Proper ranks

[very_bad_soldier]

1. real trusted user account system to prevent smurfing
then
2. do your auto ranking system

otherwise its fighting windmills

i think smurfing is way bigger problem than not having autoranking

I totally agree. While I understand "real trusted" is probably impossible but "a bit trusted" would be cool.
Currently there are people who do not want to smurf but they do because they are unable to recover their original account (at least they claim that when asking why they smurf).

[klapmongool]

Currently there are people who do not want to smurf but they do because they are unable to recover their original account (at least they claim that when asking why they smurf).

Yea.. these people just create new accounts constantly.

[albator]

That is the reason while even if ultimately - in a perfect word - the "rank" of player should be based on how much they win the game, there is a phase (which can be between 100 and 1500 hours depending on player) for which the skill must be assess in a different way. And this for 2 reasons:
- 1) Getting an accurate "rank" from team game is really difficult because of the noise created by the smurfs, or the new players if there are some. I already explain that: you need a lot of game just to get one point of data you can thrust, so adding smurfs for who you will never be able to get more data from makes the convergence very difficult. To convince yourself, in the ideal case with no smurfs/new players playing: try to find out how many inequality j (or number of game) you need to order the skills of the player Xi (1 to 16) for a 8v8 game:

sum(Xi,i in A) > sum(Xi,i in B) (j)

with A and B being a collection of 8 players

also, assume their skill is constant.

- 2) Smurfs don't keep same account and need to be "ranked" almost immediately, so that a few game (1!) allow you to detect their true level. Created a DB of damage death (or other curves), map dependent (or interpolated to the closest similar map using dmg curves), and XvsY (or intepolated using the closest data set) dependent allow you to immediately give an average skill to that player.

Finally, advising to most of hosts to prevent players to play if they don't have 1 hour (or even 20 minutes) of ingame time (or spec time) will get ride of the huge majority of players that would be tempted to recreate an account for every new game). Because they will be bored to create a new account and wait one hour if they want to screw the system. And 20min for a new player to spec is not that long, that is just one game, plus there are still host open to every one and that is just an advice to give the autohost...
For that reason I think that would be nice to either create another rank with a very small in-game time, or to be able to track the time our-self using Dansan website. However, the time for the replay to be uploaded and the data to be processed will already take some time, probably so much that a second game will run on the autohost already. Plus it need the autohost to have their DB updated as well quite fast...
Anyway, that was just some thoughts for an ultimate not smurfs word.

Then, of course, the skill and hall of fame that motivate all the player to be better should be index on something that takes victory into account more than anything else because any algorithm as specialized as it is will not be able to evaluate the ability of a player to win more than... the victory itself. But for most of the balance/smurfs issue, I think that will be the most efficient way to do it.
So a good idea would be to make a in-game dependent average of the 2 ranking so that the balance system get the best of the 2.

And tbh, I got a bit demotivated to work (and busy IRL) to work on that, and even I worked on the curve DB of my program, I will probably wait for the data file to be available - especially the damage dealth curves - to finish it. If one of you manage to get one example, please PM me.

[Jazcash]

Why does the system even allow people to make as many accounts as they want? Is there even anything stopping somebody writing a script which just registers like 500 accounts a second and breaks stuff?

I've always been opposed to smurfing but it's such a controversial topic here and there's such a split in opinion that I never feel it's worth discussing. The threads just derail so quickly or turn into ego battles about who gives the least shits.

Allowing players to have unlimited accounts which aren't tracked in a game with a ranking system is the dumbest thing ever.

[smoth]

Is there even anything stopping somebody writing a script which just registers like 500 accounts a second and breaks stuff?

probably not

[Silentwings]

With springlobby you have to wait 5 sec in between each login, but I'm not sure if that is server or SL forcing it.

[dansan]

IMO the hardcore smurfs can only be fought harshly: Ban+kick ingame as soon as detected and maintain a global ban-DB. I know that ingame-ban+kick hurts the team and the match, but in the long run it is better. Smurfs simply must not be allowed to have the fun of a single entire match!!!
As an important side effect it will make smurfs unpopular.

The global ban-DB can either be made on the lobby-server and the protocol be extended accordingly, or with a separate service. The server side is prob less work than the autohost side.
Getting the lobby devs to agree on a protocol ext is maybe the most difficult part :D

Furthermore the lobby-server can implement an account creation throttling to allow the creation of only 1 account per IP per day and only 5 per hour per AS. Maybe to strict for LAN parties...

And again: email-verification...

Summary: take away the fun and make it time-consuming.

[Silentwings]

But luckily we have very few of these and most of our autohosts now have an active admin network.


In my opinion 'agressive' smurfing isn't a problem that should be worrying us right now and we already have automated stuff that mostly takes case of linking accouts from payers who (for entirely acceptable reasons) use multiple accounts. I rarely see TERA/ACE games these days where deliberate smurfing is a serious issue.

[Jazcash]

And again: email-verification...

[very_bad_soldier]

I rarely see TERA/ACE games these days where deliberate smurfing is a serious issue.

Huh? Deliberately or not I see lots of games every day screwed by smurfing.

[marciolino]

limit of one account per IP/day would help to limit some smurfing

+1, I see games like this every day.

I also agree that actually it is too easy to create a new account. Email verification + limit of one account per email + limit of one account per IP/day would help to limit some smurfing.

Linking email to accounts and allowing to retrieve lost password using email would also solve the "lost password" problem, which is often used as excuse for smurfing.

[gajop]

limit of one account per IP/day would help to limit some smurfing

that's a bit extreme, it doesn't actually solve the smurfing problem but may cause problems with multiple players per house (f.e under a NAT)

the problem comes due to having little rewards for obtaining high elo, f.e there are few battlerooms where you can play with people of your elo - due to lack of players probably
Edit:misquote

[smoth]

I agree with gajop

[very_bad_soldier]

limit of one account per IP/day would help to limit some smurfing

that's a bit extreme, it doesn't actually solve the smurfing problem but may cause problems with multiple players per house (f.e under a NAT)

Wait, when did I say that?

[gajop]

limit of one account per IP/day would help to limit some smurfing

that's a bit extreme, it doesn't actually solve the smurfing problem but may cause problems with multiple players per house (f.e under a NAT)

Wait, when did I say that?

sorry... quoted the wrong person

[Silentwings]

limit of one account per IP/day would help to limit some smurfing

This is completely unworkable - it would make testing mods/lobbies/lua very difficult for devs. And there are also legit reasons for using multiple accounts eg. some players are in >1 clans and many people have brothers/sisters/kids who all play on the same IP.

[gajop]

many people have sisters[pictures needed] who all play on the same IP.

[Jazcash]

[4:44:10 PM] <Scientist> I love the system BA has
[4:44:23 PM] <Scientist> where new players literally cant even join games
[4:45:01 PM] <Scientist> its almost always TERA only hosts all day and people of rank 1 aren't allowed to join, even for spectate
[4:46:22 PM] <Scientist> so essentially BA is completely shut off from ever having any more new players
[4:46:41 PM] <Scientist> not that anyone cares :p

I'm guessing this is autohosts attempt at trying to stop smurfs?

[Silentwings]

It's unfair to blame TERA - TERA has a two bar rank limit, whereas ACE and most of SPADS have 4 bar rank limits.

We are now able to make rank limits into autospec limits, imo we should do that.

[dansan]

Better quoting needed:

allow the creation of only 1 account per IP per day

Do you think the whole method is bad, or it just needs fine tuning (like "3 account creations per IP per day")?