Yeah I think it’s worth considering if this is really worthwhile and what’s the reasoning for and against it. Is the server trying to say it knows better than the user on who they should play?
Basically do you trust a players judgement that when they say they’re ok to play ± 2 ranks, and you give them a +2 or -2 rank match quickly, then they’ll be content?
Some considerations
Level dependent: like if around 25, 24, 23kyu etc there was matching issues, where playing a 25kyu might lead to large variablility (with the way it’s currently grouped) then sure maybe add in a slight wait if you don’t want to discourage them from playing with bad matches. If they’re low kyu or dan, maybe they’ve played go enough to let them decide?
A game vs no game: If we’re not at a critical mass whereby the delay for a better match is like +10s, then it’ll probably simply annoy people. Maybe they’ll refresh or cancel and requeue, or just stop queueing with the automatch. Maybe just offering a game quickly is better than no game at all in some cases?
Pointless parameters?: Lets suppose you’re already at a rank and/or time of day where it’s difficult to get an even game. If you allow someone to adjust the search to find more matches like ± x ranks, but that only kicks in after a delay, is this really a useful parameter? It’s not necessarily speeding up your game search like you’d expect, it’s just creating a fallback case where maybe after a certain time you might be more likely get a game.