- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
The real issue IMHO driving the need for the patching, is the *rankings* themselves.
Sure, have rankings as an invisible matchmaking aid -- to better match equal skilled players; but once you have visible numeric rankings, you change the entire culture to one of 'pursuit of stat', often by any means neccessary in the minds of kiddie pissants (or venemous adults upset over a loss of rank).
Once you remove visible rankings entirely, we can get the community back to one of 'playfing for fun'. Surely you can still play comptetively on a 'per game basis', but once you start carrying published 'rankings' across games -- you create the very social problem that cheating, glitching and overall bad behaviour is the *result of*.
I just dont thing the 'benefits' of having a 'ranking' system outweigh all the negatives it has created in the Live community.