It’s not “ignorant”, its the easiest way to stem the impact of too many alts (something incidentally Blizz has acknowledged is a problem).
If a player or account is not active, there is no real harm in letting it decay because a true “Smurf” ie someone yo-yoing up and down is playing the account; I’d rather them decay not ruining my games and freeing up space in a tier than literally pulling others down with them. “Smurfing” isn’t a problem in reality because accounts drastically affected by SR/MMR Decay would not be played that often or all which is the entire point.
All I really hear on this is always this: lemme camp on my alts which casually come in during a season and do a few placements and sit. That literally just swings the door wide for the problem. Seriously, It’s good enough for Diamond+, it should be applied lower down too.
For those who do not know the current system applied to Diamond + is:
“Players in the tiers of Diamond, Master, and Grandmaster are subject to rating decay. The players who are in those tiers are asked to play at least 5 matches within 168 hours (7 days).”
Asking for 5 matches to stem decay on an account is not Draconian in the slightest.
First of all, this hasn’t been a thing since the implementation of RQ. There is currently no decay.
It is ignorant, because by “solving this problem” (you still haven’t shown that it is), you create another one which arguably has more negative impact on ladder experience.
But then smurfs will ruin your matches, which have to rank up their accounts because they decayed. You assume that with decay, no one would play on alt accounts which is not the case.
Back when decay was still in the game, people still played on different accounts.
Like I said, i have 12 Accounts. The reason why I have that many is because they always end up in a SR where I can’t play with friends anymore. So instead of throwing, i buy a new one. Having such a decay system would be perfect for me, because I could just rotate playing on each account and when one is to high, i can swap on one that decayed. This way I could infinitely Smurf without any effort.
nah bro, i literally cannot make it any more clear. and the fact this individual and many others on these forums cant understand that is not my issue. it is theirs. i cant explain it any clearer.
just because someone claims they spend time “learning mmr/sr elo” system, without the source code behind their statement its just false.
500 spots are available in the TOP TIER OF THIS GAME. that is only place where alts will matter.
If it states that there is currently SR decay, then yes it’s wrong.
The implementation of Sr decay would be good for me personally because I could always play with my friends without having to worry about Sr. However, I don’t put my personal needs over that of the community.
And I explained very clearly how alts will still be used and smurfing will be infinitely easier. Creating a much worse problem than the problem you are trying to solve (which, again, you haven’t even shown to be a problem).
Don’t know what that means.
He’s right. Rank distribution are percental. If I create a Smurf, it will increase the absolute number of accounts allowed in every rank. Top500 is a fixed number.
Even if it’s wrong, the merits of Decay still stand. I am working on the model now, will post it shortly. OTOH,
Alts will always be there, Smurfs will be “easier” but the net impact is they won’t have as many accounts… do you not see the distinction here? And FWIW, the rate of decay isn’t Draconian.
You are not seeing it. When someone has 2 alts, he can just smurf on one account, while the other decays. Once the 2nd alt is decayed to a low enough point, you can switch to that one while the other one decays again. This would be very bad, lol
That’s literally not a fact though. You
perhaps have an assumption that it affects one area more than the other. But all you have is your assumption in this case you can’t actually argue against what he’s saying when you don’t have anything greater than the equal opinion which you’re arguing against.
Because what is t500 if not just another rank within a rank and just like it makes it harder for you to progress or get a spot on the ladder it makes it harder for anyone in a different Sr to get higher in Sr. In both cases you are both being limited or made the situation is made harder. You’re seeing the exact same thing done in two separate ways.
Also anything above Diamond doesn’t have pbsr. Meaning you can’t get penalized Sr and you will always gain a standard amount you were supposed to gain. Alt accounts can saturate the average statistics for that rank make it harder to get the normal Sr. A penalty you do not see it in the higher ladder. At least in the ladder your wins count for the full win and your losses count for the equal same losses.
I see it 100%. The point still stands: there is a window in time for someone to move up and again, I am not saying SR decay will end alting or Smurfing. It certainly won’t. What it will do is stem the problem of someone having say 8 alts as opposed to four. In fact, one could easily argue SR decay is a very good system because it also stops the problem of intentional deranking affecting other players across time.
The number of accounts a player possesses doesn’t matter and I literally gave you an example where I did the math. Tell me where it doesn’t work out and we’ll go from there.
No you can’t argue that because you can Smurf as much as you want without effort and destroy low ranked players. Right now you actually have to invest time in throwing matches for HOURS to derank, whereas in your proposed system i could just do it for free without limit.
It also doesn’t make a difference if there is a thrower on your team or a Smurf stomping your team. Literally the same outcome. Only that smurfs in your system would be much more frequent than throwers are now. Your argument doesn’t hold and literally nothing speaks for your change.
Why? There is no need for generating more accounts to play down. Even if someone creates 10 accounts, the goal is they won’t play them all more - there is only limited time.
One more time - you only have an equal amount of time to play X number of accounts.
You are assuming that by a system which invokes SR decay, this opens the door to more Smurfing because they don’t have to spend time actively de-ranking but just playing up at least that is what it seems you are saying. This ignores two things:
intentional de-ranking unfairly punishes players pulling their SR down (but also unfairly rewards the opposing team), then upward ranking Smurfs then hit them again, its a double whammy for at least half the players. Passive de-ranking at least removes one of these two effects. Its a bit of a wash either way since its a 50/50 chance over time between gaining and losing SR due to a Smurf, but regardless it creates instability and loss of resolution for players. Three games of being on the wrong side of Smurfs can devastate someone’s MMR requiring 3x as many wins to overcome. That’s just bad.
With players who play consistently and are more properly ranked, the time spent by someone to move a de-ranked account up then requires more time to get to the same MMR/SR because now they have to overcome the weighting of MMR/SR across all accounts in the system. Never forget each minute spent ranking an account means multiple accounts are simultaneously de-ranking while active players are ranking up or at least treading water. At some point, Smurfing players will devote less time to multiple accounts because it takes more actually time to push each account back up unless they are willing to live with each one at a lower level. The more accounts they have to push, the less efficient each push is because the amount of time doesn’t change. SR decay doesn’t stop Smurfing, but it lessens the negative impact it has by negating the impact they have when just sitting at a tier - this is the most important point to remember.
So as promised:
For simplification, MMR and tiers are for illustration.
10 accounts, no Alts, Perfect Distribution by “MMR”
A - MMR 1
B - MMR 1 - 20%
C - MMR 2
D - MMR 2 - 20%
E - MMR 3
F - MMR 3
G - MMR 3 - 30%
H - MMR 4
I - MMR 4 - 20%
J - MMR 5 - 10%
Total MMR = 28 <------------- This is key - the system normalizes through a curve to force the percentage brackets - this is what the system does in a relative weighting which ELO does.
So if we then add in three alts - then when the ELO system forces the distribution - it does it downward because it cannot go up. The ends are bounded and the top doesn’t move. it’s the ceiling.
Now here is where we illustrate the impact of relative weighting when you rank accounts by a percentage system:
If the system forces by applying abitrary percentage to relative MMR by account (Perfect Distribution model), relative MMR (and therefore SR) must be deflated to make the numbers fit the model number (28):
Total 37 normalize to 28 (this represents curve normalization)
This is a very rough numerical representation, with some points arbitrarily spread (because I am not wasting my time all day in Excel to make you graphs).
The key takeaway points are this:
alts are not evenly distributed, they tend to have the most number in upper-to-mid tiers
Relative MMR distribution must be normalized always - whether its 10 accounts, 13, or 40 million
Normalization is not from the center of the curve, its a top down approach. If it weren’t alts would create deflation on the low end, and result in inflation at the top.
The impact in the numeric graph is to show the impact of alts just forces some players down in the tier system; moves are likely down from Diamond->Plat->Gold->Silver/Bronze.
Okay, so I am trying to understand your cryptic numbers here.
Why does the 37 have to adjust to 27?
Why is this Gold account G weighed differently than the Gold accounts E, F, F2?
Either I am reading something wrong, or this doesnt add up. Why is H not included in the Diamond MMR and why is it weighted differently?
The specificities aside for a moment, let’s assume that whatever you are trying to illustrate here is in fact a proper representation of the current SR system, then this relative weighting would shift with every new account, disregarding the fact whether the new account is an alt or an actual new player.
However, you are very adamant about alts being the problem, so what difference does it make whether the new account is an alt or a new player?
So first off, ignore the relative numbers, they are quick but show how the system has to look at accounts (not players); the MMR is just value to represent relative skill.
The entire point is there are more accounts with alts in mid tiers because there are just more players than at either end; the system has to force “down” from a top to bottom relative weighting for performance to fit the curve it desires of performance (MMR) in a relative fashion. There is no other option than forcing down the relative MMR to SR ranking.
Let’s further assume, I will place all 5000 account between gold and plat.
Naturally, I will push other accounts out of my way because there can only be a total number of 8250 accounts in Gold+Plat. However, the thing is that I will equally force people down as well as up. Since creating my 5000 accounts has established 1000 new spots in Diamond+ (as well as 1250 new spots in Bronze and Silver) and non of my 5000 accounts will claim any of those spots, someone else has to by me occupying Gold/plat.
So we end up with me claiming the 2750 new spots in Gold and plat (that were established by my creation of 5000 accounts) and push 2250 people out of Gold and plat so that all 5000 alt accounts of mine can occupy Gold and plat. Now, 1000 of the 2250 people will be pushed upwards (since there are 1000 new available spots in Diamond+) and 1250 accounts will be pushed down (since there are 1250 new available spots in bronze and silver).
It all evens out and the skewing that actually takes place (and not the extreme scenario that i just illustrated) is negligible.
In theory it could push players up, but there are so few, and the skill differences more clear as you rise it might. I don’t think it does, I think fact most of the alts are in tiers towards the middle puts more pressure downwards. This is why I said I don’t think it “pushes the curve down” from the center out; it pushes from the top down. The reason I think is illustrated by the fact that relative skill as evidenced by what was “diamond” say three years ago is like low Plat now, and so on. The very top of the skill tree is fixed more or less, there just aren’t enough players there to make a difference. Add to that we do not hear people say they easily went up in MMR / SR, rather we hear many more comments of going down overall with same play and better.
In short, you cannot go up but so far (because skill just starts to naturally approach “perfection”, so the only way the MMR/SR system can distribute is to push down overall. You think the curve “pushed down” from the center; I believe it “pushed down” from the top.
its the same player. It doesn’t matter what account they are on, what matters is the rank of said account.
If they can climb while another account falls then the effect is literally the same as them buying a new account minus the 16 hours it takes to get to level 25.
GM has less than 1% population not because devs push everyone out of it (They started to do it though with 3900 cap), but because its simply hard to achieve 4000SR point in the first place. 99% players cant do that.