Unranked 5v5 matchmaking - Why I think it would be a great addition to the game

[๖ۣۣۜSarah ♡]

Hello dear CS:GO players and, hopefully, developers. Today I want to suggest bringing back unranked 5v5 matchmaking (to everybody new to CS:GO - There was an unranked 5v5 mode called Classic Competitive during the early days of the game. Once competitive skill groups (from now on adressed to as ranks) were introduced, this game mode was replaced by the Competitive mode we know today.) In the following text I'm going to list up my arguments about why I think that bringing the unranked 5v5 back would be a good idea.

There's a TL;DR version at the bottom for people who don't want to read all the stuff below!

About myself

First of all I want to talk a bit about myself and my current situation, as I believe that this information may help you understand my reasons for this suggestion. So, I'm Altezia and CS:GO is currently my "main game" after having migrated here from League of Legends (and World of Warcraft before that). Given my background in a few popular games, as well as my activity in several communities about gaming, I've made a lot of friends online, and a lot of them play CS:GO aswell. But of course, everybody's coming from different places on the world and everybody has a different skill level. I know people from the depths of Silver 1 to the heights of the Global Elite. I myself am currently a Distinguished Master Guardian, so I'd consider myself an average player, I'm not awful anymore, but not exactly good either. However, the current state of competitive matchmaking makes it impossible for me to play with:

• Much lower ranks
  
• Much higher ranks
  
• People from far away countries or even continents

From what I have seen, the games you get are based around the higher ranks in the team, not the total average. I've tried playing with Silvers and Gold Novas before, it's just not possible for them to have an enjoyable game, as they'd get slaughtered by every team we've opposed. Same thing happened to me when I've joined a game around the Supreme Master First Class rank. I got destroyed. Every enemy player was either a Legendary Eagle Master or a Supreme Master First Class. I didn't have a realistic chance to be of any use for my team, I'm just not on their level yet.

"Just play Casual!"

Just play Casual. That's what I have been told several times, but in my opinion, and the opinion of a few others I've asked, that's not exactly a resonable alternative. If you have at least a little bit of Casual experience, you're most likely aware of the fact that in most Casual matches, things get really chaotic. You get singing and screaming teammates and enemies (allchat being turned on is quite an issue in my opinion), people mostly don't care about objectives or even throw the bomb out of the map or refuse to escort the hostages. And of course, there is no mechanic to ensure a somewhat game. In theory, there could be 10 Global Elites playing against 10 Silver 1s. And honestly, all that is fine. It's fine for what this mode is, a mode for casual players to just play very relaxed and for fun. But that is not what I, my friends and probably a lot of other people are looking for.

We are looking for a game with the competitive ruleset and settings, but without having to worry about a visible rank, and, even more importantly, we are looking for a fair game. In this new unranked 5v5 mode, there should be a hidden ELO or matchmaking rating, whatever you wish to call it, to ensure that you (and your entire team if you queue with friends) are being matched against an enemy team with a similar ELO/MMR.

Other 5v5 team games like League of Legends or even Valve's counterpart, DotA2 (although I'm not experienced with this game, my information is based on what a friend told me) have been offering unranked matchmaking with hidden ELO/MMR for years, and it works. Most games are definitely winnable, even if you queue with 5 people who all have totally different skill levels.

Advantages for the existing Competitive mode

I am certain that, if an unranked matchmaking mode would be re-introduced, the existing Competitive mode would be freed of some of the pesky smurfs (players who create a new account to get ranked into a much lower rank than their main account, in order to play with their lower ranked friends) and derankers (players who deliberately try to lose a game on purpose), as these players could use the unranked mode to play with their friends.

Of course, there are smurfs and derankers who are doing it just for the sake of being able to crush low ranked players, and that problem would of course not be adressed at all by re-introducing an unranked mode. But at least, it would get rid of some smurfs at least. It's a start, eh?

Another big positive would be that players could use the unranked mode to get experience (literal in-game experience aswell as general experience about the game).

Completly new players can use it as a preparation for the real Competitive mode, get a feeling for the difference compared to Casual, having to buy Kevlar+Helmet, defuse kits, the importance of eco rounds, team strategies, etc. Obviously, they're getting to see the maps of the game aswell if they haven't seen them before.

Semi-experienced players like myself can use the mode to improve their map knowledge (especially in terms of grenade throwing) and practice their weapon handling with weapons they don't usually use in Competitive. Sure, you could say now that there's offline mode / deathmatch for things like that, but some players simply don't like practice by actual practicing, they prefer to learn by actually doing it in real games, which of course is not as efficient as actual practice, but at least it's more fun.

TL;DR summary

If you couldn't be bothered to read all the stuff above (it's alright, I totally understand it!), here's a summary:

- Suggestion: Unranked 5v5 mode with ELO/Matchmaking rating based on team average to ensure a fair game even if you queue as 5 people with totally different ranks
- Possibility to play with lower / higher ranks or people from different regions, as you there's no risk of losing your rank
- More serious than the existing Casual mode, while still being just for fun
- Great way for new / not as experienced players to improve their knowledge of the game and get used to the Competitive settings
- Possible improvement (although a rather small one) to the smurfing issue in Competitive



Any comments or feedback, aswell as possible improvements to my suggestion are much appreciated!

Best regards
Altezia

[wzh]

Yeah we need ELO based on team average

[Skull]

You can't play with people from all over the world, well you can but it's unplayable, they have to connect to the servers in your continent resulting in a very bad ping and there is no way of solving that.
You can play on faceit, it doesn't use ranks and you don't have to pay for it. It's the same is official competitive but you play against higher or lower ranks. +it's 128 tick.

[Orion]

I was thinking this myself too, its great to pplay comp but if your not good enough for the time being, its not fun. This would be a great reinterduction and plus, it coud be like awarm up

[Orion]

Also, casual provides no team effort, its all just ono-your own

[๖ۣۣۜSarah ♡]

"You can't play with people from all over the world, well you can but it's unplayable, they have to connect to the servers in your continent resulting in a very bad ping and there is no way of solving that."

I have played with 180 ping before, it's not impossible, just undesirable. I wouldn't ever deal with that in Competitive, but in an unranked game, sure, why not.

"You can play on faceit, it doesn't use ranks and you don't have to pay for it. It's the same is official competitive but you play against higher or lower ranks. +it's 128 tick."

I don't think you understand the reasons behind this suggestion... I want an easy and quick solution to play with anyone, for fun. FaceIt would make things more complicated and time consuming, not exactly helpful.

[Skull]

"I don't think you understand the reasons behind this suggestion... I want an easy and quick solution to play with anyone, for fun. FaceIt would make things more complicated and time consuming, not exactly helpful."

Well faceit quite easy to work with, doesn't take that long, another alternative is connecting to community servers. There's a lot of 5v5 servers out there, of course people can connect and leave in the middle of the game.

An unranked 5v5 game mode won't ever happen and i'm 100% sure about it.

[anli]

Agreed, there should be a mode where you can practice/or play with competitive rules.Casual doesnt bring the same experience,and as OP said, is usually chaotic.
Also casual makes the game more imbalanced and more T sided then it already is,letting T side buy without having to eco or win any rounds.Its nothing close to competitive rules.

[Grampa Swood]

TL;DR still too long.

[Damian]

If you want to play for fun we already have casual.

Last thing you want to do is split up competitive match queques.

[๖ۣۣۜSarah ♡]

Originally posted by Damian:

If you want to play for fun we already have casual.

Last thing you want to do is split up competitive match queques.

I'm not trying to do that by any means. I don't want to split up the competitive queues, I want an in-between of Casual and Competitive mode. Casual CAN'T be played seriously, no matter how hard you try, there'll always be people who do random nonsense.

And as explained above, Competitive can't be played with people on much higher/lower ranks than yourself. It's an undesirable experience for everyone.

[Skull]

Originally posted by Altezia:

Originally posted by Damian:

If you want to play for fun we already have casual.

Last thing you want to do is split up competitive match queques.

I'm not trying to do that by any means. I don't want to split up the competitive queues, I want an in-between of Casual and Competitive mode. Casual CAN'T be played seriously, no matter how hard you try, there'll always be people who do random nonsense.

And as explained above, Competitive can't be played with people on much higher/lower ranks than yourself. It's an undesirable experience for everyone.

Why would you want to play against higher or lower ranks? People are already crying over smurfs. It would be unfair.

Making it unranked isn't going to make it serious, there will be a lot of griefers and cheaters. People are just going to play around since they can't lose a rank.

[๖ۣۣۜSarah ♡]

Originally posted by Skull:

Originally posted by Altezia:

I'm not trying to do that by any means. I don't want to split up the competitive queues, I want an in-between of Casual and Competitive mode. Casual CAN'T be played seriously, no matter how hard you try, there'll always be people who do random nonsense.

And as explained above, Competitive can't be played with people on much higher/lower ranks than yourself. It's an undesirable experience for everyone.

Why would you want to play against higher or lower ranks? People are already crying over smurfs. It would be unfair.

Making it unranked isn't going to make it serious, there will be a lot of griefers and cheaters. People are just going to play around since they can't lose a rank.

It would be evened out by the ELO system eventually. Unlike the existing matchmaking system in Competitive, this mode would go by team average ELO. Say we got this team queing for a game:

DMG
MG1
GN3
SEM
SE

the enemy team would look something like this for example

LE
MG2
GN2
SE
S3

Sure, the biggest factor deciding the game's outcome would be the performance of the DMG and the LE players and likely the lower ranks would not have a realistic chance to kill the high ranked players, but they can very well do something against the enemy team's lower ranked players. If team 1 would queue for a Competitive game, the enemy team would likely be all MGE/MG2 ranked, which overall is much more unfair.

[KillahInstinct]

I think casual 5v5 isn't as 'fun' as people think it might be. Imagine 5 premade globals jumping into one team, and 5 random silvers jumping into another. The experience would be a proper case of smurfing (so to speak), and no fun for the other team (I imagine getting rekt isn't fun).
Now you'll say, but there aren't ranks - that's exactly the point. How do you define matchmaking if the skill group aspect isn't supposed to be part of the equation? Do you just randomly group together 1 silver, 1 nova, 1 ak, 1 LE and 1 GE? Would that be an enjoyable experience for these people to play together?
In other words, thinking it through it isn't as easy as just enabling this option might seem. There are a few possible solutions, but they need to be thought through and take time.

[KillahInstinct]

Originally posted by wezyyA:

Yeah we need ELO based on team average

Pretty sure it does this already in matchmaking.

[๖ۣۣۜSarah ♡]

Originally posted by KillahInstinct:

I think casual 5v5 isn't as 'fun' as people think it might be. Imagine 5 premade globals jumping into one team, and 5 random silvers jumping into another. The experience would be a proper case of smurfing (so to speak), and no fun for the other team (I imagine getting rekt isn't fun).
Now you'll say, but there aren't ranks - that's exactly the point. How do you define matchmaking if the skill group aspect isn't supposed to be part of the equation? Do you just randomly group together 1 silver, 1 nova, 1 ak, 1 LE and 1 GE? Would that be an enjoyable experience for these people to play together?
In other words, thinking it through it isn't as easy as just enabling this option might seem. There are a few possible solutions, but they need to be thought through and take time.

There would be "skill groups" in a sense, they're just not visible to anyone. Winning and losing games would affect your invisible rank, just as it does in Competitive. It kinda hard to explain, if you're interested in how it works, read about the ELO System, as that's what CS:GO's ranking system is based on, although it's pretty modified here.

Originally posted by KillahInstinct:

Originally posted by wezyyA:

Yeah we need ELO based on team average

Pretty sure it does this already in matchmaking.

It doesn't. It does slightly adjust the enemy team's ranks but it's mostly decided by the highest player in your team. For example, a Global Elite queing with 4 Silvers would be playing against LEs and LEMs. Feel free to test this if you wish, I've done it with a few frineds around Silver 4 to Gold Nova 1 while I'm a DMG, our enemies were always MG2/MGE on average. Needless to say we lost every game. Hard. Totally unfair, really. And it's good that way, in Competitive. If it would be based on team average, a LEM could just queue with 4 Silver 1's and face 5 players around Nova 4 maybe. The skill difference would be so big that it would be an easier game for the LEM than it would be to play 5 LEMs vs 5 LEMs, resulting in an easier win, and an easier rank up. So it's pretty good that it's not based on average in Competitive mode.