"GBL: How I Became The First To Get To Rank 10 In Season 2...In Just 55 Battles (Sorta)."

#PokemonGO: Hi everyone!Lollersox here. If you recognize my name, it's because I did alright last season and finished season 1 at number one on the leaderboard. By no means am I the best player, but rather I happened to use the right teams at the right time in the meta to climb at the end of a league's cycle.I had every intention of just taking this season lightly and playing for fun. Despite winning 70% of my games in Season 1 in UL/ML, it was definitely a stressful experience due to the pressure that you put on yourself to do better. I toyed around with Kanto Raichu in GL and had a lot of fun playing mind games with all the Azu/Regis running around. Intended to try some spice picks in UL and Premier League as well.But then...someone in my local Discord let me know about how the biggest problem I had with GBL in Season 1 had yet to be fixed: the hidden multiplier that people get when they reach a certain threshold related to number of battles played.For those that don't know: a large number of players that normally hover in the 1000-1700 range for MMR have a hidden 5x multiplier that magnifies the points that they get for winning and losing. A normal win is about 10 points, a normal loss is about 10 points, with additional adjustments made for difference in rating between you and the opponent. However, for the group of players that are tanking for rewards, they get 50ish points for a win and something similar for a loss. The reason for this is to discourage players from going 5-0 four times a day and then going 0-15 to maximize rewards. I have nothing against those players. For the most part, they stay in their little MMR bubble and do it for the rewards because they're incentivized to.Anyways, I thought they got rid of it this season, but around 3 weeks into the season, a friend of mine let me know it is still very much in play. I decided to toy around with it. Here's the result of my "hard work" (it really is a grueling process; I don't recommend people trying this now...you definitely should do it at the start of a season. Rather, don't bother because hopefully this post will push Niantic to fix that system).A day before GBL was shut down, this was my starting point:https://ift.tt/2Bwd5Oa you can see in the background, I started at 1305 MMR and got to 1506 with a 5-0.This is today:https://ift.tt/2YrsAj9, in the span of 55 battles, I went from 1305 MMR to 3039 and hit rank 10 in the process.Here's the pose for Season 2, in case anyone didn't know:https://ift.tt/37Yv8Za why would I bother doing this?1.) I was intrigued by the existence of this multiplier and wanted to figure out how it was triggered. I have a pretty good idea now (it has nothing to do with a low rating or win rate as I originally thought, but rather you needing 200 more battles than is possible. So if GBL is out for 20 days, the "max" number of battles is 20x25=500. But if you have 700 on day 20, you'll trigger the multiplier).2.) Everyone should be rated on the same level playing field. There's no reason why I should have an easier path and at the same time, get more rewards than even the person who has the highest win rate in GBL.That second point is the primary reason for this little experiment of mine. I don't claim to be some noble person trying to make things fair, but I do think that a level playing field is the foundation of any competitive system.What are some solutions to this then?1.) Just remove anyone with the hidden multiplier off of the leaderboard for that season, if it ever comes back. You'll have some players taking advantage and hitting rank 10 or getting a high ranking, but if their name isn't on the leaderboard, you know how they got there.2.) Just remove the multiplier altogether. Is Niantic that concerned with a population of the players tanking? Yes, I understand the competitive imbalance of a true 3000 rating player beating up on 1500 rating players in their 5-0 sets, but the reality is, almost everyone at 1500 or below are doing the same thing so it's not like its hurting anyone.3.) Remove the multiplier once someone's MMR goes beyond a certain point. If Niantic is insistent on combating tanking by having this multiplier, just make it so people lose it above a certain rating.I don't care about hitting rank 10 first (if that's even the case). I don't care about people inevitably calling me a cheater or thinking I'm not good enough to hit rank 10 (sorry buddy, look at last season's leaderboard). I'm just hopeful that the outrage that comes with someone gaming the system to become Season 2's first Rank 10 player would draw enough attention for Niantic to fix such an easy problem.And if this post encourages others to try this out, then so be it. If enough people do it, perhaps Niantic will recognize that it's an issue that affects all players. As outraged as people were about the whole Jesus/hacking situation, I hope this post draws the same ire (just not at me plz thx).(pls don't ban me for 30 days kthx; I'm only trying to help out you guys) via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2NrqJod