lol so tempted to cast it :D

There should be a separate elo system for FFA

In between casual 1v1 elo grinds, FFAs, clan stacks, mass grouping for metal advantage, european primetime elo bias, private scripts, fresh new 2300 elo accounts and an obscure rating system itself that retroactively wipes your previous success... it's all just a mess where FFA is indeed a minor factor.

quote: What is this even? Are you talking about squadding and implying it gives a metal advantage?

It absolutely gives a massive metal advantage to the team abusing it, especially when it's high ranked players grouping with low ranks. They get direct control of multiple times the resources as an equivalent high ranked player on the opposing side, while being able to delegate menial micro to the low rank player.

quote: Also, again, what are you talking about?

I already reported the account in question and will not be baited by you into publicly naming it.

Yikes.

Anarchid

quote: This sounds like control superiority, rather than metal superiority.

Control of metal, not control itself. A low rank player will not contribute much differently than attack moved units in general direction of the frontline, most likely less.

However a high rank player having some multiple of a single player income will make a huge difference.

As an example, team A has a squad with a blue rank and a red rank, team B has a blue ranked player and a red rank player. Both teams have about a dozen players each. Compared to team A, the team B red player is a negative contribution. Even if team B red player left the game, team B will be at a disadvantage because their income will be distributed between the entire team instead of just their blue player.

Now on team A, the red player in squad with their blue only exists to pour metal into their blue player. They don't actually contribute above the level of unit AI and make no important decisions about their squad.

It's as if you made a second account and went into your own team just to assist your own factory. It's not fair to your own team because you get a larger resource share, it's not fair to enemies because your effective skill gets a mechanical multiplier in form of extra resources. It can happen even without squads, but that at least requires some effort from the boosting player to coordinate what to assist.

When you squad, you just tell the lower ranked player to not touch anything important and enjoy free resources.

Does only the smurf account get banned instead of the owner account?

quote: So essentily you're saying it'a the same as having them resign and give you their stuff?

It is not, since if they resign and give you their stuff you will only get a small fraction of their metal income. It's coincidentally also why uneven teams are such a pain for the highest ranked player, they get 2 comms but only income of 1 and some cents. Squads bypass this malus entirely.

quote: It is not, since if they resign and give you their stuff you will only get a small fraction of their metal income. It's coincidentally also why uneven teams are such a pain for the highest ranked player, they get 2 comms but only income of 1 and some cents. Squads bypass this malus entirely.

Fair enough. Indeed, a squadded player can control a larger share of the team's income, especially if they are either capable of making their squadmates do nothing "wrong" or capable of making squaddies ouright do nothing. I can see how this can be considered unfair.

However, how is this different from talking your allies into a krow rush? You end up controlling a large share of your team's income into being focused on the rush project, and you end up controlling personally a much larger army than any individual player on the opposing team. This should also feel unfair for every individual opponent whose first several units end up carpet bombed by the 5k cost hatredcoper two minutes into the game.

Additionally, i do fail to see why you think this should distort ratings. If a player has the skill organizing their allies into a functioning team - be it via squadding, voice comms, rush assistance or whatever - shouldn't that cause higher odds of winning in a team game, and thus raise their elo until their ability to cause local metal imbalance is compensated away?

quote: A plan like that requires coordination instead of just pressing the squad button for a permanent metal multiplier.

If it's so good and so easy, why does it happen so rarely? Sounds like it should be a piece of cake to just do it in every game and take the #1 spot on the ladder.

Do you consider network issues to also distort the rating? E.g. situations where a hypothetical Godde-level player whose network skips 30s worth of packets every second minute will have a massively decreased win rate and consequently a low rating.