Ranking System

We were talking in the server today about the adverse effects of the ranking system, and thought it might be necessary to create a thread to discuss it. I’ve heard other people talk about how they hate the system and agree that it may be having more of a negative effect on the server than a positive one for the following reasons:

Negative:

1) People who are getting their a$$e$ kicked tend to leave quickly, not because they hate the map, not because they hate their team, but because they don’t want to continue losing their oh-so-valuable “points”.

2) It affects choices for joining teams, resulting in the “stacking” that we see so often. At the beginning of rounds, people will often join the team that has the better players so that they will not suffer from getting killed so much. On the other side, people may also join the other side so that they may kill the higher ranked players and get more points in the process. This often times leads to uneven teams.

3) It changes tactics and strategies. Players tend to be more afraid to rush because they don’t want to risk dying and losing points / losing out on getting points. This results in teams that aren’t able to form cooperative strategies in an attempt to maintain their rankings, giving us dull gameplay and sometimes leading to the one-sided matches (like on dust, assault, nuke, etc)

4) Players begin to identify other players by their ranking alone, using that to decide whom to listen to, who to follow, who to look out for, and who to target.

Positive:

1) Keeps people actively playing on the server because they want to try and reach #1 in the rankings.

2) Keeps the matches competitive (although sometimes it gets out of hand.)

3) Teaches people to value “not dying”, and urges them to make smarter tactical choices to save their own lives.

Those are just some of the main reasons that came up during discussions and observations. I apologize if this topic is being discussed somewhere else in the forums already, but I took a look around and couldn’t find an appropriate thread so I started my own. I’m not trying to troll the forums and start any arguments over that. I just decided to take action myself and post a thread concerning the ranking system and I’m curious as to what the admins opinions are on the subject.

So my questions are:

– Is there even a chance of having the ranking system removed?

– Are there other positive/negative reasons you can think of?

– Do you think implementing a rankings system that wasn’t based solely on points would be an option?

Thanks, guys.