Add a new tier between Exceptional and Experienced

[Water]

Ranks don't really get satisfying to climb until you hit Expert in my opinion (however that may have just been because i started when expert wasnt all that hard to get). And if there is an imbalance in chat ranks like OP is describing, then seeing you need to double your points or whatever to get to the next chat rank is much more demotivating than there just being an extra one in the middle.

Yes it's probably because you started when expert wasn't hard to get. I'm almost Expert now but I definitely enjoyed climbing up to this point. I think that with Scotty's idea it'll make things a lot more fluid when ranking up. You'd get constant satisfaction instead of this weird disconnect when you hit experienced. I also think more importantly it'll make the bottom 4 ranks more meaningful as new players will stay at each one longer, so progressing for them will be more satisfying and more indicative of improvement.

I just would like to clarify that we can't look at CS:GO ranks in the same way like we would look at CS:S ranks, just saying. In CS:GO I believe you get a few thousands points for g1s on maps like mesa, aircontrol, leet and stuff. And g1s on these maps are like top 1k players or so, so it really isn't hard at all to get - every Exceptional player should be able to get top 1k on any tier 1 map, right? So when Experienced player's skill hits the level of getting g1's on tier 1 maps he will get Exceptional in no time.
To sum up what I said, in CS:GO you get way more points for completing maps because of a really big playerbase AND need less points to rankup than in CS:S because of less good players. Well, even I was Master in CS:GO after like a week of a little tier 1-3 grind, I think I had like 60 completions back then. I don't really play on CS:GO for like over half a year and I believe I'm still top 25 and that makes me think that ranking up is so easy in CS:GO that it's especially not needed, if ever, I would add another rank for CS:S.

And yeah, I kind of agree Juxtapo, I remember when I hit Expert in CS:S ~2 years ago or so and that was the most satisfying so far, but Exceptional was the first big rank gap that made it really satisfying to get too, and then there was Hotshot that no one really cares about.

And Scotty's double scaling points ranks idea is pretty good, it would make less big gaps between ranks in CS:GO.

I strongly disagree with the notion that when you get your first g1 you climb quickly. In my own experience and from what I've seen the average player usually gets a few g1's ends up around 8k points and then slows down considerably. I think this is due to the daunting and annoying grind ahead of them. At least for me g1's on t1 maps are really boring to get, so much so that I did t4's before I even felt the need to grind out g1's. And yes, I also think Scotty's double scaling points is a great idea.

Additionally, your own experience with CS:GO ranks don't reflect that of new players. You got master in 60 completions because you were already good at surfing. You were basically smurfing in a game you already mastered. That's true in any game ever, which doesn't equate to how difficult it is to reach that point for a new player.