Guild Wars 2

Currently, there are some at the top of the PvP Leaderboards who have gotten their main account to a high rating, and then have begun playing alternate accounts so that their highly-rated main account remains as it is. Since there is no punishment for this behavior built into the system, it’s to be expected that some would do this, but the inability of others to play against these high ELO accounts makes it not only hard for those accounts to fall off from their high rating, but it also makes it hard for those rated below them to move up since the opponents that would move them up the most are never in queue on those accounts. Another consequence of this lack of punishment is that a player could theoretically stop playing Guild Wars 2 entirely for an extended period of time and still be rated extremely highly, even though their actual level of skill may have gone down in comparison to their more active competitors. Therefore, I recommend implementing some sort of rating decay system to punish “inactive” players (whatever Anet determines inactive to be). For example (and this is only an example; there are many ways to implement this), let’s say it’s determined that playing less than 5 matches per week is considered to be an inactive player as it pertains to their PvP rating. Then, those players who have played less than 5 matches in a given week would have their ELO reduced by a certain percentage towards the starting rating(ex: 1%). You could even remind players of this weekly update by giving them a weekly quest with rewards, and those who do not complete this weekly are the ones who have their ratings adjusted downwards. This decay system would encourage those players who currently have a high ELO to keep playing and thus “proving” their ELO rating is appropriate and keep their points circulating through the system rather than stagnating at the top. If Anet’s concern is that this system would cause overall ELO deflation if done over an extended period of time, a solution for that would be taking the ELO points “salvaged” from inactive accounts and redistributing them evenly across active ones.

Anyway, that’s my suggestion. I think having a system like this would make the PvP leaderboards much more fluid and reflective of one’s normal rating, rather than being reflective of peak ratings as it currently is.