'Smurfing' on the ladder... very un sporting!

From what I've seen, you lose more for a loss against a weak player, which is back to my initial argument about smurf accounts. From what everyone has said their intentions aren't to manipulate the rankings, however that is a side effect irrespective of their intentions. A high ranked player is still a high ranked player irrespective of what account they play, but by using a smurf they effectively lower their rating, giving a much bigger loss to anyone they beat than if they played the same game with their higher ranking account.

I think unranked players hold an arbitrary (fairly high) default skill value meaning early on there were lots of lower skilled players that would net you quite a lot of points.

Since then most players are ranked so if you play the same people now you'll get less. Winning against high ranked players should still net you lots of points however so climbing the ladder is still possible.

What I'm unsure if is does the total score required to reach the top increase over time? It does on pa stats ladder so on there it's possible to 'brute force' the top spot by playing a lot more games than everyone else. I'm not clear how uber ladder works however it feels more like a trend favoring high win % more than anything. According to @Yaegz his #2 account has only 34 games, presumably all wins. If it's ratio based then no one with even one loss could overtake him although I think the system must also weigh in number of games and opponents as well or people with 5 wins from qualifying would end up top 10. It would explain why @mayhemster is having so much issue recovering though.

Dont see any problem having seve

Not really the same as the person has paid for both seats. I don't see a problem with having 2 accounts. I have 2, one when I want to play serious and one when I am rusty/drunk/ hungover /tired.

Of course I could just not play ranked, but it's a lot easier to find a competitive 1v1 game using ranked games. If drunk me is able to get into Uber thats kudos to me I suppose.

We all know you play better when drunk. Actually it's been proven moderate amounts of alcohol improve creative thinking, about 2 pints is the sweet spot

Edit: still don't see why you have to have 2 accounts, as you are effectively manipulating your rating by having a load of games that 'don't count'....

Imagine if Andy Murray decided he would like to enter Wimbledon twice, under a pseudonym of "Randy Curry". People would be annoyed that he was taking up an extra slot in the tournament and effectively preventing others from participating.
Obviously, this isn't a directly comparable thing, there's no huge money involved for example, but I think the point is still relevant.
It's not proving yourself as an accomplished player if you don't want to record your bad days as well as your good.

Let's assume elodea is really playing weaker on his smurf account. The ranking says he is. How is this manipulation of the rankings? Obviously his smurf is more unpredictable, meaning he could lose against a weak player because he tries a really crazy tactic and then win against a good player with a more or less standard tactic. This leads to his smurf account not climbing the ladder. You got 1 win out of 3 games, how many wins do you get out of 3 games against elodea playing for real? If we had the data, we could then determine if elodeas smurf, his main account and your account are ranked properly. Maybe in the long run you would win 7 out of 10 games against elodeas smurf, justifying the smurf position below your position on the ladder. As long as we don't know, you can't say it is ranking manipulation. (Unless you know of someone that loses games on purpose)

This is the only really viable argument, and would be irrelevant if there was an us ranked option for people to play 1v1s in for practice etc.
although surely it can't be THAT hard to find one opponent to play against in the skirmish lobbies?

So the choice is basically this;

1. I keep playing as I have been and nobody gets hurt. A few people feel like some sort of injustice is being done. If they can't have fun knowing that someone out there has a second account, that's their own problem.

2. I go back to one account. I'll be having less fun because I can't try crazy builds and I will be less likely to play unless I know I'm going to do well. My time playing PA will decrease again. This one lets some people feel really good about themselves because they know they stopped the awful smurfing. Maybe they all get to move up a spot or two if I stop being so active. The already inactive ladder becomes even less active because that account that was playing lots of games is gone now.

Or you could see it as, why can't you just try out experimental builds and bad days on skirmish,rather than ranked? I don't understand why that is so hard to do? Then you can play competitively on ranked, and everyone is happy...
I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to do whatever you want, you bought the game after all, I just don't see how this is a problem that can't be entirely avoided.

Sometimes I do, and that's an option when someone I know is available and wants to practice. If I just leave the lobby open though I will have boring uneven matches 100% of the time. If I want to play 10-20 practice games, I would need to spend a lot of time looking around for people in various places to get those games in. Why would I waste my time doing that when there is a matchmaking system for exactly that purpose?

I still don't see what the problem is. Both of my accounts are in the top half of Uber so there is zero chance of someone losing a lot of points to my low ranked smurf. This is only going to be a problem if somebody starts losing games on purpose and then only actually trying when they encounter someone they know is good.

I don't have a stake in this, as I don't play ranked. But some food for thought:

• What's ok for 2 accounts is ok for 3, 4 etc. Is it ok for all of Uber league to be just 1 player? What about 2? What do you consider to be the line, and why?
• At the very least, 2 accounts in Uber means someone isn't in Uber when they should be - a ladder is supposed to be measuring Player skill, not Account skill.
• What effect does it have on the game when potential players see that the top portions of the ladder are being crowded out by just a few players?

And that's only if the multiple accounts are roughly similar rank; as has been mentioned, if they aren't then all sorts of problems arise.

look bitch and moan all day long the truth of the matter is that if PA didn't go on sale we wouldn't have this problem.

Well I've decided as a more mature gamer I can't really be bothered with the over abundance of big egos in pa.

I'm certainly not going to be playing ranked anymore as I'm fed up of all my games being against fake accounts.

You win, have fun killing off the ladder

Clopse, if you want to play drunk, come to the Realm. We can have a ballin' time
Thats what friends are for. Get some friends together to play some wacky PA! Playing with yourself can get rather boring after a time. Believe me, I used to play myself in games of RISK and Nuclear RISK (personal var) for hours when I was 12-13. I don't anymore - because it's not fun, to me or the friends with whom I could be spending more time.

I don't play PA much with the general community in the Realm anymore. I do this because I will ruin someone else's fun. I don't want to do that. It's not fair that I have deep misgivings about the vanilla balance and keep spraying them all over teamspeak. So I stay away.

This smurfing business is the same deal. You want to play something that isn't stressful and has all the pressure of ranked?

Then go play one of the gazillion other game modes the game has to offer. All of them require other people to work. Boom Bot Wars, Dox4Lyf, Community UberBalance, RCBM, Statera, Shared Armies, Dynamic Alliances FFA, Split Team Games, Dynamic Team FFA, etc, etc.

When someone says "wow, elodea/Battlebear/enter most high level players here looks really good!" I usually laugh and tell them to go watch a game that isn't a 1v1. You guys hardly play anything else. It's pathetic. Myself, BC, and Gandalf/KISEL could take any three player team in this game because the best 1v1 players only play 1v1s.


TL;DR - Smurfing is an excuse to play with yourself in easy mode. Enjoy the entirety of the game, including its modding scene! It's great!

Wat? =o

I think he is suggesting the low price is enabling this...

Wow. You can play other games types if you want, but there's no need to call 1v1 players pathetic. PA is great in part because it offers a lot of different ways to play. Why would you call people that like different game styles pathetic? What's funny is you used to routinely declare yourself the best 1v1 player in the game, except you just couldn't win for one reason or another.

Ah well, there have been smurfs since PA Stats existence I have doubts.. though I'm sure it made it easier. =P

If both your testing account and your normal account are highly ranked, presumably due to your success however you play, then why do you need the second account in the first place? You could just play however you like, crazy builds and all, on your main.

I guess if it's more fun for you to divide it up to compare the success of distinct approaches, then whatever. Certainly makes more sense than "well I need a ranked account for my days where I'm planning to lose due to being drunk and not competitive for the purposes of ranking".