You are allowed to have multiple accounts but you aren't allowed to play them against each other. I don't know about deliberately lowering your rating but it seems like abuse to me and is probably against the rules but I don't know if its written down anywhere since I haven't seen a terms of service. Other things that I thought might be cheating don't seem to be (I won't mention them since it seems like it could be abused). I think the rule that wins by resignation in the first few rounds don't count was put in place to prevent this kind of thing but it seems like its only making thing worse right now.

_________________
ȁ̎̉̈̂̎͋̈́̍n͂͑̿ͥͣ́̓ġͤ͑ͯe͌̓̊ͩ͗̅l̽̓ͬͬͥ̊͗aͣ̔̃ͧ̓̾̾t͊̑̆hͤ͆̓̉̌ͣ̚e̋ͩ͒̈́ĭ̌̒̎ͧ̓̋ͪs̋ͤͧ̅̇̋̎ͫ̂̾ͨ̽̄ͫͯt͒͐̌ͭ̂̃ͪ̽ͣ͗̒ͣ

hmm I thought the rule was that you can not play against yourself, meaning as long as someone else is controlling the alt it is fine. Thus anyone doing this multi account abuse alone is a cheater, but those using someone else with them are just people who do not care about the spirit of a game...dunno which really is worse.
As for tanking of rating, that could be considered just as bad as doing multi account abuse considering it is disregarding the spirit of the ladder as well, yet many people that complain about multi account abuse obviously tank their ratings....i smell an incongruency here.

True dat.

Fortunately, i lose often enough. Hehe.

Say la, you didnt make it clear about the no rule = not cheating part. you just said cheating.
But apparently i did understand what you didn't say.(i said so at end of my above post if you missed it )

So yea, true as that may be, murder wasn't murder until it was legalized as illegal to murder.
I bet it started with a meeting about people concerned about the high rate of non-murder murder, which then spawned the anti-murder murder laws to restrict murdering.

This is one such meeting for non-cheating cheating.

Also, written laws are not always absolute and necessary. There is such legal terms as defacto.

Kinda guessed it. Np, you can have fun your own way, ill have fun my own.

Thanks for the advice on getting an edge or even getting an even chance, but ill pass. I'd rather try eliminating the other alts so no one has to do alts to have an even chance at the ladder. Less work in the long run.


Anytime anything with any kind of value is in existence, people will abuse it... that is a fact of life.

There, fixed it for you.

But if we were to just say that, and leave it like that, we mite as well do away with the police and military, with all non-prefect-abuseable-rules and so on, cos, you know, its a fact of life.
We could, on the other hand, try and see where it goes. Mistakes happen, stupidity reigns occasionally, blunders, oversight, overdoing and general incompetence is also a fact of life.

But it doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

And if its all the same to you, and you don't have a vested interest in this, not wanting to participate or give suggestions, then do let us continue our talk. Otherwise, we would be happy to hear any constructive criticism and suggestion to the ladder you can offer.

So, wheres Jed on this?

Well, really the reason I stay away from ladder is because it is very hard to make any gold off of it without abusing it since it seems everyone is doing it. I am all for them making a rule against multi account abuse and enforcement of it, and also all for them changing the ladder to be less open to abuse. I am simply stating that as of now, if you really want to make a lot of gold in the ladder you have to abuse it since so many others are abusing it, at least until this is either prevented with a new ladder system, or a rule is implemented. If someone makes a suggestion that I think would work, I will agree with them, but because I don't think that the suggestions given so far would work and so I voice that opinion I should just leave the topic altogether?

I think the whole idea of rewarding rise in ranking every week is flawed, because 1) there inevitably are people who won't be satisfied by getting the money bonus from rising for example from 1300 to 1350 only once, and will abuse it by purposedly dropping rating and making new accounts and 2) it doesn't reward anyone whose rating steadily rises as much as those whose rating goes up and down wildly.

I think the whole ladder could be replaced by weekly constructed leagues of sorts. There could be the newbie league for people whose rank-uncertainty is 1250 or less, and the advanced league for the rest. Newbie league could have something like more long-lasting phantom cards as prizes, while the advanced one could have power or gold. Both could work like this: you would gain 3 points for your first match against a given player each weak if you win, and lose 2 points if you lose. Second game against the same person could be win=+2 and loss=-2 and the third +1 and -1, and nothing after that. This kind of system would encourage to play against as many opponents as possible and add incentives to actually raise one's rank at some point to get power or gold rather than longtime / permanent phantoms (wwhich should be very useful for anyone who has that low rating!).

The number of leagues and some of the other details might need tweaking but the basic idea should be good. For example there could be a newbie league (rating-uncertainty<1151), the advanced league (1151-1350) and the expert league (rating-uncertainty>1350). In any case, it should be built so that it would be advantageous for almost everyone to switch to the higher level league eventually. Of course, it would be ok if some casual players would be better off at staying at the lower ones.

Headshot: Although i like the idea of giving new players somewhere they can play with other new players and get a reward that is good for them but that people would not really make alts to get, I personally would have to say the rest of your suggestion would do nothing but give people yet more reason to make even more alts to play against to win whatever is in the higher level leagues (power, gold, etc). I don't really think it would be much of a change for the main problem with the ladder now, which as i understand it is the fact people are making alts and just using them to gain ladder score.

so I've never played similar nor have any intention to, but it seems to me part of the reason why there are so many 'unknowns' at the top of the list is that the system rewards you for maintaining many alts and trying to get each up the ladder. i.e. for each alt you have, you get a shot at the top prize, almost like a lottery ticket.

sure there are people who play against themselves. for those people why not just make it so you can play at most 1 other person at your IP address? I don't know if the flash client has the necessary info available, but you could even go for the NIC hardware serial so that you don't get the same network card playing against itself. this would work for the d/l version, but if it doesn't work for both, there's not much point.

*sigh*
i shall refrain and not continue the talk with you, N_mex.

Jed needs good anti hacking stuff. Checking the MAC address is not a bad idea, tho similar ip needs to be allowed. College, Dorms, family, house mates... that sort of thing.

And with the said anti hacking stuff, good enforcement!

This sentence rates highly on the funny meter. LOL
(funny meter pending patent)
-Goofy McQuack esq.

On a more serious note:
1. This is the internet. Anyone can make their IP appear as if theyre in Antartica if they want to. Waste no time on that.
2. I know lotsa people will hate me cause of this: Perhaps lower the amount of gold gained every week, thus negating basic greed that leads people to cheating? This would only lower the "bad stuff"(tm).
3. Ban or whatever for match fixing. Though it would only lead to people talking in code.
4. Change the reward system a bit so that it enforces playing against lots of other people. Ie. must have played against 20 different people every week to even be eligible for a prize.? Good luck trying to find 20 people to cheat with.

And now, state of the union address lol :
There is sadly quite a number of people who will not play anything other than similiar, which leads to a bunch of people waiting in the lobby for a game, going sim? sim? instead of playing.
So one ends up playing the same bunch of people. This actually changes into people only playing challenge/not ranked (refusing if youre name is green to them) near the end of the league whenever it is.
People actually explained this to me a number of times in private chats.
These types of shenanigans used to only be limited to Domain Keeps, but its spill t over once the league was introduced.
Oh well i guess im just a grouchy grognard.