Proposal for [Challenge Accounts] | Feedback Wanted!
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The introduction of Challenge Accounts, as currently proposed, appears unnecessary, as most goals (content creation, fostering creative challenges) can be achieved without additional accounts. The administrative and moderation effort does not justify the benefits. Optimizing existing structures provides similar advantages with less risk and effort.
It should also be noted that there have always been discussions about smurf accounts, and FAF has consistently been against such accounts, even enforcing bans. Now, for FAF to allow smurf accounts under any circumstances is problematic in my view. This could lead to anyone justifying their smurfing by claiming they intended to create value for FAF.
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Two cents from a trainer perspective:
As you (aka. the ppl somewhat following discussions on the FAF discord) know, there is an ongoing discussion about the classic "how do I beat turtles?" or other things were trainers most often just give a theoretical advice bc we don't encounter turtles anymore so we can't show a decent gameplay.
With a challenge account it'd give us (= trainer team) a chance of showing exactly these type of things, similar to a thing such as "Bronze to GM series". We could play 1v1 ladder (yes, I'm basically asking for an exception), downgrade our gameplay so we play without manual reclaim and stuff and point out the important things. Atm it's the only way I see for really showing it cuz I've tried playing against low ranks with my main account, but they end up either being intimitated, trying cheese or simply not playing "standard", which we could avoid with an extra account.For challenges itself, I don't really see a reason why you'd need an extra account if said account has a unique avatar basically giving away "oh hey, I'm a secret high ranked going to cheese!", could just use the own account for that. For me it'd require the account to be somewhat undercover so the other ppl play normal.
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@Uveso said in Proposal for Challenge Accounts: Feedback Wanted!:
The introduction of Challenge Accounts, as currently proposed, appears unnecessary, as most goals (content creation, fostering creative challenges) can be achieved without additional accounts. The administrative and moderation effort does not justify the benefits. Optimizing existing structures provides similar advantages with less risk and effort.
It should also be noted that there have always been discussions about smurf accounts, and FAF has consistently been against such accounts, even enforcing bans. Now, for FAF to allow smurf accounts under any circumstances is problematic in my view. This could lead to anyone justifying their smurfing by claiming they intended to create value for FAF.
Just giving my personal opinion here, such challenge runs have the potential to provide a promotional benefit to FAF (in addition to the fun the person doing the challenge might have), but that needs offsetting against the problems caused by having a high rated player matchup against low rated players via what is essentially a smurf account, which risks a significant negative experience for the opponent as well as undermining confidence in ratings. The issue I see with the current rules is that they to some extent prevent people doing a challenge run on their main account (as an extreme challenge could be seen as rating manipulation, and for teamgames could result in a long period of unbalanced games since the person's rating will take some time to adjust to reflect how strong they are with the challenge constraints), and it feels like it's possible there's an approach where the benefits of a challenge account type system could outweigh the downsides.
On your second point I think the issue of people justifying smurfing by claiming they'd create value would be prevented under the proposed system - a big reason for the proposal being that pre-approval is mandatory for a challenge account is to prevent that, and it means people who try to justify smurfing with that reason would still be breaching FAF rules and face a ban.
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I find the idea of allowing smurf accounts under any circumstances problematic. Smurfing has always been a contentious issue in FAF, and the platform has consistently upheld a strict no-smurfing policy, even enforcing bans against such accounts. Introducing a system that permits smurf accounts, regardless of how controlled or pre-approved it may be, risks undermining this longstanding rule.
Allowing high-rated players to create temporary accounts—even for challenges—poses significant risks to the community. It could lead to negative experiences for low-rated opponents and erode confidence in the integrity of the rating system. Furthermore, even with strict pre-approval and monitoring, the line between an approved "challenge account" and unauthorized smurfing becomes blurred, potentially opening the door for misuse.
That said, this is just my personal opinion. Whatever decision is ultimately made, I will support it. I have a rating of 0, so from a personal standpoint, it doesn't matter to me either way.
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Personally I don't think there should be any restrictions on having multiple accounts for any reason across the board. If people want to go through the effort of having multiple accounts what does it really matter? I think most people wont even bother and those that do aren't going to really affect anyone else.
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I can see the value in this.
For example, Grubby who does a lot of casting of Warcraft 3 has a challenge account for literally that: challenges! These challenges originate from his viewers. Take as an example:
These challenges would never work (or be fun) against players of his rating. If you're unfamiliar with Grubby - he's similar to what TheWheelie is to FAForever in terms of rating. Not the best, but pretty close to it. And this content is viewed a lot. It is often also educational as he's often evaluating what is going on.
The suggestion here would not be much different. I'll respond to the details/questions another time.
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@Dorset said in Proposal for [Challenge Accounts] | Feedback Wanted!:
Personally I don't think there should be any restrictions on having multiple accounts for any reason across the board. If people want to go through the effort of having multiple accounts what does it really matter? I think most people wont even bother and those that do aren't going to really affect anyone else.
Allowing multiple accounts more generally could cause the following issues (non-exhaustive list):
- Ban evasion, meaning people can get away with bad behaviour that wrecks the FAF experience for others, leading to an increase in such behaviour
- Rating becomes less reliable, meaning fewer balanced games - generally a closely fought game where either team could potentially win is more likely to be fun than a completely 1-sided game where one team never had a chance. The more reliable rating is, the easier it is to come up with teams that are a similar level of skill.
- New player experience is likely to be worse if you have a much higher chance of fighting against someone who based on their rating should be a new player but turns out to actually be a smurf that completely destroys you (leading to fewer people playing FAF longer term)
It's also not that much effort to create multiple accounts, and with people often enjoying winning more than losing there'd be a strong incentive to do it (since it'd increase your chances of winning a game).
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@maudlin27
I appreciate that but my logic is as follows.- Ban evasion, meaning people can get away with bad behavior that wrecks the FAF experience for others, leading to an increase in such behavior
Yes this is true but if someone makes a new account and then never act out of line again the net affect is we have 1 more person in the community. I think it would be very rare for someone to repeatedly be toxic and make a new account over and over. These types probably do it anyway.
- Rating becomes less reliable, meaning fewer balanced games - generally a closely fought game where either team could potentially win is more likely to be fun than a completely 1-sided game where one team never had a chance. The more reliable rating is, the easier it is to come up with teams that are a similar level of skill.
In my opinion this isn't a concern because the "smurf effect" only lasts what?...100 games? I just dont think people can outrun their rank and it will quickly settle to what they are. I dont see pro level players wanting to pretend they are a 1200 and blend in a game and pile up losses just to be a smurf. I am a 1300 level and cant stand playing in games where everyone is a 600. Anyone who wants to do this is probably doing it anyway.
- New player experience is likely to be worse if you have a much higher chance of fighting against someone who based on their rating should be a new player but turns out to actually be a smurf that completely destroys you (leading to fewer people playing FAF longer term)
I am curious how many new players are onboarded each month to know if this would be a legit reason. If multiple accounts were allowed there may be an initial rush as players made new accounts but once that equalized I think it would be the same experience as it is now.
It's also not that much effort to create multiple accounts, and with people often enjoying winning more than losing there'd be a strong incentive to do it (since it'd increase your chances of winning a game).
I think its a rare type of person who wants to go through the effort multiple times over any meaningfully short duration. Anyone who wants to go through the trouble every time they get a few losses is probably doing it already anyway. I think most people probably don't even make a second account if it were legal and if they do its for a specific purpose such as playing only GAP with one account and playing only mapgen with another. Or maybe one where I am only ever UEF.
I personally would love a second account to grind but I wouldn't want a third or 4th or 5th lol. Multiple email accounts multiple steam accounts, keeping track of it all hurts my low apm brain. I have a few other games I play and have 3 accounts on each and each one is for a different playstyle but those are different genres so its not apples to apples I admit.
I'm not trying to suggest we should change the rules because FAF is great as is but since the topic was raise I wanted to point out that I think there is an argument for not governing multiple accounts.
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It’s clearly inspired by chess streamers. But no additional measures used on chess websites are mentioned. On chess website the players who play against “fake” account get all their points back (such games are basically not rated)
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Yes this is true but if someone makes a new account and then never act out of line again the net affect is we have 1 more person in the community. I think it would be very rare for someone to repeatedly be toxic and make a new account over and over. These types probably do it anyway.
Allowing people to evade their bans is not how the moderation system can work. Most bans we hand out are one or several days. Only when someone has been repeatedly banned over and over will they start receiving bans that can be counted in weeks or months. We hand out some permanent bans too, but those are very rare: from the top of my head I can think of maybe 10 permanent bans last year. (see also this page for more info on how bans are applied)
People that need an account to evade a long ban are not the people who 'then never act out of line again; people with long bans have already proven that they are not people who will receive a warning and then improve. And these are not the kind of people you want returning to your community.
While there is a lot about the proposal for challenge accounts that we are unsure about, the one thing that we are sure about is that we want to make it exceedingly clear that this is not a free ticket to a smurf account. Nor will we start to be more lenient towards new smurf accounts. This challenge account is very much intended to be treated like a carefully managed exception, and we hope we can trust the community to treat it as such.
I am curious how many new players are onboarded each month to know if this would be a legit reason.
Last month we had about 3000 new users register. I don't have the data to how many of them are now regular players.
The other points you made regarding smurf/secondary accounts should be best addressed in their own thread if you'd like to see the rule changed. Continuing the discussion here will probably derail the conversation about the challenge accounts themselves.
