Season Duration

[glossy locust]

There are too many seasons per calendar year, compressing the season duration and creating excessive churn on players’ rank with the 2022-implemented decay factor.

If seasons changed from 40-60 days to a standard quarterly cadence (90-93 days) players would be less affected by the decay / soft-reset, and feel that they control their leaderboard climb, rather than the expiry of the season “moving the goalposts” of their next rank goal.

As a player with limited game time available, a longer (and standardized) season duration would allow for more loss-correction opportunities in the Master-to-GM grind, where significantly more rank points are lost from a loss than gained from a win.

[sturdy burrow]

Agree to disagree. For me a 60 days season is far too long. If you don't have time to play, perhaps the ranked games are not for you, rather you should play casual as you are taking the game in a light way

[glossy locust]

50+ ranked games, winning 52%, making the first cut at the discord tournament… doesn’t feel like I’m taking the game in a light way.

Simple math is I’m not able to play every day, I can rarely play more than 2 game per session. With a 6-8 week season, there’s no margin for error after 21k on the ladder.

In my case: unless I close out on a 6-0 winning streak, this will be third out of 4 seasons where I get reset from 24k down to 16k. Pretty painful “soft reset” to lose 33% of your ladder points.

[sturdy burrow]

Let me put it this way: wanting to be a top player in the game of risk is like wanting to be a NBA player. You need to practice and master your skills every day. Playing not every day, maximum 2 games per day, is like playing with your homies in the hood. The idea of getting to the NBA by playing ball with your friends every now and then is simply ridiculous. So is this. Ranked games are for competition. GM status is for highly skilled players who have polished their game and also are constant by playing regularly. If your approach to the game is more casual than constant, why rank and title should be important to you?

[glossy locust]

I think you present a very thoughtful response, but I disagree on the premise. I’m not chasing “top player” status of top 100, 10, or 1 (in which case I agree with you: that is a 4-6 hr per day commitment). I’m chasing an arbitrary line that floats between top 2,000 and top 3,000 players.

Due to the diminishing returns of a win as a player approaches GM (and the exponential punishment for a loss), artificially shortening seasons (when 4 per year makes a lot more sense) seems to be a third limiting factor that stacks the deck against the Master to GM climb in a manner incongruent with other rank climb win ratios (in terms of ~approximate win % required to climb from X to Y in a single season).

[sturdy burrow]

For me the problem is the ranking system, not the season duration. Once you reach Grandmaster status, every win will give you 50-100 points, no matter the opponent's level. Each loss, -1500 points, no matter the rival's rank. There's no point in keep playing once you reach GM rank. Been there, done that. Trust me. Sad but true.

[weak gate]

Yea it’s brutal, in a week I got taken down from 31k all the way down to 21k, brutal run of games, really aggressive players trying to take everyone out first few rounds and then suiciding theirselves when they figure out they have messed everyones game up. Looked at the season clock and it had 10 days to go until it reset. Just went on crazy win streak and have got it back up passed 26k and GM level. Thats me done, I’m not playing again until season restarts. I think the reset thing is stupid and very harsh to be taken all the way back down to to 16k

[sturdy burrow]

There are 3 things that you don't have any control in this game:

1. Who goes first
2. Who trades cards first
3. Luck with dice

Given that, punishing with -1500 points a defeat when in GM status is too harsh. It's not skill only, it's also luck. The creators of the game don't seem to care about this. They will say that ELO is the best, period. That they are working on something new (which they have been working for ages), but the reality is that a game that encourages not playing is flawed and rigged. One defeat can happen in minutes, but will take you hours of play to recover from it.

[weak gate]

Yea the 1500 points loss a defeat is very harsh at GM level, it does stop you playing as much knowing a losing streak which can be out of your control can ruin your progress. Also the better you play the more likely that someone will suicide theirselves into you at any moment and ruin your game. The amount of times I have worked my way into a winning position for someone to just give up and suicide themselves into you just to stop you winning is a crazy. They would rather give the win to someone else that is undeserving than let you win through the good play you have done