Rising in the Rankings

[SuperDonkey]

In case you're interested in overt vs. hidden rankings, getting promoted/demoted, reaching SuperTitan, and other such things...

Up until now, I don't think it's been possible to observe the entire "life cycle" of a SuperTitan. However, I've created a top-tier ST [edited at flarp55's request...]. In any case, you can now go to OSN and observe several accounts reach SuperTitan and then either fall off again (in the case of TheWrathOfNikademus and PlutosMenagerie) or not (in the case of WeJusPlayin and ImperialProbeDroid). Plus, in some cases, you can also observe the entire history of everyone who these accounts have played against. I'm also interested in where they'll end up in the top 100, which is based on the so-called hidden ranking. Just how far behind LER4T are we? Does winning 50-something games in a row against SuperTitans even get you close?

Incidentally, this also points up some problems with the matching system :) It's quite possible to take advantage of it in multiple ways. I would recommend the following fixes:
--If you are creating the first game in the queue (i.e. there are no games available around your ranking), you should be assigned to second player 50% of the time. Granted, getting second player means you can't move immediately, but that seems a minor problem. I've noticed some people like to queue up a ton of first-player games, which explains why I always got second player when I was playing less than 1 game per week.
--Create a small penalty to ranking for quitting [edited at flarp55's request...].
--Cap the number of league games you can play at one time against a given opponent.

And my apologies to amoffett11, whom I bumped; but I'm guessing WeJusPlayin isn't a permanent fixture there.

--SD