I think there's immense value in being able to just press a button and jump into a game, without having to actually know people and build up a community.

However, I wonder if you could have that while still removing features that make cheating seem appealing. For example, as you said, you can have games with randoms without an automatic ranking of all players. (Or maybe you rank players so you can match people of similar skill levels, but you don't tell anyone what their rank is.)

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cortesoft 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> For example, as you said, you can have games with randoms without an automatic ranking of all players

Good skill matching is one of the most important advancement in gaming over the last few decades. Being able to consistently play against people who are fair competition for you makes the games so much more fun, especially if you are much better or much worse than the average player. In the old days, you could alternate between opponents that were no challenge at all and opponents you would have no chance against; both types of games get old really fast.

In some ways, good skill matching can alleviate the harm cheaters do; if the cheating makes them way better than everyone else, then good matchmaking should start to match them up only against other cheaters. In many ways, this is the ideal scenario - cheaters play against each other, and everyone else plays against people who are close in skill level.

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Wowfunhappy 5 days ago | parent [-]

I think you might have missed my parenthetical! :)

	▲	cortesoft 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Most skill ranking systems actually don’t show the rating they use for matchmaking. There is usually a separate level that is shown rather than what is used for matchmaking. This is because many people get really upset when their displayed rating doesn’t go up after playing a lot of games, but with a skill level that is the expected result when you finally reach your true skill rating. Players won’t constant progression, so they will show a separate score that keeps going up while they use a hidden true rating for matchmaking.

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everforward 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That still exists in many games with server browsers. The game just goes through the server list to find a populated one with low latency and “official” settings (ie not knife only or modded).

Works basically the same as matchmaking does now, albeit in only matching on server quality and not player skill.

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mjr00 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> However, I wonder if you could have that while still removing features that make cheating seem appealing. For example, as you said, you can have games with randoms without an automatic ranking of all players.

This does not stop cheaters whatsoever. Anyone who played during the private server era of FPS in the late 90s/early 00s knows this; wallhacking, modified character models with big pointy spikes indicating player locations, aimbots, etc. ran rampant, even when nothing was on the line.

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eikenberry 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They could still have this with a campaign/story-mode or even a simple bot-mode.

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Wowfunhappy 5 days ago | parent [-]

Even as someone who plays very few games online, I can tell you that playing against bots isn't the same as real people, even if they're randoms you don't know. Maybe that could be improved if developers prioritized bot AI, but since they don't, here we are.

	▲	eikenberry 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Playing against bots is to get a feel for the game, see if you like it and get good enough to not embarrass yourself. Then you look into moving onto playing with people. By that time you should have learned how to use the games community building features to find others to play with.