a DD hides behind the BBs in smoke and fires guns and torps at a BB 20Km away.

It is ruined. It cannot be fixed. Make it full pay-to-win... If I lose my star, I pay 100 gold and get it back. Simple. That way I can play like a bot retard and not try to carry my team every game.

[jksoler]

I play only ranked and co-op in WOWS. I gave up on random years ago. I have a 55-60% win rate in Bronze, and never go to Silver because I read that it gets even worse. If this continues, I will only and exclusively play this game in Co-op, get my missions and treat it as a collector's showcase. The gameplay is so bad, it is not worth trying anymore.

[JohnMac79]

Ranked cannot be fixed until they first completely rework the way XP is gained, and every 'rework' WG attempt only makes things worse.