So are we to assume his alt is only used for quickplay? That would be convenient. Since his profile is private, I’m not making that assumption. OP is complaining about alts, but uses one himself. I have an alt too, but I’ve used it less than OP has used his…
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In this case, we can say that the ‘problem’ is people using alt accounts for boosting/smurfing, which is wrong. But, if they use those alt accounts to play to the best of their ability on the heroes they choose, their stats will not cause this to happen. Basically, alt accounts aren’t inherently wrong, and if used properly don’t cause issues with the ladder, but OP is claiming that all alt accounts cause problems with the ladder, regardless of how they’re used.
I am not a sports person… all of this goes 100% over my head.
Like I say, not a sports person… but I’m pretty sure overwatch ranking system doesn’t work like a tournament? It’s not a case of ‘I have to beat x number of accounts to win’, it’s more like… ‘my win/loss ratio has to be positive to allow me to continue to climb’. The number of accounts has no effect on this.
An alt account isn’t always a smurf account though… if they use the account to play to the best of their ability on the heroes they choose, the stats should line up. You can’t pretend that every alt account magically has higher stats. Smurf accounts? Yes, bad, I agree. Alt accounts? Not inherently a problem if used for the right reasons.
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Alts increase the amount of disposable SR that is in circulation (active, kinetic) as well as what is banked (inactive, potential). The scaling is geometric, triangular (N(N-1)/2). Each alt further scales your ladder share.
With alts, the rewards (SR changes) won’t be proportional to the playerbase, and the natural laddering mobility will be wrong. They’re not changing SR rewards based on alt count. SR is supposed to reward by win/loss, but there is (geometrically) more win/loss mass to go around (than a rank ought to have) when you have alts.
If it’s not controlled, and kept in check via some % by rank distribution, corrections occur, and people with fewer accounts suffer. The strategy in this constant-sum reward structure is full-on pay-to-win. You buy more chances to pump-and-dump the contest.
Alts are literally pay-to-win, and the more you have, the more of the ladder you control, and the more SR you can take/hold/control. Even if you’re never playing more than one account at a time.
You and I may not agree on much, but I agree with you 100% on this.
I know of one player on Xbox who has more than 20 accounts spread across ranks from Bronze to Masters.
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Don’t worry it will be F2P soon 
Yes this did happen. I was content on my relatively mid to high silver then one season was bumped right to high bronze while I believe I had gotten much much better.
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I already acknowledged that. I said it’s an issue for t500 but it literally doesn’t effect any of the other ranks including GM because there’s no cap or limit to account quantity in any other rank.
OP thinks people can’t climb because there’s alt accounts in GM and they somehow thinks that raises the difficulty for lower ranked players to climb or they think the games make it harder for them to climb or something like that
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In a perfect world , yes , I agree 100% . However , a lot of players have ego issues , if they are playing on an alt account and feel like they’ve been "disrespected " . They will switch to their main character, and in a lot of lower ranked games , will decimate everyone. I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
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Didn’t get better at the rate the community did in that case. Everyone improves over time.
Also for any silver players here is it possible to smurf in bronze? I’m curious what the skill gap is.
A lot of people notice the drop due to the 50K accounts given away by OWL, and the sale and “Free Weekend” accounts it gave birth to all at once. It’s interesting how many people quoted a 200 SR drop.
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No one I knew had that issue so im wondering if it affected only a certain rank of people.
Also I find it strange that people find 200sr to be a ‘big’ drop in the first place? In a single season, ive had my SR sway up to 700sr. I’ve gone up 300sr with placements and also down 300sr. 200sr really isnt that big of a shock is it? Do people seriously stay stagnant and barely move 200sr in a season or am i the odd one out
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Possibly, I didn’t drop that much but it seemed like in general, but I (stupidly) did some placements last weekend - weekend+end of season - what was I thinking. I’d say a fall seemed to push people in mid-Plat down so I am assuming fall from Diamond (which I have heard a number of people report) seems to have occured…
oof thats the worst
Thats when you get the absolute worst games/teammates (rip sr)
That is interesting. I believe i was mid-masters at the time and my sr didnt budge? I wonder if its due to the fact Blizzard changed something in their matchmaker around the same time? They were trying to fix queue speeds iirc
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200SR was roughly the minimum drop most players noticed. I have heard some players had 600SR drop between those 2 seasons.
Adds proof to OP.
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That would not surprise me at all, in fact it would make a lot of sense, and it also correlates to the introduction of passes… can’t forget that… I am too old to ever see Masters (55), my best hope is to get into Diamond one day, been a few hundred SR from it, but never got in (yet).
Hey man you might want to reread this post. You are making claims without evidence. PBSR will directly effect rating gain or loss and is based off all accounts that played that season not just ones that are currently online.
PBSR was removed for diamond+ (or the majority of it was). You get between 21-27 for a win, and lose the same range on a loss. The only exceptions are if you haven’t played in a very long time, had a leaver, left the game and returned, or you’re a new account and doing your first 100 games. But usually 22-24 is the most common.
Blizzard removed it because people were climbing with negative winrates (torb one tricks getting to GM with a 40% winrate)
Now the ranks below diamond still have PBSR but it was still toned down. They keep PBSR in lowerranks to help them climb (especially since good teammates are harder to come by).
This is all stuff the Dev team told us.
Okay but that isn’t directly correlated to having alt accounts (assuming they’re all the same SR)?
From what has been explained to me, how much SR you lose or gain (below diamond), is partially taken by comparing your stats to the average stats of players in your rank.
Even if its still taking into consideration all the ‘alt’ accounts being played, it doesn’t really do much. If someone has 6 accounts in GM, its still got the same average stats as other GM accounts. The only time this would change is if someone bought a ‘boosted’ account and lowered the average stats of GM by playing poorly (and you would need 50% + of the rank to be boosted in order for this to really be noticeable).
As for plats, (or lower ranks in general) if everyone had 6 plat accounts, it wouldn’t really do anything because each plat player would still have plat stats. Now im assuming people are worried about ‘smurfs’ affecting their ranks and raising the averages, thus meaning they get less ‘bonus’ sr for performing well… but this also isn’t as big of a problem as people think. Especially since blizzard lowered the effects of PBSR.
People tend to think there’s smurfs in every single game and this couldn’t be further from the truth. I say this as someone who climbed from gold to the highranks. Yes there will be smurfs, but I only ever came across them in less than 5% of my games and they were quite clearly dedicated to climbing as fast as possible (and thus barely spent any time in the lower ranks). A lot of people see a low lvl account and scream ‘smurf’ assuming its a masters+ player. But really thats like… assuming the top 5% of the games population is in 100% of your games despite low ranks making up 85%+ of the games population. It’s comical.
And even if the average stats were raised (lets just say over 60% of your games miraculously had masters+ smurfs despite being impossible due to rank population), then you still would be able to climb. Like blizz said, they reduced pbsr and borderline removed it for diamond +
Nothing is holding anyone back from climbing. And if you really need pbsr crumbs to climb, then you probably don’t deserve to climb in the first place
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yep. still waiting for someone with hard evidence to prove this wrong.
Nice conclusion. Is that really the best anyone can do? The entire “system is fine” camp brings 0 math to the table, and says “BuT yOu CaN sTiLL CliMb” ?
Alts change rank data that much is for sure. This miscalibrates SR rewards because there is an incorrect amount of SR distribution (mass per region of the ladder). This is using the most unrealistic, “best case scenario”: when 100% of alts are all magically clones of their main, with no gameplay or rank disparity. These “perfect alts” still throw off the SR numbers the way resistors in parallel change a circuit’s bahaviour differently than in series. Even if operated on independently.
The reality is a significant % of those alts end up being smurfs, which makes matters far worse (we can’t say how much because no data - but we can know how the algebra scales for whatever numbers you plug in).
Alts do not zero-sum with eachother, they constant-sum. They’re able to juggle SR changes, bank them, and release them at a later date. They’re able to do that in 3+ ladder categories, with an initial currency of ~7000sr (conservatively). That’s a ton of inflation and diversification, and equates to several matches disrupted for every new entrant.
Eventually, the equilibrium strategy for this constant-sum actioning is to drop-out (the poor drop out with 1 accnt being unable to compete or being so disrupted they distrust the system and it’s designers). The rich pay-to-win and reap the spoils of multi-account min/maxing.
The amount “laddering power” you gain per alt grows geometrically. There is no defending a system that doesn’t periodically reset, correct itself, or recalibrate around them.
“You can still climb” is a qualitative tautology. Of course you can still be alive when you’re parched for thirst out in the desert behind Jeff’s ranch. But it’s wrong, unfair, and broken.
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Meh I don’t think so