Eric Musco too on the forum today, enlightening the community what BioWare have in mind to to counter Win Trading in PvP Season 4 and Beyond:
Win-Trading In Season 4 and Beyond | 02.03.2015, 08:07 PM
Hey folks,
Season 4 for PvP is about to start and we wanted everyone to understand the Rules of Engagement and how we plan to keep it fair and fun for everyone who participates in Ranked Warzones:
In The Past
- Throughout the Season we would track data around games being played by each character.
- At the end of the Season we compare data to look for possible win-traders.
- Anyone whom we are 100% sure has win-traded received action against their account. The action we took was to completely reset their rating to zero. This would mean they would receive no end of season rewards and would have no credit for taking part in that season.
What We Learned
- By doing a single large data review, it created a situation where someone could have partially win-traded may have been overlooked.
- Since all of the actions took place at the end of the season, most players didn’t realize any action had been taken.
- This perception was further enhanced by our continued silence on the topic.
Starting with Season 4
- An analysis will occur weekly and continue throughout the season. A warning will be sent to any player who has taken part in win-trading or any other area of misconduct. The warning lets the player know they may be doing something that could lead them to losing their rating, any seasonal rewards, or more severe actions.
- If a player receives a warning and continues to engage in the same activity we will take further action. Actions include any or all of the following: rating resets on that character, rating resets for all characters on their account, and game time suspensions.
- On a regular basis, we’ll communicate via the forums and let you know the type of actions that took place. Obviously, we will not be directly sharing who received a warning or action.
Hopefully these changes will provide a bit more visibility into the actions we take against those players who are playing Ranked PvP unfairly. Win-trading takes away from the spirit of the game and is completely unacceptable. We know that win-trading in Ranked PvP is something all of you take very seriously, and so do we, so we’re making adjustments in how we handle and communicate around it going forward.
-eric
Win-Trading In Season 4 and Beyond | 02.03.2015, 09:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by skarlson
What happens if there are teams that just face each other a lot and are evenly matched. Will you take action against their accounts? I don’t see how you can be 100% certain in even some cases if any. What exactly constitutes being a win trader by your definition. Do you take into account queue syncers and assume they are win traders when they just want to play with their friends instead of the loser with 1000 expertise trolling people.
You raise some very, very valid questions Skarlson. Although I can’t give you a detailed answer I will do my best. We have a lot of different data and a lot of different criteria we can look at to determine if someone is win-trading.
As you can imagine, some behaviors could look suspicious, but could happen in completely normal play. Ex: Someone went 15-0 in the last week of play to get into the top tier reward. Nothing to say with that information alone that the player was win-trading. They could just be an amazing player who jumped in at the last minute with min/maxxed PvP gear and got lucky in their match-ups. Or, they could be a win-trader. However, this one data point alone does not make a win-trader.
With any suspicious activity we will compare multiple sets of data that when combined can make a pretty complete picture on someone’s intent. We also believe that us checking week over week on this will help us in more clearly finding this with ill-intent.
-eric
