Sorry this post is long, but I want to provide a full breakdown of exactly how this works to prevent any confusion, as it’s much worse than accounts “randomly” going idle, and is currently affecting everyone who’s actively playing Ranked.
Hello, firstly I’d like to say thank you for creating this service. I recently purchased a Wii U purely to play Splatoon through your network and it’s been functioning very well.
For Ranked battles however, for an entire rotation today, I noticed all of my matches were a 3v4 / 4v3 (or similar). Originally, I presumed this was network instability or a similar issue, but after reviewing these games I’ve realized this was 100% intentional by one player to cheat themselves up the ladder.
At the moment, Ranked seems to have a low playerbase of ~10-20 people active at one time, with all elo brackets being matched together (which makes sense, as otherwise matches would never start). Due to both of these factors co-existing though, one player has realized they can exploit their rating via using multiple accounts.
I don’t particularly care about them cheating their own rating myself - the issue is them lopsiding every single lobby they join, effectively ruining the game for the rest of us for their own personal gain.
In the below images, “Kato~u” (カトゥ) appears to be using two C- “dummy” accounts to easily rank up, being “Katowa” (カトワ - real subtle!), and an account with a blank name.
This person searches for a Ranked battle with their main “Kato~u” account, alongside one of these C- dummy accounts at the exact same time to join the same lobby; seemingly cycling between each dummy account in order to bypass the temporary disconnection ban, so they can immediately do this trick again after each match ends.
Once in-game, if the dummy account is on the opposing team, they leave it idle at spawn, and press an input every minute or so to prevent it from automatically disconnecting. From this, they’ll probably win this 4v3: They’ll either receive large amount of positive points from winning, or have the slim chance of receiving a large amount of negative points for losing.
If the dummy account is instead placed on their own team, they immediately disconnect it from the match. From this, they’ll probably lose this 3v4. They’ll either receive -1 points (automatic compensation for playing a 3v4) from losing, or have the slim chance of receiving a large amount of positive points for winning.
The compensated loss points is what makes this trick work. By performing the above exploit every single match, over a long-term period, they will effectively now never rank downwards. They will almost always win the 4v3 matches to gain numerous points, and almost always lose the 3v4 matches, but lose just one point.
With themselves taking up a slot on their own team as well, their dummy account is also more likely to be placed on the enemy team - which can be further influenced by equipping certain weapons, so the weapon’s “matchmaking range” value prefers to place them as such. If done correctly, they will be playing a 4v3 most of the time.
As the C- dummy accounts will continue to be matched with their main account - no matter how high their main account climbs - they can essentially perform this exploit forever, and I imagine they’ve been doing it for a while as they’re almost S+.
Please find images & videos of them doing this below (I captured these during the later half of the rotation, once I realized what was going on, so unfortunately don’t have evidence of “Kato~u” winning against a dummy account on the opposing team - if you can track the account’s match history though, I’m sure you will find an instance of this occuring):
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Results Image - Seems to have been a slip-up; “Katowa” C- dummy account against the blank name C- dummy account. The blank name account was idle the entire game (0/0 score), and “Katowa” played the entire match (9/0), which further gives evidence to one person owning all 3 accounts, as you can’t actively play more than one at once.
- Results Image - Seems to have been a slip-up once again; “Katowa” C- dummy account against the blank name C- dummy account. This time was the opposite: “Katowa” was idle the entire game (0/0 score), and the blank name account was borderline idle (1/0; was barely playing). Again, this gives evidence to one person owning all 3 accounts.
I stopped playing at this point as the constant 3/4 | 4/3 matches weren’t particularly fair. Hoping something can be done about this, as it’s currently ruining the experience for everyone playing Ranked…
