>. The key is just to not be too good; cheaters would shoot up out of my potential matches very quickly I think.
I've found the opposite to be true, at least to an extent.
Especially in the old counterstrike 1.6 days where 'ranked' was just privately organized matches from third party leagues, cheaters were much more of a problem for the lower ranked games because that's when you were playing against new accounts and there was no reputation on the line. Anyone who cheated would just make a new account and be right back in the entry leagues
Get good enough to rank up and you get to avoid most of the cheaters. some people still cheated, but it was also easier to spot when there are less players and you generally knew the players you play against.
These days I just play overwatch where I think both things are true. The automated matchmaking does let cheaters rank up a bit more but new accounts are still more likely to be cheating than established ones so getting to a higher rank let's you avoid a lot of them that would get banned before they can rank up enough
I was not up for the rigors of Counterstrike. I got OK (but OK in a “sometimes I’ll be the best is a random matchmaking lobby”) at Call of Duty for the first couple Modern Warfares, but there was never a time where I was playing with people good enough to worry about reputations, haha.
I've found the opposite to be true, at least to an extent.
Especially in the old counterstrike 1.6 days where 'ranked' was just privately organized matches from third party leagues, cheaters were much more of a problem for the lower ranked games because that's when you were playing against new accounts and there was no reputation on the line. Anyone who cheated would just make a new account and be right back in the entry leagues
Get good enough to rank up and you get to avoid most of the cheaters. some people still cheated, but it was also easier to spot when there are less players and you generally knew the players you play against.
These days I just play overwatch where I think both things are true. The automated matchmaking does let cheaters rank up a bit more but new accounts are still more likely to be cheating than established ones so getting to a higher rank let's you avoid a lot of them that would get banned before they can rank up enough