Disclaimer: I haven't really played a COD game since Black Ops (I beat the MW3 campaign while drunk), but I used to play it a ton. Like 20 days of COD4 and probably another 15 days between World at War, MW2, and Black Ops.

That being said, over on Jeff's Twitter, he was saying that people were spamming replies at him because Sledgehammer mentioned him in a Tweet. One of the things a lot of people seemed to be complaining about was ranked matchmaking (or whatever term they use for it). This strikes me as odd, because that seems like a good thing to have in a game. I'm pretty heavily invested in CS:GO and if the competitive mode in that didn't have some kind of ranking system, it would be a total shitshow. I was just curious why it was such a big issue (apparently) in the COD:AW community.

'Cause people are idiots.

I should have made that post answerable and given it to you haha.

CSGO seems to have a group of players that have the same issues with matchmaking. They usually bypass this by creating new Steam accounts and buying copies of the game in bulk for that purpose (people who love to hack do it too). I think it's mostly because they'd rather be pwning f00ls than playing matches against similar skilled opponents. That or they feel that matchmaking is broken.

Gah I accidentally deleted the post cus I wanted to edit it.

When people complain about this it's usually in the context of having skill-based matchmaking in non-ranked games. The complaint usually goes along the lines of "I don't want to have to be 100% on every time I play the game," or something.

On the one hand, I kind of agree. Having some kind of ranking stuff separating players in unranked play seems kinda dumb. It's nice to switch off and shoot dudes sometimes without thinking, but think of how awful it'd be for new players if that was the case.

Because sometimes people get in games that have a bit more lag than they would like, and many of them think the game might be putting too much emphasis on K/D ratio and not caring enough about a solid connection.

Because part of the fun of COD for some people is getting good enough to destroy the other team, and it's hard to do that when you're a good player who is constantly being matched with other good players.

Some players are only bothered by first reason, some are only bothered by the second reason, and some are bothered by both. Others--namely those who don't run into much lag, and like playing highly competitive games against equally skilled players--don't have any issue with the matchmaking.

If you're referring to smurfing, that's going to happen in any game with a ranking system. Always has, always will. Most people I know who have smurf accounts in GO (me included) don't do it to stop lesser people. I do it to play with my friends who aren't very good and to play maps I don't know.

Are you sure they weren't just complaining about matchmaking in general?

@e30bmw: Is a smurf account necessary to play with people you know? I had assumed that CSGO would have ways to invite friends to private unranked games and such, bypassing the matchmaking system altogether. Anyways, my last post's point was that maybe the players don't like to play against similar skilled players or that they feel matchmaking is not working as intended.

I'd have to dig up the Tweets to find the exact wording, but most of them were specifically mentioning the ranked MM.

Due to some recent changes to CS:GO's MM, you can't play with people of much differing ranks (unless you meet specific requirements). And even before that they didn't want to play with my account because of it's rank. In terms of a private unranked game, I guess you could do that if you had a server to do it on. But I'm not sure that would to appeal to a lot of people. Most people want to play competitive CS (what I mean by that is the competitive ruleset, i.e. regular-ass CS, not DM or something) with their buds.

Some Scenarios Wherein I Hate Ranked Multiplayer (non game specific)

• The basic game settings (scenario, rules, maps, # of players, etc) are lamer in Ranked than non-Ranked, period
• Too many people chatting on their microphones because, you know, teams and trying hard, etc
• People on your team crying like babies because you didn't do "good enuf" or whatever
• Yourself crying like a baby because in Ranked multiplayer you have to play people who are good and try hard and thus if you only play multiplayer games 1 hour a month you won't do well, so, f ranked multi nah mean? Can't we just play for kicks? You kill me I kill you?
• In any multiplayer game that is ranked if one side has a clan and the other you may as well just walk out the room and leave an elastic on your controller. Clans aren't cool. They're lame. Also, I don't have any friends who would want to be in a clan with me :(
• Ranks bring out the worst in people who are already terrible assholes.
• Ranks encourage exploitation of systems and regurgitation of winning strategies to the point of wild, wild cloning (everyone uses x gun on y map or they are dumb dumbs).
• If everyone is playing Ranked no one isn't, so who's going to play with me?

Ranked matchmaking is supposed to be taken seriously as a concept. Your performance is gauged and rewarded or punished depending on your level of play. Those rewards are then displayed and you feel as though you're getting better and accomplishing something. Any outside influence (cheating, lag, poor design, glitches, map design, weapon design) that "ruins" or thwarts your progress through no fault of your own is pretty disappointing. So much so that many people take to the internet to angrily lash out (possibly because that's the only emotion we know how to represent when online).

Personally I am not very competitive. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy winning and I enjoy playing something at a high or advanced level. And any interference that isn't of my own or from fair and balanced play that interrupts that can be frustrating. But I'd rather have fun before I won anything. If I walk away from a game of matchmaking, ranked or otherwise, and feel like I had fun then it doesn't matter what the end score was.

Heh.

If you're playing solo, you're not matched up based on region, but your skill level. It's not really that noticeable, however. So I can see why people don't really care. Once you party up with someone across the globe, however, have fun! You'll likely be stuck in a lobby for ungodly amounts of time and/or have terrible connections.

And I have two beefs with it:

1. They have a ranked playlist already.

2. It can be easily exploited by killing yourself over and over in a match.

So having it based on region for me would be better. I don't /hate/ the concept, but we don't live in a perfect world.