descentchampions.org

Since the Mid 2016 season the ladder has been divided into four ranked categories (bronze, silver, gold and diamond). Do you think its necessary to have a seperate tier for two pilots (Diamond) or is it time for a change? Feel free to cast a vote and express your opinions as you see fit.

I feel like this is a question for the Diamond pilots. Without it I suspect we'd need a "virtual diamond" in the ratings system though, or the rest of the board would eventually be moved down to the next tier.

I think we should be GOLD with a diamond or invuln orb achievement/designation of some kind.

If us being gold knocks some gold into silver....Fight harder to get back to gold.

Keep diamond and get rid of the dominance factor. It would certainly open up the tier a little bit for baha, me, souljah, and others for a possibility of getting there. With the active pilots, I definitely have a weakness to Baha's playstyle. Where as Baha has weaknesses to other pilots. It's something I want to get better at surely, but without sounding ignorant I think I'd have a good shot with the rating threshold and going at the diamond pilots for a 20-17 average - and I thought the point was to be able to hold your own with diamond pilots? Let Baha get diamond and hold me down...it'll force people to actually see a light at the end of the tunnel for progression. This dominance factor sucks - and its hard to make up for it with the inactivity. I'll go on a slump against Baha and I know it'll take a year to make up for it if I actually do put together a defensive or offensive game plan against Baha specifically.

I don't think removing the dominance requirement would be taking anything away from the greatness of Luke and Mark - we all know they have been dominant for years and years. They can still be "top diamond".


These are just my thoughts and obviously it is a bit biased, because I think I would make diamond if these changes were implemented, but I also think others would too. The thought of getting to that next level, with the acknowledgement on the ladder is really what coerced me into activity when Gold was the epitome of descent. I don't want to get political on the fact that neither Luke nor Mark had to even go through a promotion because - "how could they?" - is really the only response, but it is an obvious flaw in the system.

I also don't like the fact that having this dominance factor definitely would make me avoid baha until his numbers actually rolled off my chart - or I would just try to be stubborn and pinpoint him in levels where I would have the best chance of putting up a decent score. So, really, what is the point of creating the potential for an angling, tactical, greedy pilot? I've gone over it in my head, for my situation, many of times and I feel as though that is the only route to go to achieve diamond, and I'm not doing it. I want to have fun and play everyone at a high level - not pick and choose to try and skew some numbers for my favor. The skill rating is fine and makes sense - I can get to 24 while playing a wide variety of pilots and I produce well enough against diamond pilots where I think that promo would be warranted.


EDIT:

Also, I'd like to add that in no way do I think any of this would be easy to obtain - it is quite obvious in promo challenges how hard Mark and Jedi play to keep the challenger down. Do you really think Luke wouldn't suicide forever and make me play a 2 hour game? It is the final stand off for that promotion. I've seen Mark decimate players to low single digits that are top gold. I mean - seriously - the person getting diamond under those circumstances are going to have to mentally defeat Luke or Mark and have nerves of steel, which both of them have shown to have consistently when it mattered. The community hype on such a promo would be amazing too! I don't know. I only see positives. I'm sure if this did happen, numerous pilots would fail their first attempts at the promo.

I say Diamond should stay. The old designation of invuln orbs was manual, objective, and confusing. The new designation is automated and intentionally difficult to get into. No one dominates gold pilots like these two. Sure, they'll lose the occasional game, but historically on the DCL the only pilots that have even been close to touching them are Loni and Souljah, with Souljah being the better vs gold, and Loni the better vs diamond.

Drakona could probably write an essay on the subject.

I think 3 tiers is the maximum (and that's pushing it) that this ladder can support given how few pilots are on it and playing.
Also, a 2 person tier isn't a true tier imo.
I'm ok with being 'demoted' to GOLD or rather.....raising up what it means to be GOLD.

I would think that the invuln orb or whatever it would be now could be automated. You get it if you meet 2 requirements. The GOLD dominance # and Skill rating. Since it wouldn't be a tier you can get rid of the challenge portion OR....u could keep all 3 requirements and perhaps adjust the gold dominance to some degree to account for the fewer GOLD players.

I'd like to apologize on Cyrus' behalf, Ron. That was out of line and out of character. He just took a lot pre-workout this morning, like 3 times the recommended amount, and he'd like you to know he's sorry.

So what you're saying is the recommended amount is 2/3, and he took three times that, so he took 2? Yeah, he doesn't like to Take2, he would be upset at that, wouldn't he.