1v1 Duels as casual mode
under review
Blackbrook
For a casual player who also plays ranked games, this would be useful.
The current system encourages you to avoid playing during weekends if your current ranking is near your personal best and you are above the Gold level.
In Gold and below, only the first 20 games (or so) matter, so you can keep playing because your ranking is irrelevant for level changes. You have that casual duels mode for the rest of the week. But if you are in Master II or higher, you may want to avoid playing if your current ranking is good enough. There is no way to keep playing duels without the risk of demotion.
Why so? I can regularly reach ranking 950-1000 and that is enough to stay in Master II. If you fall below 850, there is a high risk that you will be demoted to Gold I. At least twice in the last two months, I have had a long streak of duels against much better players. There were also some bad blunders against gold and silver players (and one cheater). My ranking dropped to ~750. Luckily, this happened early in the week, and I managed to get back to ~900 in time.
Filip
under review
AJ Vukich
Also with a wider range of starting locations... not the same cities every game lol
Bar-le-Duck
AJ Vukich unfortunately in the lower divisions (silver and bronze) you play on the "The world" map which has easier locations in big cities, because beginners apparently would like this more.
vibenmee
Incresed queue times no thank you
LushArchipelago709
I think the existing casual play options are enough and it would be bad to fragment the playerbase more
Llewkcor
Please be careful with any suggestions that would increase queue timers. There are already multiple ways to play casually with or without other people.
L
Liam
Llewkcor I don't see the "be careful"? People should be free to choose what they want to play.
ffz
Llewkcor I agree that this probably isn't the best idea, the playerbase is already pretty small and this would only provide an occasional benefit to some while resulting in a permanent detriment to most (much longer queue times)
Also, this game has an extremely volatile ranking system. The time it would take you to reach the global leaderboards if you suddenly achieved 100% winrate is incredibly short compared to any other competitive game. Unless you're near max elo (at which point it would be even worse to lower queue times), the best solution is to just play 1v1s as casually as you want to and trust that you'll get your elo back pretty quickly whenever you decide to start caring again.
bosnia
Yes please