Curse

reboot · Feb 04, 2006, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

Until such time as Anet introduces random unrated GvG then smurfs are a vital part of any decent guild that cares about the rank of the main. Even then smurfs will still exist.

You also need to win in your smurf to get it to as near the same rating as your main as possible, otherwise any build tests you run in it are pretty meaningless.

Test in your main, do unrated aranged. This is what we do. Smurfing has a real and noticable negative effect on the ladder and the community ( assuming my guild isn't the only one getting tanked hard. )

Even though we constantly play top Am guilds, constantly play thiers smurfs they never ask us to do unrated for testing.

Wuv is the iQ smurf if they tested in iQ, the main iQ would only be higher since wuv is undefeated. in fact most smurf guilds are undefeated or very close to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tafy69

it is quite annoying to lose lots of rating to smurfs, but just get over it eh. In the end you end up where you belong

You can't get over it if you were ranked 160 and supposed to be closer to 40 but had lost 4 -20 games to smurfs this week.

It's gonna take us 60 wins to make up for this, It should not be legal, and guess what were not gonna stop playing in our timezone so were going to face smurfs of the best teams over and over, and were always going to be losing more then we should, untill they hit the top ten, OH and we dont play 60 games in a week, we have real lifes.

The ladder dosen't even out as fast as Smurfers say it does, its just a not true.

RotteN · Feb 04, 2006, 10:35 PM // 22:35

we use our smurf for testing and training new members, the reason why we use a smurf is cause it's the easiest way to get a series of gvg's goin'.

so you lose against smurfs once and a while, if you mind it so much, just ask in global if they would want to leave just before killing the guildlord (and obviously having the win secured). i don't think they'll mind doin that if they're like R700 and buildtesting and you're R200

reboot · Feb 04, 2006, 10:41 PM // 22:41

lol right and you know what they say?

"FU NOOB GET OVER IT"
"YOU SUCK"

oh and i almost forgot...quiting out is illegal...It's the opposite choice and the opposite effect on the ladder but it is illegal, and winning on a smurf is not...

In other words its ok to manupulate the ladder aginst non top tier guilds, but not in thier favor, and in the rare cases a smurf beats a top ten main the loss of rating is capped so they never loose more then a lower ranked guild losses in the same situation.

Its completly stupid to have a rule aginst intentionaly losing on your smurf, with out having a rule aginst winning which would be a ban aginst smurfs in ladder play.

The way the ladder is right now, favors top tier guilds that have smurfs, Period, its not fair, Anet NEEDS to stop it.

Greedy Gus · Feb 04, 2006, 10:49 PM // 22:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by reboot

Smurfing has a real and noticable negative effect on the ladder and the community ( assuming my guild isn't the only one getting tanked hard. )

Quote:

Originally Posted by reboot

You can't get over it if you were ranked 160 and supposed to be closer to 40 but had lost 4 -20 games to smurfs this week.

I don't understand how you can say both of these statements in the same post. Don't you see they're contradictory? Even you admit that everyone has to deal with the smurf "problem", and yet you still feel that you're entitled to some sort of top 40 rank? As far as I can tell from the iQ ladder, your guild has never even broken 1300 rating. You have a warped sense of entitlement.

If you truly feel that your guild should be ranked higher, then as many people have already pointed out, your real limiting factor is only your activity, not smurfs, due to the way the ELO ladder works.

Falconer · Feb 05, 2006, 12:30 AM // 00:30

Reading through this. Shows a bit of misunderstanding on a lot of peoples parts.

How does the ladder and ranking work. If there are 100 guilds TOTAL... all the guilds start at 1000 points... meaning that provided no new guilds enter/leave the ladder. At tne end of the ladder. Those 100 guilds still only have 1,000,000 points spread between them. The farther away you get from 1000, the harder it is for you to gain/lose points.

The reason that smurfs distort the ladder is because they take points out of the system. And it's extremely detrimental to 'challengers' people with good builds trying to work their way up. They're the most likely to be paired against the smurfs, and the ones who lose the most to them.

If losing a few matches has no effect on your guild. Then iQ and others should have no problems playing with their main new builds and such. Since any ratings reductions... would simply be made up with later matches where more points would be scored. But this obviously isn't the case, so making the arguement that this change is 'neutral' is specious and hypocritical on their part. Arguably, they would be at a disadvantage for doing it if other guilds are using their smurfs for practice. If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

I'm in no way stating that iQ or anyone is intentionally tanking others ratings by doing this. But the distortionate effects do exist. But the problem exists, because you have a guild with Rating X, which does not correctly reflect it's rating. So a game is played the ladder moves to correct this by according points appropriately. This effectively removes points from the 1,000,000 point pool which others need to gain on those already at the top. In fact, I'd argue that iQ and others would be at a disadvantage within the rules if they didn't practice with a smurf while other top guilds did the same.

So lets say we have 10 teams in that 100 with ratings of 1800, they each have a 1500 point smurf. Their main guilds have 'won' 800 points from the pool.. winning more is going to be a very hard proposition. (either a lot of points from stiff competition, or very few from lots of 'easy' potentially prolonged matches). Effectively those 10 smurfs have removed 5000 points from contention, whereas if those matches would have been fought and won with the main guilds... more likely only 2000 points would have been redistributed. If they make a few 1000 rated guilds... it distorts this even more.

The other problem is the matching system in GvG. Top ranked guilds are statistically less likely to hit smurfs than the guilds trying to work their way up the ladder. Even if they have to wait a while and hit a few of them. They're less likely to get them than are the guys in the 50-300 slots trying their best to work their way up the ladder. So this gets a lot of bad press from these people who feel cheated. So the points are disproportionately removed from the top-middle of the ladder, than from the top.

In high level chess. There's a large issue in fact with grand masters picking and choosing opposition simply to manipulate their federation rankings. In many cases, there's no reason at all for a high level player to accept a game. (and this necessitated rules forcing them to play a minimum number of matches). The ELO bits used in GW suffer from exactly the same problem. There's also the bit that the chess system where this system was used for ages... you have a rating. It's attached to you and only you. You can't get rid of it, simply by leaving a guild and making a new one. Or by 'filling into' someone elses shoes.

Now in actual play... in GW... as guilds are formed and destroyed, you get some turnover into the system. The pool size isn't fixed. But the problem that the guild has players which doesn't properly reflect it's rating and results in disproportionate benefits accrueing to the smurf.

IMO: the problem stems completely from the fact that the guild rating and the players playing are completely unlinked. Unless people can demonstrate that having a 1400 or 1500 ranked guild playing with it's 1800 man squad and it's fairly representing them. (which is something I don't feel they can do). And if it's 'just for fun' then there should be no stigma against unrated matches. (I tend to feel if guests are involved. The match should automatically become a scrimmage to prevent the use of ringers. IMO the possibility of people abusing this for faction for unlocks is far less damaging than the possibility of people abusing this to manipulate the ladder ratings itself, or to protect their position. The only way people can argue me out of this position is to be able to say with a straight face, Gary Kasparov playing as Joe Unknown in some rated chess event somewhere would have no effect on the system whole and NOT DAMAGE THE INTEGRITY OF THE SYSTEM. (last bit is the most important IMO).

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 12:56 AM // 00:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

As far as I can tell from the iQ ladder, your guild has never even broken 1300 rating. You have a

Ok your from XoO right? We beat you every time we played any of your teams even your teams with 1300 plus rating, which you seem to think is some magic number of skill. We flawlessed each of your teams several times when we played for SoS. I think we lost a game to you this season with 4 guests in HaHa, to be fair were about 9-1 vs you. Just because you grind out 300 games at a 40% wins and get above 1300 rating dosen't change the fact that my guild beat you every single time we played you that season. We also played smurfs and lost to them alot...

How could my guild with out a 1300 rating even dream of beating XoO, you ask? You must be shocked, I would be, but we didn't just beat your Obs flame spike team at rank 40, we flawlessed you that game. It was over in less then 8 minutes ward spam on the guild lord and all. How is that possible? The ladders rating and rank are accurate, oh wait....hmm do you get it now?

The ladders broken because of smurfs.

Read a little the math in the thread, and I'll sum it up for you here: if you remove the smurfs from the ladder, and then adjust my teams rank were top 100 if not top 50 right now, this season, instead of 150ish. Our rating would be about 1300 too.

It is not some "warped sense of entitlement" its a fact, and one thats documented and proven through out this thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

The reason that smurfs distort the ladder is because they take points out of the system. And it's extremely detrimental to 'challengers' people with good builds trying to work their way up. They're the most likely to be paired against the smurfs, and the ones who lose the most to them.

Finally some one else who knows how the ladder works speaks up, and much better then I could have.
The info about my guild, and the losses to smurfs effect on our rank, and how often we play smurfs,
should make more sense for others now, It is clear when its happening to you that thats exactly what is going on.

Ensign · Feb 05, 2006, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

The reason that smurfs distort the ladder is because they take points out of the system.

They don't take points out of the system. They concentrate them more amongst an artificially high number of 'top' guilds. 'superguest' guilds do that as well, as long as they're better than average they work their way up the ladder and concentrate that population.

The only way points leave the system is if you create guilds, drive their rating up, then delete them. But why does it even matter if points leave the system? The purpose of the ladder is to create a *ranking* system. Even the OP is much more interested in guild rank than guild rating. It simply doesn't matter whether people's ratings are 1200 or 1400 or 2200, or how many excess points are in the system, it matters how ratings are relative to each other. In fact many of the newer rating systems are designed to be unbalanced, with provisional ratings and uneven point changes on wins and losses - designed to give a more fair representation of rank at the expense of some true statistical rating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

And it's extremely detrimental to 'challengers' people with good builds trying to work their way up.

The net effect of a smurf on a guild's aggregate rank is -1, because the smurf passes the other guild and finds its own level. There is some noise introduced to the system by who gets matched up against who but, again, that largely levels itself out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

If losing a few matches has no effect on your guild. Then iQ and others should have no problems playing with their main new builds and such.

We only play on our main guild when we feel that we can give a 'best effort' performance on a given night. Are you suggesting that people should only play GvG when they can put forward their best effort? Top chess players do not experiment with new openings during important rated matches - top teams would not play in important matches if important team members are out sick or otherwise. We want our guild rating to reflect our ability when we're playing our game, not when we're playing handicapped.

Anomolies work themselves out over a few matches. But if you're playing at a level off of your peak consistently your rating will reflect that. Hence we keep multiple guilds, one for competitive play and one for practice - the difference in rating reflects the difference in ability of those two guilds. If you want to suggest that we should go into a ladder match that is potentially worth a tidy sum of money without our best players and with an untested build I will laugh in your face.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

So the points are disproportionately removed from the top-middle of the ladder, than from the top.

Ladder ratings are. Ladder ranks are *not*. If you pulled all of the smurfs off the ladder the non-smurf guilds would remain in roughly the same order, because that's how ladders work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

But the problem that the guild has players which doesn't properly reflect it's rating and results in disproportionate benefits accrueing to the smurf.

Yep, and that's why things like provisional ratings have taken off on most competitive rankings. You want to get a new entity to its rightful position as quickly as possible to minimize the wake of its ascent.

Of course this would create exactly the same situation you have now, with a meaningless change to guild rating and the -1 per smurf guild rank hit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Unless people can demonstrate that having a 1400 or 1500 ranked guild playing with it's 1800 man squad and it's fairly representing them.

Irrelevant. Once the smurf hits its natural level the sum of its ladder disruption is -1 rank per involved guild. If that 1400 or 1500 ranked guild is being played at 1800 level by an 1800-level squad then it'll rise in the ratings until it reflects that. If it's being played at 1500 rating level then its record will reflect that. But again the only relevant change is the -1 rank per smurf involved. Absolute rating values are effectively meaningless, all that does matter is relative values, and the presence of entities above or below you does not change that in the slightest.

Peace,
-CxE

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 01:51 AM // 01:51

You took his post out of context to make several of thouse comments ensign.
You need learn when hes refering to the real ladder and then one in his example

----and this ----

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The net effect of a smurf on a guild's aggregate rank is -1, because the smurf passes the other guild and finds its own level. There is some noise introduced to the system by who gets matched up against who but, again, that largely levels itself out.

The net effect of a guild not smurfing is 0, because the guild plays more games and reached a true rating over time.

Hey, it's fun to make statements that sound all "high and mighty" as if you know what your talking about, but sorry, im in a guild thats been effected but smurfs and its over -100 atm thanks, I think I would know if it was -1 becuase our rank would be 53 right now.

It dosent matter that come season end if we stay active we should be at least that high. Right now were 100 spots lower on the ladder then we should be, and its because of smurfs. Your logic is flawed and you push the argument out of context with respect to time, to attempt to cover that flaw. This isn't a Thread about the effects of smurfs over time, its a thread about the effects of smurfs right now.

We can talk about over time when the season ends, and HaHa has been active long enough to erase the smurfs damage, if that happens.

The ladders set, like most ladders, with the idea that each guild gets one team. When you start messing with that by taking the top teams from each region and letting them play in smurfs you double the amount of times a mid or low level guild will suffer high penalty for losing to any top team they play, the correction you insist happens so quickly is spread out alot, the proof is that my guild is still alot lower then we should be.

If what you insist is true, was infact true then I would have no trouble with you smurfing. The penalty would be gone already, so it would be fair.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Irrelevant. Once the smurf hits its natural level the sum of its ladder disruption is -1 rank per involved guild. If that 1400 or 1500 ranked guild is being played at 1800 level by an 1800-level squad then it'll rise in the ratings until it reflects that. If it's being played at 1500 rating level then its record will reflect that. But again the only relevant change is the -1 rank per smurf involved. Absolute rating values are effectively meaningless, all that does matter is relative values, and the presence of entities above or below you does not change that in the slightest.

Wrong again. When your smurf reached number 4 and your main is number 5 then the sum of its ladder disruption for your guild is -(1 + all the rating you would have earned if you played all the games in the main.) we have a closed system here, you can't disregard variable you don't like. Ignoring an input like you seem to enjoy doing, is going to end up leading you to the wrong conclusion everytime.This is very basic system analysis, and I suspect you have no experiance in that field, which has lead you to many many incorrect assumptions you present, unknowingly, as fact.

Your Smurfs natural rank, has no effect on when my guilds going to recover the lost rating accumulated when playing your smurf.
If we play 30 games in one day we would erase the damage because our lower rank would give us slightly more each win, that part is true.

If we play our normal rate, with the same chance to lose to a smurf, 3 games a night for 10 days and lose some, chances are we hit another smurf or four and lose and were right back to square one.

When you hit your rank in the smurf at 4, were still workign off (i hope) only 30 wins worth of penalties. which will take a week of gaming with out losing a single game to anyone.

Sorry thats how it works, but it is. The net effect of a smurf on my guild is that my guild must play "x - the number of smurfs above us" games to reach the rank value we would have had with out smurfs. It has nothing to do with when your smurf hits 4th on the ladder.

If the season ends before we can play that many games the effect dosent go away magically, we all saw that when zpzg lost to evils smurf.

This stuff is pretty basic common sense, i'm not gonna put much more work into becuse the initial findings are enough far anyone to realize that the current smurfing of the GvG ladder is bad. That under the current rules any one who does not smurf is at a disadvantage, that th middle level teams get hurt the most, and that its just plain broken.

Phades · Feb 05, 2006, 02:07 AM // 02:07

Im just curious as to what happens when X quantity of teams become disportionatly lower due to "new alt guilds" moving up. Say for the sake of argument, many get pushed under 1000 when this happens. So then you have a middle body of people above 1000, then a group of people below 1000. Sure the relative rank between them doesnt change much, but the amount of effort in order to change positions just rose due to the amount of points taken out of the guild that went down. Then there is a potential void in score to determine rank between the different teams causing the stagnation people were commenting on back at the end of summer last year. Yeah, stuff starts at a 1000, thats why i was using the numbers for the sake of argument.

None of this addresses why people do not just simply do unranked battles though, instead of creating an alt guild and doing ranked battles.

Ensign · Feb 05, 2006, 02:30 AM // 02:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

Im just curious as to what happens when X quantity of teams become disportionatly lower due to "new alt guilds" moving up...Sure the relative rank between them doesnt change much, but the amount of effort in order to change positions

Other way around actually. The lower you are on the ladder the easier it is to change your guild's rank, because the density of guilds there is so high. A change of +10 guild rating would jump over hundreds of guilds. On the other hand at the high end of the spectrum you can play all night and pick up 50 points and only move up 1 or 2 guild ranks.

Losing to a smurf matters a lot less when you're low on the ladder as well - if you're at 1000 rating you'll lose no more than 15 points to a smurf, and likely even less because they'll be rated higher than you. At the same time you gain 15 points or more points from every win so you'll move back up very quickly. Contrast that with the top of the ladder where you often gain +2 or +3 for winning a match but lose 25+ when you do lose.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

None of this addresses why people do not just simply do unranked battles though, instead of creating an alt guild and doing ranked battles.

Because the only way to do an unranked battle is to find an opponent manually and wait for them to set up and be ready to play. There isn't a 'random unrated guild battle' button. Also you want to test your builds against 'the field', not against what everyone else is trying to test - I mean of the other teams were playing their best stuff they'd be doing rated ladder matches right? Basically the only way to get the data you want is to play rated ladder matches, and you sit on a smurf because you're trying to figure out if what you're running is a horrendous piece of crap or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reboot

You took his post out of context to make several of thouse comments ensign.

They are all in context. They simply disagree with you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reboot

Meaning net as in the end of the season? WoW, and what about now?

Right now the difference between your current rank and your 'true' rank is -1 per smurf guild above you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reboot

you need learn when hes refering to the real ladder and then one in his example

You need to learn how to read and not respond to everything you disagree with with ad hominem attacks.

<snip broken record that has been addressed a dozen times already, and I don't feel like answering again because he's given no indication that he's interested in reading it>

Quote:

Originally Posted by reboot

but FFS cant you admit it sucks to be in a mid level guild on this ladder?

Would it suck to be stuck on a guild that only had 4-6 members but wanted to take PvP seriously? Yeah, that would suck. I don't see how smurfing is even the least of your problems though.

I've addressed this all already. You're not a top 50 guild no matter how many times you tell yourself that you are. You're sitting on the ladder exactly where you belong. Come back when the cold bitchslap of reality sinks in and knocks you out of fantasyland. Until then I have nothing else to say to you that has not already been said.

Peace,
-CxE

Manfred · Feb 05, 2006, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Eh, smurf guilds create a random wake in their way up the ladder, forcing everyone down rank 1 IN ADDIDITION to the rating loss from other guilds. since the difference between non-smurfs would be roughly the same, as you have illustrated, there would NOT be a gain in points from the loss, since other guilds would be pushed down with you. Bad luck of the gvg draw would remain bad luck, and introduce less skill and more chance3 into the gvg ladder.

And as for unrated matches replacing smurfs, that will never happen, er... because... um.... unranked is so hard to find when you have contacts among the top 100 guilds and command respect...

Vesper Ignis · Feb 05, 2006, 03:09 AM // 03:09

So, under your premise, it should also be illegal to start a guild in the middle of the season? This could also be considered "tanking" by your definition if they got up into the top 10 since they beat you during their ascension and, thus, you lost -20 instead of -5. I remember in my old guild when we first started getting seriously involved in the middle of the season we ended up getting a matchup against the, then, rank 24 guild while we were rank 500ish. When we won, we gained a lot of rank while they lost a lot. This example also points out that it's not the low ranked teams who are effected most by smurfing. It is, in fact, the high rank teams you are complaining about. If they lose to another top guild's smurf, they will lose quite a lot of rating, but they cannot gain much rating back as there is a lack people significantly higher than themselves from which to gain that rating back. I guess my point is that smurfing is not "the man holding you down."

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 03:17 AM // 03:17

lol ENSIGN

I had to edit my post i sugest you re read it, any way your just wrong on so many points, im glad you are taking it to the point where you don't want to keep posting because nothing you said so far makes sense.

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 03:22 AM // 03:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vesper Ignis

So, under your premise, it should also be illegal to start a guild in the middle of the season?

lol no dont ask stupid qestions!
Its the double penalty that hurts.
That should be clear if you read.

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 03:33 AM // 03:33

I want to restate the facts, because its important to look at the numbers, after so many fictional posts about how smurfs have no effect on the ladder.

Our rank is was 160 at the time of the first post.

If smurfs were not in the game and we had replaced losses our rank would be near 50 at the time of the first post.

It's estimated to take 30 wins with out losing to a under ranked smurf, to regain the lost rank at the time of the first post.

(its simple math, check it your self.)
Note: we had alot of losses to smurfs percent wise, so we would be hurt more then a luckier guild.

Here are some of the best contributions to the anti-smurf pov:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manfred

Eh, smurf guilds create a random wake in their way up the ladder, forcing everyone down rank 1 IN ADDIDITION to the rating loss from other guilds. since the difference between non-smurfs would be roughly the same, as you have illustrated, there would NOT be a gain in points from the loss, since other guilds would be pushed down with you. Bad luck of the gvg draw would remain bad luck, and introduce less skill and more chance3 into the gvg ladder.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Reading through this. Shows a bit of misunderstanding on a lot of peoples parts.

How does the ladder and ranking work. If there are 100 guilds TOTAL... all the guilds start at 1000 points... meaning that provided no new guilds enter/leave the ladder. At tne end of the ladder. Those 100 guilds still only have 1,000,000 points spread between them. The farther away you get from 1000, the harder it is for you to gain/lose points.

The reason that smurfs distort the ladder is because they take points out of the system. And it's extremely detrimental to 'challengers' people with good builds trying to work their way up. They're the most likely to be paired against the smurfs, and the ones who lose the most to them.

If losing a few matches has no effect on your guild. Then iQ and others should have no problems playing with their main new builds and such. Since any ratings reductions... would simply be made up with later matches where more points would be scored. But this obviously isn't the case, so making the arguement that this change is 'neutral' is specious and hypocritical on their part. Arguably, they would be at a disadvantage for doing it if other guilds are using their smurfs for practice. If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

I'm in no way stating that iQ or anyone is intentionally tanking others ratings by doing this. But the distortionate effects do exist. But the problem exists, because you have a guild with Rating X, which does not correctly reflect it's rating. So a game is played the ladder moves to correct this by according points appropriately. This effectively removes points from the 1,000,000 point pool which others need to gain on those already at the top. In fact, I'd argue that iQ and others would be at a disadvantage within the rules if they didn't practice with a smurf while other top guilds did the same.

So lets say we have 10 teams in that 100 with ratings of 1800, they each have a 1500 point smurf. Their main guilds have 'won' 800 points from the pool.. winning more is going to be a very hard proposition. (either a lot of points from stiff competition, or very few from lots of 'easy' potentially prolonged matches). Effectively those 10 smurfs have removed 5000 points from contention, whereas if those matches would have been fought and won with the main guilds... more likely only 2000 points would have been redistributed. If they make a few 1000 rated guilds... it distorts this even more.

The other problem is the matching system in GvG. Top ranked guilds are statistically less likely to hit smurfs than the guilds trying to work their way up the ladder. Even if they have to wait a while and hit a few of them. They're less likely to get them than are the guys in the 50-300 slots trying their best to work their way up the ladder. So this gets a lot of bad press from these people who feel cheated. So the points are disproportionately removed from the top-middle of the ladder, than from the top.

In high level chess. There's a large issue in fact with grand masters picking and choosing opposition simply to manipulate their federation rankings. In many cases, there's no reason at all for a high level player to accept a game. (and this necessitated rules forcing them to play a minimum number of matches). The ELO bits used in GW suffer from exactly the same problem. There's also the bit that the chess system where this system was used for ages... you have a rating. It's attached to you and only you. You can't get rid of it, simply by leaving a guild and making a new one. Or by 'filling into' someone elses shoes.

Now in actual play... in GW... as guilds are formed and destroyed, you get some turnover into the system. The pool size isn't fixed. But the problem that the guild has players which doesn't properly reflect it's rating and results in disproportionate benefits accrueing to the smurf.

IMO: the problem stems completely from the fact that the guild rating and the players playing are completely unlinked. Unless people can demonstrate that having a 1400 or 1500 ranked guild playing with it's 1800 man squad and it's fairly representing them. (which is something I don't feel they can do). And if it's 'just for fun' then there should be no stigma against unrated matches. (I tend to feel if guests are involved. The match should automatically become a scrimmage to prevent the use of ringers. IMO the possibility of people abusing this for faction for unlocks is far less damaging than the possibility of people abusing this to manipulate the ladder ratings itself, or to protect their position. The only way people can argue me out of this position is to be able to say with a straight face, Gary Kasparov playing as Joe Unknown in some rated chess event somewhere would have no effect on the system whole and NOT DAMAGE THE INTEGRITY OF THE SYSTEM. (last bit is the most important IMO).

Phades · Feb 05, 2006, 03:59 AM // 03:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Other way around actually. The lower you are on the ladder the easier it is to change your guild's rank, because the density of guilds there is so high. A change of +10 guild rating would jump over hundreds of guilds. On the other hand at the high end of the spectrum you can play all night and pick up 50 points and only move up 1 or 2 guild ranks.

Losing to a smurf matters a lot less when you're low on the ladder as well - if you're at 1000 rating you'll lose no more than 15 points to a smurf, and likely even less because they'll be rated higher than you. At the same time you gain 15 points or more points from every win so you'll move back up very quickly. Contrast that with the top of the ladder where you often gain +2 or +3 for winning a match but lose 25+ when you do lose.

Forgive me for using 1000 as the baseline example, but i was going for extreemes. The reality is probably somewhere closer to the 1200-1300 range. All i was trying to find out was should the people at the middle to bottom get pushed further down, they dont get any new "bonus" for playing against their peers to go back to their original rating to be competitive with whoever they were close to before the smurf.

I am not trying to suggest that one side or the other is affected more by it, merely trying to get a better feel for how much change is alot against how long it takes to fix. It just seems strange that 1 loss can create the need to win many times just to make up for it. I would have also guessed that guilds of similar ranking/rating gain less when playing each other (like they should in terms of playing each other and the amount gained) opposed to gaining more or losing more when playing against teams ranked further apart. I realize that there has been work on trying to make the matchups better and they have taken lengths to give a huge incentive to take part within the gvg system. I also understand that finding the appropriate matchups is not always available, but i do think it could still stand to improve somehwere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Because the only way to do an unranked battle is to find an opponent manually and wait for them to set up and be ready to play. There isn't a 'random unrated guild battle' button. Also you want to test your builds against 'the field', not against what everyone else is trying to test - I mean of the other teams were playing their best stuff they'd be doing rated ladder matches right? Basically the only way to get the data you want is to play rated ladder matches, and you sit on a smurf because you're trying to figure out if what you're running is a horrendous piece of crap or not.

I realize alot of the issues floating around in terms of what is practical versus what is effective for time spent, but i cant think that there is no practical alternative that could be introduced in addition to what exists now. It might be a neccacary evil at the moment, but thats not to say that at some point it shouldnt exist or be rendered obscelete. I think you will agree that it does go beyond just winning and losing in this instance.

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 04:22 AM // 04:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

All i was trying to find out was should the people at the middle to bottom get pushed further down, they dont get any new "bonus" for playing against their peers to go back to their original rating to be competitive with whoever they were close to before the smurf.

Its worse then that, not only is there no bonus there is a penalty. As smurfs mature they take spots high on the ladder.

This means there are less spots for teams to move up into. Notice how a rank 80 team makes the regional top 12, and how the regionals were not full of teams.

Smurfs caused that, and im sure some teams didn't even try to play in the tourney because the didn't have any way to know that they could still be rank 100+ and in the tourney that was for the top 12 of each region. caausing there to be less then a full 12 teams from every region, is not 100% the fault of smurfs, but I also know that it made it hard to know if you were going to qualify, and make the nessary preparations to play. Hurting the PvP comunity as a whole and thus the entire game.

Its happend that guilds run a second smurf, after the first one is Highlevel, because they hate waiting for matches for long periods of time, or to manipulate the ladder

.

So you get a guild thats rank 1, rank 7 and rank 600 on the ladder, which is even worse for ladder integrity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

I realize alot of the issues floating around in terms of what is practical versus what is effective for time spent, but i cant think that there is no practical alternative that could be introduced in addition to what exists now. It might be a neccacary evil at the moment, but thats not to say that at some point it shouldnt exist or be rendered obscelete. I think you will agree that it does go beyond just winning and losing in this instance.

i agree.

Sarus · Feb 05, 2006, 05:20 AM // 05:20

Quote:

Notice how a rank 80 team makes the regional top 12, and how the regionals were not full of teams.

Smurfs caused that

I don't think that's true at all. The reason there wasn't enough teams to compete in the playoffs was because most teams did not have enough eligible players (i.e., players with passports and visas). Since getting a passport in time for the playoffs cost around $150, teams that knew they had no chance of going to taipei even if they might qualify for the playoffs didn't bother getting passports. As a result, once the end of the season came around not enough teams were eligible and they had to start asking teams way up the ladder.

You keep saying you deserve to be rank 50 because in the past you were rank 50. However, I want to point out that based on the historic ladder data your guild was only active for 19 days of a 90 day ladder season. There is no way you can obtain an accurate rank within that time. Your PPG was still fluctuating quite a bit when you stopped playing. As a result, it's pretty safe to conclude that the rank 50 you ended with was probably not accurate. I'll just say it again but if you want to be competitive you need to stop caring about your rank and rating and care about getting better. Actually, before that you need to get 8-10 active players.

If you haven't read Sirlin's series on playing to win it's a really good read.

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/featu...ToWinPart1.htm

Doesn't directly relate to smurfs or anything but still worth looking at nonetheless.

reboot · Feb 05, 2006, 05:48 AM // 05:48

We were able to be one of only handfull of teams teams to beat EP when they were not testing, and holding number #1, when we were top 50, and before that we were top 50 in the other season, and we were in this season till we got tanked. hmm sounds like were kinda top 50 when were active, which is kinda the whole point of this thread, we got tanked by a smurf and cant recruite top level players.

I got alot of pms, from people who haven't beat the game yet or even PvP'ed pefore asking to join us, because of this thread. Thats the type of Pm's you get at our rank, so its ok, alot of the pm's are really supportive and thats nice but i'm not looking to take people with no experiance.

I know you want us to be worse then that, im sorry were not, the ladders broken its nothing to do with us and there isnt a team up at 50 that wouldn't lose to the smurfs we lost to, therefore they didn't play them when they were low and hold the possition of 50 by virtue of luck.

Edit: Oh and if our guild dies, if i get tired of trying to find guests, if I cant recruite good players, every loss to the smurfs is never realized as "evened out over time." If you believe that were a decent guild or not, your community is losing one more PvP guild, that you can have a good fight with, and in our case smurfing would have been contributing to the death as it froze us above a rank where good players have intrest.

I am slowly getting tired, of investing the time and getting no where because of smurfs, and all the top guild can do is say "u suck get over it." If you can't see how smurfs killed our rank, or how that would make recruting players hard, then i give up.

dargon · Feb 05, 2006, 08:34 AM // 08:34

Reboot, I'm not going to say whether or not I think smurfs have a big effect. What I would like to know is how you propose to deal with them. To my knoweldge there isn't an effective method that wouldn't penalize someone.

You could suggest that ANet trakc IP addresses and the same IP can't join two different guilds. This would punish people where two family member each play and have their own account and belong to different guilds. This is a pretty common occurance. The other question is what criteria you use to define a smurf. Is it a smurf if your guild has 3 IQ members guest for them? What if it's 1 IQ 1 War Machine and 1 I Guide I?

Smurfs can be annoying at times but there isn't anyway of really dealling with them that won't cause some sort of problem. My suggestion is to deal with it, consider it a learning excuse. Loosing may cost you, but if you can hold out till VoD, you just might manage to turn to tide in somecases, and even if you don't, lasting 30+ minutes against an overwhelming force is an accomplishment, win or loose and any team, no matter what rank they are should be happy for even that sort of accomplishment. Winning is nice, but this is a game, the intent is to have fun and you can do that even if you don't win.