Musings on eSports and Halo

Games involving an account with few games on it should have a low impact on rank for accounts with higher game count. Gamerscore can be used as a metric of reputation. Higher gamerscore accounts are more likely to be mains. Matches including second-accounters / smurfs / alts are disadvantageous espionage scenarios for players that stay on their main accounts. The disguised player can learn the main-accounter's weaknesses.

In a game like Halo 3, in which connection advantage can significantly affect the outcome, host should be given to the lower-seeded team for ladder matches. This would more effectively test the hypothesis that the higher-ranked player is actually better. Beating someone on host is easier. That means winning early ladder matches has a snowball-like effect. It also means that getting a few wins, however easy or fair they are, can make later matches easy. This encourages boosting by incentivizing initial placement rather than continuous performance.