Big changes to the Ranking system

Gears 5
#1

Just posted on Twitter:

https://www.gears5.com/ranking-feb-update/

FEB 14, 2020

RANKING – FEBRUARY UPDATE

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been updating the ranking system to get it in good place for the launch of Operation 3. The system launched in a state we weren’t happy with. We’ve been making improvements from day 1 and we think that what’s running now is pretty good. We have a few more things in the works to make it even better. Below is a summary of the changes that we made.

CHANGE 1 – RANKING THRESHOLDS (COMPLETE)

We moved all ranking thresholds towards places that would line up better with the point system and provide a better feeling of progression. Previously, the ranks were too heavily clustered towards the top end of the point system. Below are the new thresholds.

CHANGE 2 – WIN / LOSS MATTERS MORE THAN INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE (COMPLETE)

We know that going down on a win doesn’t feel good. Initially, we relied on an AI machine learning system to provide the most accurate weighting. While this weighting may have been accurate, it wasn’t always intuitive. This made the experience unsatisfying for most players.

To create a better experience, we have modified the system so the weighting of team vs individual performance now feels more intuitive and hopefully matches the natural expectations coming out of a game.

The win / loss is now the most important factor when deciding how many points to award for a round. Individual performance still counts, but it is much smaller than it used to be – while it doesn’t exactly work this way, individual performance counts for roughly 20% of the points (previously, this relationship was the opposite).

We think that this is a much more satisfying experience to more players. Based on our experiences online, this feels like a big improvement.

CHANGE 3 – PREVENTING POINT LOSS ON A MATCH WIN (COMPLETE)

Oddly, this is one of the most difficult things to get right. There are two circumstances where this happens

  1. Your individual performance is poor, and it drags down the points you get from the round wins. This is much less likely to happen now, but it still can happen.
  2. You lost rounds against an inferior team. This is more likely to be what you experience now. If you give up rounds against an inferior team, it is possible to lose more points than you gained for the rounds you won.

The solution – If you win the match, we prevent the total points from the rounds you lost to exceed the total points you received from the round wins. This means, that if you win a match against an inferior team that took rounds off you, you will at worst get zero points. In this scenario, the numbers will always add up to zero as we are intentionally offsetting the negatives because you won the match.

Note: During the deployment there were a few bugs that caused all zeros to show up instead of the point values. And then it showed giant point values as another bug. Both of these bugs have fixes deployed against them.

CHANGE 4 – FASTER RANKING UP (COMPLETE)

We found that there was too much overall friction in the system with the previous tuning and some players were getting stuck. The overall movement of the ranking system has been sped up so you should notice that you are ranking up faster than before.

CHANGE 6 – REDUCING THE IMPACT OF QUITTERS (COMPLETE)

Rounds that start incomplete will no longer count for ranking purposes. If someone quits in a round, that round will still be counted. If they are still gone from the game at the start of the next round, then that round will be ignored and you can safely quit. Those rounds will show up as ‘0’ on the post-match results for both teams.

CHANGE 7 – FURTHER QUITTING PUNISHMENTS (IN PROGRESS)

We will be applying an additional quit penalty for every round that the first player to quit isn’t present for. This means that on top of the normal points they’d lose for the loss, they will take an additional round based flat penalty. We hope that this is enough of a deterrent to reduce the motivation to quit a ranked game. In addition to the quitter punishments we will also be deploying our new ‘Community Service’ feature in the future.

Most of the changes have been deployed. We’ve been playing a lot to test them and initial feedback from the community is the results feel a lot more natural and satisfying.

As always, please give us your feedback. We know that it’s been a bumpy road to get here, and we wish it had gone more smoothly. We are pretty happy with where the system is now and hope you enjoy it.

2 Likes
Masters in tdm what are you?
Operation 3 bug & glitch list
#2
#3

I don’t understand change number 2. Granted I’ve only played about 9hrs overall of ranked in Gears 5. It doesn’t play well in my opinion, and I don’t enjoy it like I did in 4.

However, it seems unfair that wins/loses matter more than individual performance. If I roll solo, seem like I’m predetermined to have a lower rank than running with a team. It’s a team based game for sure, but essentially a team can now carry a lesser player to a much higher rank than individual skills would justify.

Am I missing something? Is that wha constitutes a fairer ranking system?

7 Likes
#4

Does this mean that your rank will not be effected, or that you can now quit without a quit penalty after someone else quits first?

1 Like
#5

Yea, this kills any passing interest I had in ranked in this game. I was a big proponent for individual performance ranking and my thread about it (Gears 4 era) got more likes than any thread I’ve ever seen on this forum.

They FINALLY account for individual performance but players didn’t want to face the truth that they may have under performed in a game they won so now it’s back to Ws and Ls.

The one thing that I should mention in regard to your question is that the system accounts for the number of players teaming in queue and they are considered more likely to win, thus giving them harder opponents than if they were solo.

The fault in this is that you can fool the system by rolling with low ranked players. The average rank will be considered moderate and the strong player of the group will rank far beyond what they’d normally rank at.

6 Likes
#6

Thanks for some reaffirmation and clarification.

:+1:

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#7

I’m not surprised it worked more or less how you could expect . Turns out all those choked rounds mattered way more, of course they did…

I don’t know if this is the best way to go about it but I guess it stops losing points on a match win. This is definitely a nerf for any solo players since winning is now weighted more heavily than performance. There’s likely going to be some rank inflation to come along with this but if it makes the majority happy that’s whatever.

Unfortunately, this also increases the impact players that choke rounds away for no reason have on your own progression. Of course that’s mostly a matchmaking problem, but I don’t see any of that being addressed here. I mean they never want to address them together so I suppose that should be expected.

I think the system should probably weight individual performance more over W/L if you happen to lose with its expectations so you’re not heavily punished for anyone else potentially stifling your performance capability.

But who knows, it might work just fine now. Just bought a new controller (unfort) so I’ll be able to try it out soon enough.

#8

I have just gotten to Diamond in both KOTH and TDM solo, so I dont think it really matters as far as solo vs squad. But i think you do end up with some people ranking far above where they should be since its 80% based on win/loss. I honestly think that % is way too high.

2 Likes
#9

So maybe I’m misreading this because it’s late. But if I get a negative rank score losing a round due to a quitter, I have no way to offset that points loss as following rounds count for zero.
Doesn’t that mean that you now have to win any rounds where someone quits, or face an unchangeable points loss?

One thing tc need to add to all this info is finally breaking down exactly what stats it looks at to define performance levels.
If it’s still using irrelevant stats like points per minute, it’ll still be doing illogical crap.

#10

Change 2, sigh! It sounds like I’ll still be getting minus points for MVP. Skill based ranking system you say.

1 Like
#11

This change hasn’t started yet though.

#12

Which one? Most of these changes were already made. All except #7.

1 Like
#13

I see. Thanks man. I was thinking operation 3, but most are already completed.

Kudos to you on your rank!

I was decent in Gears 4, but I can’t seem to do squat in this game. Maybe I’m looking for an out that I can’t be as bad as my current rank lol.

#14

Lol you have to try again now with the changes. It seems a lot easier. Before i was stuck at Silver for a while before i finally broke through to Gold. I was at Gold 3 before the changes. And thank you for the Kudos! My rank in Gears 4 was Onyx 2 for KOTH and TDM. Only made Diamond in 2v2 (D4).

1 Like
#15

I mean i think the ranking was a little off pre-update, but IMO its too easy now.

#16

I’ll play a few games and see. I so want to like ranked again!

1 Like
#17

Honestly, I have been enjoying ranked since the latest Gnasher update.

2 Likes
#18

One thing that always confuses me with tc is why everything has to be so heavily swung one way or the other ???
80/20 leaning toward personal performance is the cause of points loss on wins, can tc not see that just switching it to 80/20 towards wins will still give wonky results. Probably point loss mvp’s.

Do they not even try to make it a more even split? Surely this would work out better?

3 Likes
#19

That’s what I was wondering. Why not 50/50 or 60/40?

4 Likes
#20

Aww, man! I hate the new system…I am not a great player and my level is 340, but almost all the time I have teammates with a very low level (not even 100) against 900 or 1500 levels od the other team…not balance at all! Also, with the ping thing and the quitters… It becomes… terrible. I just wanna have fun ;_;