Warning: This is a long post that will detail the problems with the current pro point system for competitive Call of Duty and outline solutions to those problems, go grab a snack before you start reading. This post was done off the top of my head and written in about fifteen minutes, if the community wants a more detailed post on this subject (and the other things wrong with competitive Call of Duty) then I’ll be happy to make one.

The community consistently complains about a variety of different things wrong with the title every year. This all comes down to the fact that although the developers do care about the competitive Call of Duty community, we are third in line behind ‘Campaign-Only’ players and Casual players. The game will be designed, updated, and fixed in favor of those players before they even begin to focus on the competitive community (we can’t blame Activision for that, they are a business that needs to focus on where the money is).

A problem that we CAN fix is the Pro Point system; the fact that we are over two months into the life-cycle of this title and have an awful pro point system is ridiculous. The pro point system has no ‘boundaries’ or ‘rules’ that it needs to abide by — MLG can alter the pro point system freely without any “higher ups” even batting an eyelash.

Let us begin by breaking down the Gamebattles Pro Point Ladder and the easily identifiable problems that are plaguing the community. The Pro Point Ladder awards five points per win (ten points for your first win of the day) and doesn’t punish you in any way for losses. Before the first 2000 series my team was ranked 13th in North America so I know what it is like to play on the ladder (and how to take advantage of the system).

- You don’t lose any points for losing, my team would ‘forfeit’ (give free wins) to teams that we feel like we didn’t have a chance at beating. In a system where the only thing that realistically matters is your seed it didn’t benefit you to have any potential chance at losing.

- You gain the same amount of points per win regardless of team difficulty, my team would only accept matches against teams that were ranked lower than us. We achieved this by remaking our team (since there is no eligibility delay for disbanding and remaking a team), winning one match and then only accepting lower ranked teams (downward arrows) which meant they have a negative record and would likely be a quick win.

What can we conclude from this? The Pro Point Ladder needs:

- Eligibility delays for joining, leaving, and disbanding teams;

- A positive effect from beating a ‘stronger’ team compared to completely crushing lower ranked teams;

- A negative effect from losing a match.

How can we fix these issues?

1. 24 Hour Eligibility Delay on Pro Point Ladder — there is no reason for players to be forced to play 16 hours per day with pickup teams against teams significantly lower-skilled than them. This solution will make it so that players will hop around less teams since they have to wait 24 hours to play another match after leaving a team (or disbanding a team).

2. Pro Points given out not per win but based on ladder standings at the end of a specific period. The ladder can ‘reset’ every 1st of the month (the ladder can give out points at the same rates as a 5000 Series). This will solve the issues of losses not mattering (you will lose experience and drop in the standings).

3. Limit the amount of matches able to be played to 120 matches (this ends up averaging out to four per day or around 2 hours of gameplay). This allows teams to use the rest of the time every day to play tournaments, scrimmage, and do other activities rather than play 16 hours per day of pointless matches that are usually one-sided.

4. Remove the upward and downward arrows from the match finder on the Pro Point Ladder, this is in no way competitive at all. I don’t think it is necessary to explain any further why this needs to be removed.

Now that we have discussed the problems regarding the Pro Point Ladder we can now move on to the rest of the Pro Point system. We have these bi-weekly 2000 series that are best of five (every round), don’t cost any credits to enter, and only give pro points out to the top 32 teams. Here are my suggestions to make this a bit more effective:

- Five Credit Entry Fee — $3.75 (makes the tournament run faster, raises the overall average skill of teams in the tournament, adds a prize pool other than pro points to the tournament).

- Pro Points for the top 64 teams in the 2000 series, this creates more bracket integrity by giving more ranking points to more teams. There are no negative effects to having a more ‘accurate’ bracket for the entirety of the game’s life-cycle.

- All teams at LAN events should be rewarded pro points, just like I stated above there are no negatives to more accurate brackets for the rest of the game’s life-cycle.

Conclusion:

I think we should be doing a better job at ensuring bracket integrity. As of right now the bracket isn’t seeded correctly, the best teams don’t have the best seeds; the teams who are better at working (and abusing) the system have the best seeds.