I'm just throwing this out here, with the full realization that it is probably a really stupid idea.

But I got to thinking... if I understand the win-trading basic mechanic correctly, which would be that I have one toon I actually care about rating on, and others I don't. When I'm going to throw for someone, I just log in to my "throw away toon" and do my shamefulness. And this works fine for me, because my basement rating on my throw-away-toon doesn't affect my "real" rating at all.

But what if it did? What if we only had a single "solo ELO" that was calculated from all matches we played, no matter what faction or what character we were on. The obvious down side, that I see, is of course that if I'm awesome on my shadow (haha), but not so hot on my mara - well then I would only ever play on my shadow, and I would never want to risk trying ranked play with my mara. Is that an acceptable trade off?

Just a thought.

Just change your thinking a bit more, and you're onto something - if you make the legacy ELO per mirror class, (and make ranked rewards legacy bound and per class), then you would have less smurfs, and less throwing chars.

(i.e. you'd have a Jugg/Guardian ELO, a Mara/Sent ELO, a Sorc/Sage ELO, etc.)

I'm just throwing this out here, with the full realization that it is probably a really stupid idea.

 

But I got to thinking... if I understand the win-trading basic mechanic correctly, which would be that I have one toon I actually care about rating on, and others I don't. When I'm going to throw for someone, I just log in to my "throw away toon" and do my shamefulness. And this works fine for me, because my basement rating on my throw-away-toon doesn't affect my "real" rating at all.

 

But what if it did? What if we only had a single "solo ELO" that was calculated from all matches we played, no matter what faction or what character we were on. The obvious down side, that I see, is of course that if I'm awesome on my shadow (haha), but not so hot on my mara - well then I would only ever play on my shadow, and I would never want to risk trying ranked play with my mara. Is that an acceptable trade off?

 

Just a thought.

Accounts are easy to come by. Why would I (hypothetically, of course) use any of my toons from a legacy I value when throwing matches?

And when it comes to benefiting from friends throwing matches for my toons, I could easily feign ignorance.

Your idea would work for people using exploits, etc. to get rating, however.

I'm just throwing this out here, with the full realization that it is probably a really stupid idea.

 

But I got to thinking... if I understand the win-trading basic mechanic correctly, which would be that I have one toon I actually care about rating on, and others I don't. When I'm going to throw for someone, I just log in to my "throw away toon" and do my shamefulness. And this works fine for me, because my basement rating on my throw-away-toon doesn't affect my "real" rating at all.

 

But what if it did? What if we only had a single "solo ELO" that was calculated from all matches we played, no matter what faction or what character we were on. The obvious down side, that I see, is of course that if I'm awesome on my shadow (haha), but not so hot on my mara - well then I would only ever play on my shadow, and I would never want to risk trying ranked play with my mara. Is that an acceptable trade off?

 

Just a thought.

Only fault I find is if people use a second account. Which some do already to bot win trades.

So, I think this solution would be manipulated too. It's a reasonable idea though, in fact I think we had a discussion about it awhile back.

If they could determine an account is a bot account, and figure out who it belonged to then banned it as well as the player's winning account, it would be a perfect solution imo.

Problem is people would use their mom's account, dad's, etc. and with different names to the accounts well, I just think it might prove hard to sort that out. They could always just ban the bot account though worst case scenario.

In fact thinking on it, this is better than what ranked has now. Anything besides what they use now would be an improvement at this point.

I still would rather see a system that was based on calculating total wins and using that as a basis for rating/standings. It would be simple and encourage more participation as well as removing the loss of ELO aspect of ranked which is the biggest contributor to the toxicity in ranked. Losses cost the players far too much rating.

If we can't stop the win trading, as is clear then make it so win trading proves impossible to win by. If anyone is dumb enough to try to win trade with a wins based system they would have to do a ton of win trades which would be far easier to catch than how players are capable of boosting ELO standing to the top with just a handful of matches and very little time invested.

When it's this easy, players just run countless alts through a win trade treadmill to get high ELO on as many toons possible.

Yeah, I hadn't thought about the multiple accounts. I also realized that if rating were legacy wide, then it would be class/spec independent. Not sure that would be too great either.

Oh well, I said it was probably a bad idea.

I'm just throwing this out here, with the full realization that it is probably a really stupid idea.

 

But I got to thinking... if I understand the win-trading basic mechanic correctly, which would be that I have one toon I actually care about rating on, and others I don't. When I'm going to throw for someone, I just log in to my "throw away toon" and do my shamefulness. And this works fine for me, because my basement rating on my throw-away-toon doesn't affect my "real" rating at all.

 

But what if it did? What if we only had a single "solo ELO" that was calculated from all matches we played, no matter what faction or what character we were on. The obvious down side, that I see, is of course that if I'm awesome on my shadow (haha), but not so hot on my mara - well then I would only ever play on my shadow, and I would never want to risk trying ranked play with my mara. Is that an acceptable trade off?

 

Just a thought.

believe it or not, that would actually stop about 90% of it. Many thowers just log into alts, but if it was account wide theyd have to make whole new accounts, which I don't see them doing. Not a bad idea.