I believe that friendly matches are often used for practice purposes.
While there is an option to check whether it’s a ranked match or not, leaving it as a ranked match by default during practice sessions could inadvertently inflate the ratings of beginners.
I suggest either disabling ratings for friendly matches or, at the very least, unchecking the ranked match option by default.
I’m not in favor - while there may be an air of casualness in “Friendly” games, the rank signal is good enough that I think it should count for something. (The alternative is a bunch of [?] players who don’t like playing tournaments or whatever)
Though if this was confusing, then maybe we could talk about the default name? Like we could have different defaults for ranked and unranked (“serious” and “friendly” maybe?)
I don’t get this type of complaints to make things default instead of being in charge of everything manually. Isn’t it just saves your past preferences? You’re anyway going to open this game settings window to make a game, so what’s the deal?
If I must make an analogy I would compare it to “Let’s make light in this room on by default always when I enter it”. It will work in most cases unless you remember there’s daytime too. What you’re doing is just moving part of work from one weights dish to another. Added amount of effort stays the same.
Thank you for your response.
Upon reflection, the issue at hand seems less about the term “Friendly” and more about the inconvenience of having games with acquaintances, especially beginners, being rated. I believe that matches among acquaintances should be non-rated by default. Providing an option to manually turn on ranked matches could be a considerate solution.
I hope this suggestion finds a favorable consideration for a more inclusive and stress-free gaming experience.
Wait, I thought that’s what the checkbox with the label “Ranked” is for? (In the picture in the first post)
Thank you for clarifying your point.
The core of the issue seems to be that the option for games to be rated is enabled by default
What’s the issue that you’re addressing? There’re custom games and auto match. Custom match is custom no issues with that. Auto match is used to find ranked games.
I would assume you suggest make auto match unranked by default with acquaintances(friends?)? How will it work?
P.S.
I think what you wanted to say is to “add an unranked option to auto match” which is a feasible suggestion, but I can only speculate.
My hope is that when initiating a challenge from the friends list, the default setting would not classify these games as ranked matches
You can untick ranked setting
On a very naive level, I would argue " the more ranked games, the more accurate are the ratings". And with accurate ratings, the auto matchup algorithm can find a player for a fair matchup.
Some people worry about their rating → stress. But thats anyway no good. If you approach the game with a competetive mindset, focus on improving instead. With good practice, your rating will eventually follow.
I didn’t think about it, good point! You can’t auto match without a rating.
I won’t argue about what is a friend on OGS.
Now a huge majority of games offers are rated. So i don’t think that’s a shared wish to have games unrated by default.
It’s possible to set up “Friendly” matches to be ranked or unranked by simply checking or unchecking a option box, so this does not seem to be an issue of something being impossible, but rather a matter of convenience as to what the default setting should be.
I guess the default setting should depend on what is the more common preference across the population of OGS users. I’m not sure what that is. However, I bet that if we were to make a change to the default setting, it might upset a bunch more people who have grown accustomed to the status quo and will make mistakes when setting up games that they had wished to be ranked.
I guess this is a somewhat separate but related issue. Maybe it should be possible to add an option for selecting ranked vs unranked for automatches.
Thank you for engaging in this discussion.
I understand that it’s not impossible to have non-rated games; indeed, one can manually uncheck the option to make a game non-rated, so perhaps it’s something players should be more mindful of. I also recognize the value of having ratings.
My concern arises particularly in situations where games serve a teaching purpose. When such matches are rated, it might become challenging to find appropriate opponents, which could detract from the learning experience. For instructional games, having the rating option unchecked by default could improve usability.
If the advice is to be more cautious in these scenarios, then it might be something we have to accept. Please consider this as merely one perspective, and I hope it can be of some reference.
Changing the default option is one thing to consider, but I am strongly against disabling ranked friendly matches. People should have the option to play one-off ranked games (outside of automatch, tournaments, and ladders). I believe this feature is quite popular.
Why?
I think you’ve missed the point(though I didn’t think of it immediately either). You need to have some statistics to arrange players of similar strength for a game. Else it’s not called auto match anymore, it’s random match now.
