Hello there again all you precious test subjects. It actually hasn’t been that long since we talked, but there’s something else we’d like to discuss today: Ranked.
Ranked modes are easily the most competitive feature of any game with any sort of strategy involved.
You place on the ladder, bragging rights, and rewards are often the main driving forces behind ranked gameplay.
We gathered a ton of feedback from all of you during Season 1, and we’re planning on utilizing your suggestions to improve the ranked system for Season 2.
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1. Promotion ‘Extra Life’[/h3]
Getting promoted to higher tiers is why we play ranked, but it’s also the most stressful part of the climb. (We’ve all heard of ranked anxiety, right?)
Losing a ranked match sucks, but it feels even worse when you lose a promo match.
We’ve read a ton of your feedback about the promotion system. Promotion matches in particular were discussed a lot - although promoting with extra LP feels better, it’s more disheartening when you lose all your additional LP by failing promotion.
However, if we just deduct from the additional LP when a player loses their promos, it defeats the entire purpose of the system. We talked about removing promotion matches entirely, but we thought that tiers would devolve to merely ‘scores’ and kind of take away from the tier system as a whole.
To help lighten the burden - while also preserving the meaning of promotion, we plan to provide a “redemption round” for players who fail their promos but have extra LP.
If you lose a game and LP, those points will be deducted from your extra LP pool. If there is any LP remaining, you’ll get another shot at your promotion!
The second time players lose LP, the promotion will automatically be unsuccessful.
The “redemption round” is also possible for players who received 0 points in their last promotion game.
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2. 0 point guarantee[/h3]
In high elo matches where the average LP and the killer’s LP are both significantly low, there were times where players would receive negative points despite placing in the top 3.
It feels bad to fight all the way to the end game… and then lose LP.
In the long term, we think that increasing reasons to fight mid-game, making it harder for ratting, but awarding survival will make for a more enjoyable game.
We still have to see full results of the final red zone revamp and other changes, but we plan to remove negative LP gain in high position finishes.
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3. Minimum Rank Calibration[/h3]
The 0 point guarantee is usually a problem in high elo. Cheesing is more of a problem in lower elo.
Although higher elo players are able to predict and change their routes on the fly, players in lower elos consider cheesing to win the unwinnable.
Through minimum rank calibration in lower elo, players won’t be able to increase their points but decrease the points they lose
For tiers lower than Gold, the 18th place’s points will be calibrated to match the one as 16th place. The calibration system can help boost your negative points up to the 14th place depending on your tier or harder matchmaking.
The lowest place in Team modes is boosted up one place if placed last.
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4. Multi character support (unconfirmed)[/h3]
In the current state of the game, it takes a lot of work to master multiple characters. Still, the ability to handle a wide roster does not really help you in today’s rank system.
We plan to change how the game starts by combining character and location select in hopes of encouraging large character variety.
Even though we would like to solve this problem using in-game methods, we also want to carefully introduce the idea of trying new characters in Ranked.Trying out new characters in Ranked is not ideal due to the prospect of losing points, but we’d like to ensure players not lose a significant amount of points when trying new characters.
When using a new character in Ranked, points are calibrated to at least 14th place (Up to 5 times per character)
This part is not fully confirmed so please provide us with all your feedback!
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5. Team modes Kill (Downed) scores[/h3]
We’ve discussed the implementation of kill scores in team modes, but we were faced with some problems.
By balancing points based off of confirmed kills, we are worried that the meta will shift to relentless early game fights.
Calculating points for killing a subject that has been revived will result in double points. This could be a bigger problem because it would encourage downed players to just quit rather than waiting for a revive.
Awarding points only once per down will result in 0 point kills, which is confusing for players and counterintuitive.
We’re continuously taking in feedback and hoping to provide a better and more polished system than systems of Eternal Return past.
In season 2 the team wipe score will be removed and scores will be distributed based on downs.
Points are obtainable by downing enemies.
Points will only be awarded once per enemy.
For Squad, a total of 15 points can be obtained (3 Players X 5 Teams)
Everytime a teammate is downed, scores will be deducted.
Scores are deducted for only the first down but will not be deducted from the second knockdown and so on.
For Squad, a squad can lose points up to three times.
The scores will be shown as combined team kills. (TK)
This displays the combined number of kills on the team separate from individual kills.
Downing an enemy that has already been downed will count only towards individual kills and will not be added to team kills.
In summary,
- Individual kills will be more intuitive. Points will be awarded for downing an enemy. Players will also be aware that points can’t be stacked by downing the same enemy multiple times.
- Individual kills will have value in clutch situations. Getting an additional kill will affect your score - even if you ultimately lose.
- Situations where no points are awarded for winning a squirmish because you failed to take down just one enemy character will be removed.
We want to avoid weird gameplay becoming the standard. A main problem of a down/ kill system, farming downed enemies, will not happen due to the inability to farm points from one enemy.
We will continue to monitor gameplay and try to be proactive in preventing abuse to create a more robust and advanced system.
Thank you.
*Note that this is somewhat of an exentsion to a previous entry to our dev letter series as seen here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1049590/view/3042715219436864921?l=english
