Hi, I’m a strong supporter of the “hide opponent ranks” feature, but I think the current implementation undermines its purpose. The opponent-rank selector still displays a range that actively scales with my own rank, and even worse, adjusting the upper limit shows my exact rank. The selector isn’t hidden at all, it sits directly above “play a human,” which effectively reveals whether my rank has gone up, down, or stayed the same whenever I want to start a game.
For me, the value of hiding ranks isn’t only about obscuring my opponent’s level. It’s equally about hiding my own rank so I can focus entirely on playing, rather than on ego, expectations, or performance anxiety. Seeing any indicator of my rank, even indirectly, diminishes the experience and makes it harder to just enjoy the game.
Please consider changing the opponent-rank selector to something like “± X ranks” or “± X stones” for users who have “hide ranks” enabled. At the very least, this behavior should apply when the feature is turned on.
Yeah - interesting: this effect is an unanticipated side effect of that change.
I think we could support this - I’d be wililng to implement it IF you could come up with a design that doesn’t bring back the reason for the change.
How do we show succinctly and unambiguously what +X -Y means?
Does +X mean “the opponent can be up to X stronger” (which means subtracting X from your rank) or does it mean “the opponent can be up to X weaker” (because when you add X to your rank you get their rank).
As far as I’m aware we haven’t had a single question about “what does the rank range selector mean?” since the change - it worked.
Easier to implement, but not easier to read for users if it retains 2 select fields. Is 9k +3 6k or 12k confused people asked on the forums when it used to be like this. That difficulty of UI design stems from 2 separate fields to allow asymmetric rank ranges (and that kyu and dan behave differently). If it were a single ± X ranks as a single select box that eliminates that ambiguity and is what I advocated for back then as part of a drive to simplify the UI and reduce options on what should be a quick match finder, not full-blown custom game screen with loads of options.
Now that I’ve seen the reasoning behind the change, I understand the original problem much better. I actually remember the old UI from when I first started playing, and I also recall being confused by how the range worked. That’s why I think the current UI is perfect for players who don’t hide ranks, and why my suggestion is aimed only at those of us who intentionally enable “hide ranks.”
I have two suggestions:
Since the current selector is in one line, it would be easy to display something like “Opponent may be up to: [‘X’] ranks weaker - [‘Y’] ranks stronger”
add a tooltip that explains why the selector has been altered to not display an explicit rank, i.e. because the user opted to “hide ranks”
Actually, if we have a design that works without stating actual rank, we’d probably just go with it for everyone.
I’m warm to the idea of this simplification for the quick match finder, except that then you’d have to figure out something different for the custom game finder anyhow.
Also, I think that “I only want to play stronger opponents today” is not a niche desire, it makes a lot of sense.
I much prefer +/- n. I think people should not be allowed to just play weaker opponents and not stronger which i have seen. It’s almost sandbagging. Also, not enough people are willing to play Dan players I think it’s just more fair and makes more sense.
UI wise, I would actually hide it behind a settings icon and make the default +/-3 and people can click the settings icon if they want to customize their experience more. Less is more with UI but also don’t take it away from people that do want it.
Right - I’m with you on “simplicity should take precedence over configuability in the automatch pane”.
However, if we’re ageeing that “it is not niche” then we need to provide it somehow, so we still have the custom game pane to solve, unless we agree that hide-rankers should just avoid that
I personally want to make this choice. It’s the opposite of sandbagging. If I have been winning too much, I choose stronger opponents. If I have been on a losing streak I choose weaker opponents. The effect of this is to make my rank_most accurate_.
Being able to decide whicih I would like was the motivation for adding the pie chart to the Profile page.
(That being said, I personally make this choice by specifically chosing my next opponent via a ladder, not by automatch, but this only worked for corre)
Fearing that the answers are going more and more Off topic, I want to fully agree with the OP who basically wants that unwanted information to be hidden.
Later there will be always time to discuss again (and again) about how to display it when it is wanted
I guess with Koba’s example you could show +3 (stronger) and -2 (weaker) when it’s on hide ranks, and say the ranks like +3 (2dan) and -2 (4kyu) when ranks aren’t hidden.
The middle bar could just say “You” with ranks hidden, and “You (2k)” with ranks not hidden.
I guess this also works
and the stronger/weaker hopefully avoids this issue than just saying +3 by itself.
And yet people do. I feel like the custom match function is pretty much built to allow you to do it. You get to see who you’re playing before you select a challenge.
So you can’t really remove this behaviour without removing custom matches.
Ah got it, though I feel the “hide rank” request is somewhat orthogonal. KGS and IGS (see @jlt 's comment) show that there’s a reasonable UI for both symmetric and asymmetric selectors without leaking rank.
I feel the spirit of custom is “as flexible as possible”, so it makes sense to keep the asymmetry there, even if we remove that possibility from Automatch.
I use “play equal or weaker only” and “play equal or stronger only” abilities to make sure that my win-rate is never far from 50%. Without it system is very unstable. Even with it sometimes lost or win streaks are too long.
I would have to use auto-match more rarely without it.
I like the slider idea, but I also struggle with sliders on mobile a lot. They tend to adjust their position when I take my finger off. If I want a value precisely I sometimes have to try repeatedly.
I think it’s just more fair and makes more sense.
