Board Game Arena

FrankJones wrote: ↑10 October 2025, 19:18 With regard to the first point - Let's examine this for a non-coop game, such as Azul. How exactly would this work? It would require a dummy account and a normal account (either controlled by the same person, or by two people colluding). So, the dummy account loses to the main account to dump Elo points to the main account. But unless the dummy account were highly rated, the Elo gain for the main account would quickly become insignificant, eventually approaching zero. To boost the main account to any Elo of any significance would require getting the dummy account Elo very high. A main account cannot boost itself to 500 Elo without a dummy account also having 500+ Elo. In which case... the entire process would be unnecessary.

The gains trend to zero now, after implementing the consecutive wins penalty. Of course, we know how well received that change was....

So now it's just more annoy to Elo boost, by design. But still probably easier than, say, getting good.

MasterMystery wrote: ↑10 October 2025, 19:35 Regarding ELO boosting. The current penalty is even worse than the original problem. https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 67#p224467

I have not experienced a single time an issue with multi accounting since I joined. Or nothing I was aware of. I don't feel it's a problem. Also elo is a ranking to estimate win rate and not a "ladder" style. Arena with all it's fraunds would be better ...

Your personal experience is just that. I've never been mugged, but that doesn't mean muggings don't occur in my city.

The first time I saw someone Elo boosting was when someone else was complaining about it and I thought, "whatever. Probably just yet another sore loser." It wasn't even a game I've ever played on here, but I looked at the accused account (this was back before xate was quickly removing the accused person's names from these allegations; maybe even before xate joined). I was actually expecting to see nothing suspicious, or at least nothing clear cut. But this person was boosting in such an obvious way: letting their main account immediately get 4 in a row in Connect Four without ever trying to block in literally dozens of games. It was almost like they actually wanted to get caught. The only annoying thing beside the cheating itself was that only the alt account got banned. The main account just had its Elo reset (and maybe a karma penalty, I don't remember).

Now that's a fairly easy game to see that something fishy. In most cases unless you can't really tell if it's Elo dumping, or if someone is just really bad at the game.

Let's leave the arguments about how BGA decided to deal with it in the other thread.

So he had another high ELO account or how? Else with current system it's like 5-20 ELO points max you can farm per alternate account. So one would need to create not one acc for boosting but all the time new ones. After 6wins you get 0 ELO.

Also elo is a self correcting system so it won't result in anything.
It gets an issue for game balance in individual plays if that person joins a multiplayer game (3+players) with both accounts

MasterMystery wrote: ↑10 October 2025, 23:04 So he had another high ELO account or how? Else with current system it's like 5-20 ELO points max you can farm per alternate account. So one would need to create not one acc for boosting but all the time new ones. After 6wins you get 0 ELO.

Also elo is a self correcting system so it won't result in anything.
It gets an issue for game balance in individual plays if that person joins a multiplayer game (3+players) with both accounts

Meeplelowda and I were discussing the Elo boosting effect without the current Elo penalty that begins after 3 wins. Yes, with the current penalty, it quickly loses effect, and that assumes that the person is able to create two accounts with similar Elo in the first place.

Let's examine someone with two accounts at 500 Elo (Which would already be a lot of work and effort).

It would then take 48 dumped games for the dumping account to get the main account to 700. Long before this, people would notice. Both accounts would get banned, and it would accomplish nothing. The work done in getting two accounts to 500 would be wasted.

If two accounts did this starting at 300, it would take the same 48 games to get one of them to 400. For most games, no one would care and might never even see either account's Elo. If it was a small enough game that 400 Elo was enough for the leaderboard, people would notice immediately.

So, I'm not sure the Elo penalty is needed. At least, not after 3 games.

Or, better systems could be implemented. If the same player beats the same opponent 4 in a row, the system could require further games between those two players to be in friendly mode. Or just prevent them from playing for 30 days. Or something.

But the current system will unintentionally penalize players who are doing nothing wrong.

FrankJones wrote: ↑10 October 2025, 23:59
It would then take 48 dumped games for the dumping account to get the main account to 700. Long before this, people would notice. Both accounts would get banned, and it would accomplish nothing. The work done in getting two accounts to 500 would be wasted.

Part of the problem is that the main account *doesn't* get banned. It just gets its Elo reset. If the penalty were the loss of the main account also maybe people would think twice. But I have a hard time getting inside the head of someone who decides to do this.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑11 October 2025, 00:46

FrankJones wrote: ↑10 October 2025, 23:59
It would then take 48 dumped games for the dumping account to get the main account to 700. Long before this, people would notice. Both accounts would get banned, and it would accomplish nothing. The work done in getting two accounts to 500 would be wasted.

Part of the problem is that the main account *doesn't* get banned. It just gets its Elo reset. If the penalty were the loss of the main account also maybe people would think twice. But I have a hard time getting inside the head of someone who decides to do this.

Likewise.

And yes, the obvious solution is to ban both accounts. it's puzzling why this is not done.

FrankJones wrote: ↑11 October 2025, 00:50 And yes, the obvious solution is to ban both accounts. it's puzzling why this is not done.

Maybe BGA's thought is that banning the alt cures the multi-accounting violation, and resetting Elo removes the benefit they got from it so that's all that's needed to set things right. Who knows...

FrankJones wrote: ↑11 October 2025, 00:50

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑11 October 2025, 00:46

FrankJones wrote: ↑10 October 2025, 23:59
It would then take 48 dumped games for the dumping account to get the main account to 700. Long before this, people would notice. Both accounts would get banned, and it would accomplish nothing. The work done in getting two accounts to 500 would be wasted.

Part of the problem is that the main account *doesn't* get banned. It just gets its Elo reset. If the penalty were the loss of the main account also maybe people would think twice. But I have a hard time getting inside the head of someone who decides to do this.

Likewise.

And yes, the obvious solution is to ban both accounts. it's puzzling why this is not done.

If account A is clearly helping account B to the detriment of A, then banning A is an easy choice. If you always ban B as well, then people can use BGA's response to attack a legitimate account B just by creating a throwaway account A.

I think players should be allowed more than one account if desired. Maybe make it a perk for premium users .
I think using multiple accounts to cheat with is what should be banned. So long as players who have multiple accounts don't use these accounts together to cheat with , I think it should be allowed. In order to avoid using these multiple accounts to cheat with, there should be full disclosure that these multiple accounts are owned by the same person.

Exotic Dreams wrote: ↑11 October 2025, 02:25 I think players should be allowed more than one account if desired.

Because?