The game will adjust ranks upwards to prevent smurfing.
Rocket League has updated how the Competitive rank system works to increase the quality of matches and prevent smurfs, developer Psyonix revealed on June 14.
From here on out, Rocket League will evaluate a player's Competitive rank when they're completing placement matches and might recalculate if the system recognizes that their starting rank is too low. This change should directly tackle the issue of "unintentional surfing," which occurs when the system places players below their actual skill level.
While tweaking matchmaking is always hard as you can break the ranked system, this change has already been successfully tested on small groups of players across all Competitive Playlists in Rocket League. Psyonix decided to roll out this update to the entire playerbase after noticing significant "positive impact" on match quality.
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How does the Rocket League ranked system work now?
Psyonix said that a player's predicted rank is based on their rank in other Competitive Playlists in Rocket League. The developers analyzed the skill transference between Playlists and noticed that they could determine a player's rank with "high accuracy" by using their ranks from other Playlists.
The rank adjustment will happen in case one of the three following scenarios exist:
- The player played at least 10 matches of a certain Competitive Playlist in the previous season. (This means the player is “fresh” in the Playlist).
- In the previous season, the player did not play the Competitive Playlist they’re currently queuing for. (This means the player is “stale” in the Playlist).
- The player has a rank significantly below their predicted rank for the Playlist they’re currently queuing for.
In case you didn't understand, Psyonix gave the example below.
"For example, consider a player who was Silver in both Doubles and Hoops two seasons ago, and now is Diamond in Doubles but hasn’t played Hoops since," Psyonix said. "When they begin their placement matches for Hoops, their rank may be automatically adjusted upwards."
It's worth noting, however, that Rocket League won't simply transfer the rank you got in one Competitive Playlist to others that you don't play often. The system will take playstyle differences between Playlists into consideration. Your performance in Casual Playlists don't interfere on your Competitive rank.
While the game will automatically increase ranks based on these changes, it won't adjust ranks downwards nor apply this to tournament ranks this time around, Psyonix said.
That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more Rocket League news.
