Upcoming update - Ranked Gameplay

Hey all,

Wanted to give a quick update as to what our next update plan is. Going to start fairly high level on it as we are still locking down details, but wanted to share what we are thinking, just so you know what is coming up.

Ranked Gameplay! - currently expected live date of Friday October 31st (please keep in mind that we are Pacific Time Zone, so those in the rest of the world, may be getting this late in the night or on the 1st your time)

We are excited to announce our first strides toward more competitive gameplay! This first step will be implementing ranked gameplay into Planetary Annihilation, allowing players to play 1v1 games and work their way through the rankings system of Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond.

The longer term idea (aka: not this step, but future steps) here is that we will take this ranking systems into a 1v1 Leaderboard, allowing you to see how you stack up.

You’ll hear more on this as we get more details into place, and I will keep this post updated with those details as we move toward the 31st!

(Also, high five to those that guessed the pic correctly That was our UI guy working on ranked badges showing Bronze, Silver, and the edge of Gold)

Updates below:

• Goal to have a more detailed list around Monday our time. We are currently testing, and should know what will be included by then.
• PTE will hit on Monday the 27th (PST so keep that in mind)
• Replaced Diamond with the official top tier...

BOOM

It's not like it was a hard thing to guess.

Could we have a couple details on how systems for this 1v1 MM will be chosen?

Nice. I'll be very interested into your solution for balanced maps

Yep this is enough for me to back HR.

EDIT: I GUESSED IT

Can we do a map contest or something? People add one or several maps and the ones that get the most upvotes will be in the ladder (or something like that?)

You should ask the community to help set up a balanced map pool, either that or put system sharing mod in vanilla. :>

Thanks a lot for the update... I know was a much wanted feature along other things... Jables, your doing an excellent job informing us, and thank the team for the efforts on making PA more awesome... I think a Balance matchmaking system would be a good idea to have, just putting it out there, for those that aren't that great at competative games don't go up against a top #10 ranked seed every game.

What about team games, Uber? I believe these are the essence of PA, and they play almost entirely differently to 1v1s. My friends and I never play 1v1s... Any chance you might implement across the board rankings for the rest of us at some point? I heard SupCom had something of the kind?

It was horribly broken in SupCom. Basically SupCom had no way for players to select their spawns. They just spawned randomly. So teams would be randomly separated. But yeah in the future team matchmaking would be nice as well. Though that's inherently harder to setup.

I'm sure team games will come, this is just the first iteration of this.

@jables , totally random, but what is your picture of/from? Obviously a lion, but you know what I mean. :>

Hopefully you'll still be able to play unranked, cos I'm really not in to this ladder business. I don't play on a regular schedule, I don't play to get ranked, I just play to have fun. Many people will be pleased to hear about this update though, good job on that! But for me... meh.

I'm excited for this to hit the PTE.... any ideas when, @garat ?

I am not asking for matchmaking. I just want my performance in team games to count for my "overall" standing on a leaderboard. And also for a clan leaderboard, if possible.

I think Uber needs to realize at some point that PA is a team game at heart. It's the Counter-Strike of RTSes. They are doing a huge disservice to themselves by pretending this is only a side aspect. Tons of people who try PA and quit it because they find it too complex or too stressful would be hooked for life if they played team games (especially with voice-chat and specialization). I am just one man screaming in the void at this point. Team lobbies fill up so much more slowly than FFAs, because people don't realize this.

In short, team games, team games, and again team games. They are the future of PA, Uber. 1v1s are lame (sorry top 1v1 players, but it's true). Start pushing that asap, and PA might even get a chance to become a big esports game at some point.

I think a solo ranking, and a team ranking would be the best way to go as its very different play, great at 1v1 doesnt them great team play, Hey PAG hows that team training coming

But i'm a big believer in baby steps when developing, so we'll get there, great to see this coming to base game!!

Will you be including matchmaking in the initial release?

I concur that team games are essential. This game is at its coolest when there's a ton of nonstop action, but you don't get that in a single-planet and/or 1v1 environment. Multiple planets, multiple players, and multiple climactic commander kills makes any XvX match a thrill to play and to watch...

All you need to do is keep stats for a "profile" created by two or more players who team up.

A fun side feature for clans would be keeping a clan profile which shows the average win percentage for all members, as well as a list of MVPs in each category (team, 1v1, etc)

The simplest way to ensure that the 1v1 maps are balanced is through symmetry: let one side of the planet (including the spawn points) be a mirror image of the other. That shouldn't be too hard to enforce in the map generator.

What's the point of ranked games without matchmaking?