It’s actually happening! Today, Global Offensive got ‘Unranked Matchmaking’; a feature
people have wanted -pretty much- since the game’s release. This lets you play on any
map you like, on any gamemode you like, with as many friends as you please, no matter what
their ranks. And the outcome won’t affect your rank.
This sounds like it would obviously be a good thing to have, but until now if you wanted
to do something as simple as to play a game of Dust2 with a friend, then you couldn’t
if your ranks were too far apart. To play together you’d have to ruin the game for
others by using a fake account with a lower rank or something like that.
Sure, we had ‘Scrimmage’, which was like unranked but limited to just a few maps, for
just 1 gamemode. So just see Unranked as being like a beefed up version of scrimmage. Available
for 5v5, wingman and dangerzone gamemodes. Provided you have prime, You can toggle between
Ranked and Unranked modes in a simple flick of a button- and you can see here that nothing
else about the process changes! Easy. BUT now we get onto the other change- and
that’s to PRIME. Just so we’re all on the same page, PRIME puts you in matches with
other PRIME members, ensuring that everybody in those games has either paid $15 for PRIME
status, or has played enough games to earn it. This hopefully protects PRIME players
from many of the cheaters and griefers, seen in the free and easily accessible portions
of the game. But PRIME can no longer be earned. It must
be BOUGHT. Sorry to all those players who were about to unlock PRIME status by grinding
matches- you’ll have to spend $15 to get it now.
Valve’s blog explains why these changes were required. They start off by making it
clear that making the game free was NOT a mistake! They have to say this, because many
people insist that it was. And, by requiring people pay for features, it sounds like Valve
are backtracking. But look at WHAT is being put behind a pay-wall, you’ll see that Valve
are sticking to their guns here- the game, and all its gamemodes are still free to play.
It’s just all the perks associated with it that are being put behind a paywall. Stuff
like ‘XP, Ranks, drops and skill groups’. Valve says this had to be done because the
system in its current state encouraged ‘Bad Actors’.
By bad actors, I think they mean large-scale operations doing stuff like account farming,
where automated systems would grind new accounts to prime status and then to sell them on for
less than the $15 to undercut the cost of Prime status, or to grind drops for a profit.
You wouldn’t think it’s worth it, but when there’s an opportunity to make money,
people always find a way! And along with this update, it appears as though Valve is shutting
down any accounts bought through these illegitimate, third-party services. RIP anybody who bought
a Prime account illegally- you may be getting a notification like this soon.
I see this as Valve admitting a limitation with the Trust Factor. I think it works on
an individual level, on accounts that people actually play on. But it didn’t combat automated
systems which didn’t even play the game, and which existed solely to make a profit.
I have no way of knowing this, but it could have been those ‘bad actors’ who were
ruining everything for everybody else, sabotaging overwatch to mask their botting operations.
I suppose that time will tell if hiding certain things behind a paywall will put an end to
these activities.
Let’s return to unranked matchmaking again. Much like ranked, it will still use your rank
to determine the games you’re put in to, but unranked won’t change your rank based
on the result. So as an example, I wouldn’t have downranked
for surrendering in this match after 8 rounds because of the 2 AFKers we had on our team.
But since your rank will remain unchanged, does this mean you’ll be crushed by silver
1 smurfs in every unranked game you play? Probably not. I reckon that unranked uses
a SEPARATE ranking system which will still change over time- it’s just that you’ll
never know what these ranks are. Which would be perfect, wouldn’t it- these players would
be incentivised to play ranked simply to know how good they were, instead of being put in
vague (but balanced) matches against players of unknown quantity every time. In theory,
unranked will be used for fun, and ranked for competitive play. In theory.
It will take time to know if these changes are what CS:GO needs. It won’t stop many
of the accounts that have already reached PRIME status for free, and something tells
me it won’t be the last we hear of smurfing, either. But it’s hopefully a step in the
right direction.
And for all of you who don’t have PRIME, Valve has given you a 2 week grace-period
in which you can buy it to keep your current rank and XP progression. You have until the
17th.