Well, since leveling is bullshit anyway (everyone reaches max level at some point) and you can level up offline (squads) in ghosts, I guess "unranked" servers, how you described them would work. I've thought of this before, maybe half XP or something for unranked would work. Also that guidlines seem solid.
About the lag stuff, there quite a few high-pingers per game, but never more than 100-120ms ping. What area do you live in? I'm having no problems here in central europe. Of course "true" dedis would make it better though.
You note "hacker free" a lot of times. Have you played BO2? I personally have only experienced 2 obvious hackers in my playtime of >20days. And one of them was during free weekend. On the other hand, my friends and I have been accused of hacking countless times. So I'm all against server-admins kicking "potentially cheating" players. If a person cheats, the anti-cheat system should handle this, not a server admin because of a killcam or some players whining.
I have to add a think about parties: You say a lopsided game isn't fun. Of course it is stupid, but we still like to play in public as a Party, simply for the fact of not having to play with stupid teammates. I don't play solo anymore at all. If I ever have to play SnD again with half of the team trying to map-glitch, camp with a riot shield, or trying to trick-shot with a sniper, or play HQ/Hardpoint with someone sniping, or some dudes just not caring to play the objective at all, I'm gonna falcon-punch my monitor. Of course with dedis there is the chance that you get to know some people who play decent and constantly play with them on a server, but chances are also high that your favorite server's slots are taken by a knife-throwing-while-360-spinning-13-year-old.
Also the chances are high they are not even adding Elite, Clan Wars, etc. to the PC version, so we might end up playing Public again anyway.
As for a good Dedi-system, I'd add the following things:
- Party support: If you choin a server with a party, you'll get auto-balanced, but for the next round you'll be guaranteed to be in the same team. If someone leaves and auto-balance is required, non-party players will be switched first.
- Rulesets: For ranked servers have the option of 3 different rulesets: Core, Hardcore and Competitive (similar to BO2s Leauge rules, basically some MLG oriented selection of allowed stuff) and allow us to have different class loadouts per ruleset. They'd find a way to force admins to follow those rulesets though. It wouldn't even be neccessary to give Admins the option to kick anyone - Reserved slots (for clan members) would kick people automatically, and anti-cheat system handles the hackers, but I doubt anyone would rent a server when he can't kick idiots.
There's still a lot of things to discuss here, but I guess it isn't neccessary. I'd really like to have a proper, thought out system of dedicated servers, but not some half assed crap. No matter what system would be used, it can be done alot better than it was in previous games.