StarCraft® II

I encountered this problem as early has 6 weeks ago and has been getting worse ever since. I have kept quiet about it fearing it could spread but I feel the problem is so bad I need to speak up.

What is win trading? Several players get together and play quick matches in 1v1. They are matched against each other. After about 10 seconds or less, one of them leaves thus handing a win to the other player. They repeat this process over and over handing wins to each other. This can occur for hours on end with few breaks.

So what is the intention or end result? A large number of wins within a short time thus cheating their way to portrait rewards that are supposed to be hard to get. By trading wins, it becomes trivialised.

There were 2 players (names withheld until otherwise) in particular that took this to the extreme. This is the first time I saw this problem occur. I was constantly matched against both players and it got incredibly annoying after several quick wins handed to me. Looking at their profiles I knew something was wrong. Their match histories were very odd and portraits were being unlocked very quickly. This annoyance repeats continuously for days afterwards and was repeatedly reporting them suspecting a botting program.

After about 12 calendar days, they managed to accumulate more than 4000 wins each. I noticed that the solo portraits Zealot to Tassadar (10 to 1000 protoss wins) was unlocked within 4 days. The dates are marked to show when they were unlocked. Surely that is not even humanly possible.

Eventually both gained access to the Dark Voice portrait using win trading. Constant reporting of these 2 players did absolutely nothing to stop them. I was constantly matched with both these players during that time thus making all proper matches in 1v1 non-existent and the ladder was seemingly being hijacked by those 2 players.

Since then I have encountered 12 more players doing the same thing; win trading with each other to gain portraits for little effort. I have even been asked to join in but I ignored those requests. All players have been reported but the problem shows no sign of abating.

There are some particular similarities with most of these players that I have noticed when researching their profiles:

- Most are team league players with gold, platinum and diamond ranks.
- Their 1v1 profile are all bronze and the majority of their matches are 1v1 matches.
- Dates of when their portraits were unlocked can be jaw dropping - 1000 win portraits unlocked within days of each other. These are all solo portraits.

Their match histories are real eye openers:

- By manual count, they would average up to 50 matches within 1 hour.
- Their match streaks would last for hours on end with few breaks in between.
- Most are between 2 players only but there are some with 3 players involved.

Blizzard, this is a serious problem and is getting worse.

Post this in General side, you can get more attention there.

I don't see how this is a big deal. All they get are just portraits man.

Win trading only matters if it gives an advantage, such as obtaining a position on the ladder or manipulating tournament results.

Portraits in bronze are not serious business.

03/08/2011 4:24 AMPosted by nGenXeen

Win trading only matters if it gives an advantage, such as obtaining a position on the ladder or manipulating tournament results.

It does gives advantage for some one to obtain position on the ladder.

I saw a guy which have almost all portrait and sitting in diamond now. I shouldn't mention his name, but he appear in forum once. He using Dark Voice portrait.

Obviously he win traded at the bottom of bronze (affecting no one else, other than giving them free wins), then after getting the dark voice portrait, he climbed his way back up the ladder legitimately.

This topic has been done to death on the NA forums, win traders are not breaking any rules. If you can find exactly which rule they are breaking, I'll accept it as cheating. Otherwise, don't label it as cheating when you're just jelly you can't get the portraits as quickly.

^ BURN THE WITCH!!!

Obviously he win traded at the bottom of bronze (affecting no one else, other than giving them free wins), then after getting the dark voice portrait, he climbed his way back up the ladder legitimately.

This topic has been done to death on the NA forums, win traders are not breaking any rules. If you can find exactly which rule they are breaking, I'll accept it as cheating. Otherwise, don't label it as cheating when you're just jelly you can't get the portraits as quickly.

Dude, if he done alone, that's is ok. How if he done it with bunch of friend? Let's say, we have 4 friend, we will give a free win to Friend A, until he promote, then we give free win to Friend B, and so on. Don't forget, when Bronze against silver, it is favored to silver, if silver give a free win to Bronze, Bronze can easily climb up to Gold and so on. This is only 4 friends example, as Hypersonic mentioned, they even invite other players to join them, the number of group is not difficult to expect.

Obviously he win traded at the bottom of bronze (affecting no one else, other than giving them free wins), then after getting the dark voice portrait, he climbed his way back up the ladder legitimately.

This topic has been done to death on the NA forums, win traders are not breaking any rules. If you can find exactly which rule they are breaking, I'll accept it as cheating. Otherwise, don't label it as cheating when you're just jelly you can't get the portraits as quickly.

Dude, if he done alone, that's is ok. How if he done it with bunch of friend? Let's say, we have 4 friend, we will give a free win to Friend A, until he promote, then we give free win to Friend B, and so on. Don't forget, when Bronze against silver, it is favored to silver, if silver give a free win to Bronze, Bronze can easily climb up to Gold and so on. This is only 4 friends example, as Hypersonic mentioned, they even invite other players to join them, the number of group is not difficult to expect.

You obviously haven't the slightest clue how this works. To get matched up against your friend(s), you need to all have very similar MMR, and other people who also have similar MMR must not be searching at the same time. To satisfy this condition, win trading must be carried out at the VERY BOTTOm of bronze, where your MMR is so low that you do not get matched up with any other player except for win traders. Additonally, to maintain your low MMR, you CANNOT just keep winning, you need to have a 50-5o w/l ratio, otherwise your MMR will rise and you will no longer be matched up against your friend(s). So unless every single player online at the time is your friend (gl with that lol), you cannot rise through the rank via this method.

I think the problem is that the op of this post keeps wasting his time trying to queue against people at his level and getting these jackasses.

Big Deal they get Portraits?, Its the skill that matters isn't it?

03/22/2011 3:21 AMPosted by Ozar

Big Deal they get Portraits?, Its the skill that matters isn't it?

Agreed, and I don't particularly mind getting a free win here and there ;).

Win trading only matters if it gives an advantage, such as obtaining a position on the ladder or manipulating tournament results.

Portraits in bronze are not serious business.

even if they did that in Masters or G Masters, it's still not serious business. They paid for the game, they can do whatever they like.

no matter how hard they try, they'll never get the illustrious, badass scv portrait

Win trading only matters if it gives an advantage, such as obtaining a position on the ladder or manipulating tournament results.

Portraits in bronze are not serious business.

even if they did that in Masters or G Masters, it's still not serious business. They paid for the game, they can do whatever they like.

Well that's not true at all.

This is old news and is not a 'new' problem. Also, it's not really a 'problem' at all, the only time you will ever run across this is if you're at the bottom of bronze, in which case you get a few free wins. It's not cheating

..

You know what Hypersonic, i hate people who cheat to recieve achievements, i spent like 300+ hrs to get the achievements i have done so far on starcraft 2 and god knows how many thousand on steam with my games but...
F*** that, i think its the greatest thing players or hackers or whom ever else has done this and people should continue to do this! and i have very good reason why.

Our good friends at blizzard are not really our friends but a bunch of nerds who enjoy using their "power" of designing a game to waste the everyday persons time, they spend X ammount of time making a great game except for this one large issue which for what im aware of people have been complaining over for the last 8 months or so;

TEAM balancing in the quick match team leagues,
it is literally a f**king joke, i spent sooooo much time finishing the solo leagues, a lot of cheeses and rush attacks to get through them faster but i finally did it, 1 on 1 is fine because its you against a person thats all, theres a lot of people out there like me who WANT to unlock all the achievements
but they make it nearly impossible!

Team leagues... blizzard encourages making the teams one sided... i think the geeks who designed this game are taking their revenge on the average person whom enjoy casual gamming because they were beaten in school for giving their computers bj's by people that spend less then 12 hrs a day on a computer. I win 1 in 12 games and you know what their idea of balance is? Plat, Plat, gold, silver, vs silve silv bronz bronz.... and no, neither 4 were in teams because ive made it a habbit of asking to figure out why the f**k would the teams be organised so unfairly.

So in conclusion, if blizzard works out your a nerd of some sort or a gamming freak, they will intentionally unite you with people similiar to you to have an "easy" win against the people who play here and there for fun. So F**K blizzard and if people figure out ways to beat the system, then do so, they ruined a great gamming experience and im pretty sure im not the only one who WONT be buiying the expanson packs

You know what Hypersonic, i hate people who cheat to recieve achievements, i spent like 300+ hrs to get the achievements i have done so far on starcraft 2 and god knows how many thousand on steam with my games but...
F*** that, i think its the greatest thing players or hackers or whom ever else has done this and people should continue to do this! and i have very good reason why.

Our good friends at blizzard are not really our friends but a bunch of nerds who enjoy using their "power" of designing a game to waste the everyday persons time, they spend X ammount of time making a great game except for this one large issue which for what im aware of people have been complaining over for the last 8 months or so;

TEAM balancing in the quick match team leagues,
it is literally a f**king joke, i spent sooooo much time finishing the solo leagues, a lot of cheeses and rush attacks to get through them faster but i finally did it, 1 on 1 is fine because its you against a person thats all, theres a lot of people out there like me who WANT to unlock all the achievements
but they make it nearly impossible!

Team leagues... blizzard encourages making the teams one sided... i think the geeks who designed this game are taking their revenge on the average person whom enjoy casual gamming because they were beaten in school for giving their computers bj's by people that spend less then 12 hrs a day on a computer. I win 1 in 12 games and you know what their idea of balance is? Plat, Plat, gold, silver, vs silve silv bronz bronz.... and no, neither 4 were in teams because ive made it a habbit of asking to figure out why the f**k would the teams be organised so unfairly.

So in conclusion, if blizzard works out your a nerd of some sort or a gamming freak, they will intentionally unite you with people similiar to you to have an "easy" win against the people who play here and there for fun. So F**K blizzard and if people figure out ways to beat the system, then do so, they ruined a great gamming experience and im pretty sure im not the only one who WONT be buiying the expanson packs

3 things:
-Why do you feel a need to unlock all of the achievements? I'd rather be Master league with virtually no achievements than Bronze with all of them. Nothing's forcing you to unlock all of them.
-No-one takes team games seriously. They're just cheese-fests, and everyone accepts that. The fact that very few people play that is another cause of imbalanced teams.
-How the hell can you call yourself a casual gamer when you have over 3000 wins? I have only 300 and I play quite a lot.

-No-one takes team games seriously. They're just cheese-fests, and everyone accepts that. The fact that very few people play that is another cause of imbalanced teams.

That attitude annoys the heck out of me. Seriously or not, it no fun getting the s* kicked out of every game. Funnily enough when I'm matched against other bronzes I tend to win, but against gold plat etc. they win every time (and they're generally boring games when they do it) - Blzzard needs to employ programmers with some professional pride in their work, rather than shills for the pro league.