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On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about.
If I had to hazard a guess, there's two main reasons behind banning ELO boosting:
Account Security is one. If you give your login and password to someone else, you're risking the security of your account. Having your account compromised is a harrowing experience for a player, and a headache for Riot to deal with. If ELO boosting was widespread, at the very least some people would lose access to their accounts, purchases could be made with saved credit card info, and then League of Legends shows up on the evening news as that game where people's accounts get stolen and hackers siphon money through your credit card.
The integrity of matchmaking is another. It's disruptive when Masters level players steamroll their opponents with Akali using a Silver level account and taking it to Platinum, and then it's disruptive again when a Silver level player derps around and gets crushed against Platinum level opponents, watching in frustration as his rank keeps dropping. Riot would much rather that Silver level player put in more time, watch some videos, read guides, and improve his level of play naturally in order to climb the ladder.
And what does Riot gain in exchange for allowing ELO boosting? Nothing. Banning it is a no-brainer from Riot's point of view. As to why it's a big deal, I imagine it's Riot's way of compensating for the fact that ELO boosting is hard to detect; if a banned activity is unlikely to be detected and the punishment for getting caught is trivial, then that's not a very effective deterrent against said activity. If it's unlikely to be detected but the punishment is harsh, then many players will think twice before engaging in it.
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On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about.
as someone who actually paid people to level my halo 3 account (I was like 15 and pretty dumb dumb) here's my thoughts.
elo boosting ruins games for anyone who's actually playing with the account either before or after it got elo boosted, because you're either playing with someone a lot beter or a lot worse then the rank. so if your going to play on the account your automatically ruining the experience for people.
there's no real reason to allow it as it doesn't really have any benefit whatsoever (other than having someone make money off of being better at a game and exploiting the fact that games are somewhat anonymous). In real life you can't have someone take a test for you.
it's really a problem if the people who you actively are paying to play your game professionally are breaking your rules and making money this way because you are once again paying them an actual salary and
so to summarise my thoughts. is ELo boosting the biggest thing in the world? no but it really shouldn't be allowed and if your the company and are paying people to play your game you are perfectly justified handing out serious punishments.
Zato made a good point about making punishments harsher for if you get caught being a deterrent if its hard to detect.
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I think it's a pretty big deal. Worse than "toxicity" imo. A silver game with a masters player is every bit as ruined as a game where someone ragequits or intentionally feeds. Same goes for the masters game with the silver player. I doubt anyone involved enjoys the experience, except the guy raking in the $$. Oking it is essentially saying you're ok with people ruining games for their own personal profit and there's no way Riot should take that stance.
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The problem with eloboosting is that LoL is a competitive PvP game. For most ranked players, there is little benefit from simply playing the game - a huge majority of ranked players already have most of the contents of the game unlocked. The entire "fun" of the game, for these ranked players, is their ladder ranking - it is their purpose of playing and the ranking identifies the "worth" of the player. When you have an unfair system where people can "buy" their ranking while simultaneously unfairly crush lower elo players mercilessly is a serious problem with the game.
I don't have the actual numbers, but I would take a wild guess that at least 1 in 10 weekly active players on the NA server play ranked - and these are probably the more active and "hardcore" players too who are probably more likely to spend money on the game. It's a huge cohort of customers that Riot wants to protect.
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On July 23 2015 06:43 Azarkon wrote:
I fully believe that Tencents gives no shits about Riot. They not only control the distribution of LoL in China - the biggest Riot market, but they actually own Riot. Sure, there's contracts about what they're allowed to do to Riot and what they aren't, but it's fucking China. You think a Chinese court is going to choose Riot over Tencents? China is Tencents' home ground, not Riot's.
That said, I don't think XWX is valued enough for them to 'lift his ban.' At best, they throw him in a LSPL team and forget about him. The fact is, China is presently in no shortage of talent due to them importing all the best players they find in both the Chinese and Korean ladders. Thus, they give even less shit about XWX.
I'm not sure you understand what ownership means. Tencent could turn Riot into a cheeseburger delivery business as long as the shareholders are okay with it. There won't be any court involved no matter what.
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On July 24 2015 15:21 chosenkerrigan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2015 06:43 Azarkon wrote:
I fully believe that Tencents gives no shits about Riot. They not only control the distribution of LoL in China - the biggest Riot market, but they actually own Riot. Sure, there's contracts about what they're allowed to do to Riot and what they aren't, but it's fucking China. You think a Chinese court is going to choose Riot over Tencents? China is Tencents' home ground, not Riot's.
That said, I don't think XWX is valued enough for them to 'lift his ban.' At best, they throw him in a LSPL team and forget about him. The fact is, China is presently in no shortage of talent due to them importing all the best players they find in both the Chinese and Korean ladders. Thus, they give even less shit about XWX. I'm not sure you understand what ownership means. Tencent could turn Riot into a cheeseburger delivery business as long as the shareholders are okay with it. There won't be any court involved no matter what.
Except Tencent won't turn Riot into a burger joint. Tencent is a huge conglomerate and it is definitely interested in acquiring other companies. It's hard to acquire companies when you have a reputation of turning world-recognized brands into burger joints.
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On July 24 2015 15:28 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 15:21 chosenkerrigan wrote:On July 23 2015 06:43 Azarkon wrote:
I fully believe that Tencents gives no shits about Riot. They not only control the distribution of LoL in China - the biggest Riot market, but they actually own Riot. Sure, there's contracts about what they're allowed to do to Riot and what they aren't, but it's fucking China. You think a Chinese court is going to choose Riot over Tencents? China is Tencents' home ground, not Riot's.
That said, I don't think XWX is valued enough for them to 'lift his ban.' At best, they throw him in a LSPL team and forget about him. The fact is, China is presently in no shortage of talent due to them importing all the best players they find in both the Chinese and Korean ladders. Thus, they give even less shit about XWX. I'm not sure you understand what ownership means. Tencent could turn Riot into a cheeseburger delivery business as long as the shareholders are okay with it. There won't be any court involved no matter what. Except Tencent won't turn Riot into a burger joint. Tencent is a huge conglomerate and it is definitely interested in acquiring other companies. It's hard to acquire companies when you have a reputation of turning world-recognized brands into burger joints.
I never said they would, I just don't believe they would care to help enforce the ban inside China if it really comes down to that, simply because 1. No one in China would care and 2. It pretty much has 0 affect on business.
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On July 24 2015 15:36 chosenkerrigan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 15:28 Sufficiency wrote:On July 24 2015 15:21 chosenkerrigan wrote:On July 23 2015 06:43 Azarkon wrote:
I fully believe that Tencents gives no shits about Riot. They not only control the distribution of LoL in China - the biggest Riot market, but they actually own Riot. Sure, there's contracts about what they're allowed to do to Riot and what they aren't, but it's fucking China. You think a Chinese court is going to choose Riot over Tencents? China is Tencents' home ground, not Riot's.
That said, I don't think XWX is valued enough for them to 'lift his ban.' At best, they throw him in a LSPL team and forget about him. The fact is, China is presently in no shortage of talent due to them importing all the best players they find in both the Chinese and Korean ladders. Thus, they give even less shit about XWX. I'm not sure you understand what ownership means. Tencent could turn Riot into a cheeseburger delivery business as long as the shareholders are okay with it. There won't be any court involved no matter what. Except Tencent won't turn Riot into a burger joint. Tencent is a huge conglomerate and it is definitely interested in acquiring other companies. It's hard to acquire companies when you have a reputation of turning world-recognized brands into burger joints. I never said they would, I just don't believe they would care to help enforce the ban inside China if it really comes down to that, simply because 1. No one in China would care and 2. It pretty much has 0 affect on business.
To be openly defiant of Riot's ruling is a PR nightmare for Riot Games and definitely a loss of reputation of Riot. It is not something you can measure objectively in terms of business loss but it is easy to see the risks. Again, it's LPL vs Riot and Riot is an internationally recognized brand with 1 billion dollars revenue. XWX is more or less a nobody. There is absolutely no way LPL will support XWX.
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On July 24 2015 16:15 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 15:36 chosenkerrigan wrote:On July 24 2015 15:28 Sufficiency wrote:On July 24 2015 15:21 chosenkerrigan wrote:On July 23 2015 06:43 Azarkon wrote:
I fully believe that Tencents gives no shits about Riot. They not only control the distribution of LoL in China - the biggest Riot market, but they actually own Riot. Sure, there's contracts about what they're allowed to do to Riot and what they aren't, but it's fucking China. You think a Chinese court is going to choose Riot over Tencents? China is Tencents' home ground, not Riot's.
That said, I don't think XWX is valued enough for them to 'lift his ban.' At best, they throw him in a LSPL team and forget about him. The fact is, China is presently in no shortage of talent due to them importing all the best players they find in both the Chinese and Korean ladders. Thus, they give even less shit about XWX. I'm not sure you understand what ownership means. Tencent could turn Riot into a cheeseburger delivery business as long as the shareholders are okay with it. There won't be any court involved no matter what. Except Tencent won't turn Riot into a burger joint. Tencent is a huge conglomerate and it is definitely interested in acquiring other companies. It's hard to acquire companies when you have a reputation of turning world-recognized brands into burger joints. I never said they would, I just don't believe they would care to help enforce the ban inside China if it really comes down to that, simply because 1. No one in China would care and 2. It pretty much has 0 affect on business. To be openly defiant of Riot's ruling is a PR nightmare for Riot Games and definitely a loss of reputation of Riot. It is not something you can measure objectively in terms of business loss but it is easy to see the risks. Again, it's LPL vs Riot and Riot is an internationally recognized brand with 1 billion dollars revenue. XWX is more or less a nobody. There is absolutely no way LPL will support XWX.
You're taking this way too seriously and I don't know why. It will not be a "PR nightmare" for Riot and people will not stop buying champions and skins simply because XWX is playing in China. By the end of the day no one cares, and there is no LPL vs Riot. It is precisely because XWX is more or less a nobody that Tencent wouldn't even notice the matter. Unless Riot takes the initiative and apply pressure, nothing will be done. And I sincerely doubt Riot would do that because, again, no one cares.
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On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about.
Because the the Elo booster ruines the competitiveness of a big number of games. He is playing far outside his own skill level. The result of the game is decided by which side he plays on and barely by how the other players play. So the players in these games randomly lose/gain Elo. Bascially the effect is just the same as a player purpose feeding.
Then the same thing happens again when the boosted player is playing on his account again, just the other way around. Again the player is outside his skill region and decides the game's result almost on his own. Only this time by feeding. Again players randomly gain/lose Elo without influencing it much.
tldr: Elo matchmaking exists for a reason in LoL.
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On July 23 2015 13:27 ricecake wrote:This is really, really sad as a TIP fan, especially if Rush is implicated  . They both seemed like such nice guys.
You say this like being a nice guy and trying to supplement your meager income while you live the eSports dream are mutually exclusive. I'm not saying elo boosting isn't/shouldn't be a problem but, as a human being, I can find no fault at all with any pro who does this.
As these cases continue to crop up (and I'm sure they will) we've gotta start asking ourselves some real questions about how we treat our players (especially those whos exit paths don't include a golden ticket to casting/coaching/talking head). I know this is a weird place to make a soapbox for this kind of issue but COME ON, a pro who is being paid what he is worth is not going to jeopardize his career with this kind of weak shit.
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Baa?21242 Posts
On July 24 2015 14:30 Amarok wrote:
I think it's a pretty big deal. Worse than "toxicity" imo. A silver game with a masters player is every bit as ruined as a game where someone ragequits or intentionally feeds. Same goes for the masters game with the silver player. I doubt anyone involved enjoys the experience, except the guy raking in the $$. Oking it is essentially saying you're ok with people ruining games for their own personal profit and there's no way Riot should take that stance.
On July 24 2015 14:03 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about. as someone who actually paid people to level my halo 3 account (I was like 15 and pretty dumb dumb) here's my thoughts. elo boosting ruins games for anyone who's actually playing with the account either before or after it got elo boosted, because you're either playing with someone a lot beter or a lot worse then the rank. so if your going to play on the account your automatically ruining the experience for people. there's no real reason to allow it as it doesn't really have any benefit whatsoever (other than having someone make money off of being better at a game and exploiting the fact that games are somewhat anonymous). In real life you can't have someone take a test for you. it's really a problem if the people who you actively are paying to play your game professionally are breaking your rules and making money this way because you are once again paying them an actual salary and so to summarise my thoughts. is ELo boosting the biggest thing in the world? no but it really shouldn't be allowed and if your the company and are paying people to play your game you are perfectly justified handing out serious punishments. Zato made a good point about making punishments harsher for if you get caught being a deterrent if its hard to detect.
On July 24 2015 18:10 Redox wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about. Because the the Elo booster ruines the competitiveness of a big number of games. He is playing far outside his own skill level. The result of the game is decided by which side he plays on and barely by how the other players play. So the players in these games randomly lose/gain Elo. Bascially the effect is just the same as a player purpose feeding. Then the same thing happens again when the boosted player is playing on his account again, just the other way around. Again the player is outside his skill region and decides the game's result almost on his own. Only this time by feeding. Again players randomly gain/lose Elo without influencing it much. tldr: Elo matchmaking exists for a reason in LoL.
So what's the difference between boosting and smurfing? Both are equally detrimental to the game by these arguments on competitiveness/mismatch in skill/etc.
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On July 24 2015 23:31 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 14:30 Amarok wrote:
I think it's a pretty big deal. Worse than "toxicity" imo. A silver game with a masters player is every bit as ruined as a game where someone ragequits or intentionally feeds. Same goes for the masters game with the silver player. I doubt anyone involved enjoys the experience, except the guy raking in the $$. Oking it is essentially saying you're ok with people ruining games for their own personal profit and there's no way Riot should take that stance. Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 14:03 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about. as someone who actually paid people to level my halo 3 account (I was like 15 and pretty dumb dumb) here's my thoughts. elo boosting ruins games for anyone who's actually playing with the account either before or after it got elo boosted, because you're either playing with someone a lot beter or a lot worse then the rank. so if your going to play on the account your automatically ruining the experience for people. there's no real reason to allow it as it doesn't really have any benefit whatsoever (other than having someone make money off of being better at a game and exploiting the fact that games are somewhat anonymous). In real life you can't have someone take a test for you. it's really a problem if the people who you actively are paying to play your game professionally are breaking your rules and making money this way because you are once again paying them an actual salary and so to summarise my thoughts. is ELo boosting the biggest thing in the world? no but it really shouldn't be allowed and if your the company and are paying people to play your game you are perfectly justified handing out serious punishments. Zato made a good point about making punishments harsher for if you get caught being a deterrent if its hard to detect. Show nested quote +On July 24 2015 18:10 Redox wrote:On July 24 2015 12:57 Zess wrote:
Why is elo boosting such a big deal anyways? You're paying people that are good at the game to try hard at winning soloq, which is miles better for the competitiveness of a region than the current circlejerking everyone whines about. Because the the Elo booster ruines the competitiveness of a big number of games. He is playing far outside his own skill level. The result of the game is decided by which side he plays on and barely by how the other players play. So the players in these games randomly lose/gain Elo. Bascially the effect is just the same as a player purpose feeding. Then the same thing happens again when the boosted player is playing on his account again, just the other way around. Again the player is outside his skill region and decides the game's result almost on his own. Only this time by feeding. Again players randomly gain/lose Elo without influencing it much. tldr: Elo matchmaking exists for a reason in LoL. So what's the difference between boosting and smurfing? Both are equally detrimental to the game by these arguments on competitiveness/mismatch in skill/etc.
In principal smurfing is not much better. In practise if someone makes just one smurf, levels it up himself etc there is not that much disruption of the ladder. But if someone buys dozens of 30s accounts, stomps noobs for like 20-40 games with and discards them afterwards it is almost as bad as Elo boosting. Which is why I was quite disappointed when Yusui's punishment was so soft. Only thing that is better here is that the accounts are not given to a bad player afterwards who frustrates his team mates by being way out of his Elo.
Most people seem to have more problems with players too bad for their current Elo than with those too good for it (personally I disagree, I think they are equally disruptive).
As for Riot's stance on smurfing. They could not do much about it even if they wanted. And players probably would not tolerate it if they would disallow it. Also some smurfs spend extra money.
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Boosting has the added account security issue, monetary transactions involved, selling of ranked rewards in addition to regular boosting.
Buying accounts got Yusui banned for a month.
Smurfing is also kind of Riot's own issue with extremely high-level matchmaking and how damn long it takes to get to 30.
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Baa?21242 Posts
If the difference between the impact of smurfing and boosting is mostly an issue of scale, it cheapens the argument that Elo boosting is a huge evil due to skill disparity because that exists in both cases, one just less (in frequency) than the other.
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Yea you guys can't use ruining games as a reason for riot not allowing/wanting it. Remember that they permaban accounts and smurfs exist as well, both of which ruin thousands of games. They would have to eliminate both of those things to make that a logical argument.
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Scale by itself is a crucial factor in almost everything. Also there is the issue of monetary incentives. It's not remotely comparable.
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On July 25 2015 00:09 VayneAuthority wrote:
Yea you guys can't use ruining games as a reason for riot not allowing/wanting it. Remember that they permaban accounts and smurfs exist as well, both of which ruin thousands of games. They would have to eliminate both of those things to make that a logical argument.
I did not give it as Riot's reason for not wanting it. I gave it as my reason for not wanting it.
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Well the big difference between smurfing and boosting is that boosting is forbidden by the ToU (see IIIC and IIID; you can't share accounts and you can't sell accounts) and smurfing isn't.
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/legal/termsofuse
From a purely-player-based standpoint boosting and smurfing seem to have a pretty similar effect to me; I suspect it's the fact that there's money involved that makes Riot want to crack down on boosting more by forbidding it in the ToU. Smurf accounts don't cost Riot any money, since the person creating one does not give their money (that they are spending on LoL) to a non-Riot party in this case (and it might get Riot more money, if the player wants to buy things for both accounts). Boosting might cost Riot money because now the player is spending money on LoL but Riot never sees it.
It's probably also a case of similar language being used by other online games; in (almost?) all of them you're not allowed to share or sell accounts. Preventing a player from having more than one account is not, as far as I know, something the ToU of online games ever forbids, though.
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I don't really see how boosting can have a worse effect than smurfing. If the boosted party is far worse they'll quickly drop in MMR to their actual value. Smurf is the same deal. It'll ruin games then even out. Both instances will have games ruined, the only difference I see is that one has cash being exchange but even then smurf accounts can be bought. At the end of the day I don't really care about it that much. Hopefully he just gets community service like the other guy in Korea and a 2 game ban or so.
I am a bit puzzled at why he's suspended while the investigation is going on when Forgiven was notified of the investigation but not suspended during it.
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EPT
