Stacking in Teams and FFA

The amount of imbalance in teams and pre-teaming in FFA is, from what I've observed, very high as of late. This has been a recurring issue for some time now in Zero-k, but as of writing this post, the scale has escalated to the point it ruins the entire elo system as a whole. While there is nothing wrong with people in a party or the same clan wanting to play in the same team, stacking a bunch of veterans in one team in order to "farm" elo from random players isn't desirable either. Take http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1407565? and http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1407563 for instance, the influence of putting players of the same clan/party into one team completely destroyed the balance, and the games ended up as a complete stomp. Repetition of this in the long run will result in players who are unfortunate enough to run into stacked parties to become underranked, and players who randomed get shuffled into the stacked party's team gaining free elo, which will cause further issues for the balancer the longer it goes on. Despite how bad this sounds, it isn't the worst, most terrible elo act of elo manipulation ongoing in Zero-k.

The next issue in line to this is pre-teaming in ffa, which, as you may or may not know, is a mode that gives the biggest push in casual elo, on a much more scale significant even when compared to 1v1s. For a while now, some players whose name I need not mention are found pre-teaming and essentially manipulating elo in ffa, placing their casual elo wherever they wish, whether it be higher or lower on the ladder, in a short span of time. While it is true that one shouldn't really have expectation when they enter a FFA room, and that it should be chaotic, using FFA to greatly influence the elo system is plain disgusting on top of making those FFA games less enjoyable for others who partake in it. The consequence of this will really start to show once these players return to the lobster pot, where the balancer will place them according to their casual elo. While I'm not here to address how game ruining pre-teaming in FFA is, I'm certain that @hedkeaf will be able to elaborate on the details in that regard.

With that said, I'm a firm believer that as long as the Zero-k community behave reasonably aka follow the code of conduct and the troublesome players stop taking virulent actions (which will promote more toxicity, if anything), the community and the playerbase will gradually heal, grow, and eventually reach the amount where the balancer will become much more accurate thanks to a larger sample size.

I think it would make sense to keep "stacking in teams" and "ffa elo" in different threads.

From previous threads on "ffa elo" it seems clear that ffa should not be rated.
Later it could get its own ladder, but for now not rating it is probably the more likely change.

I apologize for the errors on my part (mistaken a faction for a clan)

I appreciate the desire to not publicly name names re. rating manipulation, but it is difficult for the admins to make much headway unless reports are submitted.

quote: The Balancer in teams often seems to overvalue the purple players within the team, believing they are equal to say 3-5 ~giants this in turn results in a 1v5 essentially due to the purples teammates being >giants, the fact a purple is the equivalent to multiple golds and plats is absurd and it just results in a lost game from the start

Purple rated teams players, by definition, get and keep that colour by carrying games in which their teammates are typically weaker than the players on the other team. In some combinations of player distribution and map, this occasionally leads to pretty unwinnable games - but you might be surprised what some of the purple players are capable of carrying.

We are straying here from the intended purpose of the thread, but I'm not sure there is much to say beyond:

• (Continue to) report clear cases of deliberate rating manipulation. Don't bother making a thread about each one, just send us reports. Making some kind of a post on the replay so it stays on the server is fine, just make sure you send a report.
• The admins are aware there is a problem with FFA and we are considering our response. We have the capability to make our response retroactive if needed.
• Possibly there is also a problem with 1v1 in casual rating. There is certainly a problem with the no-elo 1v1 room losing its no-elo flag with some regularity. These matches should get unflagged for casual rating, but understand that this may take a while to propagate to people's actual ratings even when we get around to it.
• It's not obvious what the solution to "friends choosing to group together with parties/clans, and having better results when they do" is. It's not even obvious that there is a problem to be solved.

quote: If a purple gets into an tactical fight with high ranked blue they probably not really carry

Surely this depends on the purple a bit. There isn't that much difference in rating (sometimes none) between a low rated purple and a high rated blue, but the highest-rated purples have every chance of running circles around any blue (and for that matter, a lot of the purples), especially in smaller-size teams.

Putting aside the players in a league of their own, I would characterise the difference between low-to-mid purples and a lot of strong blues as "versatility". It is typically very difficult to put a purple player entirely out of their comfort zone, or to predict what they will do in a way that enables you to strongly counter it. Some strong blues are quite versatile, and often if their execution improves a bit or they have a run of good luck they become purple pretty quickly.