Hugh wrote:

SquintGnome wrote:

Not sure what to think of this yet.  If unranked public games were offered, then as was mentioned above, I would think there would be a tendency for the 'not good' players to play unranked games.  This would leave only the 'good' players left to play the ranked games.  One would think this would lead to lower rankings since these players would not win as high a percentage of these games - not sure if this is good or bad.  Also, the ranking would not indicate how good of a player you are on a certain board against all players who have played, only how good you are relative to the other good players. Again - not sure if this is good or bad. I am not sure if this makes the ranking more meaningless or more meaningfull?  Hmmm.....

I like this post. I view the rankings as something fun we do. It gives us some goals. They don't measure skill very precisely.

Pitting good players against other good players... Interesting idea! This is really why I support the idea. I was told by another Hex player that he doesn't start public games if I'm online. I get avoided. I don't like that. I want to play games against BOTH good and bad players. I think people would be generally be braver against good players after some practice games. (They should just be brave now, but they aren't!!)

Maybe have some limits to the # of non-ranked games someone could start/join to balance things out a bit.  For example, maybe standard players could join/start up to 20 non-ranked game a month & premium members would get twice that.

Ozyman wrote:

Hugh wrote:

SquintGnome wrote:

Not sure what to think of this yet.  If unranked public games were offered, then as was mentioned above, I would think there would be a tendency for the 'not good' players to play unranked games.  This would leave only the 'good' players left to play the ranked games.  One would think this would lead to lower rankings since these players would not win as high a percentage of these games - not sure if this is good or bad.  Also, the ranking would not indicate how good of a player you are on a certain board against all players who have played, only how good you are relative to the other good players. Again - not sure if this is good or bad. I am not sure if this makes the ranking more meaningless or more meaningfull?  Hmmm.....

I like this post. I view the rankings as something fun we do. It gives us some goals. They don't measure skill very precisely.

Pitting good players against other good players... Interesting idea! This is really why I support the idea. I was told by another Hex player that he doesn't start public games if I'm online. I get avoided. I don't like that. I want to play games against BOTH good and bad players. I think people would be generally be braver against good players after some practice games. (They should just be brave now, but they aren't!!)

Maybe have some limits to the # of non-ranked games someone could start/join to balance things out a bit.  For example, maybe standard players could join/start up to 20 non-ranked game a month & premium members would get twice that.

I don't agree with the underlying assumption.

Chess sites offer the ability to play ranked and unranked games.  In general most people choose to play ranked most of the time because they like knowing how good they are.  Even if it isn't great in absolute terms.

I tend to play unranked when I'm drinking, ranked when I'm not.

Just make it so that every game defaults to ranked.  Most won't change the default.

>Just make it so that every game defaults to ranked.  Most won't change the default.

Good point.  This is probably enough to keep most games ranked.

simplest solution is still the ability to open a private game up to anyone else that hasn't joined after all invited have joined/declined or a timeout if they haven't responded.

or - if not wanting to take the time to develop that,

then base it on something similar to DEV/Beta games? There's already a big D in the options, that can be expanded to D/B/U[nranked].

- - - -

this still doesn't address some ppl's concerns about abuse 

but we can hang this issue up next to those that we've done in the past - try it out and make a call later once we see how things go.

I prefer playing better and more competitive players and I think allowing people to learn without being ranked will go a long way to increasing the quality of the games we play ranked.

I also prefer more complex games that take time to learn which I believe should be done in an unranked environment vs ranked. 

For Tom I would propose nothing in ranking etc changes.  No statistics kept on unranked games except won, loss and history.

I would imagine quite a few of the better players would play my favorite game of Capitalism if they didn't have to see their Global Ranking scores get hurt in the necessary learning curve of 3-5 games plus looking at history.

RECON wrote:

I would imagine quite a few of the better players would play my favorite game of Capitalism if they didn't have to see their Global Ranking scores get hurt in the necessary learning curve of 3-5 games plus looking at history.

Of the boards I don't play on this site (but would like to), 100% of them fall into this category.

RECON wrote:

I prefer playing better and more competitive players and I think allowing people to learn without being ranked will go a long way to increasing the quality of the games we play ranked.

I also prefer more complex games that take time to learn which I believe should be done in an unranked environment vs ranked. 

For Tom I would propose nothing in ranking etc changes.  No statistics kept on unranked games except won, loss and history.

I would imagine quite a few of the better players would play my favorite game of Capitalism if they didn't have to see their Global Ranking scores get hurt in the necessary learning curve of 3-5 games plus looking at history.

Great argument!  +1

Something else just occurred to me:

Why do so many people join and then play less than 10 games before quitting?

Perhaps a lot of newbies get discouraged by their abysmal scores with no points.  They wonder how they will ever dig out of the hole they are in.

In ranked games how much "training" is anyone willing to do, it gives the newbies a feeling of not belonging and so why stay?

I have played Risk for a long, long time.  My son got me started on Warfish where I had fair success.  Just as here I had a game I mastered and scored higher than anyone else.  When I came to Wargear I lost my first 13 out of 16.  But, I wasn't discouraged I just needed to adjust to the random number generator (initially I couldn't believe how many I could lose, ha ha) and I believe the higher quality of player.  I didn't get any offers of help  but neither did I ask for many.  I think experienced players would be willing to help newbies in UN ranked games, I would.  Also, almost NO competitive people I have ever met DON'T care about their score at whatever the game is.  So, unranked games could increase the # of better players and I think we all would enjoy that.

Agreed with all that was said. Go for non-ranked public games.

I love this suggestion.