Hey guys, Typhooni here. In the upcoming 3.9 or 4.0 patch, we are getting the Theatre of War game-mode in Star Citizen. To make sure this game-mode can be as fun as it can be, and not have the same faith as Arena Commander and Star Marine, I came with an idea which is actually used in the most popular games in the industry. Actual. Proper. Matchmaking/Ranking system. I think it's very important that we get some proper matchmaking in this game-mode, since that is what makes other games so succesful as there are. Here I like to refer to game like CS:GO, Starcraft 2, Rocket League, Rainbow Six: Siege and DotA 2. Why is a ranking system needed? A ranking system is needed to add longtivity to a game-mode, and allow players to work together to an persistent end-result, so people play (even a maybe repetitive game-mode) more often, because they want to increase their ranks. From my own research when putting in a ranking system, people willing to win a battle are much higher, and AFK people are not very frequent/snipers just laying in the back not playing any objective. I myself have lots of experience with competitive games, and I very rarely see this kind of behaviours. I also firmly believe that popular games would not be this popular, if it wasn't for the matchmaking, and this can also easily be observed by the amount of ranked/unranked matches are being played in popular games. I think it is very wise for CIG to implement the strategies those succesful games, in their own game as well, and even better, also into Star Marine and Arena Commander (make it right once, and implement it into all game-modes, especially since CIG will host in-game tournaments and the like eventually). In this topic I will write down what element succesful games implement, and how those can be implemented into Star Citizen. What kind of ranking systems do exist? Rainbow Six: Siege Has a ranked mode where you can get into a higher ranking system, invidual performance is not relevant here, and you basically gain in rating, and decrease in rating as you win or lose. This is really, really simple, it is simple win-loss ratio results into rating. If you are interested in how it works exactly (this of course is very broad), you can read more about it here: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-rainbow-six-siege-rank-system-works Also Rainbow Six: Siege has seasons, so sometimes ranks do reset, and you can get a few placement matches to get back into a higher or lower rank again. Of course this will also result in the player being placed in matches where the other players match their ranking. Here is also a small screenshot of the ranking system and the distribution of players into each rank: https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w830/public/field/image/2019/09/rainbow-six-siege-ranks-ember-rise.jpg?itok=MqtcBky4 DotA 2: This basically works the same as Rainbow Six: Siege, but you also have a team-ranking (you can lock into a team, and gain ranking as a team, really awesome as well!). Starcraft 2: Has a pretty neat system, a bit like DotA 2 as well, where you can get a invidual rating when doing 1v1, and can lock-in teams, for example for 4v4. They also work with seasons and placement matches, very Siege alike. Of course there any many variations. but in most popular games the matchmaking mostly mimmicks each other and while there are some variations, they are for 80% alike. How can CIG apply this into their game-mode? Since Star Citizen has a very wide varity of game-modes, it needs to differ a small bit from game-mode to game-mode, nothing spectacular, but just to suite the game-mode and the amount of players better. Theatre of War ranking system On games like a massive scale like Theatre of War, I think it's the most easy to go for a simple win-loss ranking system (like most other games have). There is no need to lock-in any teams or the like, since the teams are simply too big, and we still want this game to be easily accessed for the people which just want to drop-in and drop-out. Though just like in pretty much ever game, if you leave, you automatically lose. If you have a certain win-lose ratio, you will be a medal next to your name and the like, while this mode is probably too big to rank a player with rankings a like, and we simply don't have the playerbase for that (more about this can be read here for example, which is an awesome example how many players are needed for proper matchmaking to work (http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-awesomenauts-matchmaking-algorithm.html). But in any case, it is still nice to be able to gain something in form of a rank, based on your skill-ratio. While I would love to see something like Siege here as well, the game-mode is simplly to fluid to support this kind of elements, here is where scheduled tournaments and SM/AC come in, a way of playing the game with more restrictions and where leaving could be more punishing. Scheduled tournaments Since a lot of people don't always want to spin around in public rooms in Theatre of War, but also want to go org vs org, I think it will be cool to also lock in an organization and gain a ranking as an organization. You simply schedule a match (20v20 for example, or more in the future), and gain a ranking based on a win or lose, you also get a placement for this kind of stuff, which is very cool I think, with this kinds of system we can see a major increase in terms of org gameplay, and people willing to play ToW. In the case of scheduled tournaments the same can be applied to SM/AC. Star Marine/Arena Commander ranking system On a small game-mode like Star Marine (5v5, 8v8), I think we can easily lock-in a team, and create a leaderboard/ranking system for that. It will be ver much a like like Siege, leaving this kind of game-modes will be severly punished (cool-down period for ranked, no REC/UEC reward, etc). I hope you guys liked this small write-up from me. I believe this kind of matchmaking / ranking systems really help Star Citizen as a whole, and increase the playability of all game-modes. I am sorry for the people which are just saying here that this is just supposed a test-bed, but I am not sure if they were attending the same Citizencon as me, where CIG specifically said they want to do better this time and make the game-mode actually fun so people get to play it. I hope this write-up is a small step towards such a fun game-mode.