Ok, Now I have about 2 weeks of sample size, and I am confident that this is an issue.
Please consider making the expanding search less retarded? I do NOT want to play against some rank-5-no-stars players, I’d rather have “sorry, no one in your rank is playing at the moment”. I’m really tired to get matched against non-god players in Pandora while trying to rank up. Every game against these rank5-ish players means 1 of two things:
I win and gain nothing. Like, literally nothing. Once I won and DROPPED 1 rank because someone below me won against an actual opponent with actual Elo.
I lose and drop 5 to 10 ranks instantly, propelling out of the top 10 and have to win 3-5 games against high god players to just get back into the top 10.
I don’t want to “friend” god players just to be able to check if they are playing Pandora - I do not care about “socializing” through a video game, and I think I am not alone in this. But this looks like the only way to dodge non-god players with god-knows-how-exactly calculated Elo.
P.S. If this continues, it is obvious that the best way to rank up would be not to play at your own high god account, but to park a smurf at rank-5-no-stars, surrender 10055000560560 games to get the worst Elo possible and just play in off-hours, sniping other high god players. Maybe someone is actually doing this already, given how often I meet these rank5-no-stars shitlords who actually play too well for their ranking.
I feel you. I dont know how it works exactly … but here’s what happened to me last night.
2 days ago, I go to sleep being God Rank #2 in Pandora.
Yesterday, I log on as God Rank #3, someone passed me. It’s ok.
My first win gets me back to God Rank #2, then I win 6 games in a row and don’t rank up.
My next game is against a normal Rank #3 and lose that game. I’m back to God Rank #3.
That one game erased 7 wins worth of points …
I ended the night back at God Rank #2 by going 10-1 (split between 2 runs).
Regarding Pandora, the developpers already know the ranking system is not adequate. I know for a fact a lot of people (god rank included), use the daily phantom runs to intentionnaly drop their rank since it’s free. As a result, you might indeed see some extremly good normal rank 5 players.
They also do that because there is no incentive to keeping a high pandora rank. Players dont get invited to tournaments because they get a top spot in pandora and we dont get a shiny card back either. We get nothing … so why should we stay there? I do it because I enjoy the game and the challenge good players give me. But other people who just want big rewards for big win streak will not think like that.
In conclusion, since developpers are already aware of the many complaints regarding pandora (and since the game is still in developpement), lets keep making good suggestion and wait for the programmers to come up with a new and improved unbuggy version of the game we enjoy. They just got rid of the artefacts many players hated and replaced them with treasure (which I personnally like). Now they can focus on another aspect of the game like card balance, elo and mmr revamp, in game chat or other social thingy like being able to view a friend’s profile to see his combat/pandora rank and such, etc.
Well, yes, it was announced that the system is not final, but if it copies the constructed one exactly, then the same criticism could be applied to the constructed one - I guess it is just less obvious in constructed because more people are regularly playing constructed in 10-1 ranks, so it is harder for a normal rank 5 to be matched against top 8 god, but still the possibility of smurf-sniping top opponents to try to ruin their elo makes me feel like the system is flawed by design.
//No losses to non-god opponents for 2 days, rank #4 as a result. Looking for a game really feels like some soft version of Russian Roulette now.
On a related note, I finally managed to unlock ranked play the other day and decided to try my hand at it. My Rank 25 self was instantly paired with Lv19+ opponents, all of whom were packing yellow-tier cards that were on the field within a half-dozen turns.
Is this a function of a low playerbase or does ranked matchmaking need to be better tuned to avoid these squash matches? Put simply, it is not fun watching a Ruunin, the Relentless and Doomgate combo mulch through your minions.
