Dudes getting lucky/getting carried after hundreds of games happens certainly for T1s (especially on FOTM), and sometimes Top3s. They just seem somewhat more deserving because they put in more time. Luck is involved in both the very low win and very high win scenarios, they almost negate each other in that regard IMO which is why I didn't mention it. Not weighing the first 10 so heavily or weighing it differently for sure might not be a bad idea to negate initial lucky breaks and lessen the amount you get from luck and/or skill streaks. The mat farmers and new players forced into solo ranked are certainly a factor, and a large one. The player quality the past few seasons is more of a detriment RNG wise than any other season IMO, as I have stated before. I mean do you want to put a limit on alts in ranked? There isn't really a reason to have that many, but there isn't really a reason not to (besides like the time investment, which is next to nothing now with the tokens). Some players just do it as a statement. There are quite a few dudes (especially EU dudes) that have multiple claims to single Top3 spots that do it just as the obvious skill dab, for example: "In the time it took you to do a T1, I took all 3 Top3 spots." or "I had 5 T1s." etc, etc.

Most play multiple characters for the reasons you outlined. I addition, that type of playstyle has also been more forced on players with the degradation in solo queue quality around S9 with all the forced inclusivity of mat farmers, etc. There are times when you really just have no hope of climbing, and testing that out to the best of your ability is in your best interest if you care to climb.

More wins can also be an indication of luck, the more games you play the more likely you are to get a lucky streak. Players that would otherwise never be gold can play hundreds of games and get to gold eventually by mostly RNG and playing at least at an average level. In the past few seasons if you arent selective when you queue in solos, especially at high elo, you are assured a loss by matchmaking. Queue testing is a common practice for those that actually want to climb. Its an adaptation to the forced inclusivity of mat farmers and the like in recent seasons. The days of being able to constantly queue on one character and hope to climb by skill are mostly over

50 wins still seems excessive to me for tier 1s. Perhaps I am just too accustomed to older seasons where you could grind out T1 in a day within 15 games due to how reliable queues were. I can maybe understand a mandatory amount of wins for top3... more so for granked, but T1s have always been easy to get if you know what you are doing and forcing you to endure more RNG seems cruel and unusual, especially in these past two seasons where RNG is worse than its ever been. Low wins can be a sign of dodging (especially in granked) or a wintrade... but the other legit half of the coin is that low wins hint at how quickly one climbs due to skill, something you shouldn't necessary be punished for.

Keep in mind 2 people hold 7 or 8 of the titles for that top 10 merc/mando on your server though... Many just play multiple chars to see how many they can get to T1 or higher, Dean is one for example that does it on your server. Having an enforced amount of games as high as 100 seems a bit much, at least for solos.

Mostly this

Some cheat after they tried to play legit season after season and kept losing to cheaters at the last moment every season, etc. Its not really acceptable to cheat in cases as these or any case, and it might not even be the case here, but with reasons like that its more understandable... a lot of ranked has always been a kind of a giant joke in that regard, more so in the very recent seasons. At this point in the game they have let quite a lot of wintraders, hackers, backfillers, etc. get buy. Its amazing literally everyone isn't cheating just as a giant middle finger at the excessive amount of arbitrarity and injustice due to incompetence and/or inability on the Devs part. I get that if you do something you are by definition that thing... there are just many sub-types that fall under categories that can be relevant at different levels of analysis. I was saying that you at least have the potential to learn more from a skilled wintrader compared to one that had no ability and cheated because they had no other means. If nothing else you can learn what not to do. Like many ranked players nowadays that have been around a while, I play most classes at or near what is a Top3 level, and Astor does play at that level in my opinion.

You can still be quite good at playing parts of the game or ranked or whatever even if you cheat or had cheated. Certainly those that cheat deserve a rightous spanking from the divine hand of Mike B, but I would say there are degrees of it that need to at least be taken into account when weighing their heart against the feather. Some of those who blatantly trade are obviously not Top3 worthy when you face them just from how poorly they play... cant say Astor is one of those. Give the Devil his due

I don't know to what extent Astor wintraded or how valid that claim is... but regardless hes still one of the better ranked players on NA, and a valid source of info as mara is usually his main

If there was an only reg arena queue many would probably just do that more often than ranked arenas, myself included... especially if there was an option for like only DPS or only trinity games, etc.

For the most part I am of the opinion of just letting the insults flow in ranked, just about anything is tolerated in the verbal/written regard. Its supposed to be at least a somewhat competitive environment where tensions are allowed to rise. There are in theory no victims and only volunteers. Words can surely hurt, but if you shield yourself constantly from hurtful words you tend to just make yourself more susceptible to them in the long run. Sometimes insults thrown at you are just harsh truths, which in that case perhaps consider what is being said. The only thing I ever found intolerable about the ranked community is how some tended to get triggered to the extent that they would DOX or DDOS... although that era is seemingly in the past. Having your home office DDOSed for a day for just being better at the game or unlikable/hated for whatever reason is fun stuff

Yes, the rich get richer type problems with the previous system were always there, but they were only very obvious and a large issue when there was extreme skill disparity in the queue, which tended to only happen frequently and to an intolerable degree after they added mats in ~S9 IMO. But with this new system you can get "rich get richer" type situations as well. It seems like these problems would probably occur in any system they would implement to some degree if there is as much skill disparity and low population of high level players as there is now. Either system can work, this one may work somewhat better. The previous system in most situations wasn't bad enough to absolutely carry you, you had to know what you were doing. Those that got Top3s/T1s before can and often do get Top3s/T1s in this system. And most of those players will get Top3s/T1s in any system they implement. Thats partly what I was trying to reveal or aim at I suppose

I have played pretty much every season in solos, although to greatly varying amounts depending on the season. I have played on multiple servers since S1, and on nearly all servers (besides EU ones) at some point to some degree. I am intimately familiar with how matchmaking functioned in previous seasons in solos, how it functions now, and the overall approximate quality of the solo queue throughout time. I have posted before about the benefits and drawbacks of each queue system. I don't think the only reason its harder to climb now is because it functions properly. There is a small amount of truth to that, but it's not absolute. With the addition of mats in S9 to S10, the average skill level in the solo queue dropped to levels never seen in any other season. When everyone in the queue knows what they are doing, the teams with the most "skill", if you will, tend to win in the long run. When you throw in wildcards in the queue so bad at the game that they contribute literally nothing, don't even want to be there, and don't even technically count as a teammate, they become the dominant factor of what causes a win or loss due to the sheer amount of skill they aren't bringing to the table. These players that were uncarriable certainly were there in previous seasons, but it wasn't ever even remotely to the degree as has been seen in the past couple seasons. The queue changes and Dev response in Season 10 addressed many ranked problems such as: the ease of map hacking, factional imbalance and syncing, server transferable elo, backfilling, botting, etc., and it did change how the queue formed teams. This was all mostly positive. The mats that incentivized farmers which are basically throws most of the time and the cross-role backfilling were some of the more negative changes from a queue stability/reliability standpoint. In certain situations the previous system did make the rich richer, but even now the queue can do the same thing at certain times. It's just not quite to the degree as the previous system. In some situations in the previous system for example the second highest DPS in the queue would almost always get paired with the worst tank and healer in queue (Which at times might not be a bad thing, but at other times it was almost always an auto loss), while the first highest DPS would get the highest rated tank and healer on average. Just noting this phenomenon alone and avoiding being second highest in queue in such situations decreased the probability you would be faced with unwinnable games. If you played considering this factor alone over time you often had a much smoother climbing rate to Top3 or T1, less RNG to some extent. Among some of the upper players it was known as the curse of the second highest or "the rule of number 2 in queue", etc. Those that flocked to small faction servers of either imp or pub often did have an advantage vs the larger faction, and that can be seen as a factor in some peoples successes across various seasons... but it can't usually be stated as the only factor. Because so many players were doing it, everyone that was a better player and wanted to compete in that factional bracket often flocked there as well, which often made for highly competitive inter-factional games on the small isolated factional oriented servers. Those who had Top3s on these servers would have likely had at or near Top3s elsewhere to some degree, just obviously not absolutely... and some certainly did abuse this advantage. It certainly sucked if you were trying to climb on that larger faction with a more disparate skill pool and vs the smaller faction of all good players.

Bored as fk, thought I might chime in. I can see your argument to some extent, but Zurules and others make some vaild points as well. My two cents on the matter: Granked may be dead and not quite as good of a metric for skill now and in recent seasons due to all the "kickballed" type matches and their ambiguous nature, but when granked occurs at competitive set team levels it still takes some of the highest levels of skill in the game. Team oriented play, even in the first several seasons back in the day, had its drawbacks (Like limitations when trying to find a consistent team of players that met your skill level, the discouragement of kickballed type matches in the first seasons that limited your access, the amount of time and effort it took to get going, and just when and how little granked happened to pop, etc.), but overall granked always has had more weight to it as a measure of skill, and still arguably does when its legit, regardless of how frequent it pops. To have some dismiss solos now to some degree is understandable due to all the excessive randomness and bad players, but most seasons in solos (up until around mid Season 9 with the incentives for mat farmers, etc) it was a lot more competitive and stable on most servers. Queues were regulated by vote kick and other means to keep it that way, and you could reliably climb via skill. Solos can also provide opportunity for display of individual skill that granked arguably doesn't always offer, that many often don't mention. In granked you are often locked into metas, often both teams playing the most effective classes and specs in cookie-cutter styles that is just a fight of attrition somewhat similar to the last fight, composed somewhat similar to the other team. While individual skill matters obviously, many times teammates making a mistake (improperly breaking a stun and getting globalled for example) will cost you the game, and it is often not something within your control or something you can work your way out of (in a trinity comp like that once its 3v4 its usually not possible to recover and your team typically /stucks it). All of this is high risk high skill competitive play where any mistake will cost your team, and proper cohesion will often secure a win, but I think its valid to argue that there isn't as much variability and potential for individual performance as solos due to how dependent you are on your teammates... and how any disparity in skill among teammates can cause issues. In solos you take whatever hand the Universe and Eric Musco deals you, and you just have to make the best of it. There isn't always a reliable team to back you up (in recent seasons almost never), and you will be put in an unending variety of situations that will at the very least sometimes not go well for you. While this is one of the great drawbacks of solos, it can also be a great benefit in some ways. (One reason people don't like Solos is because it's Swtors simulator of life) If you are one of those players who is able to thrive in those situations you can sometimes carry games to an extreme degree, often 1v1, sometimes 1v2, and maybe the occasional 1v3 if your class and the situation allows for it. In granked you almost never seemingly get the opportunity to win such matches or to such a degree for a variety of reasons (at least in my experience). In solos you can get the opportunity to shine as an individual quite frequently (Especially in all DPS matches [depends on class and spec to some degree] one of the most fun modes IMO that granked doesn't offer... a mode arguably somewhat more balanced if DPS for potential elo climbing via skill. This is in part due to it being hard as a DPS to carry bad support classes or to go against good ones, and how frequently one sided support class games are in solos). All that crap being said, TLDR?... like many I have always seen the two ranked modes as two halves of the coin that makes up a solid ranked player, with the coin slightly more weighted towards granked... and it still seems to be the case.

Why the fk not

Possible words or prefix stuff to incorporate in a top3 title: Arch-(AC), name Archetype The Exalted (AC) Epic Elite Legendary Zealous Keen Uber-/Super- Paragon of the (AC) Unrelenting/Relentless Unrivaled/Rival Meta-Mythic/Mythical

I'm quickly reading this crap during boring down time on phone, missed the distinction. Many would be interested in seeing this information, there are many places to post such things outside of the forums.

Saying a minority of ranked players wintrade sounds a lot more reasonable than the majority. I just can't see more than half of the titles ever given being the result of trades, which is what you made it sound like. Prove me wrong, I would be glad to be enlightened if it is or was indeed that bad.

I would be interested in seeing your wintrading evidence, especially for all the seasons you have not participated or even played the game during. You only played S1 and this season no? Wintrading happens, it certainly has happened in past seasons... but I highly doubt it happens to the degree most claim on the forums. There are many factors involved in ranked success in top3, luck for example being a more significant factor in solos the past couple seasons than ever before. There are many factors one should take into account before resorting to wintrading as the explanation. What one more than often tends to find with those who proclaim everyone wintrades, hacks, cheats, etc. is that these outcriers are those who have no hope of climbing in the system, are resentful, and want to burn it down along with those that strive for and obtain the pinnacle. Due to the levels of arbitrarity involved in everything all of this is understandable... but not really acceptable. If there is justice to be had let it be had to the extent that it can, but one should not allow envy to make one cast unfounded accusations on those that are more likely deserving than not. This is not necessarily saying you are one of these outcriers, just that you display many of their characteristics, and its something to consider if you have not.

I don't want them to remove top3s really, but I wouldn't be completely opposed to the idea either. It worked for S1 at least, even though a lot was different then.

Ah okay, just saw tier 1-3... didn't think that included top3

Brainstorming top3 titles would be good also. Many thought Genius and especially Expert were more than a tad lackluster, and I would have to agree (although the top3 flairs were decent).

I mean in my experience, most players that think that most players wintraded for their top3s generally don't have a snowballs chance in Hades of getting a top3. Wintrading happens, maybe more than it used to in recent seasons... but to say most wintraded is not something you should claim without substantial evidence and knowledge.

Might as well add them to the cartel market if you go that route. Most top3 players would give that suggestion a gigantic lolno, myself included.

What a guy