Glassy_ wrote:
I've been talking a lot with Se7ven about this subject, and at first I really didn't understand why this new system he'd like added to 1v1 ranked was necessary as it would mean less balanced games some of the time. But eventually, he helped me understand that ideally, the system would work by setting up similar ranked players as it does now. However, often it takes forever to find a game because there is no one in your rank bracket searching. In these instances, it would draw from other rank pools in order to quickly find games, allowing us to play the game we know and love without waiting up to an hour to do so. Even though it would allow for less balanced games, it would create much more competition as the worse players could look at unbalanced games and improve much faster by comparing their game play to a better player's. Eventually this system of occasionally matching low and high ranked players would (hopefully) serve to re-energize high level ranked play and allow for them to find more competitive games more often. A soft reset would also incentivize those (like me) who enjoy grinding for spots on the leader board and feeling accomplished when reaching your goals instead of having 50+ inactive highly ranked players on the boards. In this system, we would like to reward active players for climbing the ranks among other active players, rather than having to sift through players with high ranks that haven't played in ages. We really don't care if Blackheart and Petric aren't active, and the goal of this system is not to get them to play more, it is to get those who care about the game still to improve in a way where they can find games and improve faster.

I'm approaching 1400 1v1 ladder games on my account, and have watched hundreds of top tier game play replays and casts, but at a certain point players need to be thrown against higher skilled players so they can see what the specific differences are between you and the higher rank you want to climb to. I think this system would create a lot more activity and allow for players to push themselves to get better, faster so we can see a larger volume of high level games while promoting climbing the leader board.

P.S. - A lot of other games (such as starcraft) have a similar system of soft resets and drawing from other rank pools, and they have done well. I don't see why Forged Alliance can't do the same.

Glassy_ wrote:
Even though it would allow for less balanced games, it would create much more competition as the worse players could look at unbalanced games and improve much faster by comparing their game play to a better player's.

harzer99 wrote:
I want to change the blackbox:
To a system in which you can boost your rating/league by playing more. In trueskill you aren't able to increase your rating by just playing a lot (and not improving). Many other games use a rating system that is far more rudimentary than trueskill. They converge a lot slower to the true rating. They do this by generating more rating for winning than loosing. So average rating is diverging over time. This gets usually fixed by resets so that the brackets can stay in the rating range.
Nice thing for players is that after every reset they will keep increasing for quite a while after the reset. Despite not winning that many games anymore. This is the grinding aspect that makes them play more games every season.
It is a system that requires maintenance and gives the possibility to boost a player into a higher bracket just by grinding ladder. And if you reward that with badges or similar I think a decent amount of the player base would do that.
Your trueskill rating won't increase if you just play more. Only if you improve.