szeweningen 
Level 60
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Hello,
On Warlight forum there have been multiple bashing/defending threads about multiple topics that lay in the grey area, somewhere between rules and morality. Stalling, booting, that and more different topics have occupied many players and we've seen multiple angles players take from both experienced and new. Anyway I wanted to share some of my opinions on what makes a good player, not in terms of skill, but rather in terms of community/fairness.
Issue #1: Ladder stalling
I'm starting with this one for two reasons. First, it's very current issue-wise considering the amount of ladder exploitation that has been done in the past few months, second it's very current, because of piggy's all-out rage. Now, let's start with saying that anything we have against ladder stalling has to be biased considering it's not breaking the rules in any direct way. Technically you are always allowed to play untill elimination. My bias and my take on this comes straight from my deep appreciation for the competetive side of warlight. Many players play this game only for fun, but for me personally good competition and overall progress was most important when it comes to playing the game. Now if we join any type of ladder we should assume that most other players also join for this very reason, the only difference between normal games and ladder games is that the latter try to establish your skill based on games you play and how often you win. Based on your performance you can see who should be better than you and who should be worse. It is a system that is made for people with appreciation of deep in-game mechanics that should work like I just described. However the system is not perfect, by delaying your losses you can artificially increase your rating to get to higher spots. Now, of course you are a free-being, you can delude yourself however you want into thinking you're much better than in reality as long as it does not hurt anyone else. However in that case, with all I said in mind it should become quite apparent that you make the system impossible to work for all those that want to play legitimately, who do have an appreciation for sportsmanship. Now the difference between me and piggy is that it's not really rage inducing for me, it's more sad for me in the context of a flawed system, however that was discussed multiple times separately. I'm not really that angry at people who stall, I feel more pity, becasue let's be frank, stalling in order to show something is a bit like getting an achievement on steam for successfully installing a game. All in all I'd only like to stress that what you do on ladders does not affect only you, nor only your direct oppponents.
Issue#2: Booting
This is much more of an issue for newer players. Again, booting is never against the rules, it is part of the system. That said in my experience among bettter players the boot button is hardly ever used since basically all players care about is to get a decent game. In multiday it happens almost only when it stalls a tournament (I have NEVER seen a boot in a casual md game). In rt games you always have to ask in chat, internet disconnection/software problems/real life can all get in the way of your game so just take a chill pill and don't boot, especially if you wait a long time for a game to start. I sincerely believe that if your primary goal is to get a good game, everything else will follow. if it's not your primary goal, I'll predict you'll end up on many, many blacklists.
Issue#3: Alt accounts
I'm not even going to bother tackling the issue as whole, it'd take too much time and I'm currently very tired. Anyway I'll still look at alt accounts through the prism of competetive gaming. Now let me make it clear, any kind of act with multiple accounts/teams by the same player on one ladder is giving him/her an unfair advantage over others. First case is easy, if you are paired against yourself one of your accounts will get an undeserved boost. Second, it allows you for multiple "runs" (considering current ladder full of stalling almost requires 15-game runs) while other players don't have that many chances. Third and most important, since it is universal, you get to pick where your main focus is. Let me explain it in detail. Ladder tried to asess your skill based on the games you play, however it can only do that with a certain variation. The more games you play, the more accurate your rank is. Now, in the long run (when you play infinite games with both (all?) your accounts) both ratings will be the same, however since we live in a finite world you only play a handful of gameson both and you get several "partial" ratings. Still since you play with both you can always choose the one that's doing better. If A is the probability of you achieving a certain rating/rank on the ladder always P(A)<1-(1-P(A))^2. Overall I can safely say alt account did not help the community. On the contrary, it started a lot of manipulation, distrust and the socialising aspect of warlight seems to die down beneath thousands of alt corpses.
If there's anything of value in here it's only advise for all of you, be better players, think of your impact on others, let yourself lose once in a while, it's ok, trust me. And stop using alts if possible, I can only naively hope it's a fad that will die out (it won't :( ).
Kind regards
szeweningen
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