I hadn't touched ranked warzone until very recently, and was shocked at the difference in skill between it and unranked. I just reached plat, and so far every lobby has had a very notable decrease in skill compared to unranked. For comparison, I have a 2.85 KD / 15% WR in unranked resurgence, where the vast majority of games are on rebirth island. When playing ranked resurgence though, I've gotten these crazy stats: 7.45 KD / 50% WR. I know these are the lower ranks, but this made me wonder what's the point of unranked? If there's a ranked mode that's supposed to be skill driven, shouldn't unranked have little to no SBMM? I feel like my unranked stats aren't even that good, yet I'm going against players with skill I haven't come close to seeing while being halfway up the ranked ladder. It's astonishing the difference between the two modes. Maybe I'll gain more insight when I get to the higher ranks, but currently the ranked/unranked system seems silly.
4 Comments
Ranked SBMM is there, it just works differently. In ranked, you are in easy SBMM protected lobbies until around plat 2 or 3. Once you cross that threshold, a switch flips and you are in the sweat lobbies. Non-ranked matches don’t have the hard switch flip, they are a bit more mixed.
Ranked doesn’t really have SBMM. The player base is split into two groups with the dividing line essentially being Diamond. If you’re below diamond, you’re in bot lobbies where the good players who are just starting ranked can easy complete the SR challenges and instantly get bumped out of that pool to Diamond. It placates the lowered skill players who want “ranked rewards” but would get stomped in normal lobbies, which would normally cause them to quit. Diamond and above is the 2nd open pool where regardless of you and your teams skill level, you will get paired with Crims, Iri’s and T250s. If they applied their usual SBMM to the higher tiers, the Iri’s and T250s (including streamers) would have to sweat against each other AND deal with longer matchmaking times or shitty ping. To help keep those players engaged, they pair them up with anyone over Diamond. Diamond players are essentially sacrificial lambs that they need to keep separated from the lower skill pool, but also use as fodder to help keep the higher skill players and content creators engaged and entertained while allowing them to create content that isn’t brain numbing to watch. If T250s were only paired against each other, they would just sit in corners and hide to get placement, which is what we saw happen in Apex.
Because your first few games of ranked are with actual noobs. Give it a few more games, you’ll be above platinum and with the people you should be playing against
fewer sweats boost in ranked