Patch 1.6: Skølldir joins the fray and Ranking Overhaul!

With patch 1.6 we’re seeing a new hero stepping into the galactic arena: Skølldir the Terrible Space Viking!With a Gut for Glory and Fists of Fury, his entire bulk is something to fear!

Able to throw enemies around like ragdolls and making the ground itself shake with his buns of steel, you do not want to get anywhere near this stout fellow.

Check out Skølldir’s moves below:
Skølldir is voiced by Yogscast’s Simon, who gives this corpulent Viking a personality worthy of his presence! To celebrate this co-operation, Skølldir’s skin is based on Simon’s Minecraft character Honeydew. This skin is free for download through The Yogscast, so check out their youtube description on how to claim your own key!
Check the Yogscast description to claim your free skin!
But wait! There’s more!Behind the scenes we’re constantly working hard to improve the matchmaking and ranking systems. The first change you’ll notice is in the way ranking is calculated.

Leaderboard entries are partially reset: all current ratings are sent to the bottom of the boards and after playing a match in 1.6, you’ll be thrown up into the “new” Leaderboard where everyone ends up using the new ranking formula. Leaving a match will now always count as a loss and will be reflected as such in the rankings. If you’re playing a match and all your opponents leave right before the end, your win will still be counted against the ratings of the opponents who left.

Once the new Leaderboard has filled out a bit, we’ll be introducing Leagues. These will allow us to improve matchmaking, setting you up with opponents near your current skilllevel. Leagues will be released in the coming days, so stay tuned for those also!

With all these changes there comes the risk of introducing new bugs into the ranking system, even though we have tested the new system extensively. If any major bugs are found we may reset the leaderboard again in a future patch.

Here’s an excerpt of the patch notes partaking the ranking overhaul:

General fixes: Major fixes
– The ranking system has received a major overhaul:

– Your increase or decrease in rank after a match is now scaled by how long you’ve been a part of the match. If you join a match that has already been in progress for a long time, your change in rank will be relatively small.

– When calculating your new rank at the end of a match, the skill of all players that have ever participated in that match will be taken into account. Previously, the skill of people that have left before the end of a match were not a part of the calculation.

– The penalty for leaving a match is now equal to a loss of that match. Even if you unplug your PC and / or network cable, the leave penalty will still be applied. The loss in rank will not be scaled by how long you’ve been a part of the match, so it will always be preferable to play until the (bitter) end.
– Split screen players used to count as if they had the same skill as bots, but now they will count as having the same skill as the main player. This fixes the major leaps in rank that split-screen players used to get.

– Because of all these big changes, the leaderboard and rankings of all players will be reset. Games played, win percentage and other leaderboard stats will not be reset.

For the full patch notes, visit the official forum here: https://www.awesomenauts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2440