800 out of 2349 players above 2.4 are alts. 40% of the top 5000 are alts. If all of those games contributed to their mains, you would see a large push upward in terms of overall CR/MMR averages. 100% when half the bracket is “alts” people are gatekeep from hitting their rating goals.
Wow effectively uses something called an Ordinal ranking system, with MMR. Those systems do not work when you can enter the system multiple times. When people create a second character to practice without risking rating, it depresses the bracket, and makes the MMR system feel like whiplash.
The same people who say this doesn’t matter, are also the people doing it. Blizzard systems incentivize this behavior but it 100% is a problem.
14 Likes
Not being facetious. But what do you propose as an alternative? Keep in mind, it must be not work intensive as Blizzard will not allocate significant resources to WoW PvP.
6 Likes
Lose CR based on the average MMR of the highest toons of the same class on the other team’s account
So if I lose a game against 2500 players on their 2200 alts of the same class at 2200 mmr, I would lose 0 CR.
2 Likes
Well that is the pickle, because the answer is they need a relative rework of how the system surrounding rated PVP works. I would wager that a majority of people would say they think the system is outdated, and a very large % of them would say it should be replaced.
But that’s relatively intensive. By making pvp more accessible, they produced a massive ALT flooding the brackets issue rather then increasing the number of players actually playing. Not to say that they also didnt increase for some players who don’t currently play.
To stop the alt problem but keep accessibility, they could put in a SS style system for MMR. Spec specific, but make it account wide. That would allow for people to play alts of different classes but stop this never-ending series of 2k to 2.5k players 300 to 400cr and mmr below their main for practice.
This is a good idea, if you beat someones 2600mmr main class/spec alt, you should be rewarded like you beat their main character. Very simple, but could lead to MASSIVE mmr boost to an insane degree given how much people do this.|
The weirdest thing about this is people will say WOW is a knowledge game, but then claim that Alts dont count for being the same skill level. But wow knowledge transcends class? So that argument is always unclear. Its clear its not 1 to 1, but its defintily not 0 to 1.
Also can anyone tell me any other modern competitive game that has NO ACCOUNT WIDE MMR element?
3 Likes
Consistently playing games over the course of the season will reduce the very little, if any, rating loss from Smurf accounts
2 Likes
While I wholly believe this as it lines up with what I’ve experienced, do you have any stats/sources to back this up? Genuinely asking.
TRUE.
I’ve heard rumors Blizzard is working on a corgi filter for TWW, for people like me who have debilitating kabourophobia (and thus we must ensure they have the resources to ship this). Also when the corgi expire, they don’t die but instead fly to an open meadow on a rainbow where the other corgi are.
1 Like
This is factually incorrect, with how the MMR system is supposed to distribute players 40% is beyond enough to corrupt the date. If the ladder was a tournament, the tournament would be viewed as a joke for competitive integrity given the number of multiple entries into the tournament. The issue isn’t that you lose to smurfs, its that smurfs move up and take spots, that should be going to other players. Alts should not be counted for the purpose of ladder ranking, or season ranking.
for example, if Cdew made 600 characters, and got all of them up to 2800cr, he alone could have a big enough impact on the bracket to push down the vast majority of people fighting for Rank 1, and it would have a warping effect. Because he can’t que into himself, and he can’t lose rating to himself. So it’s kinda like hoarding.
I mean its not hard, but I’m not a programmer. Basically check pvp, and pvp lb can do find alts pretty easily. But on pvp leaderboards you just exclude alts in a search by rating.
I dont know the role of hiding yourself has on this though, so its likely the number of alts is higher, but I can’t comment on that and be tottally accurate.
2 Likes
A complete overhaul is out of the question. It just won’t happen. I do think they need to add in rating decay, percentage based rewards back and an independent seasonal reward track system.
As of right now, Blizzard has offered no incentive to play one singular class/toon for the duration of the season. This is part of the issue that leads to players bouncing around several alts, FOTM rerolling and participation drop off.
I think they must first revisit the above topics to see if they have a positive impact on some of the concerns you outlined.
3 Likes
Nobody has ever been blocked from achieving the rating/title/whatever they deserve to be at because of smurfs. Thats just absurd.
2 Likes
i dont think any1 thinks that. but do smurfs reduce game quality? quality of ladder? in a lot of poepls opinions yes
3 Likes
Litterally all that needs to happen for that, is you hit 3smurfs/boosts on monday night at 9:57pm on season end, and to lose those games when they are 3 wins off. What are you talking about? That is obviously the case for someone.
Like you are arguing a question of degree, it is clearly false that it doesnt happen. However a conversation about time needed or expected is kinda the unstated assumption here. At what point can smurfing be an impact? What % of games played? Like set up a standard if you are going to parrot this garbage argument.
2 Likes
So they lost their title to smurfs, or did they lose their titles because they waited to queue in the last hours on a Monday night?
Oh so your argument isn’t that smurfing and boosting doesn’t stop people from advancing, it’s that there are other mitigating factors? Cool point dude.
With 40% of character in top 5k being alts, and 3 character per team 2 teams, almost every single arena game has a character who the WOW SYSTEM HAS DEFINED as being better then they are currently defined. Arguably, this also gives people titles they shouldn’t normally get as well, in addition to gatekeeping them.
it’s the result of gearing being too easy. the meta gets further abused, mmr is deflated, competitive integrity goes down
blizzard’s already tried to persuade players away from caring about alts by making duplicate characters not consume end season rewards. but when people are losing rating they’ll always look for a way to “not”, even if it means boosting 10 characters of the same exact spec
conquest boxes shouldn’t be usable by the same class that bought them, very simple way to reduce the chance someone will boost 27 enhance shamans, 20 unholy dks, 10 hpals
5 Likes
There is a reason virtually every other game tries to combat smurfs. It’s comical because smurfs are way less common in those games yet they try way harder than wow does (aka zero effort lol).
Cannot deny it’s a problem. The fix however is not simple because wow is a very different type of game.
9 Likes
The system will continue to just reward legacy players getting to their rating + beyond and cannibalize players trying to break into new rating thresholds.
Common sentiment shared by people trying to push without robust experience/without a stacked btag is the notion that they are not fighting similar players. 2200 first timers are spending only a fraction of their time fighting fellow 2200 first timers to try to get to the next rating threshold. They are, instead, fighting the players mentioned in OP’s posts - multi glads, R1’s doing carries, R1’s/multi glads helping friends get glad.
Sure, you can say “just play better”, but figuring out how to play better against similar players is not the same as figuring out how to play better versus two R1’s carrying a lifetime duelist.
3 Likes
Smurfing in this game is absolutely egregious, but also, if people didn’t smurf queues would flow like mud.
Multiple Subscription Paying Accounts negates any suggestion that has been discussed to date. Yes it happens in other games as well.
The only way that a ladder can be determined at the conclusion of season is a tournament style champion but that is near impossible with a large playerbase.
At a conclusion of the season, rank accounts on W/L Ratio plus Games Played. The number of games played will determine the accounts bracket range. Each bracket range will have an equivalent reward. Each spec and role is then calculated off their own merit. Accounts are eligible to be ranked multiple spec or role.
Number of games are arbitrary to this example. Blizz can adjust based on their timed played metric desires.
0-150 Games - Mount
151-500 Games - Transmog
501-1000 Games - Elite (War) Mount
1001-1200 Games - Elite Transmog
1201+ Games - Banner and Weapon Enchant. Eligible for End of Season Title.
With 3 weeks remaining in the season, track the accounts in the 1201+ bracket that have over a 75% (65%?) win rate for 50 games. Take that separate win rate to calculate the top 100 (arbitrary) accounts for Title consideration. Tie Breakers are broken by number of team Killing Blows, Kills, and finally Damage/Healing Done by respective role. An account can become eligible for title at anytime during those 3 weeks. Accounts would be still be able to play into consideration.
Edit to Add - So many people love linking achievments, have the end of the season ranking for that Spec and Role displayed in the end of the season achievment.
TWW S1: Arena 3v3 Druid Balance Rank 9999/10,000.
It’s also viable that once you hit your season reward on the account, you get places in a different que pool. Everyone’s gotten rival but not duelist? Rival only pool. One person has duelist? Tough duelist que pool.
Make that account wide. Let the post glad mains play the other post glad mains. Want faster ques that are more unfair? Let people opt in. Otherwise limit brackets to people who have earned the same seasonal rewards.
Of course multiple accounts circumvent, that’s fine. Of people want to pay more and apparently they will exit the brackets quickly, so let them do that. Makes pvp look more valuable and worth working on.
Maybe add some more break points like, 2600 and 2800. Frankly I think que times would go down in the long run.
These really are a lot of overly convoluted attempts to fix something that’s already kind of addressed by extremely aggressive inflation which has lead to the easiest rewards we’ve ever seen.
2 Likes