Arena Abuse Rampant

Recently I have been doing more and more arena. I have found that there are a lot of instances where 2400-2900 rated (current rating) players are having one of their partners intentionally lose 20-30 games with alts, then will play with his two other partners. This drops the MMR of that team down to 1500-1800. This causes the players to easily get their 50 gladiator wins against much lower rated players. Boosters are also doing this with alts to get 1 person, who is above 2400, playing with two low MMR/CR alts to get them easy wins at low mmr, but still over 2400 CR for the one person.

Is this considered exploiting? Should we be reporting this when we see this happening?

Here is a link to a Reddit thread detailing a specific example of this issue: reddit.com/r/worldofpvp/comments/mcib7k/blizz_wtf_is_this_mmr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

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Yes, but the sad news for you is: They don’t care. They won’t do anything against, which is the reason why you see so many doing it


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at level 25?

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I don’t think it’s exploiting. I might do something similar to get the last couple of rank 1 wins (tank mmr on an alt priest, then just get the last 8 wins to 150 for my teammate who only had 142 when our 3rd quit) , and my understanding is glad boosting sites generally have people tank mmr once the person they boost gets to 2.4. I understand why it’s not really good sportsmanship, but as far as I know is not exploiting in any technical sense.

I’ve never seen this happen though would assume is quite uncommon. If you can get to 2.4 you can win 50 games at 2.4 almost always.

Agreed on the statement of:

If you can get to 2.4 you can win 50 games at 2.4 almost always.

However, if you look at the reddit thread linked above, it’s a perfect example. I played over 100 games last week across 4 different alts, and played against teams that had 1, or both players, at 2400-2600, and had a team rating at a 1500-1800 mmr at least 12-13 times.

I’m talking about alts with a 1600-1700 cr that I play to keep conquest cap.

As for if it is not exploiting, how is intentionally abusing the MMR system for gain not exploiting? Granted, it’s on blizzard for allowing this to happen and not requiring a stipulation such as “Must win 50 games over X CR and X MMR”, and because just the game/system lets someone do something, does not mean it is OK by TOS rules and regulations.

It’s like the old argument of "This SOP does not say we can’t do ‘Y’ ". When granted, it says: "You must do ‘X’ ". Just because it specifically does not state “no” does not mean it’s fine.

12-13 times? Wow, that’s way more than I would have thought, huh.
I haven’t done any low mmr 3s in a long time (just low mmr 2s on alts while gearing) so I wouldn’t know. Very surprising to me because the way I’d think about it is you ‘get glad once’ but queue at 1700 mmr all season.

Yeah
 the MMR system is currently all sorts of mess.

Honestly, I’m just looking for clarification on if it’s considered an exploit or not.

At the very least its “clever usage of game mechanics” and imo should be considered and exploit. I am not blizzard however so I don’t know what would, of anything, be done about it.

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This should be bannable

It is not an exploit. The only ‘exploits’ are explicit win trading and exchanging RMT. And I think advertising in lfg is also not allowed but has been not acted against in a while.

What if Blizz trolled everyone and connected people’s 3s MMR with their 2s?

So no matter how many games in 2s you throw, your MMR will still be forever Glad level if you’re Glad in 3s.

Yeah there are some abusers , and I face them sometimes too. I don’t care that much though. If I get glad XP at 1900-2k mmr that’s good practice for me.

All mmr systems will have some people smurfing or abusing the mmr to face lower skilled players .

Theoretically this shouldn’t change your mmr , since you will also receive some free wins occasionally when the 2 teammates throw 20 games in a row.

They used to ban people for it, was called win-trading.

That would make boosting so much easier


i know i’m secretly a booster and want my life to be easier

in the past bliz has said that intentionally losing games to crash your MMR/rating for easier carries or wins per week is against the TOS and bannable - just intentionally losing is supposedly against the TOS without any other condition as it is naturally a form of win trading

this is not a new issue, it is just hard for bliz to nail down as intentional

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It’s exploiting. Intentional abuse of a weak spot in the system. Although, devious intentions by ActivisionBlizzard leads to devious actions by players.

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The issue is that you can play a game while tanking, and not just join/leave the arena. You can just play and let them kill you by not doing as much damage, and “forgetting to use defensives”, or not optimizing your attacks, making bad plays intentionally, etc.

I am shocked that the devs didnt think that their system could be exploited by the carry guys/
But I do know that the carry business model is working. People buy tokens to pay the carriers. Blizz profits!!

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It’s not exploring. They assume the risk of losing a ton of points when fighting lower rated teams because one of their partners is low rated. That can easily backfire on them if they queue into some bad matchups, since there is little difference between a 1600 player’s dps and 2400 player’s dps. The pve rotations are super easy now.

This has been happening ever since they removed arena teams as a unit (cata?) and gave everyone personal CR ratings. This isn’t a revelation for this season.