Sweet! A new opinion I get to steal and pretend is my own.

As a solid 10.5er. I like the floor system. But yeah. Theeee nebulous realm of celestial and even to a lesser degree, floor 10, is pretty wack. Tbh. It kind of just made me take the game way less seriously. It was very hard to see progress when you're in that 10.5 zone. When you run out of floors to climb and you know a lot of the people in celestial are just widening the skill gap. After my 3rd attempt I just started playing in the park, and have fun. Now I'll normally just pop in when new characters arrive, try them out, have fun, play my old main for a bit, have fun. And then disappear again.

The problem of Auras requiring Grinding and Time is one that is just as true for the standard Elo ranking system. As long as you keep a positive win/lose ratio, you will move up, and then it just becomes a matter of time and how much grinding you're willing to do. I just don't think any ranking system that exists currently is suited to serious 1v1 online gaming, as they all only facilitate Anxiety and a desire for higher ranks, instead of Fun and a desire to learn.

Once you get to Celestial they should of just introduced a typical ranking system Bronze-Silver-Gold..etc. While maintaining the floor system from 1-10.

Here's my big issue: it's completely nonsensical at a conceptual level. In principle, the game's objective with a skill/rank system should be to consistently keep you in an environment where you win 50% of matches - thus, any changes in your rank result from changes in your skill, and the game then adjusts whom you play against to compensate and keep you on an improvement treadmill (which is a good thing - it keeps the amount that you have to improve in order to win in the short term as small as possible, so improvement is as noticeable as possible). Here's the problem. Celestial, as a concept, is borked from the start. If you manage to be good enough to earn your way into a higher rank, a 'promotion series' is a reasonable test, right? Except, the idea of a promotion series is to evaluate you against people at your CURRENT rank and see if you're better enough to deserve to be higher - usually by playing others also on the cusp of ranking up. What Celestial does, on the other hand, is put you up against people who ARE where they belong rank-wise (aka, as mentioned, people who belong in that skill bracket by having a 50% winrate there), and asks you to DEMOLISH them. You need to have a (short-term) 85% win rate AGAINST Celestial players to prove that you belong in Celestial... what?!? Yeah. The way they check if you're good enough to belong at a rank whose goal is to give you skilled players to reach 50% winrate against... is by seeing if you're good enough to destroy those very same people consistently. PLUS, as more people get in (aside from people who cheese/wintrade their way in), THOSE people already had to have an 85% winrate against the people who were in Celestial BEFORE. So now you have to outpace not a bar, but a moving target - you have to be better than, not the Celestial minimum, but than the average person who has ALREADY broken the Celestial minimum with an 85% winrate. You have to have an 85% winrate against other players who themselves had an 85% winrate against people in Celestial - it balloons into infinity, at least conceptually. Even if that's not what happens in practice, it's still a DESIGN that creates that untenable scenario unless players circumvent it entirely (with wintrading, cheese, or pure luck). That's not how you create an environment of the 'best of the best'. It's how you create a cycle of frustration based on random, arbitrary factors. You somehow have to improve enough, against players in floor 10, to have an 85% winrate against players with skill ABOVE floor 10 (and because of the entry requirements and lack of ceiling in Celestial, often WAY above floor 10 in skill). It just makes no sense. Just make it a top percentage of the player base or a 3/5 instead of 5/6 (make the requirements to get a ticket to challenge Celestial harder to compensate, I don't care, just make the actual challenge not completely disconnected from the skill level needed to actually succeed while IN Celestial).

You forgot one other problem with Celestial: once you get into Celestial even just once you can never go below floor 10 again no matter how much you lose. It makes learning new characters such a pain sometimes

I think this is a really effective voice of the reason I can't bring myself to grind Strive. I don't know if Im getting better because the matchmaking is so back and forth.

Im definitely in the 10.5 stage where I win like 70% of my matches in floor 10 then go up to celestial get about 2 wins then either get bodied or lose just one more time and get kicked out. I'm only really doing to prove that I can do it which I know sounds stupid but Strive is my first fighting game so want to hit celestial just to prove that I've gotten better. Now I play other games like BBCF and UNICLR but still come back to Stirve every once in a while. Good luck to everyone stuck at 10.5 like me

I remember when I was stuck in 10.5 I absolutely hated the "ranking update" animation. Getting a ranking update every ~20 gets annoying really fast.

Got to celestial floor. Got matched up with the number 1 ranked jack o' at the time. Won 2 matches lost the third. Got demoted.

Really pumping these out. Nice Job!

Something I argued since 3 weeks post launch is that the tower is great... on paper. Its implementation however is horrible. It is just way to easy to get to floor 10. That results in the skill gap on floor 10 being absolutely humongus and by extension Celestial aswell. I am one of those 10.5 people most months and I pretty much resigned myself not to partake in the Celestial lottery anymore. Yes I could search for favourable matchups and players whose levels don´t reach the thousands... or I just go back down to floor 10 after triggering the celestial challenge and never get bootet out of a set because I hit a rank up again for the rest of the month without needing to acquire VIP status. I am good enough to win matches but thanks to the massive skillgap that is on floor 10 I still face opponents that are waaaaay better than me aswell. It is exactly the same experience as Celestial without having to interact with the damn promotion system.

Adding in the limited rematch, interrupting rank up, annoying dueling station to make your experience in floor system is even more frustrating.

I literally just had this conversation with my friend the other day thank you mr gekko

Love your vids man, glad I found ya👍

Thanks for the info. I'm a former 10th fl (been 9th for a while). I'll keep that in mind if I ever get to the Celestial challenge. I take note of wanted poster, icons, & character lv when choosing opponents in Park & rare Tower matches, so I have a somewhat even match (hopefully). Good vid.

I love this video and I agree with what you said but we not forgetting the sickass Gio Combo at 0:33 😭

Gekko video TL;DR How to get into celestial - Step 1 - wait Step 2 - beat up on people who have lives

As a Goldlewis player who gets into Celestial each month on both PS5 and PC, I firmly agree. I think it was Kizzie Kay that maybe suggested multiple Celestial Floors, or maybe some better identification system to be able to put people into different "neighborhoods" up there. Quite literally yesterday was I playing PC for the first time in a while, got to Celestial, and lost twice immediately to a level 1,600 Zato who didn't let me press more than one or two buttons a round. I wasn't super upset or anything, so I immediately tried to get back in, and did, and then fought whoever was willing, which turned out to be a level 110 Ky, who gave me all five wins. This all happened in the span of less than an hour. This kinda stuff really is weird, because on one side, as a guy who doesn't have the time to play each and every day, getting into Celestial each month is great. However, the knowledge that so many people of varying degrees get in and CAN get it makes it feel like less of an achievement and more like random chance.

The idea of "earning" your place in celestial is great, the only problem with it is that when floor 10 is empty some players just won't be able to play the game. That's why I sometimes just let people beat me 5 times, otherwise they really can't find anyone.

I stopped playing due to the 10.5 situation, I had gotten to celestial a good chunk of times but the idea of having to constantly bounce between 10 and the challenge every motnhg was so draining, between the loading screens the stupid elevator animation and the dull matches in floor 10 it just wasn't very fun

The vids keep gettin better I love this

really cool bideo, epic carrot and zin shoutouts

"Let's talk about" The three words that let you know your about to be entertained

The wild range of skill is what I get on rookie and silver rank in SFV. When G came out I was getting demolished by a bunch of accounts with names like “Mr. President”, “Gthang” and also guys who literally would only dp, and Maximilian.

I feel like a ball being thrown around when playing in tower because I either find extremly boosted people or smurfs, I remember getting promoted all the way to 9th floor only to get demoted to 6th floor, getting promoted agIn to 7th, then demoted to 5th and promoted back to 8th ALL IN THE SAME DAY

I like the tower system because it doesn't force me extrinsic motivation very much. I just want sick matches and to get better - and i definitely get that when I que for matches at my floor level. (I'm floor 8)

Lollll LOVE this video bro. You earned a subscribe from me. Funny and informative and also very insightful. I made it into celestial this month and have been playing everyday but I feel I rarely win. I've just come to accept these terms even though it sometimes makes me salty but can't be the best until you mingled with the best

Also… just the 5/6 win challenge thing is already super dumb. 5/6 is the tower criteria for “beating a floor” in strive (like going from f7 to f8). So to get into celestial you need to prove that you are better than celestial? That is pretty dumb. And is the reason f10.5 is so huge. And this is exacerbated by the fact that people in the floors are not allowed to derank more than 3 floors. And a lot of celestial winners and 10.5 players just play in the parks anyway, where they will destroy newbs who thought that parks were meant to me more casual, not more hardcore. The whole tower system is broken and doesn’t serve its purpose. Ideally there would be a ranked match mode with a leaderboard, and the tower would replace the parks. Barring that, the floor drop limit should be removed, and floor rankings should be done on a per-character basis.

Why am I even watching this I've been stuck on floor six for months

I never played a fighting game before strive, and I started on floor 5 and since then I learned a lot, so much that I got to floor 10 in a few months!

love your videos man, i agree with pretty much every point of yours

What is the music i need to knowww

4:44 what's that tune?

Today i finally get into celestial after like a week or two struggling with the 10.5 and now I'm a newbie in celestial but i get in there

"european might" - guy whose entire continent is carried by leffen

Can I get the song name at 6:00?

7:00 that “AAAAAAAA” is gonna be my new counterhit sound

I think the techniques you mentioned to get into celestial is my biggest issue with the system. People need to stop running away from people who are ready to fight because they’re scared of how high level they are. You won’t get good trying to stay comfortable

I was stuck in 10.5 for a while. When promo time comes around I try to play a wide variety of characters in celestial to improve my match up knowledge. I get a dopamine rush getting the rank up, same as landing a command grab. Feel bad going back to floor 10 though, since it's starting to get a little more one-sided.

I quite liked this video. I'd say you got a lot of the main problems covered with the floor system.

Reached celestial once and haven't bothered to get back on since, casual match is where the fun is at

This was an interesting video. I often feel like I have the opposite problem when it comes to finding opponents in the celestial floor. I win the majority of my matches so (not every match tho.) And while I know there's probably still a skill gap, I find myself wanting to try and fight pros players lol. Idk how tournaments work tho when it comes to the fgc as I've only been invested in two games. Stirve and bbtag

As someone who plans to get back into Strive and grind with Testament, this both helps, and terrifies me.

you got a new subscriber but honestly everything you thought was bad i either thought was good or just dgaf, like i dont care abt auras but goddamn trying to break thru the cloud ceiling is so much fun for me i aint done it yet but i will someday

Guess you could say its... floored

honestly the floor system sounds super cool

I hate being in 10.5 hell. I learn the most when ever I'm in celestial, but that only happens for like 4 games at most and then I get sent back down to go beat up the local lv 700 celestial potemkin hanging around floor 10, just to repeat again, making my learning process so much slower and annoying

This is kind of exactly how I feel about celestial floor. It’s really a mixed bag of skill levels even when you’re supposedly at the highest possible “rank” the game has to offer, and because of this I get kinda tilted when I’m up against someone who knows the matchup against goldlewis really well and I’m just getting completely washed out of existence. It feels demoralizing but to me it’s the only way to actually get better without entering tournaments (something I don’t have time to do). And when you do get those even matches it feels incredible. Today I played against a Potemkin who knew all of his little tricks and played around my mindless copy paste neutral when playing that matchup. Because of that, the match was way more exciting for me to try and figure a way around this guy which by the end resulted in me getting a perfect which was great cause that guy perfected me game 1. When it’s even, it’s exhilarating and fun. When it’s you washing someone, you feel godlike but you know that you shouldn’t be getting away with certain things. When you’re GETTING washed, there’s either no fun to be had or your fun comes from at least hitting them 1 time. Proper ranked would be the best for this game

New player, got put in floor 4, got used as a training dummy and am now on floor 3 with noone to fight cause the game has 900 people world wide and apparently most of them are at the top. It's like playing CS GO for the first time and everyone else is Gold Nova or above.

Auras are given to players who are in top 300/200/100 on the monthly celetial ranking being Blue/Yellow/Red depending on the place you are

Whats an aura?

As someone’s whose made it to celestial but not good enough to maintain it at the end of the month, I felt it when he said “hey come on man I’m just a little guy, I’m just having a little bit of fun *internal/external scream*”

As a low level 10.5 (so low level that it's more like 10.2), I can relate. I don't even mind fighting super strong players, I just wish I could do that without being bonked down in 2-3 matches. Learning is hard when you get distracted

I knew when I saw him tweet “celestial is stupid “ a dinger video was coming

When I got strive on pc, obviously my account was from 0 because it’s different from my ps one, but I literally only did the tutorial but which set me at floor 6 and I’ve never played ranked on pc ever. Just can’t be asked, but also that does mean some people decide not to fight me

This not only happens in mid celestial but mid floor 10 too, where you're not quite good enough to get too celestial but if you fight anyone under 10 you destroy them.

"Chronically Maidenless", what a phrase... Same tho.

I’m sorry but I was too distracted by Gekko going sicko mode as Gio in the background to listen to the video.

Neat transition at 7:43

I’m floor 10.5, but I can beat celestial player easily, but then that one mega good player just takes two off of me.

I SAW MY BOY WALTER AS MILLIA ON YOUR VIDEO'S LEADERBOARD LET'S GOOOOOP

I can say I have similar experience at floor 7.5. i know i am just bad but the I barely lose on floor 7 but barely win at 8. I really want to get better though.

I have a different point of view of the celestial floor. I kinda love how it works, because in my opinion anyone who breaks through and does passes the qualifying state basically more or less has the tools to get better and learn even from getting mauled by the top players on the floor. And you can just grind to improve and learn because there is no penalty for losing. I don't really play much recently, but the few matches I spend playing in floor 10 are not a challenge 90% of the times. So when I get my first promotion to challenger I just go and fight whoever, at worst I get sent back to floor 10 and in 10-15 minutes I am on my challenge again. I feel no stress, and bonus point I probably had fun playing my 10 floor matches because I wasn't worried.

I just want the Potemkin floor, pot mirrors are the new ganon dittos

Funny seeing this as it hits home. I only get to play about 4 hours a week, so I basically live on floor 10.5 and find that "win 3 out of 5 matches" some weird arbitrary BS. Keep me in 10 or just shoot me to heaven. Ugh.

I think another big part of that is that Strive characters have very polarized matchup charts. They lose hard to a lot of matchups and win hard with other ones. So that skill gap you mentioned is often accentuated by that.

I love the floor system its a great idea, and regarding the celestial issue couldn't they just add a couple more floors?

3:49 as a proud Burger Boi, correct lol I bought this game to play Raiden Ky

Ive not touched anything other than the park in awhile. I feel too bad going up and down constantly and the load between moving up or down a floor is annoying

Wish this could help me. I’m on floor 7.5. I get out of floor 7 pretty easily, and when I get to floor 8 I get sent back to floor 7 pretty quickly.

There's absolutely no extrinsic motivation in the game after reaching celestial, but getting back every month is a bit of a pain in the ass. The fact that there's no more extrinsic motivation helped me to play for improvement more instead of wins. Grinding matches for hours every night without caring about winning or losing is actually pretty zen-like in my opinion.

Ah I’m a floor 10.5 Potemkin, good to know

I mean I like it. It forces you to get better. I went from losing 3 or 4 celestial rankings to being able to get in easily and even outside the game winning locals

My brother in Christ, I play Potemkin and I'm chilling at floor 8/9 so I don't really care about celestial

my favorite part about getting kicked out every month is dealing with 10 floor players then trying not to let the stress of having to go back floor 10 get to me during promos Also you can just cheat as dcing doesnt count as a loss if you do it before your hp hits 0, so the value of celestial is diminished by that alone

The ranking system in ggst is very floored

Personally as someone for who ggst is their first fighting game, I like celestial. It lets me challenge the best of the best, who I otherwise could only dream of playing if I was say playing street fighter. Lets me improve faster.

What floor is someone not tournament level but knows what they're doing

You touched on this, but I think the floor system does a great job of keeping people of approximate skill together. At the end of the day for 90% of players, thats THE reason a ranking system exists. BUT yeah the massive skill range in floor 10 and celestial is a joke. Finding players approximately your skill in those floors is such a chore

Its funny my main complaint is that I have to use the lobby, the duel stations always bug out and I have to spend minutes to even sit at a fucking one. Using the training mode auto queue alleviates this but it will bug out and I have to requeue it up. Having a matchmaking mode that accounts for latency and skill would be a godsend.

I was told the aura was given to the top 10 individual players of each character in that region. But I cant verify

There aren't enough people on my region for the system to work. So the players are divided between Celestial and people playing at floor 10 (regardless of which floor they're assigned to). Most of the time I'm having the experience of either getting obliterated or obliterating the other player too. But eh, whatever... I don't wanna be the "back in my day" guy but when I got into GG it was the Reload online lobby with absolutely no matchmaking and two to three players to play with at max. And other fighting games were just about getting into GGPO and challenging some KOF player who'd destroy you after picking random.

I was stuck on floor 2 for the longest time and it wasn’t because I just like sucked it was because I tend to have a lot of loosing streaks in a row

Never played a fighting game until strive and I’m some how in floor 9

Thx 4 more fantastic content and best music choices, tekken n of course p4 music, use some mvc2 and 3rd strike music if u can. Thank you good sir, stay legendary

As someone who’s surrounded by friends who say getting into (insert game level here, Celestial, Elite Smash, etc.) was easy as fuck while I, myself am not in them, I’m hurt. My floor 7 ass is in pain.

cant even get above floor 8

auras are blue, gold, and red, for top 300, 200, and 100 respectively

in my region there's usually a max of 2 people on floors 6-10, so getting a higher ranking is almost impossible

3:48 DESTROYED!!!

Honestly? celestial aside, I prefer the floors to regular MMR/Strict Skill-based matchmaking, as someone coming into fighting games from other games; it's so fucking refreshing to have a grab bag of people around my skill level, some slightly weaker, some higher. I'm not punished for having a good mental and having a streak, so I can just queue and know it's entirely on me, if I win or lose, not the system deciding that I've won two games in a row, so now I get to have a loss streak.

I've been playing only for a week and I'm just a 9 floor (i got to 10 but immediately I fought against a chipp lvl 1020 and a zato lvl 620 or more i don't remember) even tho I thinks it's good

My main issue with celestial is the promotion system, because even on paper it doesn't work. If you really belong in the floor you are on, then you should theoretically be losing about 50% of your matches, because everyone you're playing against is equally skilled. So the idea that if you really belong in celestial you have to demonstrate an 80% win rate against celestial players is absurd, even on paper ir doesn't work. So unless you're some giga chad tourney player, you end up stalking the floor dodging bad match ups, only playing against your good matchups, and hoping you run into someone who either sucks, sandbags, isn't on their main, or is also on their promos, in essence, you undermine the entire metric all together.

ah celestial the floor I never reach always stuck on floor 9 and 10

*ABSOLUTELY AURALESS*

I was able to get a fiery red name for the first time, but I still haven't been able to get a Yellow or blue name, or aura. I've gotten celestial every month the games been out too

Meanwhile I’m stuck on Floor 4 with no one in my region when I’m online

I think a revamp for C-Floor should be just once you hit the floor you can stay there as long as you like until the season ends. After that, the reward for staying there and winning sets on players is achieving the Auras by getting a set amount of wins on C-Floor. Instead of it being set on time played on the floor. For example: 100 wins on C-Floor light-blue aura, 200 wins dark-blue aura, and so on. Similar to the old square ranks on BB except its not based on win-rate and fighting similar square ranks. Also while you have these auras you gain a boost of exp points to lvl your character and only on the character where you've won the said 100+ matches you've won to gain the auras (it would be cool if your Bounty Poster also has an aura tide to that character). So it's tied to the character you won said matches not player wide.

fully agree with you, tower is indeed floored