#1 - Nov. 14, 2012, 11:19 p.m.
As we all know, the bans have started to go out on accounts who exploited the ladder. The account actions have been documented publicly on this thread. As we can not discuss account action on this forum, we're left at a crossroads. How can we possible express discontent at how things were handled?
http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/233719-arena-exploit-fixed-mass-ban-incgear-removed/
According to this thread, the accounts were given 3 day bans, conquest gear removed and a team reset. However, people who were subject to these bans comment later on to say that MMR has not been reset. One even is happy to trade a 3 day ban for 5000 MMR in order to get rank 1 in the next season.
Those of us who do not cheat have been greatly punished for not cheating, and will not be able to compete for top ranks this season, and potentially any other season. This is because in addition to teams who cheated, there were others who didn't "cheat" but won games off these extreme MMRs. They would que against these teams over and over, defeating them soundly and move their way up the rankings while the other did not fall.
The lasting ramifications of this are an arena system with highly inflated MMR on people who cheated and who did not cheat. While theoretically, this would even out over time, the fact of the matter is, the cheaters are outside the general population's MMR bracket and will only que against each other, keeping their ratings.
MMR was created to put people of similar skills against each other. It was created as a 3rd rating after team rating was found to be no longer sufficient to put teams together. Personal rating was created to avoid people selling weekly points. Instead, it's putting cheaters in an entirely new bracket above the arena players who play fair.
One possible solution:
MMR and team ratings do not need to be completely reset to solve this problem. Players who have achieved greater than 2200 could be reduced to 2200, players in the 2k-2.1k range could be reduced to 2k and so forth. This would prevent the inevitable "newb" crushing that a full MMR reset would cause, but eliminate the "cheaters" bracket which is no longer reachable. This could also be implemented at the beginning of every season.
