I made a smurf (@Spaghetticus) so that I could play with others and experiment. I understand that I could do this with my main account but this seems less honest. Why?
Because if I deliberately play less than my best on my main account I will be misrepresenting myself constantly. My elo will look too low for when I'm playing serious and too high for when I'm experimenting. Up until now I've done very little experimentation because I wanted to avoid such BS.
I have no intention of abusing alternate accounts for anonymity or elo abuse. I'm legitimately attempting to transparently represent myself here.
Since starting the smurf I've had several good close games with
never (1550 eloish at the time), one which he legitimately took from me. By playing stuff I'm unfamiliar with there is a severe handicap that impacts my effective elo enormously. Jumpjet is a tricky fac y'all.
Outside of that I had one game against Fealthas where I experimented and got hammered. The rest of my games have been chickens, speedmetal, and FFA which nobody's taking seriously.
Chesti banned my account, and did so with the support of other moderators. When asked for reasons he replied that it sets a bad example, and seemed to think that the reason I was smurfing was because I have a very high opinion of myself. Misunderstandings of motives aside, I'm not asking for exceptions to rules, I think that the rules should be changed if it's preventing player freedom adversely. Namely, if someone has no ill intention behind their smurf, why ban it? I'm trying to preserve the authenticity of elo values, not undermine it.
There are plenty of smurfs going around, the one I threw by Chesti was godde's team smurf (since it's already known). There are others I'm aware of but I don't see any harm in them so feel no obligation to expose them. If I set a bad example by smurfing, why is godde who's a moderator and the #1 player let loose to smurf? He's the highest profile player we have!
I'm happy to have a smurf with a name derived from my main account, if that will allay fears of abuse. I see the the one time evil of elo reset as vastly superior to the ongoing abuse of plukking to manage it.
Finally, I know that no-elo options exist,but they're fidgety and they give me no quantifiable feedback as to the success of anything I do. My intention behind the account was to see how high I could get mainly using jumpjet (and hover on flat maps). I believe I'll be unable to get to 1700.
I'm not having a go at the mods here. I think that this is an issue worth discussing, regardless of how it impacts on me. I will respect the decisions of the mods even if I disagree with them.