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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

Yes.

Also, why would a "pro" want to sandbag like this? I've been an amateur athlete most of my life and my goal was never to compete against known weaker athletes - there's no fun in that.

Or, do these games lack the ability to spin up "practice" sessions fully under the control of the player? That seems like the real answer, and would mirror what athletes in meat-space do - train for weeks/months, then compete at well-timed intervals against the best (or, at least relatively equal, if you're doing age group amateur competitions).

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Imagine you're a world class striker on your soccer team. You play against world class defenders and goalkeepers. It's exhausting because you have to play your top game, every time.

Now, one day you decide to try out goalkeeper. You get to face world class competition because of your status as a striker.

Two possible results:

1. You get discouraged and don't play the off positions. You only maximize. Maybe you get burned out because you never relax.

2. You do switch back and forth between things you are good/not good at. Your skill averages out and you play easy matches where you carry your team, alternated with impossible matches where you drag your team down.

I know a lot of pros will have secondary accounts for things like this. Sometimes it gets viewed as sandbagging (and sometimes it is).

This is why I asked about practice sessions. Any professional e-sport should have some means for a pro to practice without: 1- engaging in actual public game play

2- sandbagging against weaker competition

In your striker-wants-to-be-goalie situation, the wanna be goalie would practice against the clubs B team. He would not step into the WC as goalie. Nor would he shit up the local junior tournament while he tries things out.

Practice. You were talking about practice... I'm sure all the esports games have a practice. But that really only satisfies the situation where you have full teams available.

Also, a lot of pros make more money from playing the game without a team and streaming it on twitch or youtube.

That's true of sports in meat-space too.

Back to your striker... he can do all sorts of drills solo, but also needs practice time with his team. The former he can do at home (given a big enough yard). The later, he does at the clubhouse.

But, he isn't going around joining local pick-ups games. I'm still unclear why an e-sports player needs to the play the equiv of local pickup soccer matches. If the answer is "that's how he makes money" well, sandbagging a sport to earn money is a pretty silly way to make a living. That would be like Jordan paying his mortgage playing HORSE.

> Jordan paying his mortgage playing HORSE

or entering a dunk contest?

In online chess I have different ratings for bullet (up to 5 minutes per game), blitz (5-15 minutes), rapid (15-25) etc. I have also different ratings for chess variants (960 which has randomized start positions, crazy house which is a bit more like Japanese chess, etc.) Couldn't they do the same for MMO?

StarCraft 2 eventually introduced faction based MMR/rankings. It's likely easier in a game when you explicitly signal a different play style and the game then gives you different tools so can be sure you are doing something different.

I think the difference is "content creators", although they are high level players, are more putting on a show. Kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters instead of an NBA game.

Assuming it's something like an Elo rating you can always opt out of skill-based matchmaking and request a specific opponent skill; if you win you will not win any rating, if you lose you will lose a lot.

Content creators for chess also do "speed runs" from 1000 to 2500 Elo for example where they explain the mistakes and produce educational content while playing "easy" opponents. They don't do it just for the fun of owning people. CoD creators perhaps could do the same?

I can't seem to find the link, but one of the BEST resources for learning how to play Rocket League at a higher level was a Youtuber who streaming his smurf leveling up through ranked, and explaining strategies and mistakes through the process.

Streamers. No one is going to watch a streamer getting killed over and over. So they smurf to get into easier matches to keep the content going.

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