Every alt corrupts the ladder

Competitive Discussion
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Every single one. Whether smurfing or not. Whether intending to, or not. Repeat counts disrupt the fidelity of your SR curve, which is supposed to track players by % skill distribution.

To be even more specific: every single alt account adds disruption on the non-robust metrics. 1 of them, 10 of them, N=10,000 of them. The more you inject, the worse it gets. Always. This is bad for your ladder and shams away your esport (but not your $$$$).

Every single alt will monotonically deteriorate rank/ladder integrity - i.e. what SR actually measures, how it scales, and how correct it is. Whether it tries to or not. You can’t have people taking multiple IQ tests without replacement. It throws off the sampling, and makes ranking incorrect. The overall shape of the curve doesn’t necessarily have to ‘change’ to augment disparities in the indexing structure.

There is no need for data, personal experience, or annecdotes here. We can settle it with math. Show me with math how alts don’t ruin the meaning of SR and I’ll show you bad math :stuck_out_tongue:

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Exactly this.

This is why there was that HUGE noticeable SR movement where players got dropped down 200SR or more from one season to the next, even though nothing changed in their performance. Some players in this forum have indicated where they were being placed at lets say low diamond, got placed in mid to low Platinum. Mid Gold Players getting played in mid to low Silver. And this is happening at 200SR or greater within their normal SR starting range.

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Bronze accounts are a dime a dozen right now. Whatever happened to 7% of the population being bronze? Same goes for Diamond. There is a guy on these forums with 9+ accounts parked at the Plat/Diamond interface (they are mid/high diamond).

Talk about gatekeeping? Queue during sparse hours and literally snipe someone’s progression into oblivion. Stay plat because I parked my accounts first. Park several of them in bronze? Easy wintrade/gatekeep down below.

Imagine taking an IQ test several times over. But the government keeps registering them as unique individuals. Do your best? Fine we have a bunch more 140s then we should in the population. Randomly drift or throw? The curve is no longer correct.

SR is supposed to represent rarity. Those fancy ranked pixels are supposed to come with a certifiable ‘% of people’ associated with them. Alts take all that away, further compounding the competitive sham.

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This literally never happened.

If there was ever a point where people dropped massively, it was around the time pro-play became big and people had access to the vods/strats. Good players utilized the strats and techniques they saw (metas, advantages/etc) and those players climbed. A large portion of the population in the game climbed. Another portion got waaaay better but didn’t budge (because everyone else got better too) , and the people who didn’t improve found themselves much worse than the rank they used to belong in.

The ‘masters’ rank, used to be the equivelant of like… plat skill level back in the day. Even jeff said nearly the entire playerbase improved.

So where on earth are you making these statistics and ‘facts’ up from? Because thats not how any ranking works. You’re making up a narrative to prove a fake point.

If some nascar racer decides to compete in a race 1000 times in 1000 different cars, and get a 5min track-record each time, it doesn’t change the fact he’s in the top 1% of racers. Doesn’t matter how many cars he drives, theres only one of him ever competing at one time. Meaning the amount of racers at the top-rated speeds is… still 1%.
Him competing a dozen times in different cars, doesn’t make it any easier for the slow-drivers to achieve the same time. It doesn’t stop them from improving their own time. It doesn’t stop them from competing. And it most certainly doesn’t randomly change the race requirements.

You seem to forget overwatch’s engine is not conscious. It doesn’t randomly make changes to its algorithm just because theres 1billion dead accounts in GM that never get played.

The game tries to give each team a 50% chance of winning by giving each side equal sr average. IF one player constantly overperforms, they win and get more SR and climb.
The amount of accounts at (any)sr don’t get factored into the matchmaking or change how easy or hard it is to climb. If you win more than you lose, you climb. End of story.

If overwatch really gave a damn about ‘alt accounts clogging high ranks’ (they dont because it literally doesn’t do anything), then they’d bring back decay.

HOWEVER, like i said… even if theres a billion unplayed accounts in GM, that changes nothing because only 1% of people playing at any one-time are at the skill level to be at that rank. The amount of alts means nothing lol

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It’s how rankings work.

He would be top 1% of racers but his races wouldn’t account for this. This top 1% race time would be disproportionally represented, i.e. showing up more than 1% of the time.

If you plotted the race times you wouldn’t get your 1% anymore, because this “alt” registered 1% data more than once.

Well it does, because those “GM pixels” are no longer accounting for a 1% occurence. They’re a dime a dozen. The ranks don’t match the rarity, which means it doesn’t match the % skill distribution. If you’re not matching the rarity, you’re not correctly representing the skill level. Meaning SR becomes meaningless and all bets are off about what it truly represents in terms of playerbase.

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Wrong, this literally happened in December 2020 between season.

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I don’t know what you’re getting at here… you’re acting like there’s a limit to the number of people allowed in a rank, and extra accounts prevent other people from reaching that rank. That’s… not how the game works.

No matter how many people have alt accounts, if you win, you still gain sr, and can still rank up. If you lose, you will still lose sr and rank down. People can’t play on several alts at once, therefore you will only potentially be facing them once.

The only thing it might alter is how sr is spread (eg. a certain % of people believed to be in masters) but that doesn’t actually change anything from the perspective of someone playing or trying to achieve that rank. The game doesn’t suddenly decided ‘oh no we have too many people in masters, better make some people lose’. All it effects is how ‘special’ you feel for being in a rank.

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There isn’t an official limit, but the labels and ranks get watered down. It corrupts the ladder ranks, because you’re not measuring and rewarding people by % skill rarity anymore. Every alt contributes to the mess and misrepresentation.

You can’t even trust rank-based data anymore if every other match features an alt. Too much double dipping the numbers.

It does more than that. It makes the rank percentiles meaningless and the entire metric becomes corrupt. Rank ends up being an account-based no-reset winrate, not an indicator of skill, ability, selectivity, or exclusivity. But SR was already a joke because of other reasons (like rigging and using MMR to ship matches fedback by SR).

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Ah yes, so you don’t feel as ‘special’ as you want to anymore? Poor thing.

I think you’re exaggerating. The only thing I can see an argument against is people having several accounts in ‘top 500’ since that does actually prevent other people from achieving a rank. Most people aren’t using several accounts every season all playing at their top skill level. The biggest reason people have alt account is either to play heroes they’re less skilled at/learning, or to smurf and stomp lower levels. Neither of those reasons are likely to cause a big issue.

On top of which, there will still be the same number of people in a rank then, even if the stats say there’s more, wouldn’t there?

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Rank should feel deserved. You fought for it and earned it. Except now it’s watered down by years and years of alts and duplicates? Every rank is disrupted in this way. If someone has multiple accounts in a rank, they are absolutely disrupting the data, the rank % breakdown, etc. Not to mention all the gatekeeping, wintrading, and disruption they can possibly invoke.

Why bother work for it if it’s just a no-reset number that doesn’t map to % players by skill? Why bother with laddering if the ranks don’t correspond to correctly achievable labels?

Alts don’t have to be smurfs to incurr rank disruption. That is the point of this thead. They ruin what ranks/SR stand for, and what the ladder represents.

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If you want to bring the ‘years and years’ thing into it as a factor, remember that there’s years and years of old, abandoned accounts. The number of active alts isn’t likely to grow exponentially, but should level out around the same.

Look… if you need the game to tell you ‘your super special because your in this %’ for rank to feel rewarding, then you’re probably not playing ranked for the right reasons. Also, more accounts in a certain rank doesn’t make it less valuable… I don’t know how best to explain this to you… let me give it a shot.

Person A: I’m in diamond!
Person B: I’m also in diamond!
The game: You’re in the top 10%!

But now…

Person A: I’m in diamond!
Person A’s alt: I’m in diamond!
Person B: I’m also in diamond!
Person B’s alt: I’m also in diamond!
The game: You’re in the top 12%!

You: Now the game isn’t telling me I’m in the top 10% anymore and I’m mad despite there still being the same number of people in this rank, therefore meaning the rank still has the same value.

My point being… do you really need a special number to tell you how special you are for your rank to feel valuable, when critical thinking should tell you the value hasn’t changed? To me, comp is about climbing, and focusing on improving your skills. Treating it like some exclusive rank club isn’t what it’s for.

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What… this is the wackiest logic ive ever heard

So theres thousands of dead accounts in GM (alt accounts, forgotten accounts, people left the game, accounts up for sale, etc). What does it matter? Only 1% of the players in the game actually have the skill level to play in that rank. If that 1 person has 6 accounts, it doesn’t change the actual physical population of that rank and doesn’t change the amount of GMs in that rank at any one time.

THE ONLY TIME this matters is t500 where people reach the rank and camp it. Theres no limit for GM, masters, or below. Just t500. Because theres literally a numerical value on how many can be that rank.

No such thing outside t500. No one’s holding anyone back from reaching a higher rank.

This has nothing to do with rank, and rather a poor ban system by blizzard.

My god, listen to yourself.

The 1% of people with a dozen alts in GM are skilled. But there’s still only 1% of the games population in that rank. It doesn’t matter how many accounts are there. The ACTUAL amount of players does not change.

If a gold player grinds to GM, then good for them.
The only difference between the player who ‘grinded from gold with 1 account to GM’, and the player ‘who grinded to GM with 6 accounts’… is literally just the amount of accounts they own.

Repeat after me:
ALT ACCOUNTS DO NOT ACTUALLY CHANGE THE POPULATION OF EACH RANK. Because they’re not all being played on at the same time. Its still only the 1% in GM who have GM accounts. Its STILL impressive to reach GM and grind your way out of lower ranks.

Just because some random streamer successfully climbed (with their skill) 7 times to GM, does not make it any less impressive for that random gold player to climb up there too.

Then just say you hate smurfs, and hate playing against people who are leveling up alt accounts.
Admit that you think its holding you back (its not).
Making up stuff to prove a point takes credibility from you.

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People perhaps, accounts no.

If I have an IQ in the top 1%, but go and write the test over and over and over. Then even placing identical scores, the curve is going to drift. Even if I normally distribute my alts, I’m throwing the count off. Someone looking at the population data, to see where they fall, is going to see 140-something as a much more common occurence. It’s going to belittle the other scores and make the whole curve a joke. This applies to similar resampling procedures (alts, a superset of smurfs).

Every duplicate on the ladder ruins the data. It ruins the % by rank, which is what SR is fundamentally supposed to measure. It’s capturing the competitive standings, a snapshot of the ecosystem, and what the laddering process is suppsoed to be- as a skill rating vs. a population.

That’s the point of this thread. Whether or not you think alts are fine or what you think about SR is irrelevant here. SR as a metric becomes a joke, and alts help it be more of a joke.

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But ranked really isn’t about ‘what special % am I in’ because rank isn’t calculated by the number of people in it. It’s like… say you take a test, and score 89%… and that puts you in the top 10% of people who took the test… but then someone takes the test repeatedly, and the data shifts to misrepresent what % this is so your now in the ‘top 20%’. You know this to be false, so how well you did isn’t less special.

Now… rather than focusing on the answers that you got wrong, and how to improve so that you get a better score, you get obsessed with complaining about this person who took the test multiple times… you don’t care what your score is, it only has value if they give you a special badge telling you your in a certain %.

Do you see my point?

You still have your rank, no matter how many alts there are. You know your rank is still valuable even if it’s not quite shown perfectly in the data. Now… do you focus your attention in improving your gameplay, or complain about alts making you feel less special?

Personally I have several alts because role-q wasn’t always a thing, and my actual gameplay wasn’t as skilled across all roles. I’ve been doing a bit of work recently on climbing one of my alts up to diamond for the third (or is it fourth?) time (only one I’m playing comp on this season). Mostly it’s just cos my anxiety gets bad sometimes, and I like to remind myself I deserve my rank by proving it to myself. No matter how many people are in diamond, it still feels special to me because it’s something I put the time in to achieve. It’s value isn’t tied to how ‘exclusive’ it supposedly is, but the skill level of others with that rank.

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It will change winrates, pickrates, and will misrepresent a bunch of rank-based data. Because you’re 6x dipping.

Good. Time for a reset to renormalize things.

Hahah, nope. All of the above is factually wrong.

Alts change the number of accounts you must potentially surmount on your climb. Each alt artificially inflates the disposable SR (3x, per role). It goes from zero-sum to constant-sum. Each of them buffers the natural progression by inflating the amount of disposable SR that can be gained/lost.

A 1-account player navigating a ladder of alts is at a huge numerical disadvantage. Nevermind the rigging or the fact that alts make SR meaningless.

Defending an alt-infested ladder without any math is amateur-hour damage control.

True.

Yes.

You do, but it’s less meaningful. It’s a “corrupted” rank, which is the point I’m making.

And alts change the number of accounts you should be facing on your way up/down. They provide a disproportionate amount of gate-sizing, points-of-contact, and potential SR to swim through on a rank change. This backpressure disrupts the laddering experience and makes it less fair, and less correct.

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I… don’t think you actually see my point. It’s not less meaningful, because as wibble pointed out, the same number of people (not accounts) are in it. The only difference is some website telling you what % this rank is. The rank has vale, the % doesn’t.

No, they’re right… the same number of physically people are in that rank, no matter how many accounts they hold in that rank.

Nope. You’re only going to face them on one account at a time, so stop looking at it like ‘number of accounts I must play better than’ and look at it like it actually is, ‘number of people I must play better than’. Besides which, what really matters is if you win the match or lose the match… the number of alts people have in no way effects this. Have a positive win ratio? You will climb. Have a negative win ratio? You will fall. Getting about an even split? Chances are you’re around the rank you should be.

Uh… how? I’d say the person with alts is at a disadvantage if anything, since they’ve split their time… if you have a positive win ratio, and you spend it all on one account, that account will be at a higher rank that several accounts that start at the same sr and the person splits the same amount of time between.

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Its actually not. Quit making excuses for your inability to climb.

I did the climb from low gold to GM. NOTHING (and i mean nothing) but your mindset is holding you back from climbing. Accept it.

It doesn’t matter how many accounts are in a rank because the actual player-count does NOT change.

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Nope. You’re not getting the SR discrepancy and the effects alts have on laddering.

Alts inflate the ranks and bloat the ladder. They inject a disproporationate amount of disposable SR, which waters down the zero-sum mapping towards % by rank. It imparts numerical side effects. Whether or not you can only face one player per alt at a time.

The result is more wins/losses for players to sift through, on the whole. More matches and grind-throughs, on the whole, and more ‘fake population’ then you should potentially be expected to encounter for said rank.

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Look… I’ve climbed to diamond several times. And wibble has climbed from gold to masters. If your mad cos your not the rank you want to be, chances are it’s your own gameplay holding you back (99% of the time when people act as if they would be GM if not for the smurfs you watch their gameplay and their entire team is dead and the decide to solo grav the enemy Rein… that’s an exaggeration, point is there’s clear mistakes and things they could improve on).

And, as we have already clarified, alts don’t make a rank less special. So… you’ve got no real point here.

Alts do not significantly effect peoples rank on the ladder. Accept it. Move on.

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Look, I get how you focused on improving in this game instead of doing math. I really do. But the truth is that alts ruin ladder integrity because they water down the amount of disposable SR per rank - which a ladder needs to function if SR number is to represent a meaningful percentile indicator.

Every single alt affects SR as a measure of true rank.

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