Is It Time To Get Rid of Ranked for Good?

[Banderal]

On Star Forge, there were recently two people in the same guild (who claimed to be husband and wife) blatantly wintrading. They tried hard when on the same team, and alternately threw for each other when not. Why? They were trying to complete the weekly for each other for a monumental crystal..., that should be enough proof to ban/reset them in my opinion.

 

Bioware should also remove any monumental crystals they got, and any gear they bought with them. Because if they were really only doing it to complete the crystal weekly, then a reset of their rank will bother them probably zero percent. I suppose a ban might deter somewhat, depending on how long it is.

[Lhancelot]

On Star Forge, there were recently two people in the same guild (who claimed to be husband and wife) blatantly wintrading. They tried hard when on the same team, and alternately threw for each other when not.

 

What has happened to us as human beings.

[Banderal]

What has happened to us as human beings.

 

 

[Lhancelot]

 

 

That's a great commercial imo. Still doesn't explain what happened to us human beings.

[Banderal]

That's a great commercial imo. Still doesn't explain what happened to us human beings.

 

I don't know what commercial it showed (I guess as a precursor to the vid?). It was supposed to be KT Tunstall doing the song "Human Being". And, no, it doesn't explain much. But it's fun to watch / listen to while you ponder.

[JediMasterAlex]

Bioware should also remove any monumental crystals they got, and any gear they bought with them. Because if they were really only doing it to complete the crystal weekly, then a reset of their rank will bother them probably zero percent. I suppose a ban might deter somewhat, depending on how long it is.

 

That's a good point, because both of them are rated quite low lol. A ban might deter them because they were under the impression they were doing nothing wrong; after all they were just in ranked "for our crystals."

[foxmob]

Bioware should also remove any monumental crystals they got, and any gear they bought with them. Because if they were really only doing it to complete the crystal weekly, then a reset of their rank will bother them probably zero percent. I suppose a ban might deter somewhat, depending on how long it is.

 

lol I want 12 months of sub back for BW ever creating that quest in the first place. any 10-year old could've seen this coming with that quest.

Edited May 9, 2019 by foxmob

[sharkfishman]

I don't know what commercial it showed (I guess as a precursor to the vid?). It was supposed to be KT Tunstall doing the song "Human Being". And, no, it doesn't explain much. But it's fun to watch / listen to while you ponder.

 

This was great, lol. I wish we could post gifs, lol. http://cdn-www.swtor.com/sites/all/files/community/images/swtor/smilies/biggrin.png

[merovejec]

This is probably the most common method of wintrading, and it is hard to prove, but there is a way to prove it: establishing a pattern of behavior. If you notice the same characters in queue and you notice the phenomenon that you're talking about happening repeatedly, then it becomes quite clear what is happening. That is especially true when the people involved essentially admit what is happening.

 

Indeed and this is what happens on DM mainly. I remember the time when we had rep and imp ques. On DM it was imposssible to que on rep side cause if you get a pop it would be with 2-3 bad players and all elite PVPers played imp so naturally you lost as rep. Once I got a pop and the other 3 ppl were on voice chat and wintrading. What they did was tell their "friends" not to que imp side so only the bad and medicore imps were in que. They qued rep side practically as a rep premade, maybe there was even a 4th but I got his spot.

 

What they did was vote kick me out of the wz and then they went on to win 3v4, getting more rating. Thats not possible now due to merged que, but the same thing still happens. I see players who are in my team with 230 gear and we lose, then the same toon is against me and suddenly he has 258 rating gear and wins. I see very good players get globalled claiming they had lag, then globalled again complaining we didnt do as agreed or they surprised him etc. Its just silly.

 

The issue is that all this is almost impossible to prove. Sure you can say we are paranoid, but if its so many people claiming to have observed the same it cannot be conincidence.

[JediMasterAlex]

What they did was vote kick me out of the wz and then they went on to win 3v4, getting more rating. Thats not possible now due to merged que, but the same thing still happens. I see players who are in my team with 230 gear and we lose, then the same toon is against me and suddenly he has 258 rating gear and wins. I see very good players get globalled claiming they had lag, then globalled again complaining we didnt do as agreed or they surprised him etc. Its just silly.

 

The issue is that all this is almost impossible to prove. Sure you can say we are paranoid, but if its so many people claiming to have observed the same it cannot be conincidence.

 

It's only impossible to prove if they are really sneaky about it. I guess if they only did it rarely, and were always doing it on different toons, it would be hard to detect, but if they are doing it regularly on the same sets of toons, the devs should be able to investigate and surmise what is happening.

[Lhancelot]

It's only impossible to prove if they are really sneaky about it. I guess if they only did it rarely, and were always doing it on different toons, it would be hard to detect, but if they are doing it regularly on the same sets of toons, the devs should be able to investigate and surmise what is happening.

 

There's absolutely no way to definitively determine that someone is throwing matches unless they make it really obvious with a large sample size of thrown matches.

 

This is because there's simply too many reasonable explanations as to why they tend to get globaled often, or why they seem to leave started ranked matches frequently etc.

 

The problem is it takes so little time to win trade proving a real pattern exists is hard with a sample size of 10-20 matches that could even be potentially mixed with multiple different toons.

 

Point is, without being able to prove someone is guilty, BW is not going to kangaroo court it and just start banning people that "might" or "probably" were doing shady activities.

 

They also have shown zero interest in supervising matches ingame, or doing any other sort of proactive ingame security/behavior checks that require actual people to perform such duties.

[merovejec]

There's absolutely no way to definitively determine that someone is throwing matches unless they make it really obvious with a large sample size of thrown matches.

 

This is because there's simply too many reasonable explanations as to why they tend to get globaled often, or why they seem to leave started ranked matches frequently etc.

 

The problem is it takes so little time to win trade proving a real pattern exists is hard with a sample size of 10-20 matches that could even be potentially mixed with multiple different toons.

 

Point is, without being able to prove someone is guilty, BW is not going to kangaroo court it and just start banning people that "might" or "probably" were doing shady activities.

 

They also have shown zero interest in supervising matches ingame, or doing any other sort of proactive ingame security/behavior checks that require actual people to perform such duties.

 

They are doing one obvious pattern that I have noticed. When I am up against some of the good PVPers and I see my team mates are nothing special I know its a loss. Then we go out and magically we win round 1. I am very surprised that it happened etc. Then its round 2 and one of the guys on our team gets globalled suddenly and we lose round 2. He says he is sorry etc, wont happen again etc. Round 3 the same guy gets either globalled or multiple guys get globalled and we lose. This way the game ends 2:1 on rounds, so its not obvious but game play wise it is. The guys say sorry sorry and leave the match.

 

Then they can swap to an alt and continue. They would have to monitor the account, not just the toons if they are repeating the same stuff over and over. If this players is on the wintraded players team he then has to play good, so in the end he will have wins and losses, so nothing obvious again. So as it was said, its almost impossible to pinpoint such wintrading.

 

Regarding alts, the game had sooo many events to level up toons, these people must have a minimum of 20 toons so swaping them to throw and wintrade shouldnt be an issue. Most PVPers have very little achievement points from 10 000 - 20 000, which shows that they only PVP and level up. Its all they do so even alts have the valor for ranked. They simply have all that is needed to cheat the system.

[foxmob]

ts to level up toons, these people must have a minimum of 20 toons so swaping them to throw and wintrade shouldnt be an issue. Most PVPers have very little achievement points from 10 000 - 20 000, which shows that they only PVP and level up. Its all they do so even alts have the valor for ranked. They simply have all that is needed to cheat the system.

 

umm. I have like 8 mercs/mandos on one server b/c they merged all the US servers. nothing to do with the 2xp/12xp stuff.

[merovejec]

umm. I have like 8 mercs/mandos on one server b/c they merged all the US servers. nothing to do with the 2xp/12xp stuff.

 

But you have 8+8= 16 toons, thats the point

[KendraP]

But you have 8+8= 16 toons, thats the point

 

Just because someone has a lot of alts, doesn't mean they are involved in wintrading or cheating. That is a rather blatant logical pitfall.

[TrixxieTriss]

But you have 8+8= 16 toons, thats the point

 

I’ve 76 toon’s and I had more before I deleted 30 of them after the merge

 

Edit: forgot to add that’s only on this active account, I’ve 116 on my inactive account.

Edited May 10, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[merovejec]

Just because someone has a lot of alts, doesn't mean they are involved in wintrading or cheating. That is a rather blatant logical pitfall.

 

I am not claiming that if you have alts you wintrade. What I meant was that the PVPers are in the game for some time and they experienced the time of the game when it was easy to make alts, fun to play lowbies and gather PVP coms etc. They played during all this time and therefore have alts at their disposal. This only helps them in cheating cause you have throw-away toons that can be missused this way.

[JediMasterAlex]

There's absolutely no way to definitively determine that someone is throwing matches unless they make it really obvious with a large sample size of thrown matches.

 

This is because there's simply too many reasonable explanations as to why they tend to get globaled often, or why they seem to leave started ranked matches frequently etc.

 

The problem is it takes so little time to win trade proving a real pattern exists is hard with a sample size of 10-20 matches that could even be potentially mixed with multiple different toons.

 

Point is, without being able to prove someone is guilty, BW is not going to kangaroo court it and just start banning people that "might" or "probably" were doing shady activities.

 

They also have shown zero interest in supervising matches ingame, or doing any other sort of proactive ingame security/behavior checks that require actual people to perform such duties.

 

I don't want to get too lawyerly here, but you don't seem to quite understand the concepts of evidence or proof. If no one could be convicted unless there was "direct, definitive proof that a crime was committed," our prisons would be empty. There is such a thing as circumstantial evidence. Bioware has access, I assume, to all of the raw data produced by matches. They can see which toons belong to which accounts, they can see damage done and damage taken when you are on a person's team versus when you are not on a person's team. They can see the rating changes of all of the players over time. All of that information is evidence that when put together, could absolutely be enough to justify punishing someone.

 

There are basically two standards for determining guilt in courts of law (in the US), beyond a reasonable doubt, usually used in criminal cases, and preponderance of the evidence, usually used in civil cases. The preponderance standard requires the factfinder to determine that it is more probable than not that the person is liable/guilty (in other words, based on the evidence, there's a greater than 50% chance that the person did the thing accused of). Maybe you think that that standard is not right for determining cheating in this game, and would prefer the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. That still does not require a factfinder to "definitively determine" anything. Cases that go to trial never definitively "prove" anything. One side presents as much evidence as possible to show that the defendant is guilty, and the other side tries to introduce reasonable doubt.

 

It all comes down to whether Bioware is willing to fully investigate and gather the amount of evidence necessary. If I report two people for wintrading, and Bioware can only muster a meager amount of evidence, such as looking at the particular match in question, looking at the data and determining that nothing looks out of the ordinary, then clearly that is not enough to establish guilt. It would take real time and effort on Bioware's part, and maybe they don't have the desire or resources to do it properly, but they absolutely could do it.

 

There are wintraders active now that have various people throw for them. If Bioware analyzed all of the beneficiary's matches, they could take note of repeat accounts in those matches and measure their performance, etc. If a pattern does develop where let's say toons from two different accounts always tend to perform worse when facing someone versus when they are paired with someone, and the beneficiary is nearly always winning as a result, that would be a fairly clear pattern, and it wouldn't take that many games to establish. If all of the data was laid out before a judge or jury, who would have a reasonable doubt that it was not wintrading? Sure, there are plenty of reasonable explanations for wild swings in performance over a handful of games, but a sample size of 10-20 games would be more than enough to work with.

 

The point is that it could be done. It is not "impossible," it would just require a lot of work that Bioware is probably unwilling to put in due to lack of resources or just lack of caring about wintraders.

[DavidAtkinson]

There's absolutely no way to definitively determine that someone is throwing matches unless they make it really obvious with a large sample size of thrown matches.

 

This is because there's simply too many reasonable explanations as to why they tend to get globaled often, or why they seem to leave started ranked matches frequently etc.

 

The problem is it takes so little time to win trade proving a real pattern exists is hard with a sample size of 10-20 matches that could even be potentially mixed with multiple different toons.

 

Point is, without being able to prove someone is guilty, BW is not going to kangaroo court it and just start banning people that "might" or "probably" were doing shady activities.

 

They also have shown zero interest in supervising matches ingame, or doing any other sort of proactive ingame security/behavior checks that require actual people to perform such duties.

 

If you google "swtor season, 1, 2, 3, 4 rwards it will take you to the threads where the rewards are shown and presented on another site and you will see that in the comments people were complaining about the same things as we are know. People are cheating and were cheating back then by wintrading their way to access the unique rewards. The difference between now and then is that the que has gotten a lot smaller and it's not that obvious now. No one says that all the top spots are unfair, but it takes a lot of luck and rating management is needed to be able to climb there with so few wins.

 

You cannot get gold or tops spots by queing all the time every day. You simply won't... On a dps char at least.

 

If you roll a new dps char now and que in prime time chances are you will end up with a very low rating due to how bad the que is at the moment.

[merovejec]

You cannot get gold or tops spots by queing all the time every day. You simply won't... On a dps char at least.

 

If you roll a new dps char now and que in prime time chances are you will end up with a very low rating due to how bad the que is at the moment.

 

Yes this is the main problem after wintrading, but it also goes hand in hand with it. What Bioware needs to do is give the players a que system where you can que at any time and get solid matches. That really doesnt happen.

 

Like I said I am playing 2 times a week and if during that time there is a bot in que my time is wasted. If someone is throwing for someone my time is wasted (unless i am in the winning team). If someone is sync quing tank or healer, my time is wasted etc. What they need to do is ensure that the que is fine.

 

If I think back to season one, I first heard about wintrading at the end of season. The guilds were full of people so it was no issue to get 8 peiple to que together at 3 am for rating. At least back then people did it NOT during prime time and you had a lot of servers where to do it without being interrupted. You do not have that now. There is not enough people in the game and people have to use bots (which is mostly discovered now) or do it during prime time since there are pops!

[sharkfishman]

Yes this is the main problem after wintrading, but it also goes hand in hand with it. What Bioware needs to do is give the players a que system where you can que at any time and get solid matches. That really doesnt happen.

 

Like I said I am playing 2 times a week and if during that time there is a bot in que my time is wasted. If someone is throwing for someone my time is wasted (unless i am in the winning team). If someone is sync quing tank or healer, my time is wasted etc. What they need to do is ensure that the que is fine.

 

This is one reason I'm hoping they reshape the way rewards are handed out when it comes to individual players. It literally makes no sense to reward players using the current system. Literally this is the result, virtually 100%, unless you manipulate the queues by strategically declining/syncing, etc.

 

Legit player playing a large amount of matches with totally random pairings of fellow players: always a net loss.

 

Legit player playing a small amount of 10-20 matches: results vary based purely on luck of the draw

 

Wintrader: Always a significant gain.

 

In all scenarios, legitimate players are punished by actually participating in the game mode. That's just ridiculous. Since when should logging in at specific times of day/night be a prerequisite for success in a game mode? Also ridiculous.

[DavidAtkinson]

This is one reason I'm hoping they reshape the way rewards are handed out when it comes to individual players. It literally makes no sense to reward players using the current system. Literally this is the result, virtually 100%, unless you manipulate the queues by strategically declining/syncing, etc.

 

Legit player playing a large amount of matches with totally random pairings of fellow players: always a net loss.

 

Legit player playing a small amount of 10-20 matches: results vary based purely on luck of the draw

 

Wintrader: Always a significant gain.

 

In all scenarios, legitimate players are punished by actually participating in the game mode. That's just ridiculous. Since when should logging in at specific times of day/night be a prerequisite for success in a game mode? Also ridiculous.

 

Well since it's solo ranked, our performance shouldn't be measured based on 3 other randoms. So yo que solo, but still depend on a team.

 

Ranking players based on in individual performance might not be possible in SWTOR sadly because;

 

1. the game had already 10 seasons with almost zero changes to how ranked works even when Bio had more resources in the past.

 

2. It requires a complete rework of the game mode that takes into account a lot of factors like win, your damage output etc and honeslty I just don't see any other method that could work. I am too dumb to think of something that makes sense.

 

So the win/loss will stay I'm afraid but they should get rid of this dumb first 10 games thing. Make wins count more.. and remove ELO based matchmaking. Should be totally random.

 

... but mass queing should help you improve rating and get good games. Currently it doesn't and if you are unable to get good rating for some reason and still want rewards, you are basically forced to mass que to collect tokens because you will have mediocre rating and won't afford the nice rewards either..

 

Like I said in my previous post, I did some digging on net to try and find some talks about the fist seasons and players were complaining about the same thing. Did something change in the meantime ? Apart from this recent matchmaking change there have been zero improvements in the way ranked works.

 

And I have a feeling for Bioware it's simply not worth it to spend their limited resources and something that is played by such a small portion of the playerbase.

 

My biggest issue with ranked is that you might lose a lot... in an unfair way and that is very hard to recover.

 

Guys, learn to enjoy life.. and don't stress over ranked. Sometimes I feel like I am a gambling addict. I lose elo..and then keep queing to try and get it back. That's exactly what gamblers do when they lose money on the slot machine...

 

What if it's designed to make us fail... and keep us hooked to it = subbed etc..

Edited May 10, 2019 by DavidAtkinson

[alexzk]

Is it closed finally ? I feel like it is on DM .. today so many pro-premdes in regs. not usually seen such, Like 2-3 ppl same guild + using grenades + using chained stuns ...

...ya, but when mara wastes opening chain - he just runs away not trying to capture - funny ...

 

Btw, post above - "totaly random" called "regs". Ranked was made for to match by ELO. That is main purpose of its creation. Because old days premades with voice comm were wiping randoms. So Bio made special queue called "ranked" for them.

Edited May 10, 2019 by alexzk

[JediMasterAlex]

You cannot get gold or tops spots by queing all the time every day. You simply won't... On a dps char at least.

 

I mostly agree with your general sentiment, but I just want to say, it is possible to get gold on a dps char if you queue a lot. I know because I did it last season and I did it again this season (granted, I got it fairly early this season due to some luck). I queue more than anyone else on Star Forge, and it's true that when you queue a lot, you go through a lot of ups and downs, but it's still possible to get gold if you climb slowly or get on a lucky winstreak. As for getting top 3, that is probably impossible, as the vast majority of those in the top 3 do not queue regularly. As you point out, even the ones that are not wintraders are still taking advantage of a broken system in many ways.

[DavidAtkinson]

I mostly agree with your general sentiment, but I just want to say, it is possible to get gold on a dps char if you queue a lot. I know because I did it last season and I did it again this season (granted, I got it fairly early this season due to some luck). I queue more than anyone else on Star Forge, and it's true that when you queue a lot, you go through a lot of ups and downs, but it's still possible to get gold if you climb slowly or get on a lucky winstreak. As for getting top 3, that is probably impossible, as the vast majority of those in the top 3 do not queue regularly. As you point out, even the ones that are not wintraders are still taking advantage of a broken system in many ways.

 

Well.. if you get 1450 after 10 games you will have a very good shot at gold if you don't blow it...

 

But if you end up with 1050 for example it will be a nightmare. Not saying it's impossible but not very likely or it will be very hard..Depends also on class. Your best shot to pull it off would be a merc.

 

I started with around 1380 on mara then fell back 1030 and back to almost 1300 again and was steadily climbing.. I made a sent to try again on rep side, failed my first 10 and basically was just losing. Then I crippled my main too and lost 150 points in 3 days. Basically I should just delete....

 

You know it's sometimes difficult when you work so much and keep it steady around 1300 for 200 games then lose it all... morale gows down and then u can't play at full potential.I totally blame myself as my rating is that of a bot now... and it this point I feel like queing to improve but am scared to just ruin it even further.

 

What this has taught me is that losing just breeds losing in SR.

Edited May 10, 2019 by DavidAtkinson