"Wow you go online to look at your rank? Anyway I'm glad it's this way, I'm tired of ranked games whete everyone just disconnects if they think their gonna lose. I do wish it would tell us if somebody disconnected, instead of slipping in a CPU replacement. Nice touch, but I would rather search for another opponent."

Who cares if people go online to look at their ranking. Some people have a sense of achievement when they are at the top of leaderboards. No need to have a smug attitude.

As for people disconnecting, that has already been covered. Those who disconnect get an automatic loss while the opponent gets neither a win or loss. This way people won't play their friends and have them disconnect to beef up their ranking.

I think there are a lot of ways to keep things fair.

I'm am disappointed with the online implementation.

I think some people missing a crucial point about ranking systems-- aside from feeding egos, any system which gives an approximate rank of skill can be used to help match up players of more or less equal skill.
Without considering some approximation of skill (whether leaderboards, some "level" via an experience system like Blizzard's excellent battle.net, or any other system you want to think of) there's a high likelihood of a number of match ups being very imbalanced.

If you're one of the very bad or very good players you're likelihood of finding a suitable match randomly is quite low. For the enthusiasts of the game who are very good that's quite annoying. Sure the very good players can go through all sorts of extra hoops on their own like creating external rankings, but its still fundamentally an inconvenience.

Sidenote: there seems to be a lot of bashing people for wanting leaderboards in order to satisfy their egos but is that really so wrong? Look at all responses the SMG threads in the Nintendo forum to questions like: "how many stars do you have", "what was your completion time" and "how many deaths did you have". Is it really so wrong for players of fighting game to wonder "about how good am I" or "am I actually improving"? (given that historically the AI in Smash bros has been too poor to answer that question once a very low threshold of skill has been crossed.)

I'm sorry, but if you truly wanted some sense of acheivement and to play competetively you would know about SmashBoards, and would be within that circle. Just like the groups and organisations for playing DotA seriously, most competitive circles scoff at achievements made in "pubs" or public matches anyway.

There is nothing stopping you getting to know the more serious players of Smash and getting matches with them over forums.

Man, how old is Starcraft?  10 years now?  It gave you a loss for a disconnection!

If you are playing on an unreliable connection in this day and age, then please do yourself a favor and get it fixed.

Stats keep people playing.  It gives you a reason (among many others) to play.  Apparently no one is playing Calling All Cars anymore according to a poster above.  That sucks because it's a fun game.  I wanted stats within a few hours of playing online just because it's nice to keep track of what you've done.  I haven't played since because I got into Super Stardust HD which does keep stats that you can directly compare to your friends.  Great stuff. 

Again, it's not all about wanting to play better players. Read my other post on this thread.

Also, anyone that argues against online stats (not just leaderboards) can't also complain about getting a loss from a disconnect.  If you don't want stats what do you care?  It prevents people from quitting.

 Is this directed at me?  If so, why on earth did you assume I don't know about Smashboards ... I do, I contribute there much more than here, under the exact same username.

Regardless, I don't think the argument that Smashboards.com will continue organize tournaments rebuts my point. 

A matchmaking system improves the efficientcy with which a player can find a good match.  There won't always be a tournament going on that coincides with my desire to play a good game nor will my 64-freinds-codes friends always be online when I want to play.  (Or even if they are what if I want to play someone else?)  A ranking system would be really useful for reducing the amount of effort I need to put into finding a good game and increasing the availability of such games.  As such, I'm dissapointed one isn't planned and think the online experience would be better for myself and most people with one.

DotA as you bring up actually illustrates this.  For DotA Inhouse leagues are virtually as prevalent as actual clan matches.  These leagues make their own rankings/EXP/ladder systems.  This is all fine since DotA is a PC game (well, WC3 is) so you can have programs do all the laborious work of logging results and helping you find matches for you.  But since Smash bros is on a console you will have to go through a lot more work to get such a similar system running.  Sure there will still be organized tournaments, Smashbroshas always had those. However, the type of semi-competitive matches that requires little organizational effort which inhouse leagues provide in DotA probably won't be available. 

Furthermore, the main reasons why people in DotA scoff at the pubs are that pubs lack teamwork (its 5v5 for those who don't know what it is and public teams of randomly assembled people almost never have any organization or communication) and they contain mainly players of very little skill.  A built in matchmaking system at the public level would go a great way to alleviating these issues but since DotA is a custom map of WC this is clearly impossible.

Instead, in Smashbros we're going to see the same thing.  The elite will scoff at the those "pubbers" for being skilless noobs ignorant of the finer points of the game and the public players will hate those at Smashboards as cheap-bastards-with-no life-elitists (lord knows they already do).

If it was aimed at you I would've surely quoted you.

 Don't you have to first actually start kicking some?     lol