If A SoloQ Player Can't Hit Top 25, Just Throw The Whole Thing Away

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

6 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

They could just keep a merged queue just like it is now (everyone playing in the same queue) but make a separate leaderboard for solo and duo. For instance, Boyce might be rated 3rd on the SoloQ leaderboard with 1790 and "Boyce + Drazeh" might be 1st on the DuoQ leaderboard with a team rating of 1780. This is kinda like how Battlerite does it iirc: you and your duo partner counts as a team.

This way you made the leaderboard more fair while not dividing the already small playerbase.

If they're going to be ranked and compete as a team they may as well play in a team too. Most people aren't even going to care about the leaderboard and it's mostly about having a decent game where everyone competes on the same playing field and there aren't imbalanced teams to scuff your experience proper.

That means NO 👺to merged queues specifically

NO 👺and never again.

 

A pure SoloQ ranked arena. By the SoloQs, for the SoloQs.

This will not split the already small playerbase hardly at all whatsoever because the very strong majority of PvP players have ever mostly SoloQ'd. At most you'd be looking at a 90-10 split in favor of SoloQ and that's not counting any retired PvP veterans who would be coming back as soon as it is possible to compete in Gw2 without an advantage or handicap.

If you happen to hate SoloQ and you think everyone should be forced to play through arbitrary, bureaucratic forced social interaction then let me share with you the best piece of advice you could offer the Solos on their future arena:

🤐🤫

 

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

3 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Those are the obvious culprits that we often see get temp bans and disappear for a few months before coming back. I'm talking all the people who try to play normally, but every once in awhile they get fed up with having a rank that is lower than they feel they deserve so they occasionally get their friends together for a quick day of boosting. This is the kind that goes under the radar that looks believable. No reason to mention any names, but I'm talking situations where someone is stuck in G3 for a couple weeks and then all of a sudden one day they pop up into 1600-1650 range after a good 4 hours of sitting down to play and they always tell you: "DUDE I'M ON A 15+ GAME WIN STREAK I'M GETTING LUCKY".

And I know this is what is happening because I've had people ask me if I wanted to participate in it. This is not the usual cartel. These people are not boosting to sell things for USD and they are not masters of manipulating the leaderboards. They are usually very small groups of people 3 to 4 who can tilt the match making just enough, that they can climb into that 1600+ position right quick. They just want to maintain some kind of P2+ placement at the end of a season for reasons of repute.

I don't see anything here that can't be fixed with getting rid of DuoQ.

The mild wintraders don't exist without DuoQ because they lack the skill, resources, and reptilian know-how of the more established wintraders to even come close to making it work with SoloQ's truly random matchmaking.

If you've played other low-pop games with merged queues outside of Gw2, it's the same deal honestly. Me and my UK friend did this on Realm Royale and got masters(that's 50 wins in a battle royale minimum on top of a ranking) in just a week. Our amazing strategy was to get crazy stoned between 1 and 4am(when player counts were at their lowest) and then coordinate ganks against people we know are SoloQs and can't do anything about it. Then in the incredibly rare cases we'd come across another team doing the same thing, we would mount up and run away until we absolutely had to deal with it, and queue dodge if that doesn't work. It is actually easy as kitten to do, only you don't feel it as much in those games because even that barely-known dime-a-dozen bootleg battle royale game had the sense to include a Solos mode.

3 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Anyone who argues against videos like this He Paid $10,000 for 2 Gizmos - GW2 PvP Boosting Circle Exposed - YouTube are trolls participating in the nonsense who are trying to inject the community with blanket statements to act like it isn't happening. I could link a plethora of videos from streamers like Vallun or even Shorts, that expose certain top players inarguably being caught using hacks in matches and/or win trading ect ect.

Vollun is a reformed; good boyo, but that other dude isn't in any place to be calling anyone out and you couldn't convince me otherwise.

3 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This topic has been beaten to death with provided evidence that is plainly inarguable. That's what's so frustrating about it, is that Arenanet MUST be aware of this evidence, yet nothing is done about it beyond occasional slap to the wrist.

That may be true, but the forums are going to argue it anyway. To reason here is to consider lies. Spite, hatred, and intolerance are the 3 key components of the PvP population's lifeblood.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

44 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

I don't see anything here that can't be fixed with getting rid of DuoQ.

It will not stop players from synch queueing ranked.

It will however make it slightly more difficult to ensure landing throws on the opponent team, but they will still do it.

What the smaller groups are doing is this: 1) They queue in on the duo with the same two classes, let's say they initially load in as 2x Spellbreakers. 2) Then they have their alts also queue as Spellbreakers, to ensure no chance that the algorithm will try to put them on the same team. 3) This way, when the queue pops, if the duo gets a queue pop at same exact time as at least one of the alts, they know for sure that alt is going to be on the opposing team. 4) Then people can swap to w/e they want before the match begins.

44 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

The mild wintraders don't exist without DuoQ because they lack the skill, resources, and reptilian know-how of the more established wintraders to even come close to making it work with SoloQ's truly random matchmaking.

This used to be true, but our population in NA is actually so low that you would be surprised how easy it is to synch queue with even just a 3rd person and get them in your same game like 50% of the time. A lot of people do that like that and they just keep hitting decline and waiting it out until it works, especially with multi-box windows. They can throw games for themselves without anyone else knowing it is happening this way. What they'll do is they quickly play to that 120 games total and they actually play legitly for the very large portion of those games, but what happens is they go into their "sitting on it" phase. This is where once they've achieved a rating they want to sit on, let's say it's some guy who hit rank 50 and he wants to maintain that. So every 3 days he queues a game with a multi-box or two in the background. If queues pop and the alts don't get queue pop, he just declines and waits it out. When he does get a game where at least one of the alts gets queue pop same time, due to that method I explained earlier, he knows it will be on the opposing team so he hits accept on both of those boxes. This is not a bot, it's just an alt account he 100% plans on making sit AFK in spawn when the match starts, to make sure his team gets an easy win for that single match he wants to kill decay. And then they just do this every 3 days, usually inviting someone into their party for that duo same class rig and not actually telling them what's happening. They'll invite you in like: "Hey you want to run a match? I need just one match. Don't worry I'll swap when match starts, I won't play same class as you." After doing this with someone a few times and seeing the exact same result that mysteriously every game you play with them has an AFK on the enemy team, it's quite obvious what they are doing.

44 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Vollun is a reformed; good boyo, but that other dude isn't in any place to be calling anyone out and you couldn't convince me otherwise.

Completely agree, but he did catch a good one on Phoenix recently: Moa Spawncamp spot finds Phoenix Hacking!!!! - Twitch

This video is the kind of inarguable evidence I'm talking about. That is not Lightning Flash and it isn't lag either.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

It will not stop players from synch queueing ranked.

It will however make it slightly more difficult to ensure landing throws on the opponent team, but they will still do it.

Hell bro i'd take it at this point. Factually speaking any sort of improvement would be more than we've gotten in the past 5 years.

Plus I think it really gets oversimplified just how hard it is to match manipulate in a fair competitive setting. I refuse to believe there's any other reason why the wintrading cartel hates it so much.

Anything that the cartel dislikes you can bet is probably good for the game.

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This used to be true, but our population in NA is actually so low that you would be surprised how easy it is to synch queue with even just a 3rd person and get them in your same game like 50% of the time.

That's part of the reason I quit. It is a competition that offers competitors a direct advantage over other competitors, and to even dare mention such is always met with "the population is too low." 

Yeh 👺It's too low and it was too low 5 years ago too. Always the same excuse. Not to split the queues, but to invite DuoQ back into a game already starving for players. It's too low so why cater to the wintraders; the root cause of it being so low. They deserve nothing more or less than CmC's mercy. We shouldn't sign on to be farmed off of by them, or worse; delete ranked entirely for the sole purpose of getting rid of them. All that is way overcomplicated and really just nets the cartel victory in the end. I promise you that fairness and sportsmanship are like kryptonite to the wintraders and the moment we have it, their entire operation falls apart from the bottom of the barrel dime-a-dozen carried by DuoQ soys to the very top of the leaderboards 'gods of PvP'.

Seasons 9-12 were proof that it can work good enough.

I swear on CmC that when the call is sounded and SoloQ gets its own separate arena, I will answer and do my part to rebuild this game's competitive population. Will you? 🤡7

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This is where once they've achieved a rating they want to sit on, let's say it's some guy who hit rank 50 and he wants to maintain that. So every 3 days he queues a game with a multi-box or two in the background.

I imagine this is why their winrates are so predictable. 118-2 again, wowie. What a shocker. The bare minimum games with a near-perfect winrate pretty much identical to every leaderboard position around it that definitely aren't alts played by the same person. So do we abhor the wintrader.

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Completely agree, but he did catch a good one on Phoenix recently: Moa Spawncamp spot finds Phoenix Hacking!!!! - Twitch

Yeah, no that's defo cheats you can't port from that spot and I don't think LF even has that far a range.

I'm sure you've seen the other clips too, but the way he moves is pretty much identical to other hackers that port between capture points as well.

And I definitely dislike that cheat more than I do that streamer. Nice legendary badge he has though, wonder if it was worth paying his soul away for. And if he didn't cheat, wouldn't even have a clue who he is. Paid and cheated their way to relevancy in a dead game. Jesus wept.

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This video is the kind of inarguable evidence I'm talking about. That is not Lightning Flash and it isn't lag either.

Not true. Here's an example of an argument you might run into on the forums:

 

"Not lightning flash? Well actually, lightning flash has a range of 900 guildpixels therefore you are incorrect because I believe lightning flash to be dummy op and I am so fervently stoic in that belief that i'm not even going to bother to test it properly in game. Just get it out of my sight already, Arenanet, please. Anyway I forgot what you were talking about but yeah pls nerf lightning flash, anyway i'll brb while I scroll through all 3 forums pages to systematically add confused reactions to everything I disagree with."

Accurate, no?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

17 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Never 👺

Gold is the root of all evil and corruption. I still like owning things though.

Well if anything my last and one of the very few ATs i've queued for serves as a testament to your point.

All they did was sit in spawn and class-swap and play with builds near spawn and when I asked wth was going on I was told "afk at"

As though i'm supposed to know what that is, and just go along with it. Not like you have much of a choice when the enemy team has just decided they aren't going to do anything. 

This is modern PvP at its finest.

Well I say that, but then again I haven't played Ranked since season 18 when I decided I was done with the DuoQ shenanigans. No amount of money or any earthly desire could drive me to go back there. Not until everyone is playing the same game.

So I don't really know where the population is at to determine how common wintrading would be, but you could reasonably find out with mathematics, I think. Given a rough estimate of the population and the amount of boosted accounts hogging the leaderboard. It sounds like complicated math though for a well-educated mathemagician.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 Can you help us?

If that doesn't work, I don't know what will.

 

I do pay attention to the leaderboards so that I know who to pick on and who wintrades or otherwise abuses the matchmaker with the intent of boosting an accounts W/L to like 118-2 and that's usually how you can tell who.

But I understand that's only a part of it and there's more people involved in the scheme, synching their queues, abusing every known facet of the matchmaker, this takes way more than 1 singular person to do reliably and that's why they will forever hate SoloQ, but the point being you could be right, i'm more or less just trying to explain away these harmful anecdotes.

I wish they'd take their personal anecdotes and go shove them in some youtube comment sob-story where they belong, and then I want them to buff hammer warrior, just to rub salt in the wound 👺

There is no such thing as inarguable evidence on the Guild Wars 2 PvP Forums.

Tell me this isn't us. You can't. 

 

so I didn’t read this thread or anything so I’ll be missing context but just to address what you asked here.

 

…big topic, large can of worms:

 

In my studies of mathematics, science, statistics…the salient truth about these areas is that, a lot of what can be deduced about the world, and about what is true and what isn’t is for the most part, absolutely arbitrary. You can make reasonable conclusions about things with mathematics, science and statistics, but those fields rely on seeing patterns being available in information, and by and large a lot of that information is completely hidden; there is simply too many variables, and the world is so complex that reasonable conclusions are often times not good enough.

 

So, getting a real figure about how common wintrading or cheating is in this game, might be close to impossible…it requires information we don’t have access to and that information might be hidden in all kinds of places…just some examples:

 

Does age, location, gender, religion, culture etc…correlate to number of win traders in pvp

Does incentive, both internal or external to the game world correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Can money be made?)

Does financial background or current economic condition correlate to the number of win traders in pvp 

Does the existence of tools correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Bot programs for example)

Does Human nature correlate to the number of win traders in PvP

 

 

The list of possible factors that could either be extremely relevant or completely irrelevant is so vast that it’s pretty much hopeless to get any kind of reasonable conclusion about how to form a valid answer, on something that complex. You could even make the same argument for a much more general question : How common are criminals in the world.

 

The above question is a somewhat reasonable correlation you could make if you wanted to find out about win traders and cheaters in a game, based on population. Data even exists about this figure (2% of the population of America), and you can make a reasonable conclusion that the game might at least fall within the same order of magnitude (a single digit percentage of the population)

 

Keep in mind; The factors that drive criminality in the world are probably not the same as those that drive it in this particular video game. Again, trying to draw reasonable conclusions about something as complex as, how many cheaters could exist in this game is a somewhat hopeless task without actual information.

 

Final thought: it might be utterly hopeless to get any handle on the scope of the problem, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a solution. The other salient truth about what I studied is that the world is based on rules, and the things in the world following rules at whatever scale they happen to be at. It is in my view, that the design of the game creates the environment, that shapes and forms the behavior of agents inside that game which ultimately determines their actions, their actions then, further shape the environment to further facilitate more of those same actions (called Downward Causation). It’s the feedback loop that happens when we want to make sense of the world, shaping it in a way that makes it more hospitable for us to continue to exist in it. 
 

And so, if the design of the game, creates an environment that makes it logical to cheat, then cheaters will exist, and they will further curate the environment around them to facilitate more cheating  (creating 3rd party tools for example).  If you are surrounded by cheaters…then logically you have an evolutionary pressure to also cheat. Similar evolutionary processes drive the existence of the meta game: if everyone using the meta builds, then you have evolutionary pressure to also play a meta build…you become part of the environment that further fuels the existence of that environment.

So a solution in my view is simple: design the game in a way that makes cheating, criminality, wintrading or whatever pointless. It all comes down to game design. (Whether that's easier said than done, is debatable)

 

For more information on Downward Causation, feel free to visit Wikipedia, or watch this lecture (it’s fascinating)

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[shion.2084]

9 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

so I didn’t read this thread or anything so I’ll be missing context but just to address what you asked here.

 

…big topic, large can of worms:

 

In my studies of mathematics, science, statistics…the salient truth about these areas is that, a lot of what can be deduced about the world, and about what is true and what isn’t is for the most part, absolutely arbitrary. You can make reasonable conclusions about things with mathematics, science and statistics, but those fields rely on seeing patterns being available in information, and by and large a lot of that information is completely hidden; there is simply too many variables, and the world is so complex that reasonable conclusions are often times not good enough.

 

So, getting a real figure about how common wintrading or cheating is in this game, might be close to impossible…it requires information we don’t have access to and that information might be hidden in all kinds of places…just some examples:

 

Does age, location, gender, religion, culture etc…correlate to number of win traders in pvp

Does incentive, both internal or external to the game world correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Can money be made?)

Does financial background or current economic condition correlate to the number of win traders in pvp 

Does the existence of tools correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Bot programs for example)

Does Human nature correlate to the number of win traders in PvP

 

 

The list of possible factors that could either be extremely relevant or completely irrelevant is so vast that it’s pretty much hopeless to get any kind of reasonable conclusion about how to form a valid answer, on something that complex. You could even make the same argument for a much more general question : How common are criminals in the world.

 

The above question is a somewhat reasonable correlation you could make if you wanted to find out about win traders and cheaters in a game, based on population. Data even exists about this figure (2% of the population of America), and you can make a reasonable conclusion that the game might at least fall within the same order of magnitude (a single digit percentage of the population)

 

Keep in mind; The factors that drive criminality in the world are probably not the same as those that drive it in this particular video game. Again, trying to draw reasonable conclusions about something as complex as, how many cheaters could exist in this game is a somewhat hopeless task without actual information.

 

Final thought: it might be utterly hopeless to get any handle on the scope of the problem, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a solution. The other salient truth about what I studied is that the world is based on rules, and the things in the world following rules at whatever scale they happen to be at. It is in my view, that the design of the game creates the environment, that shapes and forms the behavior of agents inside that game which ultimately determines their actions, their actions then, further shape the environment to further facilitate more of those same actions (called Downward Causation). It’s the feedback loop that happens when we want to make sense of the world, shaping it in a way that makes it more hospitable for us to continue to exist in it. 
 

And so, if the design of the game, creates an environment that makes it logical to cheat, then cheaters will exist, and they will further curate the environment around them to facilitate more cheating  (creating 3rd party tools for example).  If you are surrounded by cheaters…then logically you have an evolutionary pressure to also cheat. Similar evolutionary processes drive the existence of the meta game: if everyone using the meta builds, then you have evolutionary pressure to also play a meta build…you become part of the environment that further fuels the existence of that environment.

 

H

 

 

 

Have you read the pop culture book Freakanomics.  It's a very interesting way at looking at many situations with an extraordinary amount of variables and yet come to conclusions through relatively few.  For instance, they make a good case of proving that Obama's no child left behind caused cheating by schools.  And that allowing abortion has a significant drop in crime rate.

I thought it was a very enjoyable pop culture read.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

10 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

so I didn’t read this thread or anything so I’ll be missing context but just to address what you asked here.

 

…big topic, large can of worms:

 

In my studies of mathematics, science, statistics…the salient truth about these areas is that, a lot of what can be deduced about the world, and about what is true and what isn’t is for the most part, absolutely arbitrary. You can make reasonable conclusions about things with mathematics, science and statistics, but those fields rely on seeing patterns being available in information, and by and large a lot of that information is completely hidden; there is simply too many variables, and the world is so complex that reasonable conclusions are often times not good enough.

 

So, getting a real figure about how common wintrading or cheating is in this game, might be close to impossible…it requires information we don’t have access to and that information might be hidden in all kinds of places…just some examples:

 

Does age, location, gender, religion, culture etc…correlate to number of win traders in pvp

Does incentive, both internal or external to the game world correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Can money be made?)

Does financial background or current economic condition correlate to the number of win traders in pvp 

Does the existence of tools correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Bot programs for example)

Does Human nature correlate to the number of win traders in PvP

 

 

The list of possible factors that could either be extremely relevant or completely irrelevant is so vast that it’s pretty much hopeless to get any kind of reasonable conclusion about how to form a valid answer, on something that complex. You could even make the same argument for a much more general question : How common are criminals in the world.

 

The above question is a somewhat reasonable correlation you could make if you wanted to find out about win traders and cheaters in a game, based on population. Data even exists about this figure (2% of the population of America), and you can make a reasonable conclusion that the game might at least fall within the same order of magnitude (a single digit percentage of the population)

 

Keep in mind; The factors that drive criminality in the world are probably not the same as those that drive it in this particular video game. Again, trying to draw reasonable conclusions about something as complex as, how many cheaters could exist in this game is a somewhat hopeless task without actual information.

 

Final thought: it might be utterly hopeless to get any handle on the scope of the problem, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a solution. The other salient truth about what I studied is that the world is based on rules, and the things in the world following rules at whatever scale they happen to be at. It is in my view, that the design of the game creates the environment, that shapes and forms the behavior of agents inside that game which ultimately determines their actions, their actions then, further shape the environment to further facilitate more of those same actions (called Downward Causation). It’s the feedback loop that happens when we want to make sense of the world, shaping it in a way that makes it more hospitable for us to continue to exist in it. 
 

And so, if the design of the game, creates an environment that makes it logical to cheat, then cheaters will exist, and they will further curate the environment around them to facilitate more cheating  (creating 3rd party tools for example).  If you are surrounded by cheaters…then logically you have an evolutionary pressure to also cheat. Similar evolutionary processes drive the existence of the meta game: if everyone using the meta builds, then you have evolutionary pressure to also play a meta build…you become part of the environment that further fuels the existence of that environment.

So a solution in my view is simple: design the game in a way that makes cheating, criminality, wintrading or whatever pointless. It all comes down to game design. (Whether that's easier said than done, is debatable)

 

For more information on Downward Causation, feel free to visit Wikipedia, or watch this lecture (it’s fascinating)

 

 

 

Well luckily for us, this has all already been done. I had gone out of my way recently to read about these exact kinds of statistics within the world of esport gaming. In a nustshell, this project & article had stated that 57% of players on average that had been a part of this large project, amongst all game platforms, had openly admitted to casually cheating in very specifically "competitive gaming" on a regular basis.

When asked "Why?" the most frequent response was simply "I like to win."

Edited January 30, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Khalisto.5780]

On 1/28/2023 at 12:33 AM, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Match manipulation and synced queues fall apart without merged queues regardless. DuoQ is the ultimate way for the average nobody to pretend like they're somebody just because they got top rank by abusing the matchmaker in an objectively dead gamemode. It is unfair and uncompetitive and should have never been added back in.

This, it's such a joke when a gold 3 weaver beats a god of arena using a fotm EoD spec, that proves that having nearly 24H available to abuse the matchmaking is actually a more powerful tool than actually being very good at the game.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

In my studies of mathematics, science, statistics…the salient truth about these areas is that, a lot of what can be deduced about the world, and about what is true and what isn’t is for the most part, absolutely arbitrary. You can make reasonable conclusions about things with mathematics, science and statistics, but those fields rely on seeing patterns being available in information, and by and large a lot of that information is completely hidden; there is simply too many variables, and the world is so complex that reasonable conclusions are often times not good enough.

 

So, getting a real figure about how common wintrading or cheating is in this game, might be close to impossible…it requires information we don’t have access to and that information might be hidden in all kinds of places…just some examples:

In retrospect, kind of a silly question on my part. I'm more or less just impressed in that you heeded the call at all. Like batman if Bruce Wayne was actually Bill Nye, you. You are a boon to what remains of this community and I thank ye.

I feel I owe it to you at this point to try and understand better, so here goes:

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Does age, location, gender, religion, culture etc…correlate to number of win traders in pvp

Probably, but the forum moderators provide me with just enough warning points to where I am thoroughly afraid to ever touch such a topic. I will own nothing, and I will be happy.

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Does incentive, both internal or external to the game world correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Can money be made?)

Oh yeah, definitely. I think this is a metric we can reasonably quantify even though there is no fixed rate for such a commodity. Plenty of transactions have been leaked all in the $1k-$10k ballpark with prices fluctuating depending on what's being asked for.

Rank 1 Ranked is easy as kitten to sell. Like a $900(USD) bidness, but then there's evidence of more exclusive events like MATs being sold for up to $10,000.

But then again this was also several years ago when being Plat 2 at the end of a season meant being in the top 100, not the top 25 of all players. I don't think people are going to pay prices like that for something they could potentially earn themselves without all the extra, but that doesn't necessarily mean people aren't going to wintrade still.

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Does financial background or current economic condition correlate to the number of win traders in pvp 

I think it is a no with this one. Wintrading in general has progressively gotten easier as the population has shrunken and I think it is at a point where just about anyone could do it.

You have to suspect everyone. A suspicious mind is a healthy mind, you know?

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Does the existence of tools correlate to the number of win traders in PvP (Bot programs for example)

Yes, absolutely harkening back to the last, how easy it is to do correlates directly with the amount of people doing it.

Sort of like piracy. It's incredibly low-effort, never goes punished, and there's tools to make it easier so naturally everyone and their mother does it.

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Does Human nature correlate to the number of win traders in PvP

Maybe. This is a pretty deep question that I feel I; a human, would have trouble with answering from a non-biased, objective standpoint.

So I asked an Artificial Intelligence using the ChatGPT model how Human nature might influence wintrading. The results were very interesting:

 

" Yes, and I feel like the two most likely examples would be (1) A desire to increase ones ranking by winning matches quickly, or (2) A sense of resentment towards other players who have won against you, with you seeking to beat them back as many times as necessary. I also feel like an underlying desire that contributes to both of these would probably be a desire to get into a higher rank as quickly as possible for bragging rights (or to prove yourself to others, perhaps as compensation for a perceived lack of other achievements in other areas of life)."

Ultimately I took this as a very savage yes, but as much as it made me smile in grim satisfaction, it also instilled in me a very primal fear. This is an AI, mind. We're all doomed, DOOMED!

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

The list of possible factors that could either be extremely relevant or completely irrelevant is so vast that it’s pretty much hopeless to get any kind of reasonable conclusion about how to form a valid answer, on something that complex. You could even make the same argument for a much more general question : How common are criminals in the world.

That makes sense though. I suppose it is a very hard figure to quantify with each question only begetting more questions.

Unreliable as the information might be, I think you're right too in that a rough estimate could probably be made though any is likely to be a point of contention. Cannot tell you how many times i've heard "99.9% of all human souls do not know about this amazing lifehack. Buy now! Spend, spend spend!"

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

And so, if the design of the game, creates an environment that makes it logical to cheat, then cheaters will exist, and they will further curate the environment around them to facilitate more cheating  (creating 3rd party tools for example).  If you are surrounded by cheaters…then logically you have an evolutionary pressure to also cheat. Similar evolutionary processes drive the existence of the meta game: if everyone using the meta builds, then you have evolutionary pressure to also play a meta build…you become part of the environment that further fuels the existence of that environment.

So a solution in my view is simple: design the game in a way that makes cheating, criminality, wintrading or whatever pointless. It all comes down to game design. (Whether that's easier said than done, is debatable)

That makes a lot of sense. Perhaps then a more important question would be what went wrong with sPvP's design that encouraged so much wintrading?

You play most other games; you don't see this, even when you potentially could. Understanding how is easy, understanding why is mind-boggling.

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

For more information on Downward Causation, feel free to visit Wikipedia, or watch this lecture (it’s fascinating)

I find the psychological to be pretty interesting, so I skimmed through. Can't claim to know much on the subject, but it reminded me somewhat of the butterfly effect in how it was explained.

And with how this is being applied it's hard for me to not see this as upbringing too basically. Maybe the AI was right and some deep, psychologically traumatic experience the wintraders experienced early on is the reason we get cyber bullied by Looney Tunes characters today.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

1 hour ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

This, it's such a joke when a gold 3 weaver beats a god of arena using a fotm EoD spec, that proves that having nearly 24H available to abuse the matchmaking is actually a more powerful tool than actually being very good at the game.

It's the classic conundrum of numbers vs skill. When it really comes down to it, numbers will always triumph over skill and talent except for rare, one-off occasions.

DuoQ is a massive advantage over SoloQ and SoloQ is a handicap compared to DuoQ. Arenanet is straight-up lying to your face when you click that 'compete' button because in a competition everyone competes on the same level and nobody plays at an advantage or disadvantage to any other competitor. This is like calling the Ice Cream Truck mode from Halo competitive.

And for as seriously as those top DuoQs take this game and their "get gud" mentality towards criticism, they still need help and even cheats to succeed in what others could have accomplished with nothing but raw, individual game and mechanical knowledge. Doesn't matter anyway because with no true competitive mode, Ranked and PvP in general probably aren't very long for this world.

 

Btw it is good to hear from you brother, CmC bless.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

3 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

In retrospect, kind of a silly question on my part. I'm more or less just impressed in that you heeded the call at all. Like batman if Bruce Wayne was actually Bill Nye, you. You are a boon to what remains of this community and I thank ye.

I feel I owe it to you at this point to try and understand better, so here goes:

Probably, but the forum moderators provide me with just enough warning points to where I am thoroughly afraid to ever touch such a topic. I will own nothing, and I will be happy.

Oh yeah, definitely. I think this is a metric we can reasonably quantify even though there is no fixed rate for such a commodity. Plenty of transactions have been leaked all in the $1k-$10k ballpark with prices fluctuating depending on what's being asked for.

Rank 1 Ranked is easy as kitten to sell. Like a $900(USD) bidness, but then there's evidence of more exclusive events like MATs being sold for up to $10,000.

But then again this was also several years ago when being Plat 2 at the end of a season meant being in the top 100, not the top 25 of all players. I don't think people are going to pay prices like that for something they could potentially earn themselves without all the extra, but that doesn't necessarily mean people aren't going to wintrade still.

I think it is a no with this one. Wintrading in general has progressively gotten easier as the population has shrunken and I think it is at a point where just about anyone could do it.

You have to suspect everyone. A suspicious mind is a healthy mind, you know?

Yes, absolutely harkening back to the last, how easy it is to do correlates directly with the amount of people doing it.

Sort of like piracy. It's incredibly low-effort, never goes punished, and there's tools to make it easier so naturally everyone and their mother does it.

Maybe. This is a pretty deep question that I feel I; a human, would have trouble with answering from a non-biased, objective standpoint.

So I asked an Artificial Intelligence using the ChatGPT model how Human nature might influence wintrading. The results were very interesting:

 

" Yes, and I feel like the two most likely examples would be (1) A desire to increase ones ranking by winning matches quickly, or (2) A sense of resentment towards other players who have won against you, with you seeking to beat them back as many times as necessary. I also feel like an underlying desire that contributes to both of these would probably be a desire to get into a higher rank as quickly as possible for bragging rights (or to prove yourself to others, perhaps as compensation for a perceived lack of other achievements in other areas of life)."

Ultimately I took this as a very savage yes, but as much as it made me smile in grim satisfaction, it also instilled in me a very primal fear. This is an AI, mind. We're all doomed, DOOMED!

That makes sense though. I suppose it is a very hard figure to quantify with each question only begetting more questions.

Unreliable as the information might be, I think you're right too in that a rough estimate could probably be made though any is likely to be a point of contention. Cannot tell you how many times i've heard "99.9% of all human souls do not know about this amazing lifehack. Buy now! Spend, spend spend!"

That makes a lot of sense. Perhaps then a more important question would be what went wrong with sPvP's design that encouraged so much wintrading?

You play most other games; you don't see this, even when you potentially could. Understanding how is easy, understanding why is mind-boggling.

I find the psychological to be pretty interesting, so I skimmed through. Can't claim to know much on the subject, but it reminded me somewhat of the butterfly effect in how it was explained.

And with how this is being applied it's hard for me to not see this as upbringing too basically. Maybe the AI was right and some deep, psychologically traumatic experience the wintraders experienced early on is the reason we get cyber bullied by Looney Tunes characters today.

 

3 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Rank 1 Ranked is easy as kitten to sell. Like a $900(USD) bidness, but then there's evidence of more exclusive events like MATs being sold for up to $10,000.

 

Man 10k? Hell, I'm bout to start win-trading Ghat Dham, where do I sign up lol

 

Seriously though, this is a great response. My comment was pretty much the 4 paragraph version of me saying "I don't know. We might never know," and I wasn't expecting any answers to those hypotheticals, but you've given some food for thought that is indeed worth looking at. There's also been a variety of different incites so far since yesterday. Trever mentioned on the previous page a study that said 57% of Esports players cheat, and then, seeing you mention how much real-world money could potentially be involved in win-trading, and Shion providing a book resource; Freakenomics, which I looked up earlier in the day to see what that was about...and that's also very interesting.

 

But ya, ultimately, mathematics, and statistics might not be the place to look to probe the problem because even begging the question seems like a hopeless task, as the number of possible correlations, could be an infinite regress. If we go so deep we might find that the way of solving the "real" problem is far too complex to even think that there could ever be a way to solve it in a mathematical way, which you state perfectly here : 

 

Maybe the AI was right and some deep, psychologically traumatic experience the wintraders

experienced early on is the reason we get cyber bullied by Looney Tunes characters today.

 

On the topic of making real-world money from win trading or selling accounts, this is fascinating to me, because I knew about this (people did this in WoW) but I didn't think about it yesterday at the time. Real world money is always a good incentive to do practically anything...and if this really is the case...then it might be fundamentally impossible to stop behavior like this, without just getting rid the leaderboard... or rather any notion of being "#1," where having that status is what has value, and therefor, people willing to trade that value for money, making that value intrinsic to that abstract concept.  This is debatable...but removing the leaderboard may or may not be a good or bad thing... it's hard to say.

 

Which I think then leads to this :

Quote

Perhaps then a more important question would be what went wrong with sPvP's design that encouraged so much wintrading?

 

Just to reframe that question, should be asking "How can we(Anet) design PVP in a way that doesn't encourage win-trading?" because it might be pointless to ask what actually encourages win-trading/cheating. Like mentioned above, it might be something complex or abstract like the deep seated trauma that Chat GPT suggests, or some elaborate money making operation, external to the game-world, that folks just have no control over.

 

We could go on a wild rabbit hole of discussion about this topic (like how the FBI has looked into drug cartels placing hidden messages inside of video game creation files to exchange information among each other...yes that is a real thing) But of course, these are just fun things to talk about, and is probably a bit removed from what the reality is for this game in regards to win-trading/cheating.

 

Appreciate you and your response man. Cheers.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Multicolorhipster.9751 I also want to add some additional incite into the design of the game part of my previous comments.

 

The notion that game design influences player behavior is something I came to learn over time, and that it’s not a new idea. One of the people that understand that concept (downward causation) is Hideo Kojima and he executed these ideas in Death Stranding. I saw an interview with him a few years back about that, and in that interview  he explained those concepts when making hid game:: that it’s design and rules has influence over the behavior of agents in that game, and that they players can influence the environment of the game itself.

 

this is an analysis video of that explanation. it’s worthy of a watch. (Sorry can’t be bothered to look for the interview)

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

22 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

The notion that game design influences player behavior is something I came to learn over time, and that it’s not a new idea. One of the people that understand that concept (downward causation) is Hideo Kojima and he executed these ideas in Death Stranding. I saw an interview with him a few years back about that, and in that interview  he explained those concepts when making hid game:: that it’s design and rules has influence over the behavior of agents in that game, and that they players can influence the environment of the game itself.

 

this is an analysis video of that explanation. it’s worthy of a watch. (Sorry can’t be bothered to look for the interview)

That's very interesting, and he wasn't wrong as I heard that as well about that game; that it was just a shallow celebrity cameo and an excuse to almost see Norman Reedus naked, but I digress.

Yeah I think it raises a good point, the players within a game can definitely influence a game in many ways. In sales, reviews, and developer communication just to name a few that I can think of. Generally if everyone is all miserable, wintrading and hating eachother, losing their minds over balance that is going to reduce the chances of new players coming in and for feedback from the developers if they think we're a bunch of RAVING LUNATICS 🤪

 

I think it creates a perpetual problem that will forever inhibit PvP's growth because everyone is at odds.

The veteran pvpers are toxic and unhappy because they suffer from the low population and they have to deal with the worst of themselves, such as the wintraders.

The wintraders want the population to stay low to make easier what they are doing, and they definitely hate the veteran population. I think ChatGPT was right about that.

This is all potential new players see looking at PvP; whether any of it is true or not, that fact cannot be denied. It is exactly why pretty much every new pvper you encounter nowadays is just a PvE player who came over to get cheap and easy legendaries before dipping right back to PvE.

It isn't a sustainable model for growth because this way the vets just stay miserable, the wintraders keep on wintradening, and no new players come in for an extended period of time or with any interest of PvPing longer than have to.

Still it is hard to have any sympathy for most of them. There's like 2-5 "nerf this" threads a day sometimes I have to remind myself that i'm not playing overwatch with deaf-mode enabled. Content to just ignore the larger problem and to hyperfocus on balance until a patch comes along with new things to complain about without every really accomplishing anything.

 

So yes I think you are onto something here and I wish you the utmost luck in escaping the Men in Black when they inevitably come for you.

[Khalisto.5780]

6 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

It's the classic conundrum of numbers vs skill. When it really comes down to it, numbers will always triumph over skill and talent except for rare, one-off occasions.

DuoQ is a massive advantage over SoloQ and SoloQ is a handicap compared to DuoQ. Arenanet is straight-up lying to your face when you click that 'compete' button because in a competition everyone competes on the same level and nobody plays at an advantage or disadvantage to any other competitor. This is like calling the Ice Cream Truck mode from Halo competitive.

And for as seriously as those top DuoQs take this game and their "get gud" mentality towards criticism, they still need help and even cheats to succeed in what others could have accomplished with nothing but raw, individual game and mechanical knowledge. Doesn't matter anyway because with no true competitive mode, Ranked and PvP in general probably aren't very long for this world.

 

Btw it is good to hear from you brother, CmC bless.

I dont know what is taking so long to remove duo q, even the rmt with god of arena and gizmos are no secret to the community. I think killing this game mode is a goal, cuz it'll be one less thing to care about, they're almost there.

 

To the end of this year they'll annouce

 

"Pvp has literally 30 regular players, we're not wasting our resources on it anymore"

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

16 minutes ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

I dont know what is taking so long to remove duo q, even the rmt with god of arena and gizmos are no secret to the community. I think killing this game mode is a goal, cuz it'll be one less thing to care about, they're almost there.

 

To the end of this year they'll annouce

I don't want to sound totally hopeless but probably never

I talked it over with my friend from UK he went to uni for business and he barely even played guildie, not even long enough to unlock PvP so I consider him unbiased in the whole thing.

I showed him the situation on here and he said it is most likely that  new Arenanet will purposefully never do anything about it and that PvP will probably go on existing exactly as it does now until the game itself dies, as all things eventually do.

16 minutes ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

"Pvp has literally 30 regular players, we're not wasting our resources on it anymore"

Like this, he used this in his explanation as to why. The time and resource cost it would take for PvP patch would be too great for the potential payoff. Not a balance patch, but a QoL patch to address things like DuoQ and the advantage they have over SoloQ in a self-proclaimed 'competitive' environment. 

A convincing example he gave me was he said to look at how there hasn't been any major changes to the gamemode, yet they keep adding legendaries to it and easier ways to get existing legendaries through PvP. This is to keep people playing, and in theory, generate population and revenue for the larger game without ever actually improving on the PvP experience.

I took that to mean that there likely isn't going to be any closure as well. Nobody is ever going to take responsibility for this situation in the form of an open-letter or the likes and just explain "Yeah, we know PvP is a mess. Unfortunately there are no future plans to update the gamemode further and all future patches will be only balance patches."

Yeah, it's messed up, but it's better than leading people along or giving people false hope. I think that kitten is downright cruel ngl. People's time just getting wasted; we're talking years, up to over a decade. That's more than just a disrespect for people's time if you ask me, that's straight up contempt.

Was sun man an anomaly, or was that what Anet really thinks of us? I don't know if we'll ever really know.

[Khalisto.5780]

3 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Not a balance patch, but a QoL patch to address things like DuoQ

Last mini season we had the proof that team size q are one programing line away of being fixed. When the 3v3 started you could just q as duo, the issue was fixed within 48 or 72 hours.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Khalisto.5780

[Zombiesbum.3502]

On 1/28/2023 at 3:01 AM, Shaogin.2679 said:

Honestly, I would prefer Ranked to only be 5 man pre-made teams as well. You would simply form a group just like you do in literally every other instanced group content in this game. There is no other example of a queue system like sPvP has anywhere else in this game, and with good reason. Things like Fractals, Raids, and Strikes would become a nightmare if I just had to make it work with whatever teammates Anet decided to throw at me.

However, since I am pretty confident that team queue only will never be a thing for Ranked, can we at least get some AT improvements. Not sure what exactly though. I just want to be able to enjoy the experience of an AT more than once every 3 hours. Perhaps any more frequent than that would make it a ghost town though, not sure.

What are you talking about? If you remove match making, you still end up playing with 4 other random people. The only difference is you now have to open up LFG. MM needs to be improved, but really the main issue with it is the lack of players. And the only ways to encourage more players to play PvP is both rewards and ease of access (which includes lowering the skill floor (not getting one shot because you didn't recognise one of the many of skills that do so)).

[Magizen.7842]

There's quite a lot of players that have made it to top 25 soloQ, top 10 even...

 

But I do like the idea of just separating solo Q and Duo Q and there would still be a fair way to do this without making queue times worse imo. That would be to simply separate the leaderboards for both but can still get on the same game. If you lost to a duo Q you will lose n% less rating regardless if you had a duo on your team or not but winning will still give out the same rating. Duo q'ing on the other hand, should be counted towards the duo Q leaderboards and maybe have their own niche titles similar to mini-seasons, this way people can still have fun playing with their friend but discourage people from doing it just to cheese the matchmaking or inflate/deflate ratings (e.g. duo Q'ing with another top player off-hours to farm bronze-gold players).

[Saiyan.1704]

On 1/29/2023 at 5:33 PM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

 

Completely agree, but he did catch a good one on Phoenix recently: Moa Spawncamp spot finds Phoenix Hacking!!!! - Twitch

This video is the kind of inarguable evidence I'm talking about. That is not Lightning Flash and it isn't lag either.

Rofl that's kind of hilarious, haven't seen that clip before and it was only 5 months ago. Reminds me of the map port hack that a lot of necros & thieves were abusing.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

9 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Just to reframe that question, should be asking "How can we(Anet) design PVP in a way that doesn't encourage win-trading?" because it might be pointless to ask what actually encourages win-trading/cheating. Like mentioned above, it might be something complex or abstract like the deep seated trauma that Chat GPT suggests, or some elaborate money making operation, external to the game-world, that folks just have no control over.

Well, I had that day where I ended up sitting down and reading through a plethora of articles about cheating in esports, which eventually led me to other articles about cheating or match making rigging in general when it comes to professional sports, particularly boxing.

As I said before, when it comes to casual cheating in esports, people just "like to win". They like to look good and feel this feeling of gratification when the community sees them as strong. What the hell psychological/sociological reasons lead to this, that's too deep to get into right now, but it is at least as simple as that, "they like to win".

But when it comes to match rigging, from everything I recently read, whether esports or professional sports like boxing, it always amounts down to making money. Whether it's a guy taking a fall in a boxing match to create ratings & buzz to get more views for his sport/television network, or accusations of Olympic athletes making deals with each other for the sake of corporate sponsorships, it always amounts down to making money.

When it comes to competitive esport gaming, the only thing a company can do is attempt to create a system/engine that is intrinsically designed where there are no ways to cheat. A good example of what I mean would be something simple. Let's take the idea of an online actual traditional rock/paper/scissors game. We aren't even going to use a system design with pretty graphics or any code. No, we are talking two people getting on a Discord video call and playing rock/paper/scissors in real time in front of each other. You can't cheat that. There is intrinsically no way to cheat this. But as soon as we involve even a simple graphical interface where we log into a game and it shows pixel characters throwing rock/paper/scissors at each other over a table, and there are clientsides and serversides handling our button inputs, people start finding ways to bull**** systems & codes. The best a company can do here is try to design the game so that it intrinsically eliminates as many methods to cheat as possible. And whatever grey areas are left that they know are vulnerable to methods of cheating, they need to be moderating it closely to make sure no one is exploiting the game.

These are the things that Arenanet does not do, that they should be doing. 1) When they removed 5 man queues and introduced Duo Que only, this was not a design that intrinsically eliminated methods of cheating but rather a design that invited it. 2) If there truly was no other option other than removing 5 man queues due to population problems, then they should have been seriously monitoring the open gates of match manipulation. This is not difficult to see or do, especially with server admin access to view IPs & match history logs and such. A networker intern could come in on a weekend to the Arenanet office and nail down which accounts were match manipulating pretty easily.

 

But the biggest ingredient here is "caring enough to moderate your game", it's as simple as that.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Shaogin.2679]

On 1/29/2023 at 12:19 PM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I've been running about 4+ ATs a day for the past four or five years now. I assume you are a EU player because I do not recognize your name from ATs, which I always right click and look at every team I go against. I also don't recognize your name from the FFA or even in unranked or ranked. If you are a EU player, I have no idea what's going on in EU so we have nothing to argue about.

But if one were to make that claim pertaining to NA ATs, it would be a bold faced lie. There are 3+ AFK teams in every NA AT. We have guys who run multi-box accounts to farm gold and even rando PvE kids who come in that form groups in the LFG that say "Afk" and they seriously join and sit there and AFK for 45 minutes to get a cheap 5g. It's like a real problem in NA and has been for quite some time now. Literally anyone and everyone who runs ATs in NA would tell you the exact same thing I've told you here.

 

I could care less whether you know me or not my dude. I play on NA. I am not telling a lie. I prefaced everything I said with the statement that it was my personal experience and did not claim that their own experiences were invalid or untrue. You do not speak for everyone, you sure as hell don't speak for me. If you want to argue your point, have at it. But when you start calling people liars and throwing a fit over someone that isn't even arguing against your point, then you only hurt your own credibility. 

Edit: I will say this though it probably doesn't matter if the issue has been going on for years. I have been absent for the past 10 months or so since I just came back from a deployment. Also, in my first post you commented on, you seemed to misunderstand my comment about how long ATs have been around. That was in reference to having played the game for 10 years as well but it not being as relevant to the particular topic since ATs have not been around for all 10 years. You seemed to take that as me saying that ATs are some super new thing and went off the handle about that too. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Shaogin.2679

[Shaogin.2679]

9 hours ago, Zombiesbum.3502 said:

What are you talking about? If you remove match making, you still end up playing with 4 other random people. The only difference is you now have to open up LFG. MM needs to be improved, but really the main issue with it is the lack of players. And the only ways to encourage more players to play PvP is both rewards and ease of access (which includes lowering the skill floor (not getting one shot because you didn't recognise one of the many of skills that do so)).

The difference with using lfg vs Anet picking your teammates is that you have more control over who you team up with. If you play a match with some rando from lfg, are you going to play with them again or are you going to block them and never let them join you again? Now what happens when everyone gets tired of this afk player and does the same? In the current system though, that afk player will be forced onto teams with others by Anet all day every day with extremely slim to none chance of ever facing any reprisal for their actions. That is why the solo queue system fosters this kind of behavior. So either use the lfg system and allow players to police up their own groups, or introduce increased moderation into solo queue to stop people from abusing the system.

[Lucentfir.7430]

55 minutes ago, Shaogin.2679 said:

The difference with using lfg vs Anet picking your teammates is that you have more control over who you team up with. If you play a match with some rando from lfg, are you going to play with them again or are you going to block them and never let them join you again? Now what happens when everyone gets tired of this afk player and does the same? In the current system though, that afk player will be forced onto teams with others by Anet all day every day with extremely slim to none chance of ever facing any reprisal for their actions. That is why the solo queue system fosters this kind of behavior. So either use the lfg system and allow players to police up their own groups, or introduce increased moderation into solo queue to stop people from abusing the system.

It's all moot point, because it boils down to Anet actually cracking down on exploitive/manipulating/system gaming/malicious afking behavior and forsaking repeat offenders that continually keep doing such things (Fat chance this will happen considering long time offenders are practically buddy buddy with Anet).  Either make ranked purely 5v5 premades only so there's at least some semblance of even competition(But lets be real we already know what teams and people are going to be up there) and have unranked give ranked chest rewards and no MMR, or take it back to solo queue only and make everyone claw their way through games like everyone else.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

9 hours ago, Magizen.7842 said:

There's quite a lot of players that have made it to top 25 soloQ, top 10 even...

Was that before or after you only had to be plat 1 to get there?

9 hours ago, Magizen.7842 said:

But I do like the idea of just separating solo Q and Duo Q and there would still be a fair way to do this without making queue times worse imo.

Yeah and that would be to actually separate the queues because most people play Ranked PvP as a Solo anyway.

If anything matchmaking would get even faster for the average SoloQ because DuoQs use an average rating of both players for the sake of matchmaking, so objectively speaking it is harder and takes longer to matchmake for a DuoQ.

9 hours ago, Magizen.7842 said:

That would be to simply separate the leaderboards for both but can still get on the same game.

I don't know how you've done it alter, but you've managed to come up with something somehow worse than mixed Solo/DuoQ

If you think this is all about the leaderboard and getting the meaningless titles out of ranked, you couldn't be any further wrong. Our benefactors could mail me a Rank 1 title and i'd send it back. At this point Rank 1 is nothing but a measure of a player's capacity to cheat and abuse matchmaking.

It is essentially given and something given has no meaning. Wouldn't pay a dime for it, and I will point and laugh at the people who paid hundreds of dollars to bypass getting one until the very end of days. Especially the people who bought in twice. 🤪

 

Would much rather DuoQ went because it isn't fun or competitive to fight 2v1 or 1v2 and those games where 1 team has a DuoQ and one doesn't. And for how Solo/Duo can be used to facilitate match manipulation. And so SoloQs aren't lied to and told they can compete at the same level as 2 people as 1 person. And so insufferable do-nothings cannot become internet famous by pretending to be do-somethings. And so on, so forth. I assure you the list goes on and on and I am fully prepared to channel my inner Mr. Beast and record and document every single one if need be.

SoloQ goes free. Whatever happens to DuoQ is not our problem. That is the only way and until then there is no forgiveness 👺

9 hours ago, Magizen.7842 said:

If you lost to a duo Q you will lose n% less rating regardless if you had a duo on your team or not but winning will still give out the same rating. Duo q'ing on the other hand, should be counted towards the duo Q leaderboards and maybe have their own niche titles similar to mini-seasons,

Why do any of that nonsense when you could accomplish all of that within reason by just splitting the queues?

There is no reason; absolutely none at all, for 2 entirely separate arenas to compete... together, yet separately? If i'm reading this right? 

That's hardly different from what we have now and neither leaderboard would be indicative of player skill since there would be players competing at an advantage to others still, and to make things worse there would be absolutely no interaction between these players, leading to even more hatred and aversion between solos/duos than there is already, with the opposite side just being a redundant blocker that occasionally ruins your matches for no reason. They'd be playing a different game entirely, yet still be forced to compete together.

This would be like playing 4-player chess and allowing no players to interact with the person diagonal from them. Why not just have two chess tables instead of a cluttered mess of a table? There would still be 4 people chess, they just wouldn't be playing together.

9 hours ago, Magizen.7842 said:

this way people can still have fun playing with their friend but discourage people from doing it just to cheese the matchmaking or inflate/deflate ratings (e.g. duo Q'ing with another top player off-hours to farm bronze-gold players).

DuoQ is hardly ever used to play with friends. It is used primarily purely for the number's advantage They've always had the options to have fun and even compete with friends in Unranked and ATs respectively.

And that cheese just shouldn't exist period, anyone who disagrees is a wintrader who has to play with help and an advantage in order to be 'successful.'

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

24 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

It is essentially given and something given has no meaning. Wouldn't pay a dime for it, and I will point and laugh at the people who paid hundreds of dollars to bypass getting one until the very end of days. Especially the people who bought in twice. 🤪

I've often wondered what it must feel like to pay upwards of a 1000.00 USD for a big title, only to log in and figure out that everyone in the community recognizes that you paid for a title.

It must be absolutely amazing self gratification.