In addition to the current format that was introduced with Season 2 (a preseason that does not track any rating, wins, or losses) I propose that future seasons of ranked PVP add a 1-2 week period at the end of the season, styled after the "Chase" from NASCAR. Basically, I think almost anyone is in agreement that ranked rating in solo queue is very much an RNG factor. Certainly, the players at the top of the rankings are all excellent players, but all the players in the middle and bottom tier are not as mediocre or poor players as their ratings would have them be. In addition, this will potentially solve the problem of reward tiers and general disinterest near the end of a season.

I would style it like this: If a season is to be 8 weeks, after 6 weeks ratings will be reset for all players, and the lower tier rewards are handed out to all players. At this point, the "Chase" begins. Only players who have a current rating in the current season can queue for rated matches. This rating would not have to be incredibly high. I would say anyone with a rating over 1300 with at least 25 wins should be able to queue for the Chase games. Other than that, rating is obtained the exact same as before. At the end of the "Chase" period, rewards are handed out for Rank 1-5, and then whatever the Tier 1 cutoff is decided relative to the players remaining.

I see many advantages in such a system:

1) It puts incentives on staying active. Many players queue up at the start of a season, attain a rating good or bad, and either stop queuing or stop caring. This hurts everyone. Either they are not in the queue and queue times are longer, or they are in the queue and have a rating so terrible they just run straight into the opposing team and die (or quit after a round, afk, etc etc etc). This would create some excitement in the final week as more players "chase the rancor."

2) The truly bad players would be weeded out so it would truly be a challenge open only to those that are actually playing for competition. The population problem would be a non issue I think. If the time frame is short, a week to 10 days, the excitement level would be enough that a limited population queuing would not be as much a factor. Chances are, a high percentage of those qualifying players would queue. Perhaps double rewards for that period as well?

3) It would allow for other experiments during that period for players that are not eligible for "the chase." I think a return to 'pre-season' style play for non-qualified players is a good idea. Again, with double rewards. Maybe have a title available exclusively to this tier, the player with the most wins in this tier during the chase period gets a title "King of the Bads" or something. A title no one would want, but then again why hand out a title like "S-1 Amateur" ?

4) It allows for bugs and exploits to be corrected without grossly benefiting players at the top of the charts. In season 1, ratings were highly skewed by players that were using the bugged absorb relic at the beginning of the season. This would allow for bugs to sneak through to live and be corrected over the course of the season without players NEEDING to exploit them in order to get to the top tier.

I think there are a lot of merits to this, and few downsides. It would have a similar effect to the Rancor announcement during Season 1... except it gives you TWO periods of boosted activity. One a few weeks into the season when the rewards and chase cutoff are announced, and again when the chase period begins.

Thoughts and trolls welcome.

I'm against any sort of gating, that would prevent players from queue'ing.

Don't get me wrong, I hate baddies and under-geared people in my ranked matches too, but the hard truth is you start implementing stuff like this and the ranked queue becomes a ghost town again.

If you read again, my suggestion was that players without the required rating would still be able to queue up and gain rewards, with no consequences (no rating gained or lost, no win/losses tracked). In essence, preseason would start 1-2 weeks earlier for them.

Plus I think a "Chase" week could be great publicity for swtor and get more interest in streaming those players that are eligible.

edit: and if you look at the leaderboards, if you set the limit to 1300, there would be 325 players eligible. 1200 (with 20 wins) and it's 756 (I don't agree with it being as low as that). You're saying that those 325 players would not be interested in playing with only highly skilled players in an attempt to get rated into the top 10%?

So you want.... NASCAR?

None of this is a terrible idea, just thought it was humorous that it's styled like NASCAR.

Well I think there might be a problem in cutting down the time in which you Tier is determined to a few weeks. Why? Because there are people out there who don't work on a regular nine to five base from Monday through Friday. Instead they have a periodical work plan where they work long hours for several weeks and then get several days or even weeks off.

So if you narrow the window in which they can obtain the relevant rating you might be excluding those people from effectively participating in your "Chase". In the current state they can accumulate a lot of rating during their time off to make up for the time they are not able to play.

In addition you would make the rest of the season less attactive as all that matters rating-wise are the last 2 weeks (in your example). Thus this might actually reduce the amount of rateds played or it will shift it towards those 2 weeks.

I would still prefer some entry barrier, like minimum the gear you get for normal wz comms. True there will be some people excluded that are frequently joining rwz. But there will be less people stop queuing because they don't want to get a free lose just because of some trolls or bads. And I honestly believe the amount of people that won't be driven away outweighs the amount of people that will be excluded this way. This approach of course does not prevent all the bads from joining rwz, but it is a start.