Ranked Matchmaking Improves Online Play in PGA Tour 2K23

Since the game was released last year, it’s been clear that PGA Tour 2K23 needed to provide more ways for people to competitively play the game. While online societies allowed you to post scores against others and play your rounds at your leisure, the matchmaking for head-to-head games was lacking in overall direction. There were several playlists that allowed you to compete in a variety of ways, including match play, skins, and alt shot with a teammate, but the rounds always ended with little in the way of progression or rewards (unless you were playing high-stakes skins).

That’s why it was especially exciting when the game recently introduced an online ranked matchmaking mode. This gives players an opportunity to climb tiers based on their performance and see how they truly stack up against other players when the pressure is on. Along with the advent of ranked matchmaking, PGA Tour 2K23 has also finally implemented cross-platform play, which should help expand the pool of opponents you’ll face with other platforms now available to challenge.

So how does the new ranked matchmaking system work and, more importantly, is it any good? Let’s tee up an overview and determine in what ways it has made competitive play better and where it needs to straighten things out if it wants to make par.

Reviewing Ranked Matchmaking In PGA Tour 2K23

Ways To Play

Ranked Matchmaking allows you to play as your MyPlayer only and improve your rank either solo or as a duo. In the solo playlist, each head-to-head contest utilizes a match play format where winning holes is more important than your total score. The duos playlist has teams using an alternate shot format in which you and your partner take turns getting the ball to the hole. In both solo and duo, the contest ends after nine holes or prior to that should one player or team take an insurmountable lead. With a fairly large assortment of official courses from which to have one randomly selected, you’ll either play the front or back nine of one of them for your contest.

How It Works

You’ll start out the solo and duo playlists with 250 rating points and will either gain points or lose them at the end of each match based on whether you win or lose. A win or loss will usually be worth roughly 20-25 rating points either way, though you’ll lose slightly more should you quit the game early and slightly less in my experience if the match comes down to a tiebreaker. You’ll ascend and descend ranked tiers and divisions as you cross certain points thresholds.

The Tiers

There are six tiers in each playlist, and ranked in order from worst to best, they are Bogey, Par, Birdie, Eagle, Albatross, and Condor. In a system that’s similar to Rocket League, each tier also contains three separate divisions, with the exception of Condor which has only one division at the top. The mode’s matchmaking attempts to pit you against people who are either directly within your tier or else in an adjacent one either above or below your own. As for rewards, the game doesn’t really offer any indication yet of what you can earn by climbing to the higher tiers other than bragging rights.

What I Like

As with a good movie, you’re always going to be more invested in a game when the stakes are higher. It’s hardly all that surprising then to find that a round of golf against others in PGA Tour 2K23 has both the pressure and enjoyment cranked up when there are actual consequences to winning and losing. Now that ranked matchmaking has been around just long enough for most people to have played to a point where they have either ascended or descended to a rating that closely matches their ability, the matchmaking functions as intended in having you play people that are roughly on your level. Whenever a match all comes down to the final hole and you’re trying to stick the perfect approach shot to lock down a win, it’s about as tense as a golf game can get.

By adding more players into the mix and competing in the duos playlist, things somehow get ratcheted up another notch because you don’t want to let down your teammate. If you happen to be taking on opponents alongside an actual friend, there’s no end to the satisfaction of coming through in the clutch. Just be prepared to also endure a razzing that you may never live down should you slice one into the water with everything on the line.

What I Don’t Like

It’s a little disappointing to find that ranked matchmaking gives you the choice of using either the analog stick or the game’s new 3-click method when competing. The 3-click method is definitely regarded within the competitive community as being at least slightly easier to use than the shot stick, offering a clear advantage to anyone who wants to take it. It’s hard to imagine what developers would do to rectify this though since it wouldn’t make sense to ban the competitive use of the 3-click method when they just introduced it within this game. Perhaps they could take a cue from TGC Tours and set up a separate matchmaking queue for those who prefer using the 3-click?

The other slightly annoying thing is how the tiebreakers work should you find yourself deadlocked with an opponent after nine holes. It’s obviously appreciated that you play an extra hole to determine a winner, but it’s not ideal how a tie on said tiebreaker hole is broken by who was closest to the pin on their tee shot. It would be better if the game just let you continue to play tiebreaker holes until a proper winner is determined rather than having it all come down to a tee shot.

While a match play format over nine holes works well, here’s hoping this is merely the foundation of ranked matchmaking and the game continues to expand to include more options. It’d be nice to have the ability in the future to play a full 18 holes against someone or a quick ranked mode where it’s do-or-die on just one hole.