I'll bring two perspective, standard user/player perspective, and streamer perspective.
I want to discuss that Blizzard should ban/remove all barcode accounts from the SC2 ladder.
edit: CLARIFICATION - when i say "ban" in the title of the thread and in general, i mean "abolish" or "remove" barcode anonymity from the ladder. Not to literally ban everyone with a barcode account to be unable to play. Just clarifying.
Ladder play is supposed to be a fair experience for every player involved, and knowing who you are playing is a part of that experience.
When you play versus 5 barcodes and you have no idea who they are, what their tendencies are, what builds they might use...but they see your account as "Liquid Snute," or "avilo,' or "Puck," these players can immediately have an information advantage just by knowing who you are in the community and what your tendencies are and what your range of builds are.
This is a huge deal. The solution and counter-argument should not be "just make a barcode as well!" because that is a ridiculous argument and doesnt' address the main point.
Barcode accounts are simply an unfair advantage because you maintain your anonymity while knowing who your opponent is. Would this scenario ever occur in a tournament bo3/bo5/boX? No. You might play an unknown player, but you at least know who they are and can look up VODS, etc. or get some information on them.
As a player/pro/ladder player...barcodes absolutely give an unfair advantage and i think it's time we discuss this as a community and hopefully get blizzard to get rid of these accounts. If people want to practice anonymously they can do custom games - a public ladder is not the place for having such an unfair advantage.
Now, i want to go to the streamer perspective.
As a streamer with a pretty good viewer base...this is a huge issue for me personally. I do not know how much it is for other streamers getting sniped, but every other game i'm playing versus a barcoded player sniping my stream.
It would already be bad enough playing versus barcodes normally, but then as a streamer when these people are purposely harrassing via barcodes over and over...how do i report these people or identify them to blizzard or twitch? There really is no winning here as the streamer in terms of putting an end to the harrassment from anonymous people on barcodes.
At least if i knew their ID, i would be able to metagame them as well. Simply put, it's everything a normal player experiences but amplified because streaming the game let's people snipe my stream anonymously for an even more ridiculously unfair advantage.
What do people think of this? I personally do not think the SC2 competitive ladder should allow for barcodes and something should finally be done about it.
The best analogy i can think of in relation to a standard username player playing versus a barcode player on the ladder is - you are basically playing a game of poker with part of your hand revealed to the barcode, but you cannot see his cards at all.
I agree barcodes are stupid. Names should be unique like in League of Legends. In comparison to 1% of the earth population playing League it shouldent be impossible to make a unique ID in SC2 aswell.
People will just find another way to hide their identities. Ban one kind of commonly used anonymous username, and another one will appear. This is online play, not a tournement; the possibility that you don't know who your opponents are is always part of it. Nor should we suddenly start changing the rules of the ladder just for streamers. PUBG has gone too far catering to streamers, and that pissed off a lot of players. There's tools streamers can use to decrease the chances of getting snipes. Use them, and accept the risk that comes with streaming, instead of asking that the ladder be altered for a miniscule portion of the player base.
I'm glad that avilo is out there looking out for us all and addressing all these "unfair" issues which don't affect 99.9% of the player base. Besides how do you even enforce it. There's dozens of players out there using the name "killer" for example--should they be penalized for unfairly trying to hide their identity? What a joke.
On September 12 2017 05:35 Psychobabas wrote: Kripparian from Hearthstone had a group of people that constantly streamsniped him. He gathered lots of proof and Blizzard actually banned them all.
looks like the idiot above me just showed exactly what i mean
Maybe it's just me but I feel like a turn-based card game where a lot of the thinking is about "what does the opponent have in his hand right now" is a lot more vulnerable and susceptible to stream sniping than a multitask-demanding RTS. In Hearthstone that information could easily determine the outcome of the match, were you somehow able to get it, whereas in SC2 it doesn't matter too much if you're not able to execute (macro & micro).
Anyway I'm pretty sure Blizzard released a statement about this some years back (back when the RatZ people and other unsavoury drama mongers like Destiny and MaximusBlack still plagued our scene with this bullshit) where they basically said they don't consider it a problem and if streamers do then it's up to them to set up a delay or whatever.
On September 12 2017 05:44 Biedrik wrote: People will just find another way to hide their identities. Ban one kind of commonly used anonymous username, and another one will appear. This is online play, not a tournement; the possibility that you don't know who your opponents are is always part of it. Nor should we suddenly start changing the rules of the ladder just for streamers. PUBG has gone too far catering to streamers, and that pissed off a lot of players. There's tools streamers can use to decrease the chances of getting snipes. Use them, and accept the risk that comes with streaming, instead of asking that the ladder be altered for a miniscule portion of the player base.
How does this apply to having a competitive ladder that is fair?
I wrote from two perspectives. Even as a player on the ladder that does not stream it's an unfair disadvantage to be playing under your username versus a random barcode that can metagame you/know your range of builds and you enter the game seeing them as lllllllllllllllllllllll aka you have zero information on them.
On September 12 2017 05:44 Biedrik wrote: People will just find another way to hide their identities. Ban one kind of commonly used anonymous username, and another one will appear. This is online play, not a tournement; the possibility that you don't know who your opponents are is always part of it. Nor should we suddenly start changing the rules of the ladder just for streamers. PUBG has gone too far catering to streamers, and that pissed off a lot of players. There's tools streamers can use to decrease the chances of getting snipes. Use them, and accept the risk that comes with streaming, instead of asking that the ladder be altered for a miniscule portion of the player base.
How does this apply to having a competitive ladder that is fair?
I wrote from two perspectives. Even as a player on the ladder that does not stream it's an unfair disadvantage to be playing under your username versus a random barcode that can metagame you/know your range of builds and you enter the game seeing them as lllllllllllllllllllllll aka you have zero information on them.
Why should there be a guarantee that you know anything about your opponent on ladder? Most of us are in leagues with so many players that most of the time each opponent pretty much is anonymous to us, regardless of what their username is. Besides, like I said, if barcodes are banned then people can just switch to a different style of anonymous name. Maybe the number of guys called "avilo" will just increase even more. Ultimately, you're presuming that there's some kind of right to know your opponent's identity, which there isn't on the ladder. If you choose to play without hiding who you are then that's on you, not Blizzard.
right so instead of having barcode people can just have a name that isnt Liquid Snute like SchnitzelDog and somehow that doesnt help deduce that its Snute ?
In your average diamond league game chances are you have never played your opponent before. This is only a problem for people in higher MMRs because they have less of a pool of people to play with. But even then I don't really care if my opponent would know what type of player I am. This is not a significant advantage. If my style is not diverse enough to adapt to my opponent, then I'm probably not as good of a player than I thought I was. If you're unsure what your opponent is doing - just scout.
Ways to fix this would probably be the ability to include information on the load screen, such as your opponents playstyle in the last 50 games. And some way to identify players during or after games. Like information on when you last played a particular opponent.. but this is so much work for little to no gain for Blizzard so it's never going to happen.
So as other ppl have posted: 1) It doesn't affect enough people for Blizz to give a shit 2) There will always be ways around being anonymous
Ladder isn't a serious place to compete, that's what tournaments are for.
Who cares about ladder? Ladder is just there to practice, the only time when ladder rankings are important are for the WCS challenger competition and barcodes are banned there.
On September 12 2017 06:04 Charoisaur wrote: Who cares about ladder? Ladder is just there to practice, the only time when ladder rankings are important are for the WCS challenger competition and barcodes are banned there.
Dude, ladder is for making your mmr-shaped e-penis as big as possible. it's serious business
EPT
