Skill levels and the Ranked playlist

Reading over forums, blog comments and Tweets, we wanted to talk a bit about Skill level and the Ranked playlist. Skill is only counted for games played in the specific Ranked playlist. Your performance in the other playlists has no effect whatsoever on your Skill level. Another thing to be aware of – the only thing that the Skill level takes into account is wins and losses. The number of headshots you got, or even kill to death ratio doesn’t affect the Skill level. The game tries to create balanced teams based on the Skills of the players placed in the game. The game also tries to keep parties together, so it will not split up players that are in a party together no matter what their Skill levels are. It isn’t fun to play in games that are complete blow outs, both for the winners and the losers, thus the Skill system is designed such that it moves excellent players out of the lower Skill levels quickly in order to get them into more interesting games against players that are closer to their actual Skill. It is important to note, Level and Skill are completely separate. While Skill is a measure of how good someone is at the game, Level is a better measure of how long they have been playing. It is entirely possible for someone with a high Level to have a relatively low Skill level. Also note that unlike your Level which never goes down – unless you start amassing quit penalties – losing in the Skilled playlist can result in your Skill level dropping. The take away from all of this is that more games played in the Ranked playlist, the better the game is at figuring out how you stack up against the other players, and it is able to create matches that are exciting to play. Also the more games you win, the faster you’ll move up in Skill! Have fun! Justin