Has Counter Strike's highest and most prestigious matchmaking rank, Global Elite, gotten easier?
I'm going to make a big assumption with this video and say YES. I mean, a year ago before
the VACCenings, even the best of players struggled to reach and maintain that rank when pitted
against cheaters seemingly every other game. Now, even members of Global Elite itself have
come under fire for not being good enough. Let's look at why this could be.
For a start, I believe that a lot of cheaters have been banned or moved elsewhere, which
would clear a lot more space in the top ranks for legit players. DMG's have become eagles,
eagles supremes and so on. So with that in mind, the difficulty at the top ranks will
have gone down but ONLY because people no longer have to face quite so many cheaters.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a good thing. Since its release, the number of people playing
CS:GO has risen dramatically. This will no doubt increase the number of players at every
rank and some have said this has diluted the skill level at Global Elite. I don't agree
with this at all. More people means more people battling it out, but only a few percent of
players can reach the top ranks at any given time. Just so we're all on the same page,
getting better doesn't mean you deserve a higher rank- it depends on how much you're
improving when compared with everybody else. For example, if everybody suddenly got 20
times better, they wouldn't all suddenly become Global Elite. Their ranks would remain the
same, since it's based on individual performance when compared with everybody else in the game.
If new Global Elites happen to be newer players then it's only because they've outperformed
older ones. As a game matures the skill level will, if anything, increase across all ranks
but particularly the top ones. Because of this I don't think a larger player-base would
make Global Elite easier. But that doesn't explain why Global Elites
seem worse than they used to be. Perhaps we've become more critical. More of us than ever
are used to watching pro players battling it out. We're happy to call them out on their
mistakes. Perhaps we expect the same standard of play when watching teammates in matchmaking!
Of course, we'd never make mistakes like that! Or maybe we do, but when we're playing, we're
too busy to notice the things that spectators can.
Or maybe the best players train harder than they used to when compared with others from
their rank. More and more extra training activities are becoming available for those who wish
to be the best. Many of the top-rated maps on the workshop are training maps designed
to improve our skills. You can be a decent player without this specific training, but
those who put in the extra effort will certainly have a noticeable edge, even if they just
perceive their improvement as everybody else getting worse.
No? Okay, how about this: maybe Valve are manipulating the ranks behind the scenes.
We've never seen how the ranks work. We don't know what % of players are put in which rank.
There have been sinister rumours that everybody's being pushed out of silver and towards the
gold ranks. Could this be Valve's doings? Could they also be expanding the size of the
top ranks? I wouldn't put it past them to experiment on us like this. Maybe at some
point in the future they'll do a fascinating talk explaining how they manipulated the ranks
to reduce the impact of smurfing, cheating, queue times or rage levels in some clever
way. I suggest you look up their talk on the thought process behind the introduction of
skins, it's very interesting stuff. If this is the case and Global Elite has been increased
in size, then it goes without saying that the skill difference between the top and bottom
of that rank will be greater. But why they'd do this, I don't know. Yet.
But ultimately, so what if Global Elite has become easier to reach? Is this really a bad
thing? Have we all only been playing this game to reach this rank? Would adding more
ranks really help, or would it just cause the same problem but further up? Remember
that matchmaking probably doesn't go just by rank anyway- it's likely an ELO system,
which means that even if the bottom of Global Elite is worse than it used to be, it shouldn't
interfere with the games that those higher up the same rank are having.
In conclusion, people are always going to moan. They moaned when the top ranks were
full of hackers. Now they're complaining that some players aren't as good as they should
be! Perhaps we should stop being so critical of others for once. Maybe we should instead
see this as a genuine opportunity to enjoy the occasional game that isn't pant-shittingly
difficult! Plus it's not as though matchmaking is the only thing out there. If you don't
like it, there are plenty of other third-party services instead. I suspect that a lot of
the top players have moved to ESEA or faceit, where the skill level is probably more consistently
high. I think we're expecting too much from a build-in
matchmaking service. It has already given so much to CS:GO. It has transformed it from
a goalless shoot-em-up to something where our performances have purpose. Many of us
have had hundreds of games using this built-in, free system that Valve has refined and tweaked
over the years. In the past, yes, the problems with matchmaking have been things that they
were responsible for fixing and that there were no negative consequences for doing so.
But this? That we think that other players aren't as good as they should be? This is
our making! We expect Valve to do something about this, but I don't think WE know what
we want, or even how we'd respond once we got it.
We need to appreciate matchmaking for what it is- a hassle-free way of getting a quick
5v5 match. If we want more, we should go out and get it. Plus, if we're so awesome that
we find matchmaking easy, that's probably saying more about ourselves than the system.
Be happy- this isn't as big a problem as we think it is.