Should SF5 have a monthly resetting ladder?

Street Fighter V
1

Various competitive games have a ladder that you can climb that after a certain period of time (often a month) resets so you can start again. I’m going to go over a few points why I think this would be a great fit for SF5, how it might be implemented (frankly, I’m going to be drawing a few parallels to Hearthstone because it’s a simple system that could apply very well to SF5) and cover some potential problems as well. Would love to hear your thoughts and start a discussion on the matter, too.

The system:
1) Players compete in battles to climb a ladder, a win rising you up the ladder and a loss knocking you down. The game already has a set of ranks in place that would work perfectly. You start at Rookie and work your way towards Master, with all the various ranks in-between (Bronze, Super Bronze, Ultra Bronze, Silver, Super Silver…) that’s a total of 17 ranks, a fantastic amount.

2) The current point system simply would not work for this, as the way that system works is overtime more points are introduced into the system making it easier to obtain higher ranks. At current we’re like 7 months into the game with 0 master rank players, no way that point system would work monthly with point inflation constantly being reset. This is where I draw a parallel to Hearthstone as it’s a simple to understand and good system for a monthly ladder that would fit perfectly for SF5. In Hearthstone when you win you get a star, when you lose a star is taken away (if you win streak, you get 2 stars) and if you get a certain number of stars (I think 3) you rank up. 3 wins or whatever is way too few for SF5, maybe 10 per rank would work better (perhaps 5 for Bronze ranks, 10 for everything beyond) which would lead to ~150ish points to go from Rookie to Master.

3) Every x amount of time (every month, every 3 months, etc. Personally I think every month is ideal) the ladder is reset and players are given rewards based on the rank they achieved. Fight Money and titles are fantastic, simple, already existing rewards for this. 17 new titles every month would be insane, but perhaps in terms of rewards all Bronze ranks are lumped together, all Platinum is lumped together, etc.

4) Another parallel to Hearthstone’s system, because it would fit very well. Once you achieve Master rank, you essentially enter a new category. You can no longer drop rank, but instead you enter a numbered ladder where you compete to be #1 Master primarily against other Master players. This gives top players who will hit Master rank in like 1-2 days each month anyways something to do for the rest of month.

5) Various things can be added to make the system its own. Maybe if a non-Master player gets matched up against a Master and wins they get bonus ranking points. Or, a potentially fantastic idea is some type of Capcom Pro Tour integration where the top __ Master players each month earn CPT points, and the player with the most points at the end of the season gets entered into the tournament. That could be tweaked to make more sense, but you get the basic idea.

Why I think this is a great idea:
1) It gives players a reason to come back every month. To have a new surge of excitement, a chance to start over fresh each month would be a lot of fun both as a player and as a spectator.

2) It not only gives a better reason to want to improve at the game to get a better rank, it gives you a better gauge. You can strive for a higher rank than you did last month, and this system is not subject to inflation like the current ranking is. The current ranking system is built so overtime more points are added to the system. 3 months ago there basically wasn’t any Diamond players, now there are hundreds. Long term, Master rank will be extremely common and there’s nowhere to go from there. They can add higher ranks, but it doesn’t really change anything.

Initial concerns:
1) It would be abused. This system would only work well after proper fixes for rage quitting and botting are implemented.

**2) **Long term ranking is cool. Personally, I think if a monthly ladder was implemented it should go alongside current long term ranking, not in place of.

3) The start of each month would suck for non-top players. While it’s true most good players will get out of those early ranks probably within the first couple of days, for true rookies those first couple of days would suck. The simple solution is a seeding system, have players who earned high ranks the previous month start slightly higher the next month (Master starts at Gold, Diamond starts at Silver, or whatever.) It might sound like an unfair advantage, but honestly high ranked players will just get through those early ranks on the first day anyways so it’s not a huge deal.

Would love to hear your ideas for such a system, or thoughts if such a system is even a good idea for SF5. Sorry for the wall of text.

2

I don’t think monthly is the right period of time for the system now currently in place. Legend rank in Hearthstone (though definitely a long grind, depending on win rate) is achievable monthly for the top 1% of Hearthstone players. I don’t think–and I’m just guessing here–the top 1% in SFV would hit the absolute top ranks monthly.

That said, ladder resets ought to happen regularly. A fresh ladder to grind up is a lot of fun for a lot of people. They could follow the hearthstone model and give players a percentage of their points from the previous ladder seasons to help with matchmaking issues early in a new season.

3

I’m keen on the monthly idea, because that’s generally the time-frame most people easily can relate to, aside from days and weeks and years.

This argument struck a home-run with me :tup:

4

While you make some good points, please, for the love of god, don’t copy Hearthstone’s ladder/ranked system.
It’s just not good, especially for competitive players. You’d have to change it quite a lot.
There are always the issues at the end and the beginning of the month - and in between. ´Д`
I’m all for temporary leagues as an alternative in basically every game I play, but Hearthstone’s system makes me shiver.
It might be a good start, a rough sketch, but people want the HS system to change since… forever.

5

If they did something like this they would have at leas to remove the achievements for reaching a certain rank. Having to reach Gold in under a month might be a very frustrating grind for many people.
I’m not a fan either of having to beat countless Ryus/Kens spamming fireballs from full screen and doing wakeup DPs all over again. The more you climb the ladder the less frequent beginners are and it’s a relief to be able to fight opponents with some experience.

6

Yeah, considering over half a year in there’s still 0 Master rank players the current point system would never work for a resetting ladder. A system rework could make achieving Master in a month reasonable though, I’d say. Say for example you need 5 wins per rank for Rookie, Bronze, Super Bronze, Ultra Bronze and 10 per rank for the rest (3x Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond ranks = 120 wins) that’d be a total of 140 wins. Of course, that’s offset by losses, but you could also have it go up by 2 points for win streaks.

An important difference between Hearthstone and Street Fighter is that high win-rates are way more possible and common in SF. If you needed the formula for Master was Win - Loss > 140 = Master, then at a 70-30 Win/Loss ratio (actually fairly conservative for a top player fighting the masses) not even considering possible bonus points from win streaks, you would have to play 350 matches. 350 matches in a month for someone who actively plays Street Fighter isn’t much, and of course that’s being conservative with win/loss ratios and sidestepping win streak bonuses so realistically it’d probably be closer to 200 matches for a top player.

In any case, you could still lower the number of matches needed if that’s considered still too extreme, but yeah.

7

Yeah, Hearthstones system was just used as an example because it’s super simple and straightforward. I haven’t gotten deep enough into competitive Hearthstone to be aware of the flaws it has, so if that’s not an ideal system definitely scrap it and find something that is more ideal.

8

A similar system would be good as an added mode. While I agree it would be cool to have a points reset say every season or something, I don’t think they could scrap it and change the whole thing.

It would be cool to see a “ladder” mode though with a similar theme.

9

A reset would be nice, but monthly is to much. Quarterly seems like a better go so a quarterly reset every 3 months would be cool.

10

Some people bitch that getting to legend every month is too grindy. That’s really the only problem with Hearthstone’s ladder system, from my perspective. I don’t even really think it’s an issue. I’m not sure what he dislikes about it.

11

This would be a great idea, however starting from “rookie” rank every month (or whatever time period) would just be a pain in the arse for 2 reasons:

1-High skilled players would get bored beating up on low skilled players just to get back to where they should be on the ladder in order for them to get in good matches.

2- Low skilled players would get frustrated getting destroyed by high ranking players until all of them have finally ranked up enough to leave the rookie/bronze/silver leaguers alone.

If this were to happen (doubtful) I’d like to see them put in a system akin to Blizzards league system with Starcraft 2. Before you can get placed into a proper league you need to complete “placement” matches first. These are used to allow the system that determines placement to figure out your skill level as compared to everyone else. Once it is confident it knows your skill, you’re placed in the correct league. Then you can rank up or down by winning or losing against opponents only in your league.

I do understand that the system needed to accomplish this is probably quite far from what Capcom was expecting to do with SFV. But, if they do want a proper league system with monthly/quarterly/yearly resets, this is the best option I’ve seen so far.

12

They already tried this with Killer Instincts League system and it was mostly a mess. The people who got top 32 were mostly just who played the most and not many actual top players were in that spot. You need a game with a much larger player base than SFV for a monthly reset to be interesting imo. Bi yearly or yearly reset wouldn’t be bad, but monthly is too repetitive for the smaller player base forces emphasis on grinding.

13

• Reset system is way too low. I don’t play for the first 2-3 days, start at rank 16 and often face “legit” rank 15ers. And I’m not alone with it. In a game where the skill difference is way more obvious, it might be quite discouraging for a bronze player to play against diamond+ ranks. And that’s for the whole season, but minor issue if you can just create a fake/troll acc in SFV anyway and stomp bronzes. Where should they start? All at 0? But even in HS it’s often obvious and the quality of decks enormous.
• The last days are way too important. Days? Hours. Minutes. That’s one of the biggst issues, the last moments and streaks.
And a lot more I cba writing about. Every few weeks there’s another discussion on r/hearthstone about that topic.
Or just something like http://www.kilkku.com/oldguardian/2016/07/the-hearthstone-ladder-is-fundamentally-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/
Even though that link is quite HS specific.

HS system has some good points, like winning streaks up to r5, the star system in general, but other stuff is straight garbage. It needs some work, but after that it might be a good example to use. There are many good systems you could use.

14

nope, just reset all the cheaters, RQtters in SFV and everyone will be happy except those frauds

15

I think once a season is probably enough. A ladder reset after the capcom cup finals seems reasonable.

16

i don’t like your idea at all.

i would rather see ranked being char independent so when you want to start by zero you can do so with a new character while what you achieved with your main doesn’t get touched.

doing it all over again would destroy the whole purpose to rank up because you know that it will be deleted in a few weeks later anyway so why even bother with it?
the main reason why people play ranked in the first place is to achieve a certain rank like gold/plat ect not because its so much fun it itself…i would even go so far and say that the majority of the people on this board have more fun in battle lounges with longer sets and good connections then in ranked.
beside of that people who don’t have all day long time to play the game might never achieve the rank they want to climb up to when it gets resetted.

your idea would mix up not so experienced people via matchmaking with guys who are way better which just leads to more frustration.

17

you call it a “ladder”. people “climb” ladders, they don’t like the ladder to be taken away while they are on them.

18

You guys must not be too familiar with other genres of online gaming. Ladder resets are a common part of competitive gaming. They generally bring a lot of players back to the game.

Most of the other big “e-sport” genres feature regular ladder resets, in some form or another.

19

and what has that to do with fighting games?
other genres, other rules…they most likely have way more people, are not 1v1, and have for sure a different kind of ranking system then sf5 beside of resetting it.

a lot of people struggle since month to reach gold/plat ect. with such a system they will never achieve it.

20

What does it have to do with fighting games? Is a viable ladder model used by other genres. It’s proven to be effective and routinely get’s the player base back to ranked play.

A lot of people struggle to get x rank: So? It’s a competitive ladder, not welfare. If they don’t make plat by the end of the season, they didn’t earn it. Try again next season. If they can’t cope with that, they’re playing the wrong genre.

You additionally have the phenomena people have talked about in this thread where they get x rank, then quit playing ranked. That doesn’t make for a vibrant ladder system.