In theory a 50/50 win to loss ratio is the perfect rating system. You will keep going up to the highest position if you can improve that much or are just that good. If you cant then you’re 50/50 will plateau at some point, whether that’s high position or a low position should just depend on your skill.
It’s similar to chess leagues. The difference in chess is that each player has access to the EXACT same set of tools as the other player. The pieces, the playing field and the time.
This does not exist in MMO’s because of its inherent nature of multiple classes. You can’t expect a Mesmer to have the same skill set as a Guardian, and vice versa. Here is the first instance of balance that can skew with rating systems. For example you might beat me if you’re a Mesmer and I’m a Guardian, but if we were both playing Mesmer I would win you.
So who is better? Who’s rating should be higher?
That’s where balancing the classes comes in, so that given enough skill everyone should be able to out-play the other. It can be argued that teaming up, learning map objectives and rotations are part of someones skill and that is entirely true as these places are the playing fields of ranked leagues, aka the chess board.
Now everything mentioned above can be put down to skill in terms of playing classes against one another. The balance of these classes is up for debate however, imagine if playing chess and Player A’s Queen had abilities that Player B’s Queen didn’t. That is obviously just unfair and if Player B lost is not a true representation of his skills.
The problem is further exasperated with being able to duo queue/team queue in a ranked environment. That option should be it’s own queue, limited to 2 or at worst disabled. This function undermines all the ranking balance before it because of the obvious teamwork advantage that a pre-made set of players have. This is not something that is down to chance, this is not something within the opposition players control. They just have to deal with having two or more people who are able to synchronize themselves much better than people who have just queued into the same team.
‘Finding buddies’ should lead to a separate queue. It heavily distorts the ranking in solo queue.
And then lastly, you have the current system where people have recorded losing pips on a win, gaining pips on a loss. All in all, this game needs to sort out balance of classes and teams of players before its rating system can ever amount to anything respectable.
TL:DR. – If there are too many variables outside of a players control that can impact the outcome of their games then the result of those games (ranking) means nothing.
