Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem here appears to be the banning. If the cheaters are never banned then they will continue to only play with other cheaters, and everyone is happy. And in fact, to a normal player I doubt they care very much if the player is legit and smurfing or if they are not legit and cheating. That player ruins the game they are in. The ranking system needs to be a better determinate of skill, especially early in a new…
Cheaters don't want to play against other cheaters. If they end up against only cheaters that's a kind of soft-ban or shadow-ban and once they figure out that's the case they'll do the same steps as if you had actually banned them. It also angers legitimate players to know that the top ladder tier is for cheaters only. If you're 200th in the world and legitimate, other players will say you only got that rank through…
I'll note here that the work that Nadeo has done on the matchmaking aspect is in line with what I'm thinking and should be expanded throughout the online gaming space. A division 10 COTD player will never see a cheater. If cheaters do show up, as they commonly do in Weekly Shorts leaderboards, the community ignores it. Their region leaderboards do a much better job than typical games of bringing the community together and they promote continuity. When top players smurf COTD on a new name, the community sniffs it out within the hour. TM doesn't need anti-cheat.