Personal Rating Exploits

[Xame]

I don't see an easy fix.

Two easy fixes and a suggestion that would really make Arenas what Blizzard intended.

To buy the weapon you need BOTH personal rating and team rating for that bracket at the level needed to buy the item. Its as simple as a "and" statement in the software. Clearly this is a coding laziness bug which is being exploited by people.

To solve the general ratings "pumping" action that is done by teams rolling over to each other; Blizzard would have to save the last 20-30 matches a team plays and offer zero points for a second win in that week. To make it easier on blizzards computers, you could do this only for teams above the 1700 rating (see the battlegrounds for reduced honor as an example). At some depth of "previous" games the action of pumping becomes too painful. Teams will be forced to look for "fresh" teams to move their ratings.

I personally would add a zero points rule for teams with a 250 rating points split. It would count as a "game" for your 10 games but not as a rated match for earning rating since the skill level is so lopsided (just like a chess master playing 50 people at once and losing to an unrated player really isn't a mark of skill but just randomness). But I think such a rule is not needed if you do the above two coding changes since highly rated teams will be "looking" for each other to get quality points (instead of avoiding each other which is currently the strategy in pumping). But such a rule would prevent the exploit of loging on at 4am and taking 10pts from a friends team every week with little or no risk to your rating. The movement would be slow because of the "2nd win rule proposed above" but it is very predictable and safe without a true demonstration of skill.