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In a previous post I explained in detail how the new Unranked/Ranked system works and how it is equivalent to players now having 2 accounts with independent MMRs, both in the same MMR system and both winning/loosing points against all other unranked and ranked accounts.
I also explained that "ranked" means only being in a league and that's the difference between your 2 accounts.
You can find the full post here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=389461
Now I'll analyse what I believe to be the big flaw with this concept.
Please note these are all my personal opinions and predictions.
Why Blizzard went this way
First, it's important to understand why Blizzard choose this solution: queue times.
It's a very valid reason. If they separated ranked and unranked into 2 pools/MMR lists, queue times would surely increase a lot.
The difference between a 30 seconds and 1 minute wait is huge and it could actually be more than that, because the 2 pools wouldn't always be 50/50 in number of players.
This would be more of a problem for GMs/masters, because there are fewer player at higher MMR levels.
The flip side of the coin
While this all makes sense, I believe they are not taking in consideration that the number of irrelevant games will be very high and potentially waste a lot more time for everyone, even for those wanting to play serious ladder.
Smurfing will be everywhere
If you wish to crush noobs and troll around, the unranked account is perfect for that:
- it's free
- has an MMR that you can easily manipulate
- doesn't show in leagues/divisions
- doesn't affect your main account league
- plays against all other accounts, including ranked accounts
Some people will also be smurfing while practicing. Example:
- A diamond P player wants to practice a new PvT build.
- He goes to his unranked account and starts looking for matches.
- Whenever he gets a PvP or PvZ he insta quits, lowering the MMR of his unranked account.
- He finally gets a PvT and now plays serious, because he wants to test his build.
- His unranked account MMR is now much lower than his true skill, so he stomps the T.
So smurfing will no longer be an exception: intentional and no so intentional smurfing will be a significant % of everybody's games.
The problem is not just messing MMRs...
It sucks when you get stomped by an obvious smurf. The matchmaker even said you're favored, but you did't stand a chance: this guy had twice your APM, better macro, micro, scouting... everything.
Your MMR has just been unfairly lowered and you feel cheated.
However, the funny thing about smurf accounts is that they give as much MMR back to the system as they 'steal' away from it. After stomping a few noobs, smurfs need to drop a few more games to keep their MMR at that level.
So, in the long run, you should have a statistically even number of win/losses against smurfs.
Maybe it doesn't seem even, because people tend to remember a 15 minutes beating a lot better than a win from a insta quit, but they should both happen at a similar frequency.
So messing up with ranked MMRs may not even be the biggest problem about having so many smurf accounts in the system.
...the main problem is the TIME you waste
A lot of your games will be a total waste of time.
If someone insta quits on you, you have just doubled your queue time, plus game loading time.
He can also make you play for 10/15 minutes only to THEN drop the game, because he was just practicing a build or something.
Or he could be on crushing mode and toy with you around for 20/25 minutes.
This negates the all queue time argument.
People wil be wasting a lot more than queue times with all these situations. They will sometimes be wasting entire 25 minute games.
Conclusion
I believe at some point all this will become a visible issue.
People will never know if they are being trolled or playing a decent game.
This will all be much more damaging to gaming experience than increased queue times.
 
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What you're really saying is that you should just ladder if you want a serious game, which (I think) everyone knows. But it bears repeating.
But, how would you suggest they implement a better unranked system? I mean, by its nature, by its definition, the games will be meaningless and typically uncompetitive, no matter how you set it up.
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On December 23 2012 17:43 EatThePath wrote:
What you're really saying is that you should just ladder if you want a serious game, which (I think) everyone knows. But it bears repeating..
Actually no, that's not what I'm saying.
You can't choose to ladder to play only serious mode, because both types of accounts are in the same pool and are paired against each other.
So even if you only play ranked, you will be facing smurf accounts all the time, which will waste your time by quiting some games and stomping you other times,
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So players playing for ladder points play against unranked ones? Are you sure? Source? This completely ruins the ladder imho.
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I highly doubt that unranked and ranked will play against each other. But nice writeup.
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I can verify, having just finished playing some hots ladder, that ranked and unranked can be matched against each other. Blizzard intended it for it to be this way. Hopefully it changes...
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It is probably just because it is the beta? So not as many people playing and so on. It shouldn't be in the full game. When I can see a flaw like this, Blizzard ought to be able to too. And it's not like I'm worried much anyway, if it is in the full game then everybody will go crazy and Blizz will change it. But I am one of those that expect the game to suck a little at the beginning anyway, untill Blizz gets it right. In Blizzard we trust! 
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On December 23 2012 21:06 Conny Duck wrote:
So players playing for ladder points play against unranked ones? Are you sure? Source? This completely ruins the ladder imho.
On December 23 2012 22:04 sweetbabyjesus wrote:
I highly doubt that unranked and ranked will play against each other. But nice writeup.
It surprises me that so many people are unware of this.
Here's a recent statement by the Lead Software Engineer of the Sc2 team:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/slyTsK3hp2o#t=142s
To me the point of the thread is not even to inform people about this, although I'm happy if it does.
The point here is that Blizzard should consider how much time people will waste with pointless troll games and if that isn't a bigger problem than increased queue times, which is the only valid reason to this system.
On December 23 2012 23:37 sweetbabyjesus wrote:
It is probably just because it is the beta?
Nothing indiciates that, on the contrary.
Many people have expressed concerns about this and Blizzard never said it's for Beta only.
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We don't need an unranked play option.
We just need one thing: WORKING CUSTOM MELEE MAPS
Blizzard did the first step in seperating it from fun mapsvia the arcade.
Now make it so that you can see who is waiting in a room and allow people to cancel the game without the game starting etc.
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you are correct. But I don't think they will implement it.
If they do that will suck, but we need unranked ladder matches one way or another. Ladder anxiety has killed the game for probably over 50% of players imo
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On December 24 2012 00:56 firehand101 wrote:
If they do that will suck, but we need unranked ladder matches one way or another. Ladder anxiety has killed the game for probably over 50% of players imo
This is so true. SC2 really NEEDS a unranked mode.
When SC2 first came out I had over 10 friends who played. Only 2, maybe 3 of us, reguarly laddered. The rest were too anxious to play more than 1 ladder match a day. Because they weren't comfortable. They decided the best idea was to do team games, since those didnt matter as much, and learn the game that way. But really, team games don't teach very much at all - that's not going to help you in a 1v1 ladder match very much.
As months went by everyone but 2 of us who laddered quit. Moved on to LoL/dota, since they were playing SC2 as a team game, and those games are better for team gameplay.
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On December 24 2012 00:56 firehand101 wrote:
If they do that will suck, but we need unranked ladder matches one way or another. Ladder anxiety has killed the game for probably over 50% of players imo
On December 24 2012 02:36 Spyridon wrote:
SC2 really NEEDS a unranked mode.
I just want to stress out that I'm not against Unranked play in general at all.
I'm just saying that allowing Unranked to play vs Ranked will very likely have undesirable consequences.
Why not separate ranked from unranked?
There could be 2 MMR lists and 2 pools for the matchmaker.
The only reason to mix them together is queue times, but I'm trying to alert for the even bigger time wasted in pointless games.
Also, the entire point of unranked is to make players with ladder anxiety play more, so it's quite possible that the players pool will be a lot larger. Queue times may not increase at all if people like the Spyridon friends start playing a lot more games per day.
It's true that there was incentive for casual players just wanting to have fun, but if you put the 2 pools together, this will hurt gaming experience for people taking it more seriously and ultimately those may be annoyed by too many silly games and quit playing... and there's nothing more damaging to queue times than people quiting... 
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If you think people playing unranked are more likely to screw around and ruin the game, then wouldn't unranked mode be practically useless if it were separated from ranked? I don't think too many people are going to complain about getting free wins when playing ranked either. At any rate, I don't think this is going to be a big problem.
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Seems like you shouldn't be playing unranked if you're scared of getting smurfed and think its a waste of time.
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On December 24 2012 05:17 ShadowDrgn wrote:
If you think people playing unranked are more likely to screw around and ruin the game, then wouldn't unranked mode be practically useless if it were separated from ranked? I don't think too many people are going to complain about getting free wins when playing ranked either. At any rate, I don't think this is going to be a big problem.
It's not about getting free points, it's about getting good games. The point is that people are more likely to leave early and not fight for the victory making the games between ranked and unranked worse. Of course, it's not certain that it will be like this but it is valid concerns.
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On December 24 2012 05:17 ShadowDrgn wrote:
If you think people playing unranked are more likely to screw around and ruin the game, then wouldn't unranked mode be practically useless if it were separated from ranked? I don't think too many people are going to complain about getting free wins when playing ranked either. At any rate, I don't think this is going to be a big problem.
People will not only get free wins. people will get all types of silly games, some will be losses and some will be wins.
Look at my example of that P player practicing a specific build for PvT. He will be giving free wins to some and crushing others.
In the end, free wins and 'free' losses will be even and will just waste your time.
If unranked and ranked were separated, unranked would still suffer from these problems, but at least everyone would be on the same page and ranked play would not be affected.
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On December 23 2012 23:37 Azoryen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2012 21:06 Conny Duck wrote:
So players playing for ladder points play against unranked ones? Are you sure? Source? This completely ruins the ladder imho. Show nested quote +On December 23 2012 22:04 sweetbabyjesus wrote:
I highly doubt that unranked and ranked will play against each other. But nice writeup. It surprises me that so many people are unware of this. Here's a recent statement by the Lead Software Engineer of the Sc2 team: http://www.youtube.com/embed/slyTsK3hp2o#t=142sTo me the point of the thread is not even to inform people about this, although I'm happy if it does. The point here is that Blizzard should consider how much time people will waste with pointless troll games and if that isn't a bigger problem than increased queue times, which is the only valid reason to this system. Show nested quote +On December 23 2012 23:37 sweetbabyjesus wrote:
It is probably just because it is the beta? Nothing indiciates that, on the contrary. Many people have expressed concerns about this and Blizzard never said it's for Beta only.
wait wat. That is dumb. Sometimes I wonder if these people even play their own game. I can just picture them sitting in a meeting and coming up with something like this lol.
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I'm pretty sure Blizzard said once the actual game is released that unranked will not be able to match with a person searching for a ranked game. They just have it like this now to lower queue times.
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As it is now unranked people can play against ranked people. I've played quite a few ladder games that seems to be "throw away" games and I've asked people afterwards why they played that way and they replied with saying that they were playing unranked and that they only were testing stuff, like off-racing and so forth.
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On December 23 2012 18:23 Azoryen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2012 17:43 EatThePath wrote:
What you're really saying is that you should just ladder if you want a serious game, which (I think) everyone knows. But it bears repeating.. Actually no, that's not what I'm saying. You can't choose to ladder to play only serious mode, because both types of accounts are in the same pool and are paired against each other. So even if you only play ranked, you will be facing smurf accounts all the time, which will waste your time by quiting some games and stomping you other times,
Sorry, I couldn't but assume that unranked and ranked had separate matchmaking. If they really go through with that... that is the top of what the fuck mountain.
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Why can't we have unranked tied to your ranked MMR so it will stay constant if you do not play any ranked games, and then create a default starting MMR like in chess where you start with a default rating?
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Relevant post from Dustin Browder:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6794871228#14
This is a legitimate concern. We feel like putting them in the same matchmaker will reduce queue times. But if we start to see a large amount of aberant behavior (whatever it may be) we may have to rethink this decision.
Thanks for the thread on this subject.
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On December 24 2012 10:24 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Why can't we have unranked tied to your ranked MMR so it will stay constant if you do not play any ranked games, and then create a default starting MMR like in chess where you start with a default rating?
The problem with that is players who will never play unranked; you can't update their unranked level for match making.
I've played in many chess sites and it is as you say, you play unrated based on your actual rating.
The funny thing is that unranked is actually rated, that's why instead of viewing it like just playing a few games that don't affect your rating (like in chess), I view it as almost an independent account with its own rating. Simply the unranked account is not in any league.
For other purposes it's a fully functional account and I think Blizzard wants to offer that to people with massive ladder anxiety.
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On December 23 2012 16:57 Azoryen wrote:
...the main problem is the TIME you waste
A lot of your games will be a total waste of time.
If someone insta quits on you, you have just doubled your queue time, plus game loading time.
He can also make you play for 10/15 minutes only to THEN drop the game, because he was just practicing a build or something.
Or he could be on crushing mode and toy with you around for 20/25 minutes.
People, please, SC2 will always be a waste of time. Be glad if this new feature makes you play less or even quit. THAT WILL REALLY SAVE YOU TIME!!
You know why Blizzard added unranked games? Because of elite cocks like on this forum making people too anxious to play ladder. Mixing ranked and unranked in one pool is great imo.
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On December 24 2012 03:02 Azoryen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2012 00:56 firehand101 wrote:
If they do that will suck, but we need unranked ladder matches one way or another. Ladder anxiety has killed the game for probably over 50% of players imo I just want to stress out that I'm not against Unranked play in general at all. I'm just saying that allowing Unranked to play vs Ranked will very likely have undesirable consequences. Why not separate ranked from unranked? There could be 2 MMR lists and 2 pools for the matchmaker. The only reason to mix them together is queue times, but I'm trying to alert for the even bigger time wasted in pointless games. Also, the entire point of unranked is to make players with ladder anxiety play more, so it's quite possible that the players pool will be a lot larger. Queue times may not increase at all if people like the Spyridon friends start playing a lot more games per day. It's true that there was incentive for casual players just wanting to have fun, but if you put the 2 pools together, this will hurt gaming experience for people taking it more seriously and ultimately those may be annoyed by too many silly games and quit playing... and there's nothing more damaging to queue times than people quiting...
I actually thought about this issue on first discovering how it works, but considering even unranked is still going to work with an MMR system, you will likely only run in to people playing "silly", quitting, or not taking the game seriously at lower ranks.
Any silly actions like that would show in your rating. Sounds weird but think about it, you would have trouble keeping a high MMR if you weren't taking the game seriously, even in unranked.
Also, if your playing ranked at a decently high league and happen to run in to a high ranked person who is not taking the game seriuosly, you'll probably be happy to be lucky enough to run in to the free MMR more than anything lol, not quitting =)
But yeah, this problem will "mostly" solve itself the higher rank you get.
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EPT
