What is even going on here?

https://zero-k.info/Users/Detail/451289

Mr. DocSleep has somehow almost gotten purple, and I scrolled through every single one of his 135 games, and the majority of them are playing against his gray ranked friends (or smurf accounts?) with rating. I didn't see a single game in TAW or any autohost where most people usually play.

I also noticed an interesting trend where he took about 1 hour to beat his supposed grey rank "friends". My theory is that this is some new way to manipulate the rank system and get your ladder rating up really high.

No hate to DocSleep , just investigating a suspicious climb to almost purple.

The problem is that his ladder rating is staying with his casual rating, and he's literally going to be the next player to become purple rank.

But he IS actually very good right? Or is he just a simple dirtbag pretending to be a Strider?

quote: But he IS actually very good right? Or is he just a simple dirtbag pretending to be a Strider?

You tell me.
[Spoiler]

It is very strange to me how high he's been able to climb by beating up sub-1500 whr players. He hasn't played a game he was supposed to lose in literally ever, he hasn't played a game he had a less than 99% chance of winning in over a year, he hasn't played a game he had a less than 90% chance of winning in 5 years. Looking at the MM graph there's some absolutely bizarre jumps in his WHR over time; he went up 90 WHR (2443->2532) from this one game he had a 99.7% chance of winning and 100 WHR from this one game he had a 99.8% chance of winning. These jumps are absolutely nonsensical. I'd love to have a crack at him one of these days; I could probably attain singularity rank just by playing against him for an hour.

Regardless, as long as he's only playing in these private lobbies it doesn't really matter except insofar as we care about the integrity of the ladder itself.

Question: were the games he's played in private lobbies? If so, I think the natural fix here is to make all private lobbies forced noelo. This is probably a good idea regardless.

quote: Question: were the games he's played in private lobbies? If so, I think the natural fix here is to make all private lobbies forced noelo. This is probably a good idea regardless.

I disagree. Having ELO in private lobbies lets that group of friends balance their private games.

The answer I got before, not about this specific scenario but something similar, is that even if multiple activities end up using the same rating, there is enough crossover that it will do a reasonably good job at organizing teams.

It's always a question of is a specific activity being used/abused in a way that makes overall rating unreliable.

Quite interestingly DocSleep has gone inactive after this post. I don't know the exact timings, but it says he last logged in 4 months ago, and I made this post 4 months ago. What was he up to?

Probably a coincidence.

I watched his last two games and it's exactly what I expected out of friends playing exclusively in private lobbies. They play, BADLY, having fun with each other.

Seems fine.

The only part I don't really get is why the rating system keeps giving enough points to reach such a high rating when repeatedly defeating excessively low ranked players. Wouldn't you just get 1 point a match if the difference is too great?

bro maybe some people just play for fun and this guy will NEVER play with the rest of the ranked community lmao. and if he does it would be adjusted in a couple games