I thought retrospective calculation was gotten rid of deliberately with the recent ranking system update.
Perhaps it was a misunderstanding on my part, taking it as a part of the windowed ratings.
If ranks get recalculated in such a way, then perhaps the current system/policy isn’t bad in theory as I assumed it to be. Though it does seem very hard to recalculate the entire effect of a player’s results on the rest of the system (since the people they played will have played many others and so on), I take it it is doable via mad coding skillz and was already in use and has proven to be effective.
So, in theory, the sandbaggers will get back to their correct rank via annulments and the people they won against will have their ranks increased slightly, because in retrospective calculation, they will have lost to a higher ranked player.
Still, I find this very hard to implement, requiring tremendous amount of judgement on part of the moderator, not to mention it will naturally cause issues with a number of users that can’t be considered negligible.
About the hypothetical scenario…If Steve is denying sandbagging, then Vince should be told that Steve didn’t resign as part of a scheme but was ignorant about game/server mechanics and has been warned. It should also be made clear how the rank that was taken from Vince will be redistributed to people Steve won against, making the system function properly in benefit of everyone. If Steve isn’t denying having sandbagged, then Steve should already be banned (?). When you tell Vince “Your opponent was a cheater and has wasted your time but we just warned him and we are taking back the rank you deemed as compensation”, Vince clearly won’t be content unless he is an exceptional zen-type person.
For me, ideally, users who face cheaters would have a big say in the decision (not in the warning/banning but) regarding their games since they are the ones that invested time. If this route doesn’t seem reasonable, I prefer games not being annulled unless they are blatantly thrown from clearly won positions and (not or) the sandbagger has shown clear pattern. Moreover, if the sandbagger has shown enough pattern to be deemed as such, then it is reasonable to go the banning route which by default explains the annulments to the wronged user.without much room for inquiry or objection.