A quick search with the Ranked 2.0 keyword on social media will lead you to numerous posts from Rainbow Six Siege players expressing their frustration over Ranked 2.0 and being matchmade with players way above their rank. But, they all forget one important thing: ranks do not mean anything anymore!
When Ubisoft announced Ranked 2.0, it revealed that they would be separating ranks from the true skill of the players, which was known as MMR back then. As a result, your rank does not play the smallest part in matchmaking, but it does play a crucial role in the number of Rank Points you gain or lose. But how? I’ll explain more.
Ubisoft says it uses a hidden skill rating in matchmaking, and this rating has a multiplier known as uncertainty. The more matches a player plays in Ranked, the lower the uncertainty becomes. When uncertainty is low enough, Ubisoft will be quite confident about your skill rate, and from that point on, Ubisoft will avoid making radical changes to your skill rating and even your rank.
Overall, it sounds like the matches required to lower the uncertainty operate quite similarly to Placement Matches in the old Ranked system, however, it now works with more than just 10 matches.
This is exactly where the new Ranked system fails, though. Similar to the placement matches, if someone manages to fool Rainbow Six Siege (purposefully or luckily) long enough to lower the uncertainty, it won’t be easy to get them out of the skill rating they are assigned.
While Ubisoft has separated rank from skill rating, the main factor to change both parameters is still winning or losing a match rather than personal performance. So, your K/D ratio still doesn’t matter to Ubisoft that much, which is why Ranked 2.0 can still be fooled. Although it is harder than before, it still can be done.
Now, we move on to the ranks. Ubisoft says that it doesn’t wipe your previous skill rating when a season arrives. Ubisoft even doesn’t forget your rank history. According to the French developer, if you had reached a high skill rating and the uncertainty was low enough, the new system will help you reach the same rank faster in a new season.
So, let’s say someone placed Diamond last season. When the new season begins, Rainbow Six Siege’s matchmaking system will check the player’s skill rating and their rank history, realizing that they deserve to reach Diamond again. As a result, the game will grant them the highest Rank Points possible for each win and retract the lowest Rank Points possible for each loss to speed up the player’s progression towards Diamond. This bonus will continue until the player reaches one rank below the deserved rank, which in this case is Emerald.
So, it is safe to say that if you fool the matchmaking system in Rainbow Six Siege once, it will be easier to keep fooling it in the upcoming seasons too. When the uncertainty is low, it takes Ubisoft longer to adjust the skill rating, and thus it takes a mediocre player longer to drop from Diamond to Gold.
It doesn’t matter how bad you are in the game, because there will be matches where you get carried and win, as opposed to games where you lose. That’s why it is rare to find players that demote more than a few ranks throughout a season, especially in higher ranks.
And remember, while Rainbow Six Siege has a bonus system to speed up your progression toward your deserved skill rating, it does not have a penalty system to speed up your demotion toward the rank you deserve.
This is the main reason why when Rainbow Six Siege even realizes that your skill rating does not meet your rank, it cannot help with a faster demotion. So, the player who once ranks in Diamond or Champion will at least remain in the same rank for another season, even if their skill rating is close to Gold.
This becomes the main reason why players are put in matches where there are a variety of different ranks. You may find yourself in a match with players from Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and even Champion. In such a case, it doesn’t mean that the matchmaking is unfair. The skill rating still works fine, but it is the ranking system that doesn’t show the real values.
So, the Champion in your lobby while you are Gold could have a skill rating that matches Platinum, but the game is unable to demote them quickly because the player still gains more Rank Points for winning than they miss for losing.
As a result, you shouldn’t be mad at Ubisoft when you are put into a lobby with a player way above your rank. Just remember that ranks are not real indicators of players’ skills, and this is even more relevant with Ranked 2.0. So, all Ubisoft needs now is to change the way ranks work, to make it much closer to the player’s skill rating.
This can be done in a variety of ways, but the easiest way is to introduce penalties in Rank Points so that players who don’t deserve a higher rank lose more Rank Points when losing a match.
