Rocket Arena Ranked Play

Hello Tour Competitors!  I’m Kyle K (Pravda), a Game Designer here at Final Strike Games, and I’m here to tell you about the Ranked system in Rocket Arena! In this post we’ll go over how Ranked works, the differences between Social and Ranked, our design philosophies and goals for it.

Rocket Arena blasts off with a Ranked Preseason on launch day, July 14th. Season 1 will officially begin two weeks after launch on July 28th.

We believe Rocket Arena has awesome competitive gameplay in both Social or Ranked environments. In Social playlists, games are plenty sweaty, but we’re ok with them being a little more over the top and playful experiences. However, for Ranked, we want to give players looking for competition a more even playing field to test their skills in. 

Our goal is to provide the best, most competitive Ranked experience for players, so we’ve focused on removing randomness and adjusting other elements that don’t support the idea of an even playing field.  We’ve done our best to preserve as much of the core Rocket Arena gameplay as possible to ensure that Ranked is an absolute blast to play!

We also wanted to make sure that players have something to strive for, so we’ve added 50 Ranks for you to climb. We’ve put a lot of work into matchmaking as well to make sure everyone is matched appropriately and having fun.

Seasons

The Ranked playlist will be available to everyone at the launch of Rocket Arena with no prerequisites! This means players do not have to meet any level or progress requirements and can enter the Ranked playlist immediately and start blasting!

The first two weeks after launch will be a Ranked Preseason. The Preseason will give players a chance to learn the ropes of how our Ranked systems work, and will allow us to keep an eye on how those systems are performing and to listen to your feedback.

Season 1 will officially start on July 28th and all ranks will be reset. So, practice up, and then get ready to GO GET YOUR 50! 

Ranks

Rocket Arena’s Ranked system has 50 ranks for players to climb, each with a unique associated Ranked Badge. All players will start at Rank 1 at the beginning of every Season and can progress their Rank by playing in the Ranked playlist.  

Gaining Rank is easy -- win games!  The more games you win, the more your Rank will increase. However, your rank can also decrease if you start losing too much. In Rocket Arena, unlike some ranked systems in other games, if you keep losing, you can keep dropping Rank.  So get ready to prove you have what it takes to stay at the top!

With the start of every new Season, all Ranks will be reset.

Rank Calculations

How far a player can climb in Rank depends on their own personal Skill value. Skill is a behind-the-scenes value, similar to MMR in other games, and is part of how we measure a player’s ability and where we should matchmake them. Like Rank, Skill is on the same 1-50 scale. We calculate Skill separately from Rank and can narrow in and update it fairly quickly to help ensure better matches. 

At the start of a Season, your Rank will start at 1 and we will calculate your Skill value based on your performance. Your Skill will initially be higher than your Rank, and by winning games, your Rank will eventually converge with your Skill. If you keep winning, your Rank can even surpass it!

We will keep an eye on how easy or difficult it is to rank up during Season 1 and adjust values as needed for future Seasons to make sure ranking up is achievable but still challenging.

Quit Penalty

Starting with the release of Season 1 on July 28th, there will be a penalty for players who leave games. Leaving a game will count as a loss for your Rank.

Matchmaking

We do our best to ensure players are getting the best Rocket Arena experience possible and attempt to match players of similar ability together. In Ranked play, our systems will try to only match players with others who are within a certain Rank and Skill range. 

We also prioritize matching parties with other parties. We matchmake parties based on the average Rank and Skill of the players in the party, so if your friends are higher ranked than you, prepare for a fight! 

We will monitor queue times and adjust values accordingly so players are getting into games relatively quickly while trying to maintain as much fairness as possible.

Artifacts

Artifacts in Rocket Arena are gameplay altering objects that players can equip to each of their Competitors. Each Competitor can have 3 unique Artifacts equipped at one time, and different Artifacts equipped to each Competitor. At launch, 22 Artifacts will be available.

In Social playlists, each Artifact has 3 levels, and players must acquire and level them up by playing games. However, in Ranked play, all Artifacts are unlocked immediately, set at a single Ranked level, and cannot be leveled up.

As Ranked play is all about competition, we do not want to give an unfair advantage to players with more time to unlock and level Artifacts, and we feel that providing all Artifacts in Ranked from day one is the best way to ensure this.  Having a single Ranked level for each Artifact also lets us fine-tune the Ranked experience more carefully without affecting Social play. 

Generally, our philosophy is to allow Artifacts in Social to be a little stronger than Ranked Artifacts as we intend Social to be more over-the-top and focused on fun and crazy moments. It is important to us to reward Social players for putting in the work to unlock and level up their Artifacts. 

The good news is that players do still earn XP in Ranked, so they will be unlocking and leveling up Artifacts for use in Social playlists. Our goal is to have players be able to hop between Ranked and Social without feeling like they’re behind.

Items

Items in Rocket Arena are in-game objects that can be picked up and used during the match In Social playlists, all Items are random and are inside of Random Item Boxes.

Starting with the release of Season 1 on July 28th, Items in Ranked will not be random and instead the same Item will spawn in the same location every time. Players will also see the Item itself on the spawn point instead of a Random Item Box. Additionally, only a subset of items will be available in Ranked play, with the Speed Boost, Bomb, Trip Mine, and Magnet Items available at the start of Season 1. Finally, Item-granting Artifacts will now only choose from the list of available Ranked Items.

Our goal with Ranked is to provide a consistent experience across games, so removing any randomness in Items is crucial. We also want players to know exactly what item they will be picking up, so displaying the Item itself is very important as well. Finally, removing some of the more over-the-top Items from Ranked further promotes our goals of consistency and fairness.  

Map and Mode Selection

The modes available in the Ranked playlist are currently Knockout, Rocketball, and Mega Rocket. Like the Social Arena playlist, the game will be chosen from the list of available maps and modes. However, the maps and mode combinations in Ranked are a subset of what is available in Social playlists. 

Differences in geometry can favor one team spawn over the other, so we’ve only chosen the map and mode combinations that play the most consistently.  For example, we try to make sure one team doesn’t start with a power position in Knockout and only choose symmetrical maps in Rocketball.   

Finally, while we love Treasure Hunt and believe it can be very competitive game mode, after much debate, we feel it is currently best suited to a less stressful environment and have decided to let players collect all the coins they want in Social playlists.  

If you have feedback about certain map and mode combinations, or feel that your Rank should also reflect your ability to dominate opponents in Treasure Hunt, please let us know, especially during the Preseason! Going forward, we will continue to listen to the community and adjust maps and modes as the Seasons progress.  

Hopefully this post has helped explain our Ranked system and given you some insight into our design philosophies. Going forward, it is our goal to listen to the community and continue to mold our Ranked experience into something special for every competitive player.

We’re super excited about Ranked and can’t wait to share it with you! Hit us up on social media and let us know what you think!

Discord: https://discord.gg/rocketarena
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketArena/
Twitter: @RocketArena
Facebook:www.facebook.com/rocketarena
Instagram: @RocketArena

NOW GO GET YOUR 50!