TITANS 1v1 Ranked Ladder Season 2

I've thought about that, matching against a good player would imply that its a less active time priod in the first place. Id make one just to proove my point experimentally but I think its unfair and we already have some data from Qzipco & Bob(2016-2017), and Xankar's(2018) smurfs

Where can I find the current maps for custom games?

They haven't been added to the base game yet, outside of ranked.

Toxic enviroment??? Do you mean if you dont know who your are playing you cant try a cheese build and then blame a loss on you cheesing?

Be happy the smurfs don't boost their own accounts and are helping to boost yours.

I have used smurfs because I enjoy ranked games but am rusty/hungover or wanna try a build against the best players.

Basically respect the ladder and your opponents and you will be fine nik.

Imagine someone gets #1. Then he doesn't play on main account and just smurfs all the time to keep ranks of the other players lower. This is simply unfair, as he represents the skill of #1 player, but his points represent someone in low uber or high plat or whatever. Ranking in ELO system is supposed to represent someone's skill and if I play vs someone better than me, I'm supposed to lose very little points. With smurfing it can be exactly the opposite. That's just one of example where smurfing is very problematic.

Another much more vile one, could be that someone would have multiple accounts and those could be boosting the main account (if you have 2 pcs or a friend you can easily arrange it) - even though this one sounds much more badly than the first one - the nature is essentially the same, you are cheating system to either get more points for yourself or less points for your opponent

There needs to be some serious rules about this, since money is on the line and if money is on the line people will abuse the **** out of stuff like this.

In my opinion any uber or #1 contender should just be banned from using smurfs, allowing them just opens pandora's box and those 2 examples are just the top of the iceberg on how smurfing can be abused

So let me get this right, I'm fine with your idea but if somehow I got my hands on the second account and started playing on it every time you play and demote you to gold, how would that make you feel?

The fun doesn't stop there, I will make gold account and bring you to silver, I'm pretty sure you will deinstall game after that but you should show respect to the ladder.

Viewing the ranking 'ecosystem' as a whole, I don't see how a person, as a smurf gold, can drive a plat/uber player to silver. These 2 are not playing in isolation. Seems to me that the smurf account will just rise to the actual skill level of the player, same as the main account. The plat/uber player will continue to will matches against other players of lesser skill, just lose to the smurf. That puts everyone back where they were to begin with.

If having multiple accounts in top 10 or in uber is an issue, then there should be SMS protect like Overwatch does with their ladder. I have been top 500 in Overwatch and the rules are to complete 50 games with SMS protect enabled in order to show up on regional leaderboards. Same thing can happen with PA if the devs want to. This doesn't stop smurf accounts from being created but it 99% of the time prevents them from showing on the leaderboards because people don't have two phones.

so i asked PA lobby about this a couple days ago in a PM and he said i should ask that question in here....seems like he has nothing to say about this? and i've already seen multiple new smurf accounts playing...would like to get some clarity on this from the horses mouth.

It's probably nothing that needed to be considered before, but now that there is real money on the line.....

I suppose that a top Uber could have 10 accounts and occupy the top 10 Uber slots, but Quitch would better know how the ranking system would handle that situation.

I'm still not sure that multiple accounts would give you a competitive advantage.

And why wouldn't a player want their main account to be the competitive play account?

Again, the worst harm comes not from boosting yourself, but from keeping the rest down. Especially if you are already unbeatable or comparatively better on a certain map

You can protect your #1 uber spot (or any spot which gives money) by demoting other players from the ladder who contest that exact spot. An example you are #1 and you don't want risk loosing that spot so you play on a smurf with #2 and demote him to #5. At this point, he can not contest #1 anymore.
And smurfs can be in all leagues, you just surrender games aka losing them on purpose and system will demote you with time and win only matches that you want to win and abuse system.
I'm strongly against smurfing for that reason.

TBH I HATE MONEY being the main reason why ppl play this game (nowadays)! It kills all good aspect of the game for me, everybody is abusing everything from system to locust to snipes to playing at certain times to dodge others to everything for the win and not actually enjoying when playing the game. Best players like Nik (and others) didn't become best because they were driven on money but rather on their passion for a game.
In my opinion, PA inc if you wanted to bring people in (by giving money motivation) you should have created tourney every 2-4 months (or at the end of the season) where players play for it. It would be open to all players and top 10-15 would get money for their spots. Easy, not abusive and we could really have more content to talk\share\watch which would bring even more player on top new guys who want that money. That would move everything from leaderboards and base game to competitive scene where "tryhard mode" is the only way to play it.
I'm not against tryharding but there is a difference when tryharding for money and doing all possible stuff for a win and playing hard to be the best (don't know how to explain that thing\feeling).

I don't wanna judge anybody whos smurfing if there isn't any rule. You have to make a clear statement about how you want your system to punish rules breakers and protect other players.

I have had a couple conversation with people about a playoff. A six or eight player playoff would be fun to watch and great for the game. There does seem to be support for this idea in the community.

EDIT:
My idea was a 8 player single elimination tournament with the higher seed selecting the rank map of their choice. If a player can't play for whatever reason, then you select the next highest player on the ladder. This seems to be the fairest way to decide who is the best 1v1 player. If a lower seed can beat a higher rate player on their map of choice they deserve the right to advance.

Smurfing does not create a competitive advantage for the player smurfing, but it creates a competitive disadvantage for the player playing the smurf. If you beat the smurf you don't get the proper boost. If you lose to the smurf, you are penalized for losing to a player you should have beaten. For example, last night I beat an Uber player's smurf (yes, he told me it wasn't his real account and no I am not calling out that player) and all I got for the win was a pinch of salt and lost a spot on the ladder.

The issue isnt smurfing it's the whole set up. Glicko system. No visable scoreboard. No decay. Its a classic dont hate the player hate the game. If you know beating a smurf gets you 1 point but loses you 13 or whatever you know the situation. Where it will leave you, how many games you need to win to gain one place, but lose one game and lose 5. Not a guessing game on where you stand.

Not the first and nor the last to say this but glicko for 1v1 rts is just downright idiotic. Similar to swiss tournaments, best player doesnt always win. As previous posts have mentioned a tournament with the best players seems better suited with this system.

I am not blaming people for smurfing. Just pointing out that there is a competitive disadvantage to playing a smurf. There is also a competitive advantage to using mods and having a better computer or internet connection.

Developers want motivate players to play in ranked. And they added prizes. But ladder don't work enough good and fair. I think is the best way is make tournament with top 16 or top 32 players. Tournament can show real skill. Number of your games, smurfs, avoids games with players can't help you in tournament.

Really a simple SMS protect or minimum amount of games to show up in uber or top 10 is the only solution to this issue, it's not glicko itself. Every ladder has these problems it's just more apparent with low players e.g. this game.

SMS won't solve it if you are so dedicated to getting a new account, Nokia is not that big of a deal.
Decay needs to be implemented. Ubers should play 5-8 ranked games in 3 days spam and plats should play 3-5. (number of games can be adjusted later on, this is just example) If uber after 3 days doesn't play the necessary number of games his ranking points go down. At this state 1 game in 1 week you can hardly contest top spot if you don't catch right players, but if we force the best players to play all the time well somebody has to win. Problem with this is that smurfs can still hit hard. In an ideal situation where smurfs are not allowed, we can really show who is the best on a ladder. Now the real problem is with our ranking system, would it allow such precise jumps up and down on an almost daily basis? @Quitch?

The offer of money is a fantastic idea. It would be interesting to see the stats of the last season activity vrs the next say three seasons. The money on offer is very good for eastern countries. The Nosebreaker would be very surprised if this did not dramatically increase player base.
The most active award is a great idea because it promotes activity across all the ranks.
Genius all round...
The Smurfs is an issue though specifically as above mentioned comments.
Smurfs definitely got to go in this The Nosebreaker thinks,
Could you not put some sort of spy wear on our computers to see if we are smurfing and then ban accounts if we are.