Even though I am queuing to play a RANKED match, I constantly get matched with people with NO RANK. And there is no option to stop them from joining my games, so my only option is to block them.
Me blocking players is preferable? Really? How is this not implemented yet?
You didn’t have a rank when you started playing here. Should you have been banned from joining games?
There are no “Unranked” users. Just because you see “[?]”.
Users get a provisional rank at the creation of the account. They get asked what would their estimated ranks be.
After a couple of matches this gets adjusted, and you begin to see their rank e.g. “15 kyu” etc
A match against a player with “[?]” displayed as their rank is still a ranked match, and those users still have a provisional, but inaccurate rank.
We do occasionally get users complaining about facing such “[?]” players. Perhaps, we should display their provisional rank sooner, and perhaps just add ? as a suffix, like displaying something like “[5k?]” instead.
Reminds me of the times on KGS where people didn’t want to play me because my rank had a question mark, so I had to play bots to get a solid rank first. Now that bot games are no longer ranked, it may be harder for new players to get a rank if players keep rejecting question marks?
And there are players like this who on the verge of getting a rank, stopped playing ranked games altogether, and only played unranked games for years, and a lot of them (average to more than 5 a day, usually more than 10 every day in clusters), all custom setting restricted opponent ranks only from 10k to 25k (not technically sandbagging? but at very least seal clubbing). And this is not the only one, there are quite a few clearly quite strong players, like a shadow fleet, who just enjoy destroying weak players without declared ranks.
Those are easy to weed out: only accept ranked matches.
A lot of new players (not players just joined but beginners who rose through the ranks enough above 20k to be in range of these seal clubbers) weren’t aware of them at first, but after facing one of them, I’d assume they would complain about facing such [?] players quite intensely and have quite strong opinions not wanting to be paired or played against [?] players in general. It’s affecting the perceptions for new players.
By definition, [?] players have an uncertain rank, so sometimes you’ll get crushed by them, and sometimes it will be an easy win for you. In the long run, playing against [?] won’t affect your rating. Perhaps you wanted a balanced game, and it may be unpleasant to play a one-sided game instead, but remember that for the system to provide opponents with similar strength, the rating system needs to be accurate, and to have an accurate rating system, [?] players need rated games…
Should we just display the provisional rank as is, without any markers?
I don’t think so, otherwise many people who register at a wrong rank will be reported as sandbaggers.
That’s what happened to me.
After I played a ranked game, I deleted my account and created a new one. Hope I got it right this time 