EDIT: I've changed the OP a fair bit to get my points across a little better. Sorry to put a wall of text in front of you, feel free to skim through and read the stuff in bold.
It might not seem like a big deal for some of you, having a full team making proper call-outs, no suspicious players, people on both sides being genuinely nice, everyone having fun. But it is for me. I haven't played decent games like this since early 2018. It's almost worth dealing with the beta causing my game to run like it's on 15fps to stay in the figurative Garden of Eden that is high-trust MM. I've played so many games where there's 3-7 cheaters in a lobby this year alone.
I hate that this is a temporary boost. I just know I'll be down in the cesspool again before long... It really hits home the fact that (prime) players should be able to see their trust factor status, and if they aren't horrible human beings, they need a way to actively increase it when it's lower than optimal.
How you ask? Easy. We could apply for a 'high-trust pass', where we volunteer 3-4 games to overwatch, randomly spread ~2 weeks before and 2 weeks after applying for a pass, and people who haven't played for more than 2 weeks aren't eligible to apply. 2 weeks after applying, bam, you get a message saying you now have a high trust factor status.Toxic players, griefers cheaters etc. who are tired of playing in a hell of their own making are either forced to play like a decent human being for a full month, or risk volunteering themselves for a ban.
Legit players stuck in low-trust hell would be a thing of the past... Even smurfs would be better off in high-trust games, they would rank up to their normal skill group way faster, and ruin less games overall, and they can't derank out of fear of killing their trust factor, and getting forced to play with cheaters and griefers.
Frankly, we all know cheaters would try to get on board with the trust pass, as they can't fulfil their little fantasies about being team-dominating aim-gods if they play against other cheaters constantly. Forcing known cheaters to play cleanly (or cleaner, at least, and risk volunteering themselves for a ban if they try it) for a month is a win for both the community and for VAC devs, as it ruins less games AND gifts VAC a whole month to catch players who are barely able to use cheats (or the cheaters try to keep a low profile and stay miserable playing against each other). If cheaters manage to 'keep it in their pants' long enough to cheat in high-trust games, good luck to them. They waited 4 weeks to play against legit players, they'll play like 5 games and then get banished to low trust factor again. They can wait out another 4 weeks, or spend thousands on prime accounts that are worthless 10 times faster than ever before, and need to clean their steam installations again, and again and again to ensure their other accounts don't get detected and put in low trust factor too. Just imagine how much effort it would take just for cheaters to play for a full week. Dozens of spare accounts lined up, lots of steam reinstalls, if not windows reinstalls. Each account becoming useless after 5 games, not even banned yet but not fun to play on anymore. Cheaters are currently only having fun because there's enough cannon fodder in low trust populations to keep themselves amused, if that population is gradually absorbed into the main playerbase, they are left fighting each other, rage hackers would slowly die out and get replaced by 'legit cheaters' looking to gain access to high-trust matchmaking (or a large chunk of the cheater population would give up cheating).
Imagine if the only cheaters left in MM are indistinguishable from high-level players; at least they can be beaten with smarts and good aim. Overwatch would also slowly shift from constant fidget spinners to 'legit cheaters' that suck at hiding their cheats. Thanks to the recent changes to the demo viewer, players no longer need to feel a sense of urgency to report players during a game, they can spectate it afterwards are report people as appropriate, so really, cheaters who are good at hiding cheats might not get overwatch banned right away (in the old, single game method), but they will accumulate reports and eventually get sent to the naughty corner. Legit players get left alone or apply for the high-trust pass at no risk to themselves, cheaters risk losing their account by failing their 'trust pass application'.
Before people speculate on how this affects under-ranked legitimate players who keep getting reported, time is no object for normal people with 1-2 accounts. They can play sparingly during the 2 weeks in the low-trust pit of despair as to not derank against cheaters, apply for high trust, play a few more games, and then continue their efforts in high-trust matchmaking to eventually find a rank appropriate for their skill-level, where they no longer find themselves getting reported by multiple people every game. It would be a little inconvenient at first, but players who have been playing in the medium to low trust factor clown fiesta for years probably wouldn't mind if they know they'll be able to play normally after a few months of back and forth. Cheaters will mind a lot. Even if they attempt to do the same thing, it's a lot of work for no payoff, they'll play 5 games and get slapped down continuously, no matter what skill-level they are in. Legit players in Global ranks might get slapped down by sore losers a few times, but you would only deal with low trust factor for 2 weeks before you can play normally again.
It's a win-win-win-win... uhh, win. Everybody wins. It certainly wouldn't hurt the MM system if the legitimate playerbase was more consolidated, we'd have less games where silvers are playing with LEMs.
I realise that this trust-pass method might clash with Valve's creative vision of VACnet being trained through Overwatch verdicts, but who knows, Overwatch may be able to accommodate the extra workload. I certainly wouldn't mind if I saw more legit players in OW to break up the monotony of bhops, aimbot and walls. How about you guys, would you use this system?
