Because it doesn’t seem to matter currently if you play ranked games or casual games, the general experience tends to be the same. But one has numbers and things to go with it. You still get people playing to win in casual games and you get people dicking around having fun in ranked games, and the ranks don’t necessarily indicate how they play as a team and a whole bunch of other things that make it less than ideal.
There was a brief time in the late 90s to early 2000s where you’d just hop into an open server. The lobby would keep the same players as it went round to round and people would just filter in and out as they felt like it. It didn’t track scores or stats between games, and there wasn’t a leveling or progression system that followed you. You just played through the round as it came. People seemed to care a whole lot less about their record or team–it just seemed like everyone was happy to be able to play online. Maybe it’s just because I’m older now and I’m looking back at it with rose tinted glasses, but I wish we could go back to casual modes like that. I don’t have the energy or will to deal with people the way it’s set up now.
I remember those times. They were awful. I had no fun if the people I started the match with weren’t the same I ended it with. What was the point? It’s not fun if I can’t even tell if I’m getting better at the game. I didn’t need to be the best Counter-Strike player, but I wanted to play actual Counter-Strike.
However, while this isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive, those games that let you run your own servers will actually survive to be seen by future generations, unlike just about every game with matchmaking these days that won’t let you run the game in LAN or on a private server. It’s possible to have both, but devs don’t want to.
The problem with non balanced lobbies is that they can be completely wrecked by someone who is more skilled.
This is still an issue with matchmaking systems intended to keep the game balanced in developer controlled servers though, so I don’t know what the relevance is.
Its a lot less of an issue so it’s obviously relevant.
If anything it happens more in the unmoderated matchmaking systems because there are no admins.
Admins do not kick people for being to good. I dont know where you get that idea.
Well I can tell you never actually played in that era, because it did happen. Just on the SLAUGHTERHOUSE TF2 servers, in which I myself was an admin, would kick players who completely dominated a game over to another server where they would fit in better. This was a pretty common practice. Not to mention the admins who power tripped and would kick anyone who killed them too often or claim everyone better than they were was cheating.