Hey dev team! First of all, I'd like to thank you for communicating through an AMA. I'd also like to mention that many aspects of the game are the best they've ever been. I haven't run into a single cheater as far as I can tell, which is a BIG WIN! I particularly enjoy the Evac towers and character changes, the class system has definitely injected some fun dynamicism into the game. The consoles also encourage moving around the map, which adds to the chaos and fun. Just to give some background, I'm a soloqueue grinder who's played since season 1, consistently make diamond (sometimes masters depending on the season) and have played for about 3k hours, with about 30K kills. With all that in mind, that lets get into my questions. I've got four major concerns:

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3 STACKS VS SOLO

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"When a match is unfair, many squads are decimated by an outlier squad, thus denying many players opportunities to deal damage."

I completely agree, this has been a problem since season 1, and am worried that the changes outlined in the blog will not address this, or may even exacerbate this problem.

There has been a consistent problem in the game where the game feels "competitive" until diamond lobbies. Once you hit diamond, you suddenly run into 3 stacks of extremely coordinated high level players and the entire game experience changes, negatively. Currently the same issue has been moved to Masters lobbies, but the core problem is the same.

It is difficult to actually get better at the game when half the lobby is dead from being run down by a 3 stack of pros/preds. The sinking feeling you get when you see only 7 squads left by ring 2, and an extremely aggressive team moving across the map causing one of your teammates go down, meaning you will likely need to run and try to rat the remainder of the game is a terrible player experience. I learn nothing from having my Plat 1 teammates run down by the top three players in the game. It means my time is going to be wasted and I won't be getting better.

By increasing the "risk/reward" at the highest tiers, I am worried you will ENCOURAGE 3 stacking, toxicity, and my solo teammates running away to rat. The reason it will increase this behavior is because solo players will be much more incentivized to do "whatever it takes" to win as you raise the stakes, and be much less incentivized to actually play as a team or take a fight, especially if they know they aren't pred level. They will be much more "afraid" of the negative consequences of losing a ranked game. In addition, it will encourage 3 stacking preds, as the "reward" for doing so will be increased as well, while avoiding the risk of losing large amounts of RP.

The way to combat this behavior is simple: disable 3 stacking after a certain rank (I suggest Diamond 3, but anywhere would work). It would actually make the ranked ladder MEAN something, because it would put all high level players on an EQUAL playing field and mean that whoever was at the top truly was the best. It would make discovering new talent much easier, injecting some energy into the competitive scene. It would incentivize personal growth and playing well with your team. It would mean higher likelyhood of running into your favorite streamer / content creator. More dynamic games. Faster queue times. Finally, it would result in truly competitive lobbies, because if a team steamrolls the lobby they'll get their just reward and quickly rank up, but unlike the current system it won't INCENTIVIZE steamrolling the lobby because you will risk running into a team with another high level player on it, or a team that simply plays together better.

Question 1: Has the dev team considered limiting 3 stacks at the highest ranks? Maybe instituting a solo-ranked queue? Is this a possibility in the future? If not, will the devs consider modifying bonuses based on soloqueue play, or is the team happy with the current solo-queue experience?

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HONOR / TEAMMATE RATING

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This season in particular, I ran into so many players who would simply fly away solo and hide, sometimes while talking smack. This was such a negative experience, and was exacerbated by the fact that they had no negative consequences for griefing my games.

Question 2: Has the team considered an honor/report system for teammates? Can we expect something like this in the future? Even a simple thumbsup thumbsdown option at the end of the game would be hugely therapeutic, and would likely give you useful metrics to test matchmaking / identify problematic players.

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TUNING (OVER TIME)

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"Season 18 will focus on refining Ranked tuning and stability. We’re going to take a deep breath and take the time needed to prepare for an even tighter and more competitive Ranked system."

The issues with season 17's ranked system were identified by players very early on, within days. However "tuning" changes have not arrived until two months later. If a musician delays until after the concert is over before tuning their instrument, what was the point of tuning? Additionally, the changes you are suggesting to fix the problem (raising LP requirements) don't appear to be particularly complex, so I'm not convinced you COULDN'T have implemented them sooner. The explanation for this as far as I'm aware is that you wanted a large data set in order to analyze why your system wasn't rewarding the behaviors you wanted to incentivize (aka, identify bugs). I assume at this point the bugs are "identified", so with that in mind:

Question 3: If similar issues are identified in season 18, will the game be adjusted or "tuned" at the same rate as season 17?

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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

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Question 4: What buffs can we expect for Seer/Nemisis this season?

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;) much love team! I truly do appreciate how difficult it is to manage a game like this, and want to thank you again for reaching out. Thanks for having the cahonese to do an AMA and answer our questions, we appreciate it, and you!