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

In all honesty, I don't think that the smurfers are doing this on purpose, to hurt anybody. First off, it is obvious that they are obsessed about rank far more than anyone else is, and that's precisely why they are smurfing -- in order to safeguard their rank. But more importantly, and more generally, I believe that the top "competitive" gamers, in all games, tend to include a disproportionate number of people who suffer from a neurodevelopmental disorder which is characterized by "impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior". In short, it makes people obsessed with numbers and it makes them unable to empathize with the feelings of others. I am not going to name this disorder, because people will accuse me of ad hominem. I am not trying to insult anybody: this is simply what I have personally deduced after 20+ years in the videogame community. Many others agree with me, and one day there will even be studies about this. But at any rate it neatly explains the behavior of the smurfers, and also their incapacity to understand why the other players object to this behavior.

In view of the above, I believe it may be a good idea to be lenient towards them, since they simply can't help doing what they are doing. If their behavior is indeed a result of this disorder, banning smurfing is going to hurt them far more than it will help those who are hurt by smurfing.

And on that note, I will stop posting in this thread. I am even starting to regret some of my aggressive comments here, considering what the real problem at the bottom of all this might be.

Thankfully that's over.

One of the problems here is that Uber can't go and tell people that they can't Smurf (lolz name), just because they own a second copy of the game (besides, how could they know?). It ends up being a moral decision for the person who is in that position, like @cptconundrum here. There really isn't anything wrong with having a legitimate alternative account, but it surely seems to be quite unfair. It's a bigger issue for the Uber Tier, as most of them are so far ahead of us that they can't even effectively try out new strategies without organizing a 1v1 with another Uber ranked player.

I guess one thing that could be considered is to have a competitive match-making (rank shown; current system) and a casual match-making (rank not shown, though still affected by skill so matches remain fair) so that players can practice against their skill level without damaging rank. It really isn't fair that there isn't an easy way to practice against certain skill levels, but I don't consider it to be Uber's fault. It's a weird issue, really.

There's several ways of telling multiple accounts belong to the same person. It won't detect 100% of cases, but certainly enough that it is possible for Uber to make it a rule, if they wished.

Question: Is there a problem with only ranking one of the two players in a match? As in, say there was a checkbox in matchmaking to rank the game you were about to play. Is there a problem if one player who has it checked is matched up against one who doesn't? Does the system need both ranks to be affected?
If not, then you can solve this issue entirely without reducing the matchmaking pool.

Since the goal of the system is to rank all players according to their skill, and it assumes that their ranking reflects, or will eventually reflect, their skill, then it does need both ranks to be affected. These rating systems are designed for official chess play, where there's no chance of anonymity or abnormal participation.

Bear in mind that a 'perfect' rating system would be able to see the outcome from your first game, recognize your skill level, and place you directly in the top 10. You would be unable to smurf because every smurf would be adjacent to your original account. While real rating systems are much more limited, they're designed to accomplish this eventually, with all the consequences that would result for other players.

Your "not an ad hominem, honest" speech is not fooling me, but I'll just ignore that bit and reply to the second sentence. You talk in absolutes regarding smurfing when it is not absolute, there are different reasons someone may want to have multiple ranked accounts. I outlined one other reason before, challenging yourself with restrictions on a second account. If maintenance or resetting were introduced, another reason would be to show that you can maintain two accounts at a certain rank (I'd expect that more often in high ranks). Once you've reached the peak of what you and your environment can offer, it seems natural to me that some would invent challenges for themselves to keep things interesting.

In that case only yaegz would have this justification, since he's the number 1 player right now. Everyone else has definitely NOT "reached the peak of their environment", including cptconundrum.

Besides, getting 1 account at a certain spot in the ladder doesn't pose any less challenge than getting 10 of them in the same general ranking vicinity. (See Dementiurge's post above yours.) It's just another excuse to hog the ladder, like all the others we have been hearing so far.

Unless the points are zero-sum though, only one player getting or losing points shouldn't affect the system, and it would be as if the other player had simply played a non-ranked skirmish.

No there's really no way to differentiate between real smurfs and family accounts or people using the same IP.

***
Btw, if no-one was aware, all the accounts in the top 10 are already smurfs of the same player. They all belong to Captain Conundrum. You can check this out for yourself by matching the IP addresses. Sometimes he would send it through a proxy server, but i'm a really good hacker and found out who the real evil mastermind is.

It makes me so angry that my own smurfs rank is artificially lower by 10 places out of 2,500. Outrageous!

I was not speaking to his motivations, and also said "you and your environment". Everyone has a limit, mine is probably around the platinum gold mark.

I said that on the condition "If maintenance or resetting were introduced", as it would be more challenging to keep multiple plates spinning. Even as things stand, it does take effort to rank up twice.

Or maybe they should take a look at what exists outside their rooms, if they've "reached the top of their 1v1 PA environment"? But that brings us back to what icycalm was saying.

Alright fine, I'll feed the troll. I do care about my rank. Is it because I have a neurological disorder? LOL... I have always been a competitive person and always strive to attain what I know or think I am capable of. Competition is a primary motivator in my life that also effected my career choice. I enjoy being able to measure my success using concrete metrics because it means I can measure my progress and see how much I am learning. It is important to me that I push myself to my intellectual limits and comparing myself to others gives me a way to measure that progress.

I have a smurf for a variety of reasons.
1. My average queue times are above 20 minutes so finding a game is often difficult. Today I waited over an hour and did not match with anyone. Having a smurf used to mean I could play more often until it's mmr reached my main account.
2. I like to experiment or play high/drunk but still be able to measure my true skill (main account) with everyone else. I don't want to occupy two spots in top 3 but there is no bonus pool system to prevent that from happening.
3. Preventing ppl from knowing my strategies is very important in tournaments. Both of my accounts have the most watched replays of any other PA accounts, which makes it hard to prepare for tourneys.

I think you should reevaluate your 'personal deductions.'

I've highlighted the sections of text that i find to be an agreeable reason to have an alternate account, but you of all people must understand that you are effectively holding a top ranked platinum player from advancing to Uber if he deserves it?

I can imagine very well that the queue times must be ridiculously high with only 60 or so players in the top tier, and as an SC player that played (albeit very low level) some tournaments, i can understand hiding your strategies aswell. But does it merit occupying both TOP 2 spots?
To continue on the reasons though: number 2 is a fluked reason, sorry to say this. I have good and bad days aswell and although i'm only a gold level player here, i don't only play on my good days. I like the challenge 1v1 gives me, and i'm willing to take all the risk involved in playing, good or bad days. This reasons sounds to me like you just need an excuse to "troll" people when you're not at peak performance.

But once again: I DO understand reasons 1 and 3 completely, but this high/drunk/hangover bullcrap escapes me completely...

1. That's why you play a custom game with a highly-skilled friend. You'll never get better playing mediocre players, especially if it's a relatively unknown strat that catches them by surprise and they don't have the experience to think of a reaction. Plus your friend is a confidant, who won't rant on the forums exposing your latest strat to the world.

2. You'll naturally gravitate towards the rank you belong, no matter how many accounts you have, because that's how the rating system is designed.

Glicko is not exactly zero-sum, but it tends towards it. If a player locks their position at a specific point that doesn't match their skill level, they'll gradually push other players upwards or downwards because the system can't reevaluate their position.

In the case of smurfs who might lock their position below their skill level, they'll probably push players downwards, especially if they win every game. Which is possible, because they won't need to deliberately lose in order to maintain their rank. If enough of them do this, it would drag the entire ladder down until they're competing against players of their own skill levels again.

Reason I can think up that helps the case of smurfs.

They want to find their average skill, they have an account for finding what their peak is (their main account) whilst a smurf could be used to find their skill at their lowest point, this allows the top players to gage how they'll perform on their best, and worst days against an opponent.

I think allowing players to widen their matchmaking to players in vastly different ranks would be adequate. The ranking system can probably handle it, and I'm sure there's some players who want to get a one in a million chance to play the top 10.

E.g. CptConundrum and CptConundrunk ?

I don't play drunk.

Although Icycalm's posts have been getting increasingly rude, he is right in a way. I do have some kind of neurological condition. It causes me to feel alert and like myself on some days and some times of day, but other times I become extremely unfocused, can't sleep, suffer from anxiety and memory problems, and even sometimes go catatonic for a while.

I know people here are just going to laugh at this or take it as proof that I'm actually crazy and my opinion doesn't matter, but I decided I don't really care by now. I can't even always tell when something is wrong and PA is actually a really great indicator for me that I'm about to start having trouble.

I am very disappointed that so many people here feel it's ok to tell others how to play this game. Mered thinks it is pathetic that some people only play 1v1, icycalm dislikes smurfing enough that he is just making big sweeping statements about how all top players have mental disorders, and a lot of the rest of you are more concerned with someone having a second account than with your own games.

Smurfing does not affect the quality of the matches you will be given. It does possibly drop people down some ranks, but what does the ladder really mean anyway? Where is colacolin on the ladder right now? We all know he has the skill to be in the top 10. What about every SC2 grandmaster? They could all take over the ladder in a week if they wanted. None of us are really all that good and the ladder already doesn't tell us anything useful. What it does show accurately is whether one person is higher than another. Smurfing doesn't even change that one.

There are a few problems with this common arguement

Absolutely no-one knows how uber handles ladder rankings, distributions, and league promotions. Can you tell me whether they base distributions on active players, or both active and inactive players? You can't.

I can just as easily say that a player who has ladder fear and is not yet ranked is entirely responsible for preventing someone in high platinum from entering uber. If only they would rank themselves, then the distributions would open up a slot for this platinum individual. This is a stupid, yet inescapable line of logic that follows from trying to bring in some subjective definition of 'deserved'.

Another flawed, yet common arguement

People are not forced to play if they are having a 'bad day'. You set up a false dichotomy of it being either all bad and all good games under one account, or all good games under one account and all bad games under another. What happens in reality is that the player will simply not play on his 'bad days'. Smurfing allows the player to participate where he or she would otherwise not do so.

Logical fallacies are usually more destructive when they are allowed to persist. I really hope tthese arguements go away.

We ARE concerned with our own games, thats why we dislike smurfing
About the SC ladder, yes they could probably do that, but who has the time to fill up around 200 accounts for GM and around 2k for masters (and thats only the EU server)

EDIT: @elodea
I see what you mean with the logical fallacy, but since i only have one account, it means that it encompasses ALL my games, good and bad, so that logic still stands. About the "deserving that rank", i can follow your reasoning, but isn't that also partly due to a "lower" amount of total players in the pool?

PA has probably helped me with alot of things like getting some creativity back. I quit doing art and decided not to go to AI because of that but because I have thousands of hours in pa modding and playing I have enough passion for pa that makes me want to draw robots and logos and other things. I spend 90% of my time in PA playing 1v1's. I have 200+games on Gandalf this month on the ladder. And have skrimished another 200. I love 1v1 because anything goes wrong it's on me. Not on my team. Communication. Or anything else