May 2019 - last edited May 2019
Too much text? You don't care? TL;DR at the bottom.
Apex Legends, to me, has a clear advantage over other BR titles: it doesn't force players into boring gameplay in order to succeed. Being aggressive is a valid strategy; being tactical is a valid strategy; and knowing when to switch between the two is key. While many complaints can be made about the game, balance is not among the top concerns (give or take a small tweak to Pathfinder's hitbox). In spite of all this, not only do we lack ranked play, but we also do not know whether it is ever going to be.
Many players, myself included, would love to have something more meaningful than skins and banners to grind. I.e. a feedback system to keep track of whether we are improving or not. This isn't the only reason the game would benefit from a ranked system though. Let's have a good old pros and c0ns list, but before that, I'll sketch a rough proposal of what I think would make more sense.
Proposal: an additional queue system (ranked) that keeps track of placement and kills and uses the information to determine an elo for each competing player. When updating elo values due to kills, the elo of both players is considered. When updating elo values due to placements, the average elo of the lobby is considered.
The elo can then be used for two purposes: 1) To match (when possible) players of similar ability together. 2) To provide each competing player with a badge (or whatever) according to his/her elo. Obviously, the system can be made more fancy, where getting a better badge can have some additional conditions (e.g. to go from Silver to Gold, you need to be placed top X, Y times in a row).
Now onto the pros and c0ns.
C0ns:
- Splitting the playerbase. While two queue systems, especially with Apex Legends' numbers, would definitely not be a problem, depending on their plans for Solo and Duo and, potentially, Quad play, this could easily turn into 8 queues. There is a simple fix for this though: allowing ranked play for a single queue system only (most likely, for 3 players).
- Development time. The team working on Apex Legends is relatively small and players are expecting content. Development time is precious.
Pros:
- Any player with a competitive mindset will eventually grow bored of a game with no ranked systems in place. This will ensure those players will spend a lot more time on the game.
- Most streamers are by nature competitive players. A vast majority of them has expressed boredom towards free wins and many of them stopped playing the game altogether. Even streamers that still regularly play the game have expressed the concern, and their desire for ranked play, on many occasions. Why do we care about streamers? Well, streamers enjoying the game goes hand in hand with the game getting more players, more visibility, more success, and, ultimately lasting longer.
- Longevity. Getting better at a game is a constant quest and by providing feedback for this improvement, this immediately turns into additional content that feeds on itself.
- A ranked system would bring more hype over the competitive scene, and a healthy competitive scene goes hand in hand with a healthy playerbase for similar reasons as to why streamers are relevant.
While I'm attempting to act unbiased, which I clearly am not, I'm really struggling to understand why this isn't currently deemed as an important focus. The game is new, true, but I would at least expect to hear from the developers about their plans in regard to the issue. I personally feel the game is ready for it and badly needs it, but the real question is, how do you guys feel about it? Am I alone here? Am I in the majority?
TL;DR imho this game needs ranked play badly. Please let us know if/when it will be added.
May 2019
May 2019
July 2019
I despise this ranking system. If I wanted to, I could hide the entire game and rank up by getting a top 5 or top 3, because they are weighted more heavily than your actual performance in the game. You get one RP per kill up to a max of 5 RP, and nothing for assists, knockdowns, revives, re-spawning a teammate, etc. The ranking system is mainly based off of where your team places in the match...and a couple extra RP for kills...that's it. You cannot accurately rank a player in this system, because it does not take in to account individual performance. So...you're going to get in ranked matches with potato teammates who ranked up by hiding and earning points from top 5s & 3s.
July 2019
July 2019
My bad. Didn't check the dates.