The Problem with Multiversus Ranked

Multiversus recently released their ranked mode and it leaves a lot to be desired. In this video, I talk a lot about what I think the problem is with Multiversus ranked and offer a few suggestions on how it could be improved upon going forward.

[Octave]

Stage bans NEED to be there. My main is considerably worse on Dexter’s 2 for example and leaving that up to chance is never a nice feeling.

[sablenarwhale]

not going to watch the whole video going to disprove your whole vid by saying that if u rank up to masters you get cool skinss

[morgansloth]

I think the only suggestion I have is regarding the ranked rewards. Having the background banners exclusive for seasons is something I love (or would love with the badges) but I would prefer if the character specific skins were not strictly season based and were instead based on which character you get to what ranks. Like if you main a Finn and get him to masters you’d get similar skins to jack’s ranked skins but for Finn. And so on for the other characters. This would not only incentivise players to play more of ranked but learn and master other playable characters too. Rather than reward people skins for characters they don’t play.

[Dezatron-]

Thanks for making a video about this because I was confused about why I a gold rank was just getting masters non-stop. The worst part about it is how limited the mmr range is. You need to play at perk hours or you will be paired with or fight the same people most of the time unless you destory your mmr.

[BigPeish]

I’ve been getting -29 a loss and +9 per win. Keep in mind I had a 5 win streak and lost 2 games and I ranked down. It’s complete bs how brutal the ranking system 😵‍💫

[Wolfiyeethegranddukecerberus]

My biggest gripe with the game is the Lock In Character feature. It's kind of like the adverse to MMR where I think it should be locked to Ranked. It was so much fun in Beta to try out different characters and strategies between matches and now you can't. I miss the old CSS 😢

[yu-sama]

They should ditch different ranks for different characters. It makes Matchmaking even more scuff and for something that isn't that important.

Is cool to have a "Master Rank [Character]" and it also gives people reasons to keep grinding (getting multiple characters to master)

But this could have been done with mastery lol. Also even if they say "well my bronce Bugs is worst than my Master Batman" but you are not a bronce player yourself bro, even if your Bugs is bronce you are at worst Platinum 2 at Bugs.

Also about the bo3, I would love it if they incentive bo3 instead of forcing it. Like if you play the full set, you get more RP or get a reduction on how much RP you can lose if you lose. (edit: okay you said just what I was thinking haha)

About stage bans. I would only add this on high elo like, from Diamond and above. Really you don't need that for lower elos or casuals that just want to play a match.

[vima]

I mostly agree with everything in the video, but one thing was wrong, if you are starting to climb with a new character (at bronze) and you beat a diamond/master opponent (since you have high mmr you are gonna be matched with them) you do get to climb a full tier with just winning 1 rank match, I've gotten +500 RP to climb from bronze to silver, and +500 RP to climb from silver to gold, effectively climbed 2 whole tiers in 2 or 3 games, I think that is good, also I haven't had that happened at all from Gold to Platinum
Good video!

[PlaguevonKarma]

I agree with the overall point - that being that the ranks themselves are more grind-based than skill-based, making them lose a lot of meaning. I love a lot of the suggestions too; placement matches, stage picks/bans, swapping characters mid-set, and all that are also great suggestions. I think placement matches would have solved almost every issue with ranked in the first place, really; going through Bronze feels kind of awful lol

My personal suggestion would be to make RP into Elo or something like that, which is a more "normal" measurement of skill. I also think a form of ladder decay may be useful if there's ever a permanent leaderboard, and a "universal rank" across all characters would be nice to encourage general skill.

But there are a few disagreements!

Firstly, I'm not sure how BO3 can't be forced if you introduce counterpicking characters and stages. This becomes a large part of the metagame when introduced; setplay, how you pick pocket characters, what stages are best for you, and so on, these all influence the tiering of a given character. In Yu-Gi-Oh, for example, Master Duel has a BO1 ladder while real-life TCG has a BO3 with side decking (basically counterpick cards) format; in Master Duel, dozens of decks become viable solely because of the lack of counterpick options, creating a completely different format. If you take away forced BO3 in MultiVersus, playing a character stronger in a BO1 setting becomes a legitimate strategy, even if you penalise the amount of rank points you get. You'd have to do a lot to strongarm players into using the quit feature "fairly". Is that really what we want? It just feels like these suggestions contradict each other.

I feel like the experiences between strong and weak players in Bronze may be a bit exaggerated. While it's technically "harder" for us, the weaker players would still be matched with players of their skill level. It'd be better to phrase the argument as "the experience is static across all levels" - that's the actual problem.


I don't think I've ever had the experience of fighting a Master-ranked player, despite going like 18-0 just tonight. The highest-ranked player I fought was a Plat I Rick while being Plat V myself. Like, that player was juiced as heck and I had to sweat a ton, but I still had a lot of fun and the experience was nice. I've enjoyed fighting strong players all the time and personally dislike the "stomping phase" of lower ranks in less polished ranked games; I really think placement matches would have been good...

[rakan_mdr]

Insanely good points the devs need to see this.

[Jabersson]

Agreed, there's so many things PFG can implement to allow players to customize their experience, like additional "Best of X" voting options. I actually think this would also decrease toxicity among the playerbase, which is another big issue.

Also, toasts are incredibly broken in ranked, when you can only toast back from the results screen and you're in a mode that eventually forces everyone to quit.

But I don't agree that we should be able to swap characters in ranked, as realistically, most players are rolling the dice with randos and not able to communicate with their teammate, so there's really no strategizing outside of perk deck synergy.

[talapantedtoad]

Big problem I experienced with rank yesterday is the fact that the court is in ranked.

The issue is that there are floating rotating hoops on each side of the map that at random can prevent a ko it’s really frustrating.

Also while I’m not the type to whine about balancing I will say the game feels currently in its least balanced state it’s not unplayable but characters like Black Adam and Ayra just dominate the higher ranks.

[donglybits]

Looked up your Jason rank in 2s and noticed you were 13th. Thought that was neat :)

[sheesh]

Great video as always👍, I agree with everything except changing characters after a set. I believe that perks (which we definitely need more of) are what should allow you to deal with certain matchup disadvantages. In real life tournaments it's fine but for online play I think you should stick to the character/team you chose originally with the option to change perks in order to help your weak points. I believe there is more reward in figuring out how to beat a team rather than switching to a strong meta team just to avoid losing the set and protecting your W/L record.

[brianalberson]

Couple of things you got wrong. 1. They did change the system to give more points to Bronze players facing masters, I saw on Voids stream he got over 200RP for a single win when normally before it was giving 30RP max so that is a step in the right direction. 2. You can't just play bronze players to masters. If you are in platinum playing bronze players you will lose like 3x as many RP as you gain when you win, so you will need above a 75% win rate to climb. While ranks are largely meaningless being able to hit Diamond or Master on a character means you have been winning a lot against very good players consistently or you at least are winning at a ridiculous rate against newer players.

[burymeintulips]

I think the optional best of 3 would be great. I do think this will be bad for certain characters though because I can't see people willingly rematching Morty's or Arya's. I also would love placements. As someone who plays a lot of characters, I wanna get them all to masters but it's so tedious having to start from the way bottom even though I know I should be higher.

[EmileAnimation]

One thing I HATE in ranked mode is that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to go up, you win once you get +9 you lose once and you get -25, LIKE HOW????

[meowmix_tv]

really hope pfg sees this and hears it loud and clear

[CHAYZ]

I don’t think it’s actually as easy to get to Masters as you convey, although I agree with most of your points. I entered this ranked season as a high MMR Lebron (top 36 in Beta, top 1500 overall), and climbing has become tough at Platinum 1 and Diamond 5.

Before they implemented best of 3 matches, I ran into GSMvoid in 2v2. We lost, and still plummeted like 22RP.

[TheDesknight]

Reporting in from season 3, it is WORSE