StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

StarCraft II's multiplayer match-making is complete garbage. At least, as far as I can tell. Not that I mind terribly -- being neither great nor terrible at StarCraft, I'm fine with winning against awful players and losing to skilled ones. But it's extremely clear from examining my competitors' rankings that Battle.net isn't trying very hard to find comparably-ranked opponents for me.

This is probably because, at a fundamental level, the ranking system is broken. Your initial rank is determined by five "placement" matches, and you have individual rankings in the 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 categories. But the rub is, you also have separate rankings for each team configuration you play in. If you play 2v2 teamed with Friend A four times, then play 2v2 teamed with Friend B four times, you still won't have a 2v2 ranking, period.

This makes sense from a precision standpoint: the ranking applies to your team's collective ability. But it also means that, unless you have a dedicated regular team, your ranking is basically meaningless. Not to mention, requiring five games in the same team set-up before getting any kind of ranking means that casual players will probably never get one at all.

Like I said, it's fine for me because I feel like I'm pretty much in the middle of the ability spectrum. And it's probably also fine for serious competitive players, assuming that they have high rankings, because they play enough to be placed against foes of similar standing. But if Blizzard wanted the random matchmaking system to be accessible to everyone, I'm pretty sure they failed.

Anyway. It's still a super-fun strategy game, even when I'm losing. Unless it's to a cannon rush. In which case: fuck you.

Progress: Finished the campaign on Normal