u/Midna18

There's absolutely no reason I can think of as for why they don't use the tournament standard best of 5 format for ranked. Best of 3 is too fast for a game as volatile as strive, let alone the fact that people one-and-done which makes most matches a coin flip.

Calculating rating changes after every game completely ruins the point of having rematches in the first place. In bracket, it's pretty common practice to try a variety of approaches in each match to see what sticks and because you can lose two games without issue, you can get up to some pretty crazy stuff. This is a great thing because it lets you actually figure out what your opponent is doing and respond accordingly. In best of 5, if a player is consistently making an incorrect choice they WILL be punished for it and potentially lose because of it. In ranked, if an option is good enough to win one game out of three then it may as well be perfect because of how skewed DR gain and loss is.

Speaking of, they NEED to rework DR. The breakpoints make absolutely no sense. From what I've gathered, they look like this:

• 0 DR difference, 8/8 DR
• 30 DR difference, 9/8 DR
• 50 DR difference, 9/7 DR
• 100 DR difference, 10/6 DR
• 200 DR difference, 11/3 DR
• 700 DR difference, 16/1 DR

The problem here is that these numbers do not change NEARLY fast enough. the difference between a 1500 and 1600 player is ASTRONOMICAL. 1500 and 1700? insurmountable. The game starts you at 1500, but getting to 1600 makes you a top 50 player for your character. There are people at 1700 who can and have beaten me (roughly 1500) 50 times in a row. So why is this person who will realistically never lose to me getting almost the same DR for beating me 2-0 as they are for one-and-doneing someone at their level?

All around, the current system encourages a toxic gameplan of playing to cheese wins, all while dodging people better than you, one-and-doneing people at your level, and stomping people worse than you. The only thing that saves the system as-is is that pretty much nobody actually one-and-dones or dodges in vanquisher. Pretty much everyone there is chill AF and plays for the love of the game. It would be great if the ranking system would reflect that though.

PS: PLEASE add a 0 stakes ranked queue. I would love to be able to play against the same level of people I play against in ranked but just for fun without going down a million DR for it. Celestial and Park are not a good enough option. (the only people who play park are trolls who want to stomp and new players who want to BE stomped. Celestial is better, but skill levels vary.)