FreeGameDev

Hello. It's possible (and even happened with some players) to gain your rank unfairly this way:

1. Create two (or more) accounts A and B
2. Play each account separately against other players until both accounts have pretty much ranking points
3. Choose an empty server and play A vs B, make A win and B lose much time/quit
4. Now A has bigger rating!

My calculations tell that it's possible to gain roughly 400 points in an hour provided that both accounts had equal ratings before. This is unfair because equal ratings should mean equal chance to win, and for most players it's impossible to constantly win against rivals with similar rating. Any thoughts how to prevent this?

High ranking gained in this way is meaningless. When racing with other players, you can notice that ranking does not mean everything. But higher ranking does mean people have spent more time on STK.

Some ideas:
1. Add an upper limit the points a player can get from another player per day.
2. Limit the points a player can get from another within the same IP. Not sure if it is a good idea, as I once met some friends played online with split screen.
3. Limit the minimum number of players on a ranking server, say 3. As the point-exchange mechanism, 1 player on a ranking server is useless. Blocking 2 players can prevent this cheating problem, unless people create accounts A, B, and C.

kimden {l Wrote}:Hello. It's possible (and even happened with some players) to gain your rank unfairly this way:
[...]
Any thoughts how to prevent this?

Hi! I love this observation. It seems like a vulnerability of the ranking system. But then again, nobody plays STK for money, so who cares? If somebody got a high a rank in this way, let's say, somebody got to be #15 in the rankings and I'd play against them with my not-so-great rank and beat them,it would make me really great that I beat somebody so high ranked! And also, if that person played any other people, he's lose that fantastic rank pretty quick.

Personally, I look at people's ranks when I'm about to join a server to see if it makes sense playing against them. But when I'm actually playing, then it doesn't matter what people's rank is. After a couple of races, I have a very good idea how good the other players are and if somebody who can't drive very well had an artificially improved rank, I probably wouldn't even notice.

So as long as there's no $1,000,000 award for #1 in STK rankings, it doesn't really bother me

eltomito {l Wrote}:Personally, I look at people's ranks when I'm about to join a server to see if it makes sense playing against them. But when I'm actually playing, then it doesn't matter what people's rank is. After a couple of races, I have a very good idea how good the other players are and if somebody who can't drive very well had an artificially improved rank, I probably wouldn't even notice.

Yeah. The way I see it, if your goal is a high rank and not skills, competition or fun then you have already lost.