> if I have a good match where I did better than expected, the system responds to that by putting me in a much harder game, where I'm expected to lose
No, the system puts you in an easier/harder game, where you're expected to play _with and against_ people of your skill level (including if you want to play strictly meta or if you want to play with only one hand or whatever).
I've been playing one of the most popular (for PC anyway) online game for 10+ years now and it only has skill-based matchmaking, in both ranked and casual mode. While plenty of people rail against the fairness of its matchmaking, I've rarely heard anything against the concept of skill-based matchmaking. It's the only kind of matchmaking that makes any sense to me. Why would I want to play against people that are way better/worse than me where I have no chance to have a good game either way?
While my friends no longer play it regularly, when they used to play we'd just... play however we wanted in casual mode. Why does it matter if some people are better/worse or meta/casual? You can play the most random stuff you want and you eventually get matched against people of your skill level. Or if you don't enjoy the current match for whatever reason (winning/losing too much, or trying too much/little), just go next and let matchmaking do its thing until you get games at your level, wherever that level happens to be.
If anything, your complaints sound to me like the developers care too little (rather than too much) about competitive balance/integrity across the entire playerbase.
The way this used to get solved, was that people hosted servers, and there was always an empty one lying around for people who wanted to play with their own group, or you could just go figure out if you liked the particular server community or not.
Then game companies took total control, made you play on their servers and introduced all these problems.
> when they used to play we'd just... play however we wanted in casual mode.
Well, when you're on a 5-person team on Counterstrike and your fifth player doesn't want to buy guns and even try to complete the objective, they just want to run around and knife chickens and hide in corners the whole game, it can be a little frustrating to the other 4 players.
Like, I get its casual, and you shouldn't necessarily expect everyone to always try as hard as they possibly can to win, but when one person not even trying to do the objective of the game it sours the experience for the other four.
But this is kind of true of any team-based game. Imagine playing Spades or Rummy where your teammate is just always purposefully playing junk and never even trying to play their hand properly. Or a baseball game where whenever the second baseman gets the ball he just throws it up in the air to himself and never bothers to get the runner out. Or baseketball where one person on the team just wants to try and spin the ball on their finger instead of playing the game. If you're trying to actually play the game, its going to be frustrating having a player like that on your team.
In causal its definitely forgivable to make mistakes and try something different, but if you're just in a casual match to sniff the proverbial flowers in the game you end up ruining the experience for your teammates. Ultimately in a team based match-made game all players really should at least try and observe the objectives of the match to some level, at least in my opinion.
No, the system puts you in an easier/harder game, where you're expected to play _with and against_ people of your skill level (including if you want to play strictly meta or if you want to play with only one hand or whatever).
I've been playing one of the most popular (for PC anyway) online game for 10+ years now and it only has skill-based matchmaking, in both ranked and casual mode. While plenty of people rail against the fairness of its matchmaking, I've rarely heard anything against the concept of skill-based matchmaking. It's the only kind of matchmaking that makes any sense to me. Why would I want to play against people that are way better/worse than me where I have no chance to have a good game either way?
While my friends no longer play it regularly, when they used to play we'd just... play however we wanted in casual mode. Why does it matter if some people are better/worse or meta/casual? You can play the most random stuff you want and you eventually get matched against people of your skill level. Or if you don't enjoy the current match for whatever reason (winning/losing too much, or trying too much/little), just go next and let matchmaking do its thing until you get games at your level, wherever that level happens to be.
If anything, your complaints sound to me like the developers care too little (rather than too much) about competitive balance/integrity across the entire playerbase.