What a reset is
Many ladders divide play into seasons, and at the boundary the ratings are changed in some way. A full reset puts everyone back at the same starting value, as if they were new. A soft reset moves each rating partway toward a central value, so strong players stay above average and weak players stay below, but the gaps are smaller. Some games use a partial approach, such as dropping players a fixed number of tiers, and others do not reset at all.
A soft reset is often described as compressing the ladder: the distribution of ratings is squeezed toward the middle. As a simple illustration, if a reset moves every rating halfway to the average, a player 400 points above the average ends up 200 above, and one 200 below ends up 100 below. The ordering is preserved, but the spread is halved.
Why designers reset
Motivation. A ladder where most players have settled can feel static. A reset gives everyone something to climb again, and it makes the top of the ladder open to challengers instead of locked in by results from months ago. Seasonal rewards and a fresh leaderboard add to this.
Correcting stale ratings. Ratings built over a long period can drift from reality. Players change, some leave, some improve, and some return. A reset reduces the weight of old results and lets recent play count more.
Handling drift. If a ladder has inflated, as discussed under rank inflation, a reset can bring the average back toward a target. How well this works depends on whether the reset rule preserves the mean.
Rhythm for the game. Seasons fit with patches, new content and events. Balance changes, such as those in balance patches, can shift who is strong, and a reset acknowledges that the old standings may no longer reflect the current game.
What a reset does to accuracy
This is where the trade-off is sharpest.
A reset throws away information. The old rating was a summary of many results, and compressing it makes the system less sure about everyone. Players are now closer together in rating even though their true gaps have not changed, so the system’s predictions become less sharp. Early-season matches therefore include more mismatched games than late-season ones, with strong players meeting weaker opponents because the ratings no longer separate them.
In systems that track rating uncertainty, the correct response is to raise the uncertainty for everyone after a reset, so ratings move quickly again. This restores accuracy faster. Without that, ratings must spread out again slowly through ordinary updates, which can take many games, especially with a small K-factor.
The time it takes to recover depends on the amount of compression, the update rule and how often people play. Heavy players re-sort quickly; occasional players may not play enough in a season to get back to a settled position before the next reset.
Effects on the early season
Several visible patterns follow.
- Stronger players win a lot at first, rapidly regaining ground and often ending up near their previous position.
- Weaker players lose points to those climbing past them, which can feel unfair because their play has not changed.
- Lopsided games are more frequent, a version of the quality-versus-speed trade-off covered under queue time tradeoffs, because the matchmaker cannot yet tell who belongs where.
- Smurf-like behaviour appears more often. Returning players and newly motivated ones distort lower brackets until they climb, a problem related to smurf accounts.
- Rank volatility is higher, since big adjustments make for noisy early swings, as with any rating volatility.
Effects on motivation
Resets have mixed psychological effects, and designers disagree about the balance.
On the positive side, a clean slate encourages players to return, and the sense that effort can change position is energising. Rewards tied to the final rank give a goal.
On the negative side, many players feel that a reset erases their work. Seeing a hard-earned rank fall can sting, and loss aversion makes the lost position feel larger than the gain of a fresh start. Some players treat the early season as unrewarding and wait until the ladder has settled before playing seriously. Players near the bottom may also feel more discouraged than others, since a small lift from compression is little consolation.
Others find the cycle itself the problem, feeling that grinding back to the same place each season is repetitive. Games with long resets give more time at a stable level, while frequent ones offer more starts but less stability.
Choosing a design
Roughly, the options are these.
- Full reset. Maximum freshness and a clear race, but the most information lost and the most disruption early on.
- Soft reset. Keeps most of the ordering and some of the spread, so accuracy recovers faster; players still feel a change.
- Tier-based drop. Easy to explain, though it ignores the exact rating and can compress players unevenly.
- No reset. Highest accuracy and continuity, with risks of stagnation and a ladder dominated by past results.
- Decay or rolling windows. Rather than one big reset, old results fade gradually, avoiding sudden shocks but making the ladder less of an event.
How to read your rank around a reset
Treat the first weeks of a season as a re-sorting period. Your position in that stretch is a weak guide to your level. Do not compare it with the previous season’s final number, because the scale has been rebuilt. And expect that the settled rank, a few dozen games on, is a better estimate than the opening drop or the opening climb.