Ranking System affects Hardcore and Casual

No visible skill ranking system

=> People don’t have incentive to keep playing because they don’t feel like they are making progress (this single number does have a huge affect on our brain’s reward system)

minor chain-affects:

  • People don’t feel rewarded when they kill a more skilled player because they don’t know and NO, we can’t assume the invisible ranking system actually WORKS

  • Competitive aspect is downgraded (obv, social competitiveness isn’t all that competitive)

=> Less people play the game because without incentive and accomplishment why would they play

=> Mutliplayer as a whole gets less popular and as a consequence the experience itself decreases (Reach for example averaged 80-100k players online not too long after release)

chain-affects:

  • more quitting
  • A lot of people develop a I don’t give a crap attitude
  • People will be annoying just to try to make the game more fun for themselves

=> Community quality decreases and instead of playing a fun competitive video game people just fool around and hate each other

=> Everyone is affected and eventually a lot of people start to feel like the game is sucking. Casuals and Hardcores alike.

I had a highest skill of maybe 41 (no higher than 45) in Halo 3 but I still consider myself casual because I enjoy plowing noobs more than getting legit 5 shotted 24/7.

I approve of this message.

P.S why is stopping cheaters so important? Compared to the amount of people not cheating who cares. I don’t care if some guy spent 5 seconds getting top rank he probably sucks promethean balls good for him. why wreak multiplayer incentives because of cheaters that no one cares about? I had fun in Halo 3 and there were cheaters. They didn’t make my experience worse.