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Comment by mjr00 | Hacker News Reader

How do dedicated servers work with skill-based matchmaking and ranking systems?

I think they are orthogonal models. With dedicated servers, people sort of self-organize into groups of people they want to play with, maybe based on skill or fun or something else. Maybe you know who runs the server IRL, or you just randomly tried the server. Maybe you just get along with that group of people, maybe they're a group that is dedicated to improving and that's exactly what you want.

I think parent's point is that you don't need skill-based matchmaking and ranking systems if you give players the ability to self-organize.

The question was somewhat facetious. Being able to click "Find Match" and be able to match up against someone close to your skill level in a few seconds is a feature that players want. A ranked leaderboard that's somewhat legitimate and has prestige in climbing is a feature that players want.

You don't need this stuff, of course, but people (who don't play games) love to dismiss these things as if they don't matter.

So, then, why not both? The players that want to just jump into a match can deal with the kernel anticheat, and the players that are willing to find a dedicated server don't have to deal with rootkits.

I mean, I know the answer, it's because doing both would be significantly more work for unproven returns, but still, a guy can dream.

We do have both… some games have centralized servers, some games have player hosted ones. You are free to play either kind.

People want the weirdest things.

The rise of those things you describe matched the decline of my interest in any form of online multiplayer.

Yeah I use to play a lot of CS:S and when I got CS:GO the lack of community servers killed me interests and never picked it up again

I honestly feel the exact opposite of you, and think your desire is strange. I want to find games quickly and experience good, fair competition - which seems to me what most people would want.

The problem is that your solution to find "good, fair competition" (whatever that means to you) involves some form of ranking.

The problems start when everyone cares about their damn ranking. And yes, even casuals care about that crap. Everybody follows the same strategies, everyone is whiny and annoying because losing means your ranking is damaged.

Back in the day nobody cared. A match went awry because someone did a completely retarded build on their toon, or didn't know how to play with the class they picked? Oh well, game is over, you find a new one.

I never play with player audio on, so I never hear if anyone else is whining about their ranking. I don’t pay attention at all to what my own ranking is, I just play my best and let it sort itself out. I only want fair matches, and it does seem like I mostly get those.

The ranking itself is meaningless, the only thing important is that it accurately represents my skill so that it can be used to find a match.

It sounds like I might play different kinds of online games than you… I mostly play sports games, which don’t have the issues you describe.

You go on a server. You're getting smoked. They kick you or you leave because the people there are way above you. Alternatively, you're too pro and you get bored and look for a server with higher average skill.

I played a game called Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory at the pro level (of course making small amounts of money even as a teenager like things were back then).

A lot of the time in the game was spent scrimming on private servers against other teams. Public games were played on the team’s public server, where people of all skill levels would meet. The highest skilled players would always look to be challenged and would switch to the weaker team all the time. Of course on the scoreboard you’d have people who had a K/D of 40/2 and people who were 1/12.

People who weren’t looking to improve and got stomped would of course leave.

After a while of playing on a server you’d know the good players and they’d also self select to form teams with each other and move to private servers.

Ranking/competitive systems truly are a cancer on games.

So many quality of life standards have been sacrificed just to let jackasses feel superior to others in what is supposed to be a fun game.

On the contrary, skill-based matchmaking is a godsend for casual players, as long as they don't care about their rank. If you're a bottom 50% player, you really don't want to get matched up against a Challenger League of Legends player or Master Street Fighter 6 player or The Wazzler in Marvel vs Capcom 2.

I played plenty of unranked LoL back in the day, it was generally a better over all experience.

Mostly because ranked games were full of tryhards that raged constantly and in general didn't actually treat the game like a game.

___

In fact now that I think about it... some of my funnest LoL games back in the day was when I got paired with someone way out of my league in unranked and they would spend a lot of the game mentoring teammates.

And when the opposite happened, we would get stomped quickly and would be able to into a new match quickly. No one felt the need to drag out a unfun/mismatched game because their ranking would get hurt. Wasn't really an issue.

Yes, people of competitive nature like competing.

This does not match my experience.

By far, the best time I had in online multiplayer was playing Dota (the WC3 map, not the standalone atrocity that exists nowadays).

No ranked whatever. Every game was a blank slate. Nobody really cared, everyone was having fun. People tried weird builds, odd team composition, etc. You sometimes played with nice people and added them to friends.

With ranked matchmaking everybody is pissy if you are not playing optimally, everyone moans and hisses when they lose, etc.

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