Ranking & progress

Ranked vs Custom games

When you start a game, you choose how you want to play:

• Ranked game — Noctie matches you with a challenging opponent. Only Ranked games win or lose points and move your badge.
• Custom game — you pick the difficulty, opening, and starting position. Perfect for practice or experimenting; it doesn't affect your rank.

Matchmaking

In Ranked mode you're automatically matched against an opponent tuned to be a real challenge for you, based on how you've scored against Noctie. Win ranked games and you'll gradually face harder opponents; lose and you'll face easier ones. The goal is to keep games close and fair.

Your badge and points

Your rank is shown as a badge — Pawn, Knight, Bishop, Rook, then Queen — together with a number from 0 to 100:

• Win ranked games to gain points, lose them to drop points.
• Reach 100 and your badge levels up (for example Pawn 3 → Pawn 4).
• Drop below 0 and your badge levels down.

Behind the scenes there's a hidden matchmaking rating, tuned to give you a fair chance in every game. Your badge points move more slowly than that hidden rating on purpose — so your badge is a steady measure of progress rather than a number that jumps around after a single result.

25 levels, from Pawn 1 to Queen 5

There are now 25 levels — five badges (Pawn, Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen), each with five steps. The new lower levels reach below the old Pawn 1, giving beginners a gentler place to start. Because the scale changed, the new levels don't map exactly onto the old ratings.

Switching to the new system

If you played Noctie before this update, you'll switch over once before you can play Ranked games again. Switching resets your progress and rating graph, and lets you choose how to set your starting rank:

• Play a calibration game — play a game against Noctie to prove your skill and start at a matching rank.
• Start at Pawn 1 — begin at the bottom and work your way up.

You can do this from the in-app prompt, or any time from your Progress page.