By “super fun” you mean “they get to stomp typically lower ranked players without having to actually throw down to lower ranks”.
1 Like
I didn’t read the novel, but I’m going to bet it doesn’t explain how two people playing at the same level are somehow different. Because they aren’t. Fix the placement/scoring system if it’s an issue. If it’s not, then everyone is where they should be. Smurfs included.
1 Like
I already explained this several times. It doesn’t seem to be reaching the gamer minds so here it goes again:
number of accounts > unique players
If you bloat the distribution with repeat accounts but label things by % players, you are imparting a false SR mapping. No person should be allowed to gain, lose, bank, trade, earn, dispose of duplicate amounts of SR without some zero-sum recalibration to the % players.
New players have a small disruption effect but that’s the cost of doing business. Alts impart ~O(n2) levels of disruption and create all kinds of systems effects we can maybe try to discuss next semester.
Until then please accept the knowledge.
And build a boat for the coming flood.
4 Likes
You can type another 1,000,000 words, but it doesn’t change the simple facts I’ve already laid out.
1 Like
Yes, thats exactly my point. Low ranked players wouldn’t like it at all because they’d just get curbstomped because of it. Imagine how much worse it would be if people didn’t even need a different account to derank? Every season they could get pushed back to 2500 and just climb back up to GM, and then get to do it allllll over again. MMR resets would be really dumb.
You’d be creating smurfs out of people who had 0 intentions of doing so.
3 Likes
You’re forgetting that a reset entails global placements. Actual placements. A reset is much different than re-seeding how you finished last season, or bringing a new account into a fully developed structure.
It doesn’t work like that. They would have to throw placements which tells you there is a smurf/alt problem that needs to be solved before you can truly solve rank structure.
A reset entails placements that form winner/loser brackets. It sieves and partitions players back to where they belong within a few matches, and the mismatch “disruption” decreases ~O(lg(N)) in the number of matches played.
So no, that GM would have to throw, placements would be fast and relatively painless. You would get back close to where you belong, and where you belong would be more calibrated for active/live 2021 playerbase.
Chaos wouldn’t suddenly exist where it never did before. And throwers/alts should be sparse encounters, uniform and balanced out in a large population of true mains (unless they have fundamental problems regarding the population and alt % they’re not telling us about).
Unless you’re changing something, than no, an MMR reset would place everyone gold. Do you not remember season 18?
1 Like
It would seed their first placement match at ~2350.
That is not “placing everyone gold.”
It takes ~14 matches to place N=10,000 players to within a 200sr resolution.
Try again.
They know but they prefer that new accounts money over the competitive experience
2 Likes
Not in Blizzards control though, you have to make a new profile on the Xbox.
1 Like
Blizzard can control it, though, by forcing linking to a Battle net account (just like you have to do on PC).
2 Likes
Dunno maybe there was something funky with it being on Xbox, no idea tbh. It’s a good job smurfing and alt accounts are 1000% less of a problem than people moan about ha.
1 Like
It’s a huge problem on console.
I know of some players who have dozens of accounts across all ranks.
Smurfing is the main reason why I’ve quit playing Competitive on Xbox because I just got sick of games being decided by which team had the better/non-throwing smurf(s).
5 Likes
Meh, I played on console for about a year, didn’t have any of the issues other people seem to see ‘every’ game. Or if I did it was extremely rare, so rare I can’t even remember any specific examples.
(I don’t know your rank)… But I find it very telling that on the forums the same group of people moan about smurfing and alt accounts, and a lot of them happen to be low ranked on the ladder… I’m just not willing to accept that’s a coincidence 
I’m convinced it’s people simply getting frustrated because they aren’t climbing. Understandable. But not the games fault overall.
1 Like
It’s not every game, but it’s still more often than not. It was just getting worse and worse with each passing season, too.
Last time I bothered to do placements (which was about 2-3 seasons ago now) I was Gold Tank, Platinum Support, and was never able to do my Damage placements since queue times were horrendous (this was pre-Priority Pass).
2 Likes
Fair enough, i’m mid-high gold too. I could count on one hand the amount of times I think i’ve been destroyed by a smurf.
Tbh in a totally opposite view. I LIKE playing against smurfs. I got very good at Halo 2 back in the day… Simply because I was lucky enough to play with MLG members in private games and it forced me to adjust It acts as a wake up call and an extreme warm up, tear the next game to pieces.
But hey, I like throwing myself in the deep end with everything I do.
I just think a lot of people use smurfing/alts as an excuse for not improving… Not saying that’s you specifically… But if someone never made it out of bronze… It’s 100% not the games fault.
2 Likes
Errrhmm…
What ladder?
You mean the OW Competitive Slip & Slide?
4 Likes
I need your S76 for placements like it’s 2018 again.
2 Likes
I don’t think it jives exactly the way you say, for a game that… could possibly have new accounts added from actual new players at any time. I do think it does dilute the pool, because of the reasons you mention. I mostly agree with you, and yes… many players have quit, but we also don’t know how many new players there actually are vs alt accounts.
I think it could balance out more with cross play between all platforms… because the numbers would be so big that the variance would probably be so small that it didn’t matter.
2 Likes
Yes it miscalibrates the ranking structure, reducing ladder and esports integrity. They can reset around this (temp min/max against rank mismatches).
A proposed solution is to paywall the whales out of comp. This offsets lost revenue from alts. You can also get households down to 1-2 accounts, you can force a per machine/license, SMS verify, and 2 hour cooldowns when you log out/on to hotswap a burner into comp.
In 5 years, they haven’t even taken a single effort towards reducing the impact of whales (players with >2 accounts). They’re just not keeping up with the times at this point.
4 Likes