PSA: Expect Diamond + players in EVERY one of your ranked games forever.

Most people assume ranked mode should match you against people of your skill, after all that is how most games do it. It is a reasonable assumption at first glance. However this is a battle royale game, most games are not battle royales. There is 1 winner and 146+ losers in every game.

For those who have not seen it yet, here is a link to the patch notes that talks about the buy in cost for each division + how you score points: [https://www.callofduty.com/patchnotes/2023/05/Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-II-Warzone-2-Season-03-Reloaded-Patch-Notes.html#RankedPlay](https://www.callofduty.com/patchnotes/2023/05/Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-II-Warzone-2-Season-03-Reloaded-Patch-Notes.html#RankedPlay)

For this discussion I am going use the lowest level of Diamond as an example: Diamond 1: Buy in is -58 SR.

Let us pretend for a second that there are enough diamond players online at the same time with a reasonable ping, lets pretend that the entire lobby is diamond. (this is the expected at first glance balance), what happens?

The vast majority of the lobby ranks down. That is what happens. For you to score 58 score you need to do one of the following (roughly):

* get 12 kills (60 score) and place under top 40
* 10 kills place top 30
* 8 kills top 20
* 6 kills top 10
* 3 kills
* any kills place top 2 or 1 (score exceeds buy in)

As such in a lobby of all diamonds (buy in cost is higher for higher tiers of diamond keep in mind) there has to be people who get 0-1 kills and die early. If two diamonds drop at the same spot one kills the other that guy is now in gulag with 0 kills, probably fighting another guy who has 0 kills and one of them will die. The vast majority of the lobby cannot mathematically get 58 points per game, in fact they won’t get anywhere close to 58 points.

For you to be where you belong rank wise you need to average your buy in cost across your games, which means diamond players in general need to on average do one of those bullet points in the vast majority of their games. This is not possible if they only play against other diamond players.

Therefore the only way the ranked system will work, is if lobbies are filled based on rank, but with a certain breakdown of each rank in each game. What I mean is, in every single ranked lobby I would expect to find players of ALL ranks in that lobby. The distribution of those ranks will vary. Would I would not expect to see is a lobby with lots of high rank players and few low. No, instead it will probably be something like:

* 50% of the lobby bronze/silver
* 30% of the lobby gold
* 15% of the lobby plat
* 5% of the lobby diamond +

This method does a few things that are important:

First it allows allows for better queue times for all ranks which is good for everyone. Second it means most people in the lobby has the ability to rank up. To be clear that does not mean they will all rank up. Here is what I mean:

A silver player with 18 SR buy in only needs to get 4 kills (sub 40 placement) to go positive and climb a little bit. This is perfectly achievable even in a lobby with higher ranks in it. Silver is close to gold in skill, it is possible to win a fight against them and most the lobby is near your skill level. Only in a minority of games will you die EARLY (key word here) to the few high rank people the game. Meanwhile the high rank players will be farming noobs, as they always have done in this game because that is how skill in a BR works. The question isn’t are they going to farm noobs? It is how many noobs can they farm? After all we pointed out they need on the safe side to get placed 20th + with around 7-12 kills a game (Again this is for Diamond 1 only, it is higher for higher ranks).

The sooner we all get used to the idea that yes there will be high rank people in my lobby, the better it will be for your mental. And please don’t assume you can’t win ever because of this, you certainly can. A bronze player who sees the diamond player first, or happens to have better positioning due to circle movements can win a fight. TTK is fast enough where this is possible. In fact that is something that people bitch about plenty on this sub.

Please also note, I am not saying this is fact, and this IS how it works. I am saying I assume it works like this or something similar. I just don’t see any other logical way. And by assuming that, I won’t have a mental breakdown when I too get got one day by someone in Diamond or top 250.

TLDR: you will see all ranks in every ranked game because otherwise the Buy in costs don’t function properly. Also queue times.