Thoughts on Rank -> Grade changes
I'll start with a short rant that I thought grades were supposed to reset on the 13th of every month, not the 12th. I was aiming for iridescent 1 grade killer since I don't have that steam achievement, only to log in last night to find that I was back at Ash IV with all of my progress reset. Just 7 pips shy from completion of my goal. Little irritated on that.
Anyways, seeing as grades have been out for about a month now, I'm just sharing some of my thoughts on this new system. Chime in if you agree/disagree. Opinions welcome.
Firstly, I'd like to question some of the decisions based on the grading system. I'll start by asking why do the emblem point goals change across grades? Isn't the point of a matchmaking rank supposed to be that if you do well, you compete against better players and therefore have more challenging experience ahead of you? It seems silly to be changing the goal post during this time. Specifically, if you're doing well and double pipping as a killer in lower grades, your MMR will be rising and your grade will be rising, but in order to double pip in iridescent ranks, your only option is to achieve iridescent in every. single. category. This seems a bit excessive. See the chart below (taken from the DBD Wiki) to the shift in goal for what a -1, 0, 1, and 2 pip means as your grade rises.
Secondly, I'd like to talk about grade rewards -- namely, the amount of time invested and games played for what feels like such a paltry reward. As others have mentioned, I'd have to estimate that about 5 decent killer games running some of the bloodpoint perks and/or using a bloodpoint offering will easily net you 250k bloodpoints. Some quick napkin math: it takes 85 pips to reach iridescent 1 starting at ash 4. If you double pipped every single game you played, you're looking at a minimum of 43 games played.
250k bps / 43 games = 5.8k bps per game if you played perfectly.
The above is a pretty unrealistic expectation as more often than not you'll be finding yourself getting 1 or 0, or potentially -1 pips per game, so let's adjust our numbers a little bit. You're still a good player, so let's say, 30% of your games are +2 pips, 40% are +1 pip, 20% are 0, and 10% of your games are a -1 pip. Iridescent rank 1 in this case would take approximately 95 games played.
250k bps / 95 games = 2.6k bps per game using the above stats.
Perhaps a more fitting monthly reward would be iridescent shards, to help players unlock some of the sweet cosmetics that are so often underutilized due to the scarcity of materials.
Lastly, I'd just like to ask, why are grades made public? They should have no bearing on gameplay other than a personal feel-good (or feel-bad) metric. More often than not, I find myself annoyed seeing such large discrepancies in grades between survivors and killers on the match results screen. I know it has been said before that grades != MMR and I may be beating a dead horse, but grades are explicitly tied to skill with the above metrics and the pip system.
Anyways... thoughts?