Ranked battles rebalancing

[Mik1984]

Dear WG

 

I know you don't read the EU forums, but please rebalance for the next season of ranked battles:

 

1. The chance of every ship class to be awarded no star loss on defeat. Currently the notion of the top XP ship losing the star favours the DDs too heavily as it is usually a DD who gets his star saved. I had multiple games in other ship types where I dealt over 100 000 damage and I still was not first in the losing team. Very rarely I would be the first in a losing team in anything else than a DD even with very strong performance. This leads to DD spam on higher ranks

 

2. Please rebalance the issue of the lesser tier involvement in the ranked battles. Currently the tier 6-7 battles are de facto for tier 7 only, as you are needlessly handicapping your chances with the lesser tier with no compensatory reward. Of course on the lower leagues you can play with a floating bucket and still crush your opponents, but on the upper rank every advantage matters, as it allows you to finish the season quicker with less tedium. Please give some compensatory rewards for playing the lesser tier if you allow that tier into the ranked battles. It will make playing them worthwhile for those who wish the extra challenge.

 

PS: Preemptively I must add that I speak from the authority of having finished the season on rank 1, so it is not that I am a "moaning loser". I would just like some changes for a better gameplay in the future. I would even enjoy playing the lesser tier more if there was some extra reward for it.

[nekomatafuyu]

With regards to the "top tier only" issue, I suspect that it would be alleviated by a change in the matchmaking system.

If any bottom tier ships must be matched against an equal tier ship of the same type, then it will remove the danger of selecting a bottom tier ship. It may well be that there's only one tier 6 BB waiting for a game at a given point, but let them wait. This will at least mean that you know that you will not be paired up against a tier 7 BB, and can therefore use the tier 6 if you so desire.

 

I reached rank 1 using my Nagato in the end, but I would have loved the option to take my Warspite out at least some of the time. As if, I couldn't realistically do so as I knew I would most likely be matched up against something like a Nagato.

[Mik1984]

With regards to the "top tier only" issue, I suspect that it would be alleviated by a change in the matchmaking system.

 

That is insufficient, as even in evenly matched teams, with a weaker ship you have less chances to "beat the game" and your skill superiority is not going to have as strong impact on your winrate and on top of that, you have a lesser chance to be the top XP ship in your team, as the greater tier ships will tend to get more XP - that is of course if the current system is maintained.

 

PS

 

Possibly strict tier matching would make things even worse for lower tier playability, as you would have to wait endlessly for being finally allowed to play, unless there are additional changes that compensate the problem described above - that lower tiers are unattractive even if the teams would be perfectly balanced, which will lead to a poor low tier player pool.

[RamirezKurita]

A better solution to the handicap of having a lower tier ship would be to simply force tier mirroring. If you go into a T6-7 ranked game in a T6 ship, it would force a T6 ship to appear on the enemy team so that the total tiers remain the same across both teams. The freebie star could also be shifted to be an underdog award to be given out to the best performing lower tier ship rather than the outright top performing ship.

[nekomatafuyu]

 

That is insufficient, as even in evenly matched teams, with a weaker ship you have less chances to "beat the game" and your skill superiority is not going to have as strong impact on your winrate and on top of that, you have a lesser chance to be the top XP ship in your team, as the greater tier ships will tend to get more XP - that is of course if the current system is maintained.

 

That doesn't strike me as a real issue to be particularly honest. My concern when looking at tier 6 at the moment is that I know I will be matched against a tier 7, which in turn means that my team is at an immediate disadvantage, and we're more likely to lose. If I know that my Warspite will be up against another tier 6 BB, then we're back to an even chance of winning.

 

If anything, the drawback is that it will make it easier for lesser players to be carried. Taking a t6 BB will force a t6 BB onto the opposing team, whch will in turn make the better players' t7s count as a greater factor in the battle. If a player who needs carrying is on my team, I would certainly prefer for them to make it easier for me to carry them to be completely honest.

 

Edit: The problem with straight tier mirroring is in that some t6 DDs can at least be useful due to better concealment. I wouldn't really want to take a t6 BB if all it meant was that the opponent would take a t6 IJN DD which can act as an invisible spotter for the enemy team.

[Mik1984]

The freebie star could also be shifted to be an underdog award to be given out to the best performing lower tier ship rather than the outright top performing ship.

 

That is something that I am thinking about. You need EXTRA perks for the underdog tiers. Tier mirroring is insufficient(and possibly even redundant), even without the risk of mismatched tiers, the lower tiers suck.

 

However with extra perks for underdog tiers, you may even drop the absolute tier mirroring. Yes there might be a risk that you are on a team with one lesser tier more, but you have perks to compensate for that.

 

PS I don't believe that carrying players is a thing. Players with negative winrates don't progress and stay in the noob leagues, where such details are simply irrelevant, as there even a weaker ship is good enough. Furthermore, players that don't progress, usually drop out.

 

In the upper league, all players that play, play with the intention of beating the game, regardless weather they will succeed at it or not. So I don't think that there is a reason for anybody to intentionally aim for being carried.

[Spellfire40]

 

That is something that I am thinking about. You need EXTRA perks for the underdog tiers. Tier mirroring is insufficient(and possibly even redundant), even without the risk of mismatched tiers, the lower tiers suck.

 

However with extra perks for underdog tiers, you may even drop the absolute tier mirroring. Yes there might be a risk that you are on a team with one lesser tier more, but you have perks to compensate for that.

 

PS I don't believe that carrying players is a thing. Players with negative winrates don't progress and stay in the noob leagues, where such details are simply irrelevant, as there even a weaker ship is good enough. Furthermore, players that don't progress, usually drop out.

 

 ​Why rewarding someone who shoots himself in the leg and screws his Team over by selecting a lower Level ship than he could? Would be better if they Limit the Tir so you only can take t7 ships when thats the highest posible choise.

[nekomatafuyu]

Hmm, the underdog star could be an interesting solution, although it could go either way. Depending on the implementation, it may end up that players trying for extra perks cause their team to be the weaker team overall. I've already seen problems with some players making decisions that boost their own XP as the detriment to the team's chance to win, and I can see rage if that type of behaviour was reinforced.

 

I'm not saying that it will end up that way of course, and I definitely think the idea merits further investigation, but I'm just keeping myself open to the possibility of unintended consequences. (Hell, top loser keeps his star is a perfect example of unintended consequences when you consider that it sometimes makes players play more selfishly).

[Mik1984]

 

 ​Why rewarding someone who shoots himself in the leg and screws his Team over by selecting a lower Level ship than he could? Would be better if they Limit the Tir so you only can take t7 ships when thats the highest posible choise.

 

If you reasonably reward people for playing underdog tiers, there will be a considerable number of those tiers in the field, which means that on average it will not be "a shot in the foot" for anybody, even if sometimes you will have one extra lower tier ship on your side.

 

If the existence of lower tier players is normal and abundant, as an upper tier player, one time you will have the disadvantage, the other game you will have advantage, it will average itself out throughout multiple games.

[RUSSIANBlAS]

Kudos to the two guys who hit Rank 1 with a reasonable amount of games.

 

I still think stars should be denied to the bottom of the winning team, maybe to the bottom two. That would stop the bots and the poor players from climbing. 

[Mik1984]

Kudos to the two guys who hit Rank 1 with a reasonable amount of games.

 

I still think stars should be denied to the bottom of the winning team, maybe to the bottom two. That would stop the bots and the poor players from climbing. 

 

The problem is that you need a star faucet.

 

Players effectively win stars by taking them away from each other. The star sink is that winning players gather up the stars and move up or finish the season. If there was no star faucet, nobody would reach rank 1, not even the best players, because they would not have opponents they can win the stars away from.

 

The current system replaced the free star on promotion. Now every match 6 stars are taken away and 7 are added, which constitutes a faucet, which supplies the player pool with stars that are depleted through gathering.

[Spellfire40]

 

 

 

If you reasonably reward people for playing underdog tiers, there will be a considerable number of those tiers in the field, which means that on average it will not be "a shot in the foot" for anybody, even if sometimes you will have one extra lower tier ship on your side.

 

If the existence of lower tier players is normal and abundant, as an upper tier player, one time you will have the disadvantage, the other game you will have advantage, it will average itself out throughout multiple games.

 To get to rank 1 you Need a lots of games even if your resonable skilled there are enogh obstacles like FSBs no fighter strike Ranger to makeing it more apraling for People to Chose crap lower Level ships so they get some "Underdog" boni for srewing their Teams game and posible even beiing rewarded by it and not losing a star? If there would be a a simple Limit like T6 for games till rank 15 T7 for the rest you would eleminate one variable to piss Players off.

 

Id rather see a not gain a star on a win for Players in low Level ships dieing with Little Impact to reduce even chosing such a  vessle if they cant stick to one Tir.

[Mik1984]

 

 To get to rank 1 you Need a lots of games even if your resonable skilled there are enogh obstacles like FSBs no fighter strike Ranger to makeing it more apraling for People to Chose crap lower Level ships so they get some "Underdog" boni for srewing their Teams game and posible even beiing rewarded by it and not losing a star? If there would be a a simple Limit like T6 for games till rank 15 T7 for the rest you would eleminate one variable to piss Players off.

 

No, because first

 

- basic math  for dummies:

T6 players don't damage your winrate in a t7 ship, as the number of games where you have advantage and disadvantage averages out.

 

- the current ranked battles system is already highly tier restricting, as you have no chance to use tiers 8 and 9. You don't want to remove more tiers form the "real game".

 

The point of the game is to make using the lower tier worthwile (and there is no arguments against it if you understand math). That is possibly why you can make even the following adjustments in the future:

 

t-5 -6 for the lower leagues

t 6-7 for the middle leagues

t 7-8 for the upper league

t 9-10 for the super league.

 

You could upgrade the super league to include t-9 and you could safely move the last league to tiers 7-8, without destroying the players who want to finish the season on a t7 ship.

 

That would be an example of a reasonable plan for allowing all ships from tiers V to X to play in "real games". The point is that people have their "pet ships" in all tiers and they would love to have a chance to give them a spin under balanced circumstances.

 

[GulvkluderGuld]

1. The chance of every ship class to be awarded no star loss on defeat. Currently the notion of the top XP ship losing the star favours the DDs too heavily as it is usually a DD who gets his star saved. I had multiple games in other ship types where I dealt over 100 000 damage and I still was not first in the losing team. Very rarely I would be the first in a losing team in anything else than a DD even with very strong performance. This leads to DD spam on higher ranks

 

2. Please rebalance the issue of the lesser tier involvement in the ranked battles. Currently the tier 6-7 battles are de facto for tier 7 only, as you are needlessly handicapping your chances with the lesser tier with no compensatory reward. Of course on the lower leagues you can play with a floating bucket and still crush your opponents, but on the upper rank every advantage matters, as it allows you to finish the season quicker with less tedium. Please give some compensatory rewards for playing the lesser tier if you allow that tier into the ranked battles. It will make playing them worthwhile for those who wish the extra challenge.

 

PS: Preemptively I must add that I speak from the authority of having finished the season on rank 1, so it is not that I am a "moaning loser". I would just like some changes for a better gameplay in the future. I would even enjoy playing the lesser tier more if there was some extra reward for it.

 

1. Having played all ranked seasons except the pilot, I can tell you DD spam at higher ranks is nothing new (in case you didn't know). The rank 2-5 bracket has always seen 5-6 dd on each team. 

 It has nothing to do with capping XP having been increased, DDs are simply the best ships for carrying games (capping, spotting, smoking friendly ships) unless you are a pro CV player.

Getting rid of the dd spam would require more fundamental changes.

 

2. Would love to see some more diversity as I agree high rank gameplay is very, very repetitive. This season almost saw me burn out and give up on rank 1 because I hated the grind.

Using it as a way to add stars however....would effectively transform ranked games into a lower tier league, because everyone will want to optimize star gain. Doubt the grind would be different.

 

As to top loser gets to keep his star, I am still undecided whether i like that or not.

It relieves the frustration of being handed potato teams that die like flies.

However, it also promotes selfish play and wasted time (ships not playing to win, but to be top of their losing team)

 

A better solution to the handicap of having a lower tier ship would be to simply force tier mirroring. If you go into a T6-7 ranked game in a T6 ship, it would force a T6 ship to appear on the enemy team so that the total tiers remain the same across both teams. The freebie star could also be shifted to be an underdog award to be given out to the best performing lower tier ship rather than the outright top performing ship.

 

 

Tier mirroring as described is already implemented. Each team has the same amount of tier 6 and tier 7 ships.

[Spellfire40]

 

No, because first

 

- basic math  for dummies:

T6 players don't damage your winrate in a t7 ship, as the number of games where you have advantage and disadvantage averages out.

 

- the current ranked battles system is already highly tier restricting, as you have no chance to use tiers 8 and 9. You don't want to remove more tiers form the "real game".

 

The point of the game is to make using the lower tier worthwile (and there is no arguments against it if you understand math). That is possibly why you can make even the following adjustments in the future:

 

t-5 -6 for the lower leagues

t 6-7 for the middle leagues

t 7-8 for the upper league

t 9-10 for the super league.

 

You could upgrade the super league to include t-9 and you could safely move the last league to tiers 7-8, without destroying the players who want to finish the season on a t7 ship.

 

That would be an example of a reasonable plan for allowing all ships from tiers V to X to play in "real games". The point is that people have their "pet ships" in all tiers and they would love to have a chance to give them a spin under balanced circumstances.

 

 

​Yea and it would be quite fun to have some mitsuki in your team while the enemy has Blaskawika Maham and Kiew. Give People the Chance and they bring crap into the game. Trust me if the MM can screw you over it will hapen and since you advance slowly anyway since most dont have a 75% WR any factor that lowers it is worth eleminating..

[RUSSIANBlAS]

One thing that annoyed the hell out of me with the MM was being put against two BB when we had one. Especially when our replacement ship was an Atlanta, every time I got that MM it was an automatic loss. Sometimes if I was DD I'd be able to come top but the outcome was always inevitable.

[aboch]

1. The chance of every ship class to be awarded no star loss on defeat. Currently the notion of the top XP ship losing the star favours the DDs too heavily as it is usually a DD who gets his star saved. I had multiple games in other ship types where I dealt over 100 000 damage and I still was not first in the losing team. Very rarely I would be the first in a losing team in anything else than a DD even with very strong performance. This leads to DD spam on higher ranks

 

Actually i personally would say that the not loosing star goes to a carrier, enough he was good and did his job.

Even if it goes to a DD, whats wrong with it? He did his job and deserved it, like everybody that got on top XP.

 

For me personally its just fair for several reasons. It's not only about dealing damage and this is forgotten by many players. 

- Capping is essential, mostly done by DDs at the beginning. And in most cases you have to deal with another DD or DDs. If you think this is an easy task, just play a DD and we will see. If the allied player kills the enemy DD and capped its allready a huge advantage for the team. 

- Spotting, again a job for the DD or the carrier. Without spotting you could not place your first salves from your battleship i guess.

- decapping, whatever class does it, does his job, just mention it here because you are talking only about damage dealt.

- If you are in a battleship, take some damage, in tier 7 in ranked you are the only one that can heal and regenerate HP points and that 5x times. The other classes do not have the extra feature.

- damage dealt vs. own HP pool: A battleship with 5x HP regain option has an HP pool of at least 100k HP and does at best around 100k damage in ranked, makes 1 HP dealt vs 1 HP got. A DD with 15k HP will deal several times the own HP pool in damage. 

- a carrier that get air supperiority for you team did his job as well, not an easy one again if the other carrier is not a total noob. Another task that is essential for your team that can decide the win or lose from beginning.

- there are more just mentioning some....

 

So, in case a DD or Carrier is on top of XP results, we can nearly with 100% say that he did his no way easy job. When a DD or carrier does not his job, are noobs or failed, they won't be on top of XP, easy as that. In that cases you have good chances to be the top XP gainer with 100k damage of your battleship.

 

For me the XP thing works like intended..

 

Additionally i see now reason why someone that brings a lower tier ship into team, in many cases even a bad one, should be rewarded with any favour? At the end only one thing counts in my opinion, and that is how much you have helped the team to win. IF everybody did his job perfectly all 7 anyway get a star, if they fail, only the one that did best does not loose its star, perfectly. 

 

 

[__Danger___]

I had not enough time to play last few weeks so I had to get through last 5 ranks to the rank 1 on last day of season without having a chance to actually try the tier X ranked battles. That's my fault, but having this content locked (requires rank 1 first) is crap and I'm fed up with low tier ranked battles. I finally want some tier X content (clans? are they coming before 2020?) and I'm not alone.

 

Now I'm finally happy that I got rank 1, however it doesn't reflect absolutely no skill (only stat that reflects the skill is probably number of battles required to reach rank 1 as it's only stat that counts with stars you didn't lose) and unless something changes, I'm not going to go through this again. Bring tier X content first and then we can talk.

[_interceptor_80]

Tier mirroring as described is already implemented. Each team has the same amount of tier 6 and tier 7 ships.

 

No You need to play more Ranked battles if you never see this

In a few battles  a get 7 x tier 7 vs 6 x tier 7 + 1 x tier 6

Not a big differnce on paper but in terms of Ranked is problematic

Imagine enemy team have 2x Sims/Mahan and you get tier 6 Mutsuki

This battle is passive/defensive for your team from the start

If you lost Mutsuki early this is 80% defeat

This Mutsuki cant doing spotting becuse of gunboats patrol

If spotted its really hard to escape and survive

Number of DDs is essential in ranked and xp for capping is OP

I have 148k dmg in Nagato and lose star because of friendly Mahan with average dmg and few capping actions

 

 

[anonym_EFwxJOPWzlER]

Personally i think rank battles above rank 10 should be T7 & T8 ships, below should be T9 & T10. At T9,T10 players are more careful not to go yolo and get sunk quickly resulting in high loss of credits. High tiers sort out the good from the poor players who play recklessly.

 

At present, T6,T7 is incredibly boring

[GulvkluderGuld]

 

No You need to play more Ranked battles if you never see this

In a few battles  a get 7 x tier 7 vs 6 x tier 7 + 1 x tier 6

 

300 ranked battles under my belt and I don't think I ever saw the MM do this - but I usually played during prime time.

 

Seen lots of other crap MM like New Mexico vs nagato + colorado or even 2x Cleveland vs Nagato + Myoko, all of it including assorted dds.

The problem with tier 6 ships isn't bringing a mutsuki. I actually disagree with you about how useful it is for spotting. As long as you only get one on the team, an IJN dd is very useful.

The problem is that sometimes the MM will decide to give your team 1 BB and give the enemy team 2 (including a tier 6)

In fact tier 6 ships are responsible for most of the screwy MM I've seen (by class), but I can't ever remember the MM departed from balancing tiers. Untill now, I didnt think it could!

[_interceptor_80]

If you get really good Mutsuki player then he can be usefull, but with a lot of effort

On some maps its really risky to be sneaky and constantly capping/spotting for a team

Average player will be ''on the high preassure'' psyhologically in scenario vs 2x enemy gunboats

Enemy team have easy task - to find that Mutski fast and focus all to kill

Long torpedo reload and low firepower cant do much on the end of battle

I never get some Mutsuki ''hero'',kiling 2-3 enemy ships for win on the end

Gunboats-yes, tier 6 IJN DD-never

I dont like to see Nurnberg/Yorck in my team (have few fail DDs hunters with AP lol), but most of fails are yolo IJN DDs from my Ranked experience

Tier 6 battleships are waek armor for tier 7 BBs shells     

[Cynd3r]

Hi! 

 

I agree that something needs to be done with Ranked battles...if anything we had a lot of feedback during the "Race to Rank 1" competition ended up being too frustrating to continue.

 

Either way I'm adding it to the feedback report, so hopefully the devs get the message

[Takru]

Hi! 

 

I agree that something needs to be done with Ranked battles...if anything we had a lot of feedback during the "Race to Rank 1" competition ended up being too frustrating to continue.

 

Either way I'm adding it to the feedback report, so hopefully the devs get the message

 

Will there be a dedicated feedback report of sorts? Or a survey? Or are you taking the feedback from various threads on the forum?

[Syrchalis]

 

Will there be a dedicated feedback report of sorts? Or a survey? Or are you taking the feedback from various threads on the forum?

 

There was a ranked survey, several actually.

 

And I'm glad WG realizes that ranked is mainly frustrating, then somewhat rewarding because hurr durr flags you can't buy in the shop (EU GG) and the last thing it is, is fun.