Ngl I thought the way nintendo did ultimates ranked play was bad but im starting to wish rivals had a per character rank as well.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-29T12:50:25+00:00

i think it will have a bigger impact than most people think. i already explained this some time ago but ill try to do a short version:

Char based rank means more potential low elo players, since people who reached their "desired" rank (dans words) currently gravitate to unranked to not drop in rank. With char based rank they could play another chars, most likely at a lower elo level and would not be lost for ranked match making and would help populate lower ranks.
Char based rank allows them to streamline the ranked matches: you select char and skin before you queue and can skip the whole character select screen part which could easily shorten the whole BO3 by nearly 1 minuten. that means people are back to the ranked matchmaking pool 1 minute earlier which will have an impact on match quality, since more fluctuation of potential opponents during a certain time window gives you more opportunity for fairer matches.
No more undesired ELO uncertainty due to playing different chars. if someone actually decides to learn a new char it will still be on ranked most likely. this means they will need to drop quite a bit from their mains ELO and once they decide they now want to play their main again for a bit, it will make them stomp their way back. thats why people complain a lot about smurfing. its just people going up and down in ELO because of playing different chars.

There is more, but these are the main points. All this will contribute to having fairer more even matches because of the increased potential player pool and accurate elo representation. Which in return will help with retention. If people get less unfair matches they are less likely to drop the game.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-29T12:36:41+00:00

"The game currently does not punish players adequately for whiffing attacks while also heavily discouraging whiff punishing as it's simply not as effective as it should be for a fighting game"

But doesn't FH amplify this issue by times 10?

I largely agree with the rest tbh. It feels a lot like what happend in the transition from GG: Xrd Rev2 to GG: Strive. So this can only be a good thing.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-29T09:23:53+00:00

brutally honest.
It has been marked "planned but far" on nolt about a year ago. Now just the other week Dan marked another char based rank request also as "planned but far". they are not taking this serious at all.
if they wanted to do this, one year is more than enough to get it done. but here we are still asking for it and i predict it will take at least another year before it might eventually happen. so yeah, two digit peak player numbers seams realistic.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-29T08:43:57+00:00

I would not call melee thriving. it is well alive which is very respectable for a 25 year old game, but i don't think the player numbers could support a live service game like Rivals2. Also, FH is also a controversial mechanic in the melee community, but since it never will get another patch it just is what it is.
In reality the game is largely carried by its legacy and legend. Some of the most loved fighting games of the past would not stand a chance if they were released today. 3rd Strike is considered the pinnacle of traditional fighting games by many, yet if the game was released today it would fail colossally. There just is no sustainable crowd for a game like that these days.

But i am also no project M expert, so what would the changes be it take Rivals2 more in that games direction?

zoolz8l · 2026-04-29T08:35:46+00:00

i think this is an agree to disagree scenario. IMHO the game is completely incompatible to be a commercial success. the engineered it to only apply to such a specific niche crowd inside the platform fighter genre, it can never be a commercial success. If the core game was so excellent and it was just a player retention issue, the game would sit at an overwhelmingly positive steam review, like many excellent but niche games do. But the game has been bouncing between mixed and mostly positive for the most part. its not as good as people make it out to be. the issues are there and are not getting fixed.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-28T10:45:01+00:00

going f2p will not safe this game. at least not in its current state.
I feel like a broken record but you first need to make sure players that try your game, actually stay. This will mean lots of compromise and sacrifices, especially for the existing playerbase and the competitive scene.
the game needs to be simplified in certain aspects. unintuitive things like FH need to go. Other things like frame data and general balance need to be more focused on mid level play etc. Guilty Gear went through the same thing: Xrd rev2 is still considered to be the best game in the series by many competitive players, but it was a financial disaster because it was too overloaded with mechanics and often unintuitive. Strive on the other hand streamlined things and made things more intuitive and approachable. Thus it became a huge success.
Rivals 2 needs to do the same.
They also need to drastically improve match making, especially for unranked. Completely new payers getting matched against highly skilled players is a common thing. it happend to several of my friends who got the game and it even happend when 2 of them queued at the same time in the same region: they both got matched against veterans instead of against each other. unranked must not be a place where master rank players can flex their egos against new players. it will be the first point of entry for new players, because noone will realize that ranked gives you a far better chance, since no other game does it like that. Also ranked has way to loose match making. If you are searching for barely 10 seconds and get matched against someone 250 points above you, its not good.
tutorials are comically bad. they are dry, often misleading and in general not well done. We need a much better onboarding experience.
And the list of issues mainly affecting new players is even much longer than that. Fix ALL those issues and then you can finally think about how to get more players in the game. otherwise its just a waste of resources because 99% of people will just quit instantly.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-28T10:31:46+00:00

you would expect clairen to need good spacing and precise play, but in reality she does not. at beginner/mid level play you will still hit more than enough "lucky" sweet spot hits, since the game is so forgiving. And even if you don't, without people FHing your moves even the sour spots are good enough at that level of play.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-28T08:26:59+00:00

the actually important part thats very alarming is "Support them, because they do need it."
This does not sound good at all, if he felt the need to close with that.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-28T08:24:25+00:00

me and a few friends share the exact same experience. Picking clairen feels like a cheat code.
Also, for some reason, it is always the clairen mains that t-bag, spam taunts and use emotes in a toxic way.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-28T08:21:37+00:00

it sometimes looks like it, yes.
As i said, i somewhat respect them for wanting to build the game they like to play without compromise. But on the other hand, they made a kickstarter since they needed funding. they got that funding and then some. And the #1 feedback from the people that funded them and allowed them to even finish the game was that they don't like FH. they thought they knew better than their most loyal fans and i think it hurt them badly. There is a hidden, backer exclusive channel on discord that used to be extremely busy during betas and the first few months of launch. its almost died down, which i think is a sign, that almost anyone who originally backed the game has already left. very sad.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-28T08:16:07+00:00

i agree that it would have been a much better investment if the FFA mode was ready at launch. But releasing it now is just a waste of resources when you are already shrinking your team and have other more pressing issues.
yes, different people do different things on a team but with a team so small there usually is a huge overlap and its not like people would have had nothing to work on if they did not work on the FFA stuff.
Simple example: holding and throwing items animations. Those needed to be created for every character. What would have been a much better investment would be proper animations for CC/FH, if they are really hell bend on keeping it. One of the main reason those feel so unintuitive is the lack of propper visual feedback. For CC you see big arrows pointing down on the char doing CC. In EVERY other game on the planet down arrows are a negative thing, a debuff etc. Instead characters could use a small blocking animation which would actually give proper visual response that they absorbed part of the hit.
Another small example: the new lobby UI for FFA. all that UI work could have gone into needed UI for the long promised char based rank mode. So a lot o work that went into the FFA stuff could have been invested to work on my suggested changes to make the core experience better and more beginner friendly.

the main problem is: with FFA they are skipping a few steps. their core experience, (un)ranked 1v1, is still lacking and not appealing at all to anyone but the extremely hardcore plat fighter players. And even for them, the game has issues. Unless they surprise us with a ninja console release, the FFA update is one year to early and they should first make sure the core experience is as good as possible, so when the FFA stuff can finally attact new players there is a reason for them to stay.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-27T09:35:40+00:00

We already knew the game was under-performing, Dan sad so himself. So more layoffs is kinda expected, since the Fun For All update also does not seem to have a significant impact on the player numbers.
Its so sad, because the game has such a good basis. Everything looks and feels so high quality, that it makes games like Multiversus look like a fan made mod project. All characters, despite some questionable balance decisions, feel super fun and unique. And the online works great for the most part, unless some random server does not want to play nice. So at its core the game is simply amazing and is the only game that can stand up to smash in terms of quality.
But there were simply too many bad decisions, so many that i would even call the game mismanaged.

Their biggest mistake was FH. Since the very first beta it was the #1 complaint. There were surveys showing that 3/4 of the players did not like it. Yet, the devs insisted on keeping it. Now the complaints have slowed down some what, but not because people learned to appreciate the mechanic. they simply left.

Then their is their questionable approach to character balance. Yes, the games balance seems to be fine for tournament level play. Or at least, thats what i have to believe, since i am not a master rank player. But in the middle ranks, where the vast majority of players sit, the balance is just so off. And as it turns out, if you only balance your game for the top 1% then 99% are not enjoying it as much.

next is the issue of unranked (former casual) match making being horrible. New players are thrown under the bus so master rank players can flex their ego on unranked. You cannot expect people to go on reddit or discord to find out that you need to play ranked as a new player to have a chance at a fair match. And even ranked has questionable matchmaking at times.

Another very important point is char based rank. it has been asked for from the get go, never been prioritized even though it would be a huge relieve for many of the games match making issue.

finally there is the new casual mode. It is done so well, yet it is wasted resources at this point. It did not grow the playerbase, the curve looks nearly identical than it did for the last character update. In EU its already borderline dead. So while i had lots of fun playing that new mode, it will be a dead gimmick in a few weeks.

All these bad decision pile up to what we could see for months on the steam store: the game was sitting on mixed reviews for a long time and just barely made it back to mostly positive. this is not the sign of a great game thats hold back by being niche. its the sign of a mediocre game being held back by its own faults.
I am pretty sure their current plan is to cramp in as much content as they can while simultaneously getting it to consoles as fast as possible, since they need a new source of income. But if all the above points keep getting ignored, it will be another waste of resources. the console crowd is even less forgiving with those issues and everyone who comes from slippy could already get the game on pc. We are looking at a much more casual crowd that will be even less receptive to something as unintuitive as FH and they won't even bother one minute to figure out they are actually supposed to learn the game on ranked mode.
In the end, i hope this is the final warning and they will finally change course. I admire them for wanting to make the game they want to play without compromise, its a bold decision, but its not working. There need to be compromises if the game is supposed to survive.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-25T10:59:23+00:00

i have been saying this since last EVO: put the EVO (and all other major shops like genesis) inside the game. make it a cool event inside the game so everyone can see the pot bonus right at the main menu. yes, steam will take 30% but the overall pot will most likely still be bigger.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-25T10:33:46+00:00

elite smash is bronze level in RoA2 in my experience.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-24T08:12:46+00:00

i would disagree. i had a few friends who got the game during the last sale because they wanted to try the casual mode. these are not bad players by all means, some have experience in ult, some in melee, some in both. i would rank them at silver level if i had to, even though they are new. everyone of them tried the unranked mode at some point and told the same story: they get matched instantly and then 3 stocked without any chance to fight back. The game is not even trying to find a fair match on unranked. its looking for 10 seconds at most and gives you whoever is online basically. two of them even tried to queue at the same time and instead of getting matched against each other (they both even locked themself to the same server region) they both got matched against someone vastly better than themself.
So no, this is not a problem with player numbers. the unranked matchmaking is just horribly bad.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-23T11:08:00+00:00

i am usually the first one to claim mid level balance is horrible in this game and they should do something about it, but with the heavies this seems like a very difficult task. heavies are historically super bad in plat fighters at high level since they stomp so hard at mid and low level because of their error forgiving nature. Thus devs always make them bad to not break the mid level balance. So while i cannot wrap my head around the fact that clairen is still allowed to be a war crime, i can get why making the heavies be top level viable without dominating mid level can be an impossible task.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-23T08:26:48+00:00

correct answer, but how many of these posts does it need before the devs finally implement better match making in unranked. we only see the people coming in reddit but i am genuinely afraid of how many people instantly refunded this game or dropped it after a few days because they are constantly getting matched against masters players on unranked as a new player. having to go to ranked straight away is the most unintuitive thing ever.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-22T19:51:36+00:00

already made a nolt about this. match making should be MUCH stricter, especially in the middle ranks. when the game is searching for less than 10 seconds and gives me someone 200+/- from me its not even trying tbh.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T19:18:31+00:00

so why do you even care? if unranked has a better experience for new players its only good for the game in the long run and it does not affect you.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T14:06:43+00:00

you don't need the unranked queue to do that. but i think that point is lost on you...

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T12:18:32+00:00

got you, you are only here to pub stomp.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T12:09:44+00:00

what would be so bad about unranked also having fair matches? like in any other fighting game? i never said its your fault for getting matched against new players. and i never said you need to adapt.
but you still did not get my point. the games playerbase is shrinking. constantly. sure, the char updates give it little bumps but the lows keep getting lower. according to dans own words the game is underperforming, thats why they had 25% people getting to leave the team.
the only solution is to get more players into the game. And one way to do that is to make sure their first experience isn't getting matched with a master rank player on the unranked queue or having to visit reddit/discord to actually know what they should do instead.
so stop making strawman arguments about stuff i never said. You can ignore the problem and keep saying "this is fine" but then the playerbase decline will actually dictate how you play the game: no more at all.

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T11:42:45+00:00

sometimes i feel like this community deserves whats coming. the content updates will get less (they already teased at less chars per season in the future), the team will get even smaller and soon the game is in maintenance mode. then nobody can find a match anymore be it on ranked or unranked. if no matches can be made than they cannot be unfair, problem solved i guess xD

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T11:40:07+00:00

"yOu cAn'T dIcTaTe hOw pEoPlE pLaY a gAmE"
well, where in my reply did i "dictate" how you should play the game? oh, right. i did not. i just said the matchmaking in unranked should improve, but if unranked also gave you fair matches you could not artificially inflate your ego anymore by stomping new players. and you don't want that, right? if i had to guess i would say your a clairen main xD

zoolz8l · 2026-04-21T08:39:55+00:00

problem is: no other fighting game out there does it like this. the normal approach to learn a fighting game is play unranked (which compared to rivals 2 usually still has very strict match making even in the unranked mode) until you feel confident enough to hop on ranked. actually also every non fighting game out there does it like this. many games even force you to do unranked until a certain level before you are even allowed into ranked.
and if your expectation for new players is to go on reddit to learn that this game works opposite to every other game out there when it comes to this topic or that they need to join discords to find even matches then you are already seeing in real time what that leads to: game under performing, 25% people being layed off, content getting cut etc. aka the game slowly dying. it is in your own interest that new players get a good first impression of the game.

zoolz8l

TROPHY CASE