The biggest problem I've seen in trials is the way it treats it's players, from the bad players to the good. There are decent or great players not being able to get good teams mostly because they are stuck with terrible stats even though they are better than what the stats tell other players. Trials right now is just tryhards looking for players with more than 1.0kd. They don't want to check out the players that are good with terrible stats because they don't trust it. The trials will consist of a seasonal passage. The passage will be done once in each season(meaning the ranks will reset every season and players will have to do another). This passage will give players a rank depending on skill, light level(if light level advantages will be enabled), and cooperation. Once people acquire a rank, the rank will be given account wide, not character wide. This will prevent players to create a new character and cheese their way into low ranks. Having a trials ranking would completely separate bad players from good and average players. This will balance out the playing field each match and not be completely one sided. This gives more motivation for average and bad players to play trials. Ranking without matchmaking (for teammates not enemies) would require a system that averages each team's ranking per character. Rankings use point system just like competitive survival system. Once the average is set for a team, they will matchmake against players with the same average. For light level advantages, Light level will be included to the ranking passage. A way for this to work is to add light level as a factor to get your rank. Light levels will affect ranking meaning if you have a soft cap character (supposing it is your highest level account wide) there is a chance you can get a lower rank then what you should. Again, this is taking your highest level account wide. Not that specific character. There can be many flaws to this system but it is honestly better than elo or card based matchmaking. Since on elo matchmaking there was a problem where players would leave early to keep a low elo and card based would just matchmake you with players on the same card without evaluating the skill gap.