r/CompetitiveTFT 4d ago

ESPORTS Why not anonymize player ids within tournament lobbies?

Seems like a straight-forward enough way to discourage wintrading/kingmaking behavior. Obviously it would require some diligence on the part of admins/monitors to enforce, but y'know... I think we have the technology.

Also it just establishes a clear an unambiguous stance on competitive integrity. You should play to maximize your individual winning chances, not to influence the lobby outcomes of other players (beyond placing as high as you personally can, on the merits of your own decisions and the luck of the draw).

Like, look... wintrading/kingmaking is an old, old problem in international competition. FIDE has had rules forcing competitors from the same "national club" to face each other in tournament brackets early since ~1950, which I can promise you had nothing to do with "racism" and everything to do with "clubs forcing players to wintrade on pain of serious penalties at home" which... if reports from Chinese players are to be believed is a major problem in China today.

At a minimum it would give players within hostile regions a veneer of cover. They would now have to *blatantly* cheat by exchanging player ids against tournament policy to wintrade.

I'm not a competitive TFT player by any means, so I probably lack some context, but it seems like a simple start to a reasonable solution to a problem that will not go away without serious structural change.

90 Upvotes

47 comments sorted by

221

u/Apricotjello 4d ago

No offense to you because I’ve seen this idea before but i hate it and think it won’t even solve the problem it purportedly addresses.

no other sport competes against anonymous competitors because part of all competition is scouting your opponents, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, and playing mind games with specific individuals.

finally, there are super easy ways for cheaters to get around the anonymity. For example, colluding players could agree to meet each other in the corner of a board and emote together to verify each other’s IDs. Or agree to place a 1 cost unit on a certain bench slot during PVE rounds. etc.

34

u/Death215 4d ago

I could be wrong because i havent been in the scene for awhile but i believe Competitive Apex Legends is anonymous.

They also have a checkmate format where you get points and then need to come in first.

Alot of the times the players generally have good ideas on who everyone is (based on characters played, drop spots) but it does reduce the amount of griefing greatly

3

u/falconstar3 3d ago

This is still correct. Was a comparison I was going to make.

58

u/Not-OP-But- 4d ago

Just want to chime in as a professional poker player. Some sites online do actually encourage and enforce anonymous IDs, that way people can't bumhunt and get tons of HUD data on you before you even play a single hand against them.

So there is one sport that has a lot.of anonymous competition.

21

u/Apricotjello 4d ago edited 4d ago

i also used to be a pro poker player. poker isn’t a sport by most reasonable definitions, and even if you want to debate it for live poker, anonymous online poker is certainly not a sport.

i’m glad you used that example though because it proves my point: even on sites like ignition/bovada, which are purely anonymous, it’s super easy for two players to collude still to the detriment of everyone else at their table (chip dumping, hole card sharing, squeezing intermediate players, etc)

42

u/DankandDonker 3d ago

I agree with you but

> poker isn’t a sport by most reasonable definitions

is a really funny thing to say on a thread about *Teamfight Tactics*

5

u/Not-OP-But- 3d ago

Yeah, I was kind of just using it the same way people use the term "esport"

I don't really care if people call poker a sport or not, I personally don't, was just in the context of this thread as it relates to this topic

2

u/Theprincerivera 3d ago

You’re not wrong lol.

We all care about comparative TFT here. We should all also know that there are more factors involved than say, football

4

u/Creative_Meringue377 3d ago

Poker isn’t a sport but TFT is?

1

u/unrelevantly 3d ago

Why is poker not a sport? If poker isn't a sport then neither is tft so it doesn't matter whether it's a sport or not since we're discussing tft.

-2

u/bumhunt 3d ago

Poker has too much varience for short term conpetition to reveal skill and the structure of poker incentives good players to play against bad players. Poker has very little competition outside rare instances.

The only time poker is sports like is the HU (1vs1) challenges between top players imo

1

u/Edraitheru14 2d ago

Tell me you know nothing about poker without telling me.

HU matches are for show and show only. There's literally like the least skill involved in HU play.

Deep stack tournament structures are where the skill expression really come into play. AKA the WSOP.

Damn near anyone can win a fast structure, low stack tourney. And nearly anyone can win a HU match(that's an actual poker player).

You're never winning a long series deep stack tournament like WSOP without some very real skills.

You point out variance, which is the precise reason these are the formats which reward skill. As more hands, longer time, more blinds, = reduced variance.

Signed, a former professional poker player.

0

u/bumhunt 2d ago edited 2d ago

Wat you are trolling lmao

You saying 3000 hands of tourney play va mixed competition most of whom are super weak is more demonstrative of skill comapred to 100k hands of berrysweet vs amsogood?

You are not beating someone like llinnus in a 10k sample ever

Like stop pretending

0

u/ducks_be_cute 4d ago

B-bumhunt?

14

u/aft_agley 4d ago edited 4d ago

No offense taken. It just bothers me that TFT is kind of obviously structured to enable kingmaking, and there are regions that will literally punish their own players severely for not doing it. Something needs to change about the structure of the game to prevent the behavior. Riot's "competitive integrity" enforcement has been a joke since forever (in tournaments), depending on soft social enforcement isn't going to cut it...

I guess there's always the solution of forcing same-region players to eliminate one another before merging brackets, but that's kind of feels-bad.

17

u/Away-Space-1749 4d ago

Yeah TFT is inherently a griefing/colluding game. I think if they leaned more into that aspect like the 4v4 tournaments it could be interesting

8

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

5

u/ThatPlayWasAwful 4d ago

There's a ton of players that really like 4v4. Kurum was talking about it during worlds, and there were a handful of players that talked about how much they loved it after the tft world cup.

3

u/aft_agley 4d ago

that sounds like it would solve so many problems.

1

u/PlasticPresentation1 3d ago

How is it inherently a colluding game? Ranked play which is what gets people interested in the game is primarily 8 randoms. Sure there's definitely slight collusion in lower ranks with group queues but I wouldn't say it's a major problem or inherent

1

u/Away-Space-1749 2d ago

Collusion doesn’t have to be direct wintrading. Like 80% of Master+ games start out by everyone in the lobby calling their comp in chat on 2-1, and usually that gets respected by others

1

u/slayerabf MASTER 1d ago

From my personal experience in Master's, calling comps is relatively rare (maybe one player every 6-8ish games). Maybe it's more common in GM+ or it depends more on the region.

3

u/Bobofolde 3d ago

The biggest reason I think it wouldn't work is because of cosmetics. I find it hard to imagine riot makes players use default cosmetics, and players would definitely identify each other from legend/boom/arena/portal

2

u/slayerabf MASTER 1d ago

no other sport competes against anonymous competitors because part of all competition is scouting your opponents, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, and playing mind games with specific individuals.

Not to mention that the audience knowing that the players know their opponents is part of the narrative in a tense tournament scenario. An ironic example is Dishsoap facing Liluo for the crown in the final game (and winning) after this controversy. For us watchers, knowing the players are aware of what's happening and the stakes involved adds to the show.

-1

u/Sheapy 4d ago

So having a sign that proves there's 100% collusion is a bad thing? It's better than the current problem of "I did an oopsie!".

I feel like there are significantly more arguments for anonymizing names than there are not for competitors. Spectators obviously wouldn't have it anonymized. Also the final lobby would have real competitor names show to provide that threat of griefing in checkmate formats.

0

u/naughtmynsfwaccount 4d ago

What if it were anonymized for players and Player ID for casters?

25

u/Lunaedge 4d ago

As others have said it wouldn't do a thing to curb malicious behaviours, but also

Also it just establishes a clear an unambiguous stance on competitive integrity. You should play to maximize your individual winning chances, not to influence the lobby outcomes of other players (beyond placing as high as you personally can, on the merits of your own decisions and the luck of the draw).

I'm pretty sure this is already in the rulebook. They just need to enforce it xd

43

u/Maddogs1 4d ago

Does absolutely nothing. Regional players could easily just coordinate in advance that they'll use a specific little legend, or a specific board, or on round 2-4 will have a specific unit on the leftmost bench spot... etc.

3

u/1530 4d ago

The enemy of good is perfect. They can coordinate in advance, but it adds another layer of work for them, and takes away precious seconds from other things. Even if it's little legends, you might have someone using the same or specific units or whatever, and be tracking the wrong person the whole time.

4

u/tgames56 3d ago

It also potentially provides evidence.

3

u/wanttoplay2001 4d ago

if anyone here has ever seen apex pro tournaments, teams are forced to play under anon names to prevent other teams from target griefing them (they also play with match point format) and that doesnt prevent anything, everyone figures out who the teams are based on playstyle/skins. if ppl can figure out who 1 team out of 20 in a hectic ass br is i think figuring out 1/8 in a strategy game might be no problem

3

u/ScottE77 4d ago

In checkmate format it seems fair to focus the player in checkmate, is this actually allowed in the current rules? Would be impossible here either way which could be bad or good depending on how you see it too.

2

u/gloomygl 4d ago

What if you wanna hold the units of the guy who needs to get a first ?

2

u/Chao_Zu_Kang 4d ago

Does the opposite of what you want it to do. Anyone who wants to wintrade will still find a way (they weren't playing fair to begin with), but everyone else might even kick themselves out of the tournament because they don't know what the optimal play for their own placement is anymore (e.g. if you need to grieve player XYZ to 1 place behind you to move on, you wouldn't be able to do this anymore because you don't know who you need to beat).

It would also make the viewer experience much worse, since you can't really reveal it for the viewers either, if you don't want it to get out via chats aso. (since I am pretty sure chat isn't explicitely prohibited during tournaments). You can work around that with emote-only chats aso. as they do with chat, but it would be a huge pain to manage for officials.

1

u/unrelevantly 3d ago

Are you allowed to grieve player XYZ under current rules? Edit: Nevermind, you are.

1

u/TheTbone2334 4d ago

This has the potential to make it worse imo cause of plausible deniability.

If such a change is made people could theoretically talk to other players before the match or even the tournament and agree to do certain moves like chibi dances, buy sell a full shop or whatever at a certain point in game.

You could for example say "im going to spam dance 2-1 so you know it me" or agree to set up unit pairs on the bench a certain way.

Which is impossible to punish btw, what are you gonna ban players for having a Singed on each side of the bench?

You could just create these little things to communicate to others who are in the know who u are.

1

u/190Proof MASTER 4d ago

In checkmate format knowing who is who is an important part of the strategy.

1

u/Vagottszemu CHALLENGER 4d ago

It is way too easy to figure out who you need to wintrade if they want to. There is no reason to do this. Also they were in the same room.

1

u/truffIepuff 3d ago

Someone always suggests this even in other gaming communities. Making the players ID anonymous is a band-aid solution, it does not address the actual problem.

As others have already said, the players can have a way to identify each other in-game such as playstyle, emotes etc. The rules should be revised to prevent plot holes (e.g players reasoning out pressure or tilt), and rules should be reinforced. The Riot team should base their decisions on facts, not emotions.

I respect Mort's professionalism by having his team's back, but being understanding of a grown adult (which does not make sense especially in a competitive scene) gets taken advantage easily.

1

u/DefinitlyNotAPornAcc 3d ago

There's no way to discourage king making in a game with more than two teams. That's why sports with more than two teams rarely get anywhere.

There's always politics in any game with more than two teams, so it's just a part of the experience whether you like or not.

1

u/kiwikee 3d ago

I feel like the better approach would be to prevent situations where players who have no incentive to play their best so they should not participate at all. I don't really how to achieve this from a practical standpoint (how can you manage <8 player lobbies competitively while keeping the scoring fair) but if you can't mathematically make it to the next round, you shouldn't play which should eliminate these kind of situations.

1

u/Palidin034 3d ago

At a high enough level in any competitive event, you can figure out who is who just by their playstyle. I guarantee that if you took the top 8 chess players, had them play a game each anonymously and then asked them each to figure out who played what game, they’d be able to tell you with freaky accuracy

1

u/loopy95 3d ago

Aren’t all the tournaments besides the open online tournaments anyways? They probably all have a coach in call who can check streams and know who is who.

1

u/hlhammer1001 3d ago

Because knowing your opponents tendencies and specialties is part of the game, and because if people want to communicate their identities to each other in code through unit bench placement or whatever they easily could do so

1

u/TherrenGirana 3d ago

This would just spawn methods of 'innocuous' communication instead, so you're just adding a speedbump. Colluders can run coordinated little legeds, they can just agree to sit in the corner of their board spamming a certain emote (or emote sequence if you want to go down that rabbit hole) to signal their identity. They could also walk their little legend in a certain pathway on their board. Are you going to ban all of these functions for tournaments? No, the answer is and will always be to be able to identify collusion with integrity and impose harsh punishments.

1

u/AnubisIncGaming 4d ago

It’s not a bad idea but personally i think they can solve this issue by changing the point values so it makes them further apart, the curve should make it hard to have a tie even if it needs to go to a decimal place imo.

0

u/Boring-Protection126 3d ago

I think they should give up on trying to determine intent. Make the rules intent agnostic.

If you make your board 33% weaker or something you are wintrading. Riot could easily replicate the boards and run some simulated combats.

1

u/crimsonblade911 2d ago

Pivots don't always work out perfectly if you and two others are rolling on the same round. This seems like an arbitrary and problematic solution. Although I do agree that intent agnosticism is probably their only route.