Hey guys, I'm a trash pokemon battler that can't even beat those who are even worse and needs to share his frustrations to calm himself down. So what I'd like to cry to u about today is the matchmaking/scoring system of PS ladder battles. Basically what I find flawed/not particularly fair is that u can be high in ranks, get matched with someone much lower, then battle them for like 6-8 points while risking to lose even 40+ if u're defeated. This is especially common in lower tiers since they're not as overpopulated as UU/OU, so sometimes there might just not be anyone with rank similar to yours online and as a result u get matched with whoever's available at that moment, often someone much lower if ur rank is high. Thing is, low rank doesn't always equal low skill, a lot of people make alt accounts to test stuff, or are other tier veterans who are giving a low tier a try etc, which in practice may as well mean that u're battling someone with similar skill level even if the rank difference is a few hundred points. Not to mention low ranks are typically full of gimmick teams that aren't so unlikely to give u a hard time, or u can just get haxed or face a counter team and struggle for your 6 points. I'm sure everyone would rather wait a bit longer in the ladder queue and face an opponent of similar rank than risk 3-4x as much points for very little potenial gains in a battle that's often unproportionally difficult.
So what are my suggestions then? Got a few thoughts on it, maybe something will interest u.
1. First of all, we could make a try at altering the point gain calculations to better match the user's actual experience and skill rather than just base on their rank alone. The formula could take into account the total games played by each user in the tier, since having 1200 rank after 100 battles (just a random example) isn't the same as having 1200 after 7 battles with 100% win ratio, the latter meaning that the player could have prepared a working team beforehand to climb quickly (possibly by testing stuff on another account...) and/or has higher skills than their battle history would suggest. They could battle a 1500 guy on a level playing field while the potential point gains would differ greatly for both sides. Having a variable that depends on both users total battle count in the formula rather than plainly compare their rank could help mitigate the difference. There could and maybe should also be another variable with a smaller impact on the final results that would reflect an user's overall laddering experience in PS, in other words how many battles they have in all tiers combined. This would especially help deal with the plague of alt accounts. The downside is that new but already skilled players would have harder time rising in ranks fast, I'll address this issue later tho.
2. Make a player only gain/lose a portion of normally acquired points till they reach a fixed numbers of battles in a tier, for example 50 per tier. It could be something like 25% or whatever. This would greatly help with the issues mentioned above while not holding back new users for too long if the number of required battles is reasonable.
3. Set a limit on how big the point difference between both players can be, for example 200, so at 1500 u can only encounter ppl who have 1300+ or 1700-. This could differ among tiers and even rank levels within the same tier since there's a wider point variety in higher tiers and 1500 in PU isn't the same as 1500 in OU. This would make people in (mainly) lower tiers wait longer for their battles, personally I wouldn't mind that at all if it solved the main problem, but that's just my opinion.
4. Separate the winner's and loser's point calculations so they don't necessarily have to gain/lose the same amount of points, for example if the winner is much lower and gets 40 points for winning, the loser would still only have 5 subtracted from his count. Both calculations would depend on the rank difference as always and would be inversely proportional, so it would work just like it does now if both users have similar rank. Incidentally, why is it even that the winner always gets the same amount of points that the loser loses? Kinda looks like a fundamentally unfair design to me for a ladder system but it might be just that I don't fully grasp how it works, I suppose?
Or it could just be a mix of all this, or something entirely different. These are just some random ideas that I wanted to put up for discussion, not sure if there's even any chance of changing the current calculation system but won't hurt to try since the current one appeared to me as imperfect. Lemme know what ur thoughts on this are guys (or just treat it as crying of a noob that it indeed is and ignore it).
So what are my suggestions then? Got a few thoughts on it, maybe something will interest u.
1. First of all, we could make a try at altering the point gain calculations to better match the user's actual experience and skill rather than just base on their rank alone. The formula could take into account the total games played by each user in the tier, since having 1200 rank after 100 battles (just a random example) isn't the same as having 1200 after 7 battles with 100% win ratio, the latter meaning that the player could have prepared a working team beforehand to climb quickly (possibly by testing stuff on another account...) and/or has higher skills than their battle history would suggest. They could battle a 1500 guy on a level playing field while the potential point gains would differ greatly for both sides. Having a variable that depends on both users total battle count in the formula rather than plainly compare their rank could help mitigate the difference. There could and maybe should also be another variable with a smaller impact on the final results that would reflect an user's overall laddering experience in PS, in other words how many battles they have in all tiers combined. This would especially help deal with the plague of alt accounts. The downside is that new but already skilled players would have harder time rising in ranks fast, I'll address this issue later tho.
2. Make a player only gain/lose a portion of normally acquired points till they reach a fixed numbers of battles in a tier, for example 50 per tier. It could be something like 25% or whatever. This would greatly help with the issues mentioned above while not holding back new users for too long if the number of required battles is reasonable.
3. Set a limit on how big the point difference between both players can be, for example 200, so at 1500 u can only encounter ppl who have 1300+ or 1700-. This could differ among tiers and even rank levels within the same tier since there's a wider point variety in higher tiers and 1500 in PU isn't the same as 1500 in OU. This would make people in (mainly) lower tiers wait longer for their battles, personally I wouldn't mind that at all if it solved the main problem, but that's just my opinion.
4. Separate the winner's and loser's point calculations so they don't necessarily have to gain/lose the same amount of points, for example if the winner is much lower and gets 40 points for winning, the loser would still only have 5 subtracted from his count. Both calculations would depend on the rank difference as always and would be inversely proportional, so it would work just like it does now if both users have similar rank. Incidentally, why is it even that the winner always gets the same amount of points that the loser loses? Kinda looks like a fundamentally unfair design to me for a ladder system but it might be just that I don't fully grasp how it works, I suppose?
Or it could just be a mix of all this, or something entirely different. These are just some random ideas that I wanted to put up for discussion, not sure if there's even any chance of changing the current calculation system but won't hurt to try since the current one appeared to me as imperfect. Lemme know what ur thoughts on this are guys (or just treat it as crying of a noob that it indeed is and ignore it).