Ranked Gamemodes!?

[Tobirousch]

The only two ranking systems in Trackmania are the official mode and the ladder. In my opinion, both got a reason to be there and the systems are working but none of these two are comparable to a "real" ranking system with MMR rating like most esport games and in general, a lot of games use nowadays.

People could argue Trackmania doesn't need to contain ranked modes and even though I agree with that I can definitely see Trackmania benefiting from such a system. Let me share my vision with all of you.

I won't explain how a ranked system with MMR works but let me at least tell you that you get a number which is reflecting your skill. if you win the number gets bigger and if you loose it gets smaller. simple as that.

I want to have some sort of Matchmaking where you can join and get qued together with 3 random players of similar skill rating to one server. You then play a basic CUP mode match on that server on set and publicly known maps. After the match, you get sent back to the menu or matchmaking server (depends on how it would be realised inside of tm) and decided by where you placed in the match and the MMR of the other players you either loose or gain MMR points. You can also do this with basic 1v1 or even CHASE (chase might even work the best for all of this). My vision is that we start with just one out of the mentioned game modes and create additional modes with separate MMR rating if enough people are interested in ranking modes. For example, start with 1v1 Stadium/tech 3 maps 45 secs long. you could even think about pickand ban maps at the start of each match =P.

But would there even be enough players? wouldn't it get boring if you always play the same maps over and over?
This is where I would like to introduce seasons. A lot of competitive games use Seasons to make changes to gameplay or releasing big updates without ruining the rankings.
I would implement seasons to the ranked modes and every season there is a new map pack and the MMR rating partly resets (I think a full reset doesn't fit TM). Why would people play it? In other games, people mostly play it because there simply are no dedicated servers, which Tm obviously got but the other big reason is. season rewards!
Depending on your global place at the end of each season you get rewards from the games. in TM this would need to be discussed because I don't think planets are something people would be pleased with.
Besides rewards ranking is a way to easily compete on a competitive level with players on your level. If you want to play tm but don't want to play on a public ta server but you want to compete with others then you just queue into ranked. Besides, it makes playing chase easier. It is kind of like a global matchmaking server which ensures that you have a good match without someone that is way above or below your level that could ruin the fun.

I know this definitely is nothing that could or can happen in MP4. This is also not really going in the direction MP4 wants to go but this might be something interesting for the future. Ofc you could already create this yourself with plugins and host it but something like this would benefit a lot from being officially hosted and managed by nadeo.

[i7mean]

Joining with random players is a big problem unless the publicly known maps you talk about are directly updated into the game files without searching for download it, it will be very annoying; and also if these maps are unchanged for like months. Because having an update every 3 days to change maps will also be annoying... And imagine training to play the map and when you're ready it changes
I think the best thing to do is to play the maps that are in a current competition (and keep them until another competition appears) and let people play these modes :
1v1 ranked, 2v2 ranked, 3v3 ranked, 5v5 ranked (can play with teammates via invitation)
tech, speed, dirt for each

not on community servers... and a map from the current/last competition as I said is randomly loaded. All the rest are things that should be decided by Nadeo such as :
_ match is 1 map ? 3 ?
_ 7 rounds ? even in 2v2 ranked ?
ect...

problem is with this game in ranked, if you disconnect, you lose as simple as that, and with the instability of the game it will be a big problem. But the insta-lose if disconnect will prevent any problem that are seen right now (end-round, and we wait, and another disconnect, and the points are f*cked up cause somebody finished...)

[Tobirousch]

I don't really know what you mean. Where is the problem in having like 3/4 Maps especially for the ranked gamemode? They will remain the same all season long and get replaced by 3/4 enw ones each season. Maps are ahndled by the ranked servers. Nothing needs to be updated into the game files.
Competition maps change every week or every 3 weeks (esl/tmm) and therefore I would rather have ranked mode having it's own maps. they will remain the same all season long anyway so training them won't be a problem.

The idea of having 2v2, 3v3 and even 5v5 is cool but a ranked mode needs a lot of players to be working properly and I don't see trackmania having enough to directly have team related ranked matches at the start. maybe later on after the solo modes are working properly and there are enough players.

I don't think gamecrashes are as big of a problem as you wrote. Since it's ranked you could make it able for players to reconnect but the match would go on whyle they are not on the server. making the server remembering the points of the player shouldn't be a problem. The game does crash sometimes idd but it doesn't happen THAT frequently and also MP4 will improve stability.

[djhubertus]

Current ladder points is basically elo, they just don't give negative points in Trackmania(substracts are exclusive to gold players in shootmania elite).

If they finally create 1v1v1v1 matchmaking for TM, they will maybe enable negative points aswell.

[Tobirousch]

current ladder points are kind of an elo rating. that's true but the way you gain them already is completely different. you have to play on ta or rounds servers destinated for it and especially in the top ranks (roc) you can only play for 3 hours. this is a lot different to matchmaking. current ladder is not reassembling the true skill of a player at all. Having a global world rank is cool but it's worth nothing sadly :/