devtrackers.gg
Yes, capital T “Thoughts”
First, the two main bullet points of this entire post:
the trip from 0-2100 was miserable and stressful and awful and the playlist needs some real work in numerous areas from matchmaking to scoring to incentives and to the game modes
the trip from 0-2100 was addicting once I started making real progress and getting the rarest gun in the game has made me feel incredibly accomplished and a step above most
If those are contradictory, it’s cause competitive was both at once. It is something that saw a massive mid season shift that really mucked up matchmaking and drove people out and overall needs a lot of work but it had that competitive spirit I’ve been wanting for a real reward.
Instead of pontificating though I should probably just list out my thoughts and places I see improvement is needed for the sake of brevity:
game modes and length made the entire experience feel lengthy more than a fun experience should; a 15 minute match should feel like 10. Countdown once it hits 5-5 is exhausting, and Survival is a whole different beast that requires serious reworking as most teams that play to win will play to the timer either on purpose or by chance. Countdown as a mode IMO is mostly fine but Survival can be cheesed our so hard by teams that get kills and turtle up until time, and that does not feel competitive or a rewarding use of anyone’s time.
the jump from rank 2 to 3 can feel like a million years, it’s a very large gap and there is no sense of incremental jumps that can help players feel like they are making progress. Combined with a loss penalty that equals a win, a bad day of trading off can feel defeating as you spend hours for literally nothing.
with so few rewards and concurrent incentives there’s little reason for a proper ranked hierarchy to get set up, as of there is only one reward that’s out of reach for players and nothing being given to keep people coming back, the bottom and mid will eventually drop out instead of sticking with the season to see where they end up. There should be a weekly tangible economy based reward that can encourage players to play a minimum amount of matches per week, that can assist in their character progression. Planetary materials, a masterwork core pack, something. There needs to be a reason for players to stick around and see where they end up at the end of the season and not feel like time was wasted if they can’t get the ONE big reward.
glory based matchmaking is what the playlist needs, and will work better in S4 now that we are all starting at 0 and not getting sorted by two different systems that don’t mesh with each other.
Win and loss streaks should go and instead glory gain and loss should be based on a more traditional ELO style system; if you match against a team with a high glory average, you gain more points for beating them and lose less for losing, and Vice versa, matching a lower average team should net you a lower gain for stomping them and a higher negative for losing.
what started to become common closer to rank 3 were teams gaming the system to try and get that last push, by having solid players play on accounts with little to no glory in an effort to bring down their team average to get “easier” matchups. I feel MM should, when taking averages into account, ignore players under a certain threshold. For example, if a team has 3 1700 players and a 200, instead of averaging it to be 1325 the game would ignore the 200 and make the team average 1700 (as that is a massive gap in where matchmaking searches in terms of player skill. I’m not sure if this is how it works but I’m sure it’s probably a part of it).
Again please make Survival not as bad
give players a more visible path of progress to entice people to stay; seeing your Glory go up a bit might be nice but seeing say, your global ranking jump up by a couple hundred spots might encourage a player who isn’t that great to put in some extra work. Give the top spots some recognition at the end of a season, hell host a stream for a mini tournament set up via private matches for the top players to give them some airtime and see which is the actual top team. Make competitive matter to everyone from bottom to the top, be it the aforementioned incremental rewards, weekly rewards, visible improvement, and something at the end of the season that can correspond with how you did to keep people around. I know me personally, seeing how few people had the Claymore lit a fire under my ass to get busy and get the thing.
Anyway that’s what I got I hope someone reads this and is like “hey some of that sounds pretty good”. The Claymore is a ton of fun, and to me it’s a fitting trophy for coming back to an improved D2, i made some friends along the way and i gained a much higher understanding for my ability and the game (i even broke into the top 500 rank on DTR for survival for a night!) and I’m excited to do it again(and hopefully with less of the pain and frustration that stagnating between rank 2 and 3 included). I hope S4 continues this trend to a better place and I hope comp is reworked, along with the new weapon system, to keep me hooked for a run at rank 4 and 5.
Edit: have a bonus clip of me winning a round of countdown 1v4
Edit 2: now everyone gets one and Im left feeling like my greatest achievement in Destiny was cheapened to an Engram reward. Feels bad man.
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