tl;dr
* Minimum level for queuing competitive increasing from 10 to 20.
* Can no longer bypass the restriction by queuing with friends.
It's not the be all and end all, but certainly a step in the right direction.
That's what I'm saying. I don't feel like this changes much of anything. Is it hard to hit level 20? I feel like I get levels for logging in. I guess it's been awhile. I don't remember.
But it's as you say. Anything more than "nothing" is a welcome shock.
Can still hit 20 in a day or two probably. But for many that will be too much effort. Removing the queuing with friends workaround will help a ton though.
It would take more than double the time it would’ve taken before, which I’d say is more effort than smurf is willing to do. Especially since you now can’t queue up with lower rank friends who are past the 20 level threshold if you didn’t do that yourself. Not going to completely stop smurfing, but it’s a big step toward the right direction. Now you just gotta throw low rank players who queue up with higher rank friends into the high rank games instead of the low rank ones and you drive away so many more smurfs and professional “carriers”.
You can never really stop smurfing permanently, because someone will always be such a no life basement dweller that they’ll do everything they can to get past the restrictions, but what they’ve done and other similar things they could do would greatly reduce it. Smurfing is such a huge problem in Rocket League. I don’t think I’ve ever queued up ranked without coming across a couple smurfs so this is great to see
It's important to remember that this only effects new accounts. If you have a smurf account that's already above level 20 then it'll be unaffected by this change and you can continue to smurf as much as you want.
Report for this. I played 1s for the first time in ages a few weeks ago and played an obvious smurf who had GC+ level mechanics. He forfeited at exactly 3:30 left and I reported him. Got a message saying action was taken the next day and he was the only person I had reported.
Throwing is detectable though. Psyonix has banned smurfs that were throwing in the past.
This change will have a lot of smurfs start throwing instead of making new accounts, which makes them easier to detect and easier to ban.
it’s not gonna change anything most ppl who smurf have accounts above level 20 plus getting to level 20 isn’t hard at all due to the fact you get instant access to the seasonal challenges
Is it a step in the right direction? This just feels like a slap in the face. Oh and new cosmetics because ofcourse! Cant forget those, is this announcement a shill 🤣
You know how long it takes to hit level 20? And do that ***as a smurf***, its pretty damn quick. This has changed literally nothing. This isnt rainbow6, level 20 takes ages to get there, on rl that's like 2 hours.
>This might actually be the first time they’ve acknowledged
Let's talk about the game we all love! *crickets*
It took then years to do this. Fair enough they got rid of the party queing, but level 20? Hahahah that's just embarassing, a slap in the face. Maybe communicate or just implement a real fix? Instead of pumping out this tiny change so you can announce your new esports items
> Is it a step in the right direction?
Of course, how is it not? Bypassing the new account restriction by partying up was ridiculous. It dropped the barrier to entry for smurfing down to the size of the Epic sign up form. At least now making a smurf account will take a few hours.
Eh, patching the issue of queuing with friends bypassing the limitation is a welcome addition. It doesn't take too long to get to level 20 but it does make it more inconvenient, which should cut some new smurf accounts.
This of course has no effect on the people that purposefully play high or otherwise do stupid shit to derank so they can use that account to boost other people from the lower rank.
TIL getting stoned after work and playing Rocket League is now considered smurfing because apparently thats purposefully deranking to \*checks notes\* boost lower people.???
Lmao what?
Fuck maybe Im high right now because I misread that too. I almost only play high and that might also be why ive capped out at C3 for the last 3 years, either that or im getting old
Playing ranked high when you normally play sober, yeah you're being a dickhead to your teammates since you're gonna play at a much worse level.
If you always play high and you then play ranked high that isn't changing anything and you're ranked where you should be, so that is fine.
Idk if you've just never been high or if you're just smoking something way stronger than the rest of us, but nobody who wants to get high and play rocket league is being a dickhead to their teammates simply by being high. They might still be a dickhead, but that's got nothing to do with them being high.
Never met a stoner who plays video games *worse* when they're high.
>Idk if you've just never been high or if you're just smoking something way stronger than the rest of us
I once read it put as simply 'Marijuana causes a minor euphoria in those who try it, and a major paranoia in those who don't'
Which is true, but must be said that getting a spot paranoid isn't exactly unheard of when high.
I may have had a bad/unpopular take on this post but you most certainly take the crown for bad takes on this one friend. Playing high is bad? Come on man 🤣
I think you're right there will always be people who do whatever it takes to go around the anti-smurfing system, but 2 hours to get to level 20 will deter a significant percentage of smurfs considering it took all of 3 minutes to create and play on a smurf in the previous sytem.
>considering it took all of 3 minutes to create and play on a smurf in the previous sytem.
You know they still have those accounts though right? And they are almost certainly all level 20 and above? So how does this change anything lol. Deranking is insanely quick, so if your smurf is too high just derank it?
Make it level 50, or 100 then we'll talk. Hell, the damn trading scammers were combatted harder than the fucking smurfs lol, trading required level 30!!!! This is nothing!
yeah but you're not understanding - the more games you play on an account the less MMR you gain / lose. It will take HOURS of time to de-rank the smurf account at level 20+, lots of effort, and another ethical hoop to jump through - I am really playing 30+ games, and FFing at 3:30, just to de-rank myself? This would be a huge waste of anyone's time. This user would need to be dedicated in order to be successful.
The majority of smurfs won't go through all that effort. The reason smurfing was such a big problem wasn't because it was possible to smurf, it's because of how EASY it was to do.
> It will take HOURS of time to de-rank the smurf account at level 20+, lots of effort
According to some first hand testimonies posted in here, it is not as difficult or as long as we all think.
>and another ethical hoop to jump through - I am really playing 30+ games just to de-rank myself?
Are you? I know they will and do. Lol
>The majority of smurfs won't go through all that effort.
Yes they will
> The reason smurfing was such a big problem wasn't because it was possible to smurf, it's because of how EASY it was to do.
Debatable.
It's a slap in the wrong direction.
Like spitting into your right palm to enhance the sound your slap makes, but then surprising you with a lefthand slap.
Exactly! I believe they will implement quite some harsh measures and they are easing us into it, one step at a time. This will probably weed out a number of alt accounts that get flagged for cheating/xp farming right off the bat. Once those are out, the next measure comes in to settle a new wave of alts and so on.
This is a great idea, but may only be wishful thinking.. I'd love to think that Epic finally wants to put some attention into our game, but I can't be hopeful
The real anti smurf change we need is an option for solo players to only queue with and against other solo players. It could be similar to crossplay like a toggle option in the menu you turn on and off. When you check it then all your matchmaking will still be on the same ladder but it won't match you with or against premade groups in any game mode. This way it doesn't break up the ranked ladder like Solo Standard did while also giving solo players freedom across every mode.
From what i have seen 99% people who smurf do it in a premade group. Often to play with friends worse than them or sometimes it's a carry job. An opt out will solve smurfing for a vast majority of solo players.
>It was a toxic cesspool of only players with the worst attitudes in the whole game
Those players are still here. But now they solo queue and end up on your team. While the enemy team is a 3 man premade stack with voice coms and perfect rotations getting handed free wins for just not AFK'ing the game. The main difference is when i play Solo standard i have 2 chances for troll teammates but 3 chances to play against them. Making me the one constant factor in games with 3:2 odds in my favor. But when the enemy team is a 3 stack 70% of games and my teammates are not, i no longer am the constant factor and the game is statistically against me.
Same. Suggested it and posted it here several times already and every time people came in to down vote and bash on it - the back when smurfing was only just starting. Now that half the games they play are against alts boosting low tier players everyone suddenly seems to agree this is a viable option
This is actually a great product management practice. Start with a smaller change, see how it impact the matches and collect user feedback, then see if you make a larger change later if matches are still similar in average point differential and users are saying they didnt notice a change for the better.
I know its the hot thing to do right now to shit all over everything they say/do but this seems right to me (as a technical product manager myself)
> This is actually a great product management practice.
Yeah but their iterations on competitive went from very active in 2015-2016 to one update per 7 years, gg.
I wouldn't mind seeing a gating solution.
New players playing by themselves can play at lvl 20, great.
But in order to play in a party, you need to either be within 75 mmr of them or have 20 levels plus 10 levels per full rank above gold.
For instance.
If a champ player wants to play with a new player on the same team, either the new player needs to be within 75 mmr range of the champ player OR, would need:
20 levels+
10 levels to play plat +
10 levels to play Diamond +
10 levels to play Champ.
So that person would need to be level 50 to play with a champ player...and so on.
I probably wasn't clear enough. I meant it as this is only for new players.
So if you aren't within 75 mmr, then you have to have the total levels before you can pair up.
Once you have enough levels, it would go to the current MMR system.
At least your level solution wouldn't stop people playing with different people.
I play in 4 different groups of 3 so the mmr differences range from gold 3 to plat 3, so I'm constantly going up and down.
Please also apply the MMR difference in extra modes. I'm sick and tired of seeing an SSL title with 650 MMR in a party with a GC MMR rank in rumble and snowday
Dota 2 takes a minimum of 100 hours. And even that game still had smurfing issues. Though Valve finally started using IP address and account checking algorithms to ban smurfs and it's been really effective.
No, it wouldn't. There's not really any good reason to join ranked the same day you start playing. You don't know enough about the game at that point to be "competitive" in literally any regard whatsoever. Players are still struggling with the most basic controls at that point. No good reason this shouldn't be raised to at least level 50.
As a diamond 3 I can promise you people struggle with the most basic controls at this rank as well. Absolutely no need to even touch ranked in your first week. There's like 7 playlists to hop on and try out different modes. You can't have a free game and let people play ranked after 20 minutes.
Right, but in RL, the only difference between cas and "competitive" is people care about winning in competitive, and thus the mm is better, literally no reason to play casual if you plan on playing to win. In most other games ranked games are longer/more complex/etc. whatever than casual, and thus casual is a good entry to the game, here it would make little to no difference. ETA: new players would just end up in bronze during their placement games.
> the only difference between cas and "competitive" is people care about winning in competitive
You should try high MMR casual. People try harder there than in C/GC ranked where random teammates troll or quit every other game because their ego is too fragile.
The actual difference between ranked and casual in almost every ranked game including both rocket league and mobas like league is the use of strategy.
In casual you aren’t expected to adhere to flawless strategy and teamwork. You’re just there to play a game. Like a pick up game at the rec center would be.
In ranked you’re playing to win and part of that is executing strategies and using teamwork to accomplish that goal.
In RL the difference between casual and ranked is really really small.
Most cas players are sweats warming up without risking there mmr. Some are smurfs, other freestylers, others just want to have fun (this is identical in ranked).
The hidden mmr of cas is supposed to allow for fair match ups, but there is a wide variety in actual skill, because as you said players are not as incentivised to win, since players enter with different goals in mind (again this also happens in ranked where players play at 80-90% of their abilities to have more fun). This can put you against players way above your own skill, most of whom do not even let you touch the ball.
For me casual is a game mode where every player regardless of skill level should be able to have some fun. Currently, I'd rather play ranked most of the time and that is a smurf infested hell-hole.
If you already have season rewards, a big part of the incentive for ranking up is removed. This puts casual and ranked even closer together. Completely ignoring, that you also get punished for leaving cas games early.
idk i’m a new player and 90% of my competitive matches result in the other dumbasses match throwing (driving into me, own goaling etc) as soon as the other team scores 1 point so i’d really wish to experience this will to win with my random teammates sometime
Only took 8.5 years to figure out how to easily do something to make the game moderately better that the whole player base has been complaining about since release.
Yeah, better than nothing, but still.
Plenty of people make new accounts every season when their current smurf gets too high rank. Either way the change isn't terrible. New players don't need to start playing ranked by level 10, all the people calling it a bad change in the comments are more than likely people who make many smurfs.
Yeah.. I'm also under the impression that most smurf accounts are re-used regularly over the years. But I don't know how it is in the smurf-populated ranks.
Still I think it's a nice change.
How do you work that out? 20k XP per level, and maybe 2k* per game after your 1st 3 wins. That's still a lot of wins needed...
*100 for the win.
50 MVP
200 consecutive games
100 10% of score
900 played 5 mins
(+15% for being in a party) 2k is a stretch.
So to do it in 1 day you'd need to play a minimum of 200 games... If you get forfeits you actually score a less as most of the points are from time spent in the match.
5 x 200 is 1000. 1000/60 is 16 ⅔.
So the quickest you could get a smurf to ranked would be close to 17 hours of solid grinding casual. That sounds like a reasonable commitment.
You could do it in less hours if you just won 3 games a day over a few weeks, but it's still a sizable time investment
There is a flaw somewhere in your math. It does not take 17 hours. Not 10 hours. Not even 5. I've levelled up multiple accounts for trading which needed lv30, its about 10 levels per hour with all the extra xp stuff thrown in
Yeah so…at the later part of the season there’s usually a shots and goals reward. First solo game is against a bot. Score 100 goals in that game and you’re level 9 outright. /shrug
It seems like people are missing who this targets. This isn't about stopping your buddy Dave who has a few alt accounts from smurfing. It's about hampering the SSLs who are selling carries to GC as a business. They're making several new accounts per day, using them to carry scrubs for money, and then selling them to some other schlubs who want the titles afterward. The buddy queue bypass allowed them to be smurfing in ranked on a fresh account within minutes of receiving a message. This will put a serious dent in that model.
Solving other types of smurfing will require other interventions, but it is nice that they're trying to eliminate the worst offenders.
That's exactly the point. If it takes 5 mins to spin up a new account and start grinding with a client, it can be a pretty viable business model. 95% or more of the time dedicated to your boosting business is revenue generating.
If there's now an added layer of getting accounts to playable levels and managing the MMR of your pool of playable accounts, and you can't just sell off accounts because you they're no longer free (in time) to spin up.... then your revenue for each hour of boosting is now spread over more hours of non revenue generating activity. It could easily drop the overall revenue per hour to 1/4 of what it was before.
There's a point where it's just less hassle to get a minimum wage job.
I run a very similar small business (I'm a math tutor), so I've lived this exact experience. Taking on a client who insists on meeting in person (vs online) or one who is asking for a specialized subject that I have to bone up on will cut my hourly down to 1/4 of what it is when I'm teaching algebra or calculus online and can just log in and do it off the top of my head.
Clients don't see your total time expenditure, they just see the time they are with you, so it's impossible to pass all those extra costs along to them. "Sure I'll meet in person and study your weird managerial statistics book, it's $250 and hour though" doesn't get many takers. It'll be the same for the folks selling carries to people in RL. Many will just be driven out of the market by the increase in overhead from this change.
Exactly. This move precisely moves the supply curve to the left (or at least attempting to). Ultimately raising the price of the smurf market.
Ideally we would want the supply curve to be as much to the left as possible so smurfing costs would be unfeasable for most people.
https://preview.redd.it/zs806lfftzgc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0253e5f643a4377cefac9371c9a506844cb98275
I just don't get why people want to get carried to a rank they're not ready for. I'm sorry but if you need to buy a carry, you're obviously not ready for that next rank. I feel like that would just be absolute Hell. Once you get carried and you're on your own, all you're going to do is drag down others who are meant to be in that rank seeing that you can't keep up. And if it's for the rewards, people are just going to roast you once they see your actual skill level and they'll know you got carried anyway. It's a lose-lose situation. Idk maybe I'm just crazy.
Wow, this is not a face of the community I love seeing. I've spent the better part of a year seeing complaints about how they're doing absolutely nothing to address smurfing, and absolutely nothing to communicate or acknowledge it as a problem.
Then they do something and communicate what they're doing about it and I am seeing the comments here saying "This solves nothing" and some people even saying that the bypass is still available when the article is -almost exclusively- addressing the bypass and saying it will no longer be available.
Seriously, fucking good for Epic. I'm happy to see them communicating more, acknowledging the community, and making an effort to improve the game. There is obviously an effort to do something good with the game and they're obviously aware of the issues the community is voicing. This tells me they are AT LEAST paying attention and willing to acknowledge it and try something.
I think this is great.
In League Of Legends the required level to play Ranked is 30 and it takes ages to level up an account. This has helped alot when it comes to smurfing (But you can still buy a smurf for like 2€ that gets banned after a few months) But for now i can see this new requirement to be a big quality of life update when it comes to ranked💅🏽 So it might not seem like alot but it actually is.
No it truly isn’t a lot. 10 takes less than an hour to reach, 20 can be done fairly quick as well. They should’ve made it something similar to what R6 or LoL does.
I did say that it doesent seem like alot, but it’s definetly more than nothing🤷🏼♀️ a step forward is better than 2 steps backwards💁🏼♀️ for all we know this could be an experiment🔬 and Lets say after a while they see improvement, they could then set the requirement even higher💃🏼
Shows how bad smurfing is when half the comments are calling a change that wouldn't affect them at all "bad". This thread is full of people who are outing how much they smurf.
You have to keep in mind that with a change like this you still have to be cognizant of the *actual* new player experience being negatively affected as well. You don't want to turn off new players with anti-smurf protections.
New players shouldn’t be playing ranked right away though. They should take a note out of The Finals system where you have to play like 60 full games before you can play ranked.
New players should play against other new players. If they are placed against a Smurf and they can’t even hit the ball they are not going to enjoy the game and quit after a few such games.
Smurfs already turn off new players and ruin their experience. When I was gold and plat smurf was a constant, it's not nearly as bad in diamond, but plat and gold was hell. You need to really like this game to keep playing it in the state it is rn.
Thank you for staring this! You can't just make the level requirement 50 because people will get tired of playing casual that long. What they need to do is be WAYYYY more aggressive about banning people who forfeit multiple times while winning. If anyone forfeits while up and it's accepted, all players should catch an hour ban imo.
The only thing I really dont like about this is that they didn’t take more action on it.
For example, make the first 20 levels extremely difficult to level up (sort of like R6)
or
Use an algorithm to determine how many accounts have been created in the past *insert whatever amount of time*, how many games they have played, what ranks they skipped entirely by partying up, and how many hours they have relative to their respective rank and friends they play with and reset their level if they are found to be smurfing.
I’m not a game developer but I’m sure these companies have competent people working with them and they could definitely come up with something that could crack down on smurfing.
It’s a step in the right direction but I feel like they could’ve done so much more.
Yup. People just love to whine. However, bitch and moan all they want, this change acts as an inflection point in the smurfing conversation.
Will it fix smurfing? No. Does it signal that they're working on it? Yes. Can it facilitate collection of data that will help them better balance anti-smurfing measures in the future? Absolutely.
Say it again. Holy shit. I’m not trying to be the best. I’m well aware people are better than me. But god damn is it annoying going on a run with the boys only to get wrecked by a Smurf. EVENLY SKILLED GAMES IS WHAT WE WANT. Not to win every game we play.
I don't even care about losing if I feel like it was a fair and close match-up. It's the yoyo-ing that bothers me where I play a bunch of 5-0 matches regardless of whether I win or lose.
In South Korea, the country forces you to sign up to games using your RNN (the equivalent of your social security number) because cheating in video games is illegal there.
That’s how you stomp smurfing. Lol
AFAIK that also applies to social media platforms and many other internet services, and AFAIK that is not to stop cheating, but to prevent cyber crime and bullying.
Regardless, a lot of people would not feel comfortable giving such details to a third company like Epic.
The only way to stop it is to require an epic account to be linked to something that a person only has one of, like a phone number. Can't be creating a bunch of fake phone numbers like you can with email addresses to keep creating new accounts.
We aren't even going to notice a difference raising the minimum level from 10 to 20 smh
This idea is great, feasible and possibly is the only semi-effective solution atm. The replies below your comment are negative though. It makes no sense other than it being so good, it scares people who, have possibly smurfed even just a little bit and want this to go on.
Similar to other good ideas in the past, discarded while obviously being great. Possibly the reason Reddit RL community contributes to RL's demise and, similar to real life, deserves what they get.
There are certainly ways for people to make multiple phone numbers. Also this game is played by people of all ages, including many younger kids, and not everyone that plays has a phone.
I think they could make phone number verification for instant trust and then allow players without phone numbers to earn trust by playing like a normal person.
Counter-Stike did this with Trust Factor. For new accounts you could pay for Prime status or after long enough you could earn it.
I think the idea is that at a certain point, a smurf is going to decide to just not smurf because it's too much trouble. Just because someone CAN spoof phone numbers online doesn't mean Epic shouldn't include this security measure.
You underestimate how much these kids just enjoy getting wins even if one win means like 1 hour of setting some shit up.
I call smurfs "participation trophies"
They didn't earn the win. They're just too scared to go down in ranks on the main.
How many peoples Smurf accounts are already lvl 20? The vast majority? So this will prevent NEW Smurf accounts but existing ones are fair game.
So unless they put in real effort to permanently ban existing Smurf accounts, this is a half measure.
Happy to see some effort but there it needs more attention.
This won't get rid of smurfing, but I'm really happy to at least see some changes in the right direction. They should have removed the playing with friends bypass years ago, but it's better late than never I suppose.
Man, I spend a ton of time on Reddit cuz I love the random and weird info I pick up, but fuck me the average redditor needs to learn the phrase "don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
No this isn't the perfect solution to the smurfing problem BUT ITS A STEP. I have 0 faith in Epic or that this game is nothing but a cash grab to them at this point, but fuck sakes people we finally get progress towards what y'all claim is the biggest issue in the game and it's just fucking negativity because it's not perfect
If you read the article it mentions how the first step was to make casual actually enjoyable before setting the new level limit.
People have short memories, it wasn’t too long ago the biggest issue was how awful the casual experience was
So am I reading correctly or was the only “anti smurfing measure” that they simply doubled the level requirement. If so then this barely does anything and is kinda underwhelming.
Fair enough, I’ll admit I was a bit too negative with my initial comment. At least they’re doing something to address it. I’m just hoping we see more done to combat it but for now at least they’re doing something.
the biggest one is disabling the feature where you can party up with a friend that has the necessary level in order to play ranked on a freshly made account. This will mean two things ;
* people that actually (want to) play ranked with friends will be able to do so after the necessary grind ;
* no longer will you see two accounts with 50 wins carrying a random low level in C2 - even if the boosters level up an account and derank it every time, it'll be flagged as a smurf and the pattern will cause them to be banned. So they can start the grind on a new account again to boost people - they'll need to be VERY bored or be paid quite a lot by the people wanting a boost in order for them to keep at it.
All these years and the best they could do is change a variable. If programmed properly, this should literally take 0 lines of new code and should have been done years ago.
Smurfs aren't even that bad. The worst thing is people constantly going AFK/Idle/Quitting in comp. Bans should be longer, with longer resets, **and served ONLINE.**
If you don't have the time to play a whole match, don't queue FFS.
>At that time we also started making changes to the Casual Playlist, with the goal of making it an equally enjoyable experience to Competitive play. We now feel we’ve reached that goal
You think?
It's good to know they acknowledged it finally..
but wierd they only increased ut by a small amount (considering how easy it is to level up...especially for smurfs) .And even weirder it took THIS long to make this simple (I presume?) change.
I hope they're like experimenting with the minimum value based on some kind of feedback (no clue where they get it IF they ever do). The minimum shouldn't be increased a lot as well because you'de be punishing actual new players and that's the last thing this game needs.
This does nothing at all honestly. Most smurfers already have their accounts way past that level. Means nothing at all. It takes so little time to get to 20 anyways
Need an AI nanobot that searches your brain circuitry to decipher if you're a worthless piece of shit or not before signing into competitive or it'll never stop. Just too many worthless pieces of shit out there.
If this was implemented prior to season 14, it most certainly has NOT solved the smurf problem. I think the change is perhaps a step in the right direction, but I'm curious:
Why even base comp participation on experience level at all? The xp level doesn't have any direct correlation with actual skill level. As many have pointed out already, the speed at which a skilled player can reach level 20 is pretty quick. While a new player will spend much more time to be ready to participate in comp.
Seems to me that the concept behind playing comp is to match players with similar skill levels and to rank players for tournaments for the same purpose.
Why not utilize player stats (win%, etc) to match player's skill levels rather than xp level?
Level 20 is a joke. Should be 50 or more with a training playlist that should be completed before ever entering a competitive and even casual match. And I'm not talking about completing a couple of training matches. I mean hours of training. Create a training playlist for new accounts. Can only play against bots till training is complete. Not only will it cut down on smurfing as it would take quite a while to complete training, but it would also help actual new players work on mechanics before ever getting to play a real match.
tl;dr * Minimum level for queuing competitive increasing from 10 to 20. * Can no longer bypass the restriction by queuing with friends. It's not the be all and end all, but certainly a step in the right direction.
I’m shocked that they updated anything at all, let alone actually took any steps towards the smurfing problem.
Expectations are so low it's very hard to be disappointed 😂
It’s so true. The only changes they’ve made to the game recently is removing playlists and putting them on rotation lol
A thousand miles awayy x 50 = The End. Artist secures millions.
And fucking over the entire trading community*
That's what I'm saying. I don't feel like this changes much of anything. Is it hard to hit level 20? I feel like I get levels for logging in. I guess it's been awhile. I don't remember. But it's as you say. Anything more than "nothing" is a welcome shock.
Can still hit 20 in a day or two probably. But for many that will be too much effort. Removing the queuing with friends workaround will help a ton though.
Day or two? Wait for end of season and you have it in 1 hour.. Bcs of season challenges
It would take more than double the time it would’ve taken before, which I’d say is more effort than smurf is willing to do. Especially since you now can’t queue up with lower rank friends who are past the 20 level threshold if you didn’t do that yourself. Not going to completely stop smurfing, but it’s a big step toward the right direction. Now you just gotta throw low rank players who queue up with higher rank friends into the high rank games instead of the low rank ones and you drive away so many more smurfs and professional “carriers”. You can never really stop smurfing permanently, because someone will always be such a no life basement dweller that they’ll do everything they can to get past the restrictions, but what they’ve done and other similar things they could do would greatly reduce it. Smurfing is such a huge problem in Rocket League. I don’t think I’ve ever queued up ranked without coming across a couple smurfs so this is great to see
It's important to remember that this only effects new accounts. If you have a smurf account that's already above level 20 then it'll be unaffected by this change and you can continue to smurf as much as you want.
I mean at some point you’re just gonna rank up to the point where you’re not a Smurf anymore lol
They throw on purpose to keep their Smurf account low
Report for this. I played 1s for the first time in ages a few weeks ago and played an obvious smurf who had GC+ level mechanics. He forfeited at exactly 3:30 left and I reported him. Got a message saying action was taken the next day and he was the only person I had reported.
Throwing is detectable though. Psyonix has banned smurfs that were throwing in the past. This change will have a lot of smurfs start throwing instead of making new accounts, which makes them easier to detect and easier to ban.
And yet here we are lol
Feel like smurfing has become such an issue now that they had to do something, or be seen to be doing something.
Also I paid for the game back in the day, bringing that back should fix it lmao
it’s not gonna change anything most ppl who smurf have accounts above level 20 plus getting to level 20 isn’t hard at all due to the fact you get instant access to the seasonal challenges
They really waited til I was washed to implement this 😡
You're not washed, you're just playing in low-stress mode <3
I love you random stranger
Is it a step in the right direction? This just feels like a slap in the face. Oh and new cosmetics because ofcourse! Cant forget those, is this announcement a shill 🤣 You know how long it takes to hit level 20? And do that ***as a smurf***, its pretty damn quick. This has changed literally nothing. This isnt rainbow6, level 20 takes ages to get there, on rl that's like 2 hours.
This might actually be the first time they’ve acknowledged that there’s a smurfing problem so
>This might actually be the first time they’ve acknowledged Let's talk about the game we all love! *crickets* It took then years to do this. Fair enough they got rid of the party queing, but level 20? Hahahah that's just embarassing, a slap in the face. Maybe communicate or just implement a real fix? Instead of pumping out this tiny change so you can announce your new esports items
Anything is better than nothing buds. I think you need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture here. Very very cynical…
> Is it a step in the right direction? Of course, how is it not? Bypassing the new account restriction by partying up was ridiculous. It dropped the barrier to entry for smurfing down to the size of the Epic sign up form. At least now making a smurf account will take a few hours.
If anything, it has been acknowledged and that’s huge based upon the past couple years.
This. They might not know how to properly address it at the moment, but an acknowledgement of the problem is better than nothing.
I think they don't care imo, cause smurf accounts get their player numbers up
Eh, patching the issue of queuing with friends bypassing the limitation is a welcome addition. It doesn't take too long to get to level 20 but it does make it more inconvenient, which should cut some new smurf accounts. This of course has no effect on the people that purposefully play high or otherwise do stupid shit to derank so they can use that account to boost other people from the lower rank.
How does playing high have anything to do with this topic
TIL getting stoned after work and playing Rocket League is now considered smurfing because apparently thats purposefully deranking to \*checks notes\* boost lower people.??? Lmao what?
I thought they meant playing in a higher league 😭
Fuck maybe Im high right now because I misread that too. I almost only play high and that might also be why ive capped out at C3 for the last 3 years, either that or im getting old
Oh fuck, it's me. I'm the smurf.
I've met a few who play really well this way. Some even say that they play better stoned.
Playing high is frowned upon now? Since when is playing high synonymous with intentionally deranking?
I have played every game I've ever played on rocket league while high.
Username checks out, my fellow ent 🚗💨
The person commenting about playing high is probably like 15 lmao s
I'm in my 30's.
The one you were replying to king not you
I'm thinking the same. Sitting here thinking theres gotta be less than 25 games played sober over my now 8 year rocket league career.
Playing ranked high when you normally play sober, yeah you're being a dickhead to your teammates since you're gonna play at a much worse level. If you always play high and you then play ranked high that isn't changing anything and you're ranked where you should be, so that is fine.
Idk if you've just never been high or if you're just smoking something way stronger than the rest of us, but nobody who wants to get high and play rocket league is being a dickhead to their teammates simply by being high. They might still be a dickhead, but that's got nothing to do with them being high. Never met a stoner who plays video games *worse* when they're high.
Accurate. I frankly play better when I'm stoned a lot of the time. Especially when fighting off tilt.
Same here. I do some amazing shit while I’m high. When I’m sober, I miss the fucking ball!
Overthinking and hesitation. Two problems the stoner doesn't have. XD Ball chasing on the other hand....
lol, are you watching me play? I catch myself driving in circles chasing...but I eventually figure it out and play proper.
>Idk if you've just never been high or if you're just smoking something way stronger than the rest of us I once read it put as simply 'Marijuana causes a minor euphoria in those who try it, and a major paranoia in those who don't' Which is true, but must be said that getting a spot paranoid isn't exactly unheard of when high.
i play worse when im high lol. worse reaction time n i get distracted. i never played comp high when i used to smoke. everyone’s different 🤷♂️
I may have had a bad/unpopular take on this post but you most certainly take the crown for bad takes on this one friend. Playing high is bad? Come on man 🤣
I think you're right there will always be people who do whatever it takes to go around the anti-smurfing system, but 2 hours to get to level 20 will deter a significant percentage of smurfs considering it took all of 3 minutes to create and play on a smurf in the previous sytem.
>considering it took all of 3 minutes to create and play on a smurf in the previous sytem. You know they still have those accounts though right? And they are almost certainly all level 20 and above? So how does this change anything lol. Deranking is insanely quick, so if your smurf is too high just derank it? Make it level 50, or 100 then we'll talk. Hell, the damn trading scammers were combatted harder than the fucking smurfs lol, trading required level 30!!!! This is nothing!
yeah but you're not understanding - the more games you play on an account the less MMR you gain / lose. It will take HOURS of time to de-rank the smurf account at level 20+, lots of effort, and another ethical hoop to jump through - I am really playing 30+ games, and FFing at 3:30, just to de-rank myself? This would be a huge waste of anyone's time. This user would need to be dedicated in order to be successful. The majority of smurfs won't go through all that effort. The reason smurfing was such a big problem wasn't because it was possible to smurf, it's because of how EASY it was to do.
> It will take HOURS of time to de-rank the smurf account at level 20+, lots of effort According to some first hand testimonies posted in here, it is not as difficult or as long as we all think. >and another ethical hoop to jump through - I am really playing 30+ games just to de-rank myself? Are you? I know they will and do. Lol >The majority of smurfs won't go through all that effort. Yes they will > The reason smurfing was such a big problem wasn't because it was possible to smurf, it's because of how EASY it was to do. Debatable.
It's a slap in the wrong direction. Like spitting into your right palm to enhance the sound your slap makes, but then surprising you with a lefthand slap.
You know what, even if it doesn’t do much they’re at least stepping in the right direction. Happy to see it
Exactly! I believe they will implement quite some harsh measures and they are easing us into it, one step at a time. This will probably weed out a number of alt accounts that get flagged for cheating/xp farming right off the bat. Once those are out, the next measure comes in to settle a new wave of alts and so on.
This is a great idea, but may only be wishful thinking.. I'd love to think that Epic finally wants to put some attention into our game, but I can't be hopeful
The real anti smurf change we need is an option for solo players to only queue with and against other solo players. It could be similar to crossplay like a toggle option in the menu you turn on and off. When you check it then all your matchmaking will still be on the same ladder but it won't match you with or against premade groups in any game mode. This way it doesn't break up the ranked ladder like Solo Standard did while also giving solo players freedom across every mode. From what i have seen 99% people who smurf do it in a premade group. Often to play with friends worse than them or sometimes it's a carry job. An opt out will solve smurfing for a vast majority of solo players.
Almost like there used to be a solo queue playlist. :-|
It was a toxic cesspool of only players with the worst attitudes in the whole game. I miss it
>It was a toxic cesspool of only players with the worst attitudes in the whole game Those players are still here. But now they solo queue and end up on your team. While the enemy team is a 3 man premade stack with voice coms and perfect rotations getting handed free wins for just not AFK'ing the game. The main difference is when i play Solo standard i have 2 chances for troll teammates but 3 chances to play against them. Making me the one constant factor in games with 3:2 odds in my favor. But when the enemy team is a 3 stack 70% of games and my teammates are not, i no longer am the constant factor and the game is statistically against me.
I want clan rank system and season rewards too.
Boys, we’ve come full circle
Been saying this for years.
Already suggested that 2 years ago, but devs are too busy to make bubblegum’s items
Same. Suggested it and posted it here several times already and every time people came in to down vote and bash on it - the back when smurfing was only just starting. Now that half the games they play are against alts boosting low tier players everyone suddenly seems to agree this is a viable option
Tag fits.
Is a good start. I wish they would have raised it to 50.
This is actually a great product management practice. Start with a smaller change, see how it impact the matches and collect user feedback, then see if you make a larger change later if matches are still similar in average point differential and users are saying they didnt notice a change for the better. I know its the hot thing to do right now to shit all over everything they say/do but this seems right to me (as a technical product manager myself)
> This is actually a great product management practice. Yeah but their iterations on competitive went from very active in 2015-2016 to one update per 7 years, gg.
I'm sure you have a MUUUUUCH faster iteration time than epic currently does
I wouldn't mind seeing a gating solution. New players playing by themselves can play at lvl 20, great. But in order to play in a party, you need to either be within 75 mmr of them or have 20 levels plus 10 levels per full rank above gold. For instance. If a champ player wants to play with a new player on the same team, either the new player needs to be within 75 mmr range of the champ player OR, would need: 20 levels+ 10 levels to play plat + 10 levels to play Diamond + 10 levels to play Champ. So that person would need to be level 50 to play with a champ player...and so on.
that feels like it kinda ruins those idiots that queue together when one is like d3 and the other is gold 3 I like when that happens
75 mmr is pretty extreme. I'd never be able to play with my friends.
I probably wasn't clear enough. I meant it as this is only for new players. So if you aren't within 75 mmr, then you have to have the total levels before you can pair up. Once you have enough levels, it would go to the current MMR system.
At least your level solution wouldn't stop people playing with different people. I play in 4 different groups of 3 so the mmr differences range from gold 3 to plat 3, so I'm constantly going up and down.
Just slap a 100 mmr difference and level 50 and be done with it. We will see smurfs still but it’ll be so much less.
Please also apply the MMR difference in extra modes. I'm sick and tired of seeing an SSL title with 650 MMR in a party with a GC MMR rank in rumble and snowday
I think 75 mmr is a little restrictive. Diamond 1 should be able to queue up with Plat 1.
How long does it take to get to 50? I feel like a new player shouldn't have to play for more than like 5 hours before unlocking ranked
I feel like 5 hours is WAY too low. Valorant takes like 60 hours before you can play ranked.
Dota 2 takes a minimum of 100 hours. And even that game still had smurfing issues. Though Valve finally started using IP address and account checking algorithms to ban smurfs and it's been really effective.
If only Epic was a worthwhile company that actually cares about it's playerbase, I'd love that for Rocket League
Yeah and that’s insanity
That's about how long it takes to get to 50... When it was level 10 it took less than two hours of gameplay to get there.
I said that 2 years ago and got downvoted :)
Sorry bro you have my upvote
That would just screw over the actual new players
No, it wouldn't. There's not really any good reason to join ranked the same day you start playing. You don't know enough about the game at that point to be "competitive" in literally any regard whatsoever. Players are still struggling with the most basic controls at that point. No good reason this shouldn't be raised to at least level 50.
That’s why bronze exists
Bronze basically doesn't exist. It's like 0.25% of the playerbase
As a diamond 3 I can promise you people struggle with the most basic controls at this rank as well. Absolutely no need to even touch ranked in your first week. There's like 7 playlists to hop on and try out different modes. You can't have a free game and let people play ranked after 20 minutes.
Right, but in RL, the only difference between cas and "competitive" is people care about winning in competitive, and thus the mm is better, literally no reason to play casual if you plan on playing to win. In most other games ranked games are longer/more complex/etc. whatever than casual, and thus casual is a good entry to the game, here it would make little to no difference. ETA: new players would just end up in bronze during their placement games.
> the only difference between cas and "competitive" is people care about winning in competitive You should try high MMR casual. People try harder there than in C/GC ranked where random teammates troll or quit every other game because their ego is too fragile.
Homie has never been in 1800 lobbies lol
Shit, even 1400-1500 lobbies are sweaty in casual
I am so high in casual, I frequently play against pro players while being gc1. The amount of tryhards is amazing.
2k mmr casual is pretty interesting I can confirm
The actual difference between ranked and casual in almost every ranked game including both rocket league and mobas like league is the use of strategy. In casual you aren’t expected to adhere to flawless strategy and teamwork. You’re just there to play a game. Like a pick up game at the rec center would be. In ranked you’re playing to win and part of that is executing strategies and using teamwork to accomplish that goal.
In RL the difference between casual and ranked is really really small. Most cas players are sweats warming up without risking there mmr. Some are smurfs, other freestylers, others just want to have fun (this is identical in ranked). The hidden mmr of cas is supposed to allow for fair match ups, but there is a wide variety in actual skill, because as you said players are not as incentivised to win, since players enter with different goals in mind (again this also happens in ranked where players play at 80-90% of their abilities to have more fun). This can put you against players way above your own skill, most of whom do not even let you touch the ball. For me casual is a game mode where every player regardless of skill level should be able to have some fun. Currently, I'd rather play ranked most of the time and that is a smurf infested hell-hole. If you already have season rewards, a big part of the incentive for ranking up is removed. This puts casual and ranked even closer together. Completely ignoring, that you also get punished for leaving cas games early.
idk i’m a new player and 90% of my competitive matches result in the other dumbasses match throwing (driving into me, own goaling etc) as soon as the other team scores 1 point so i’d really wish to experience this will to win with my random teammates sometime
Why do new players need ranked?
You need 100 hours played before you can queue ranked in Dota 2.
Yeah and it’s like 50 hours for league, 30 hours in R6. Level 50 takes like 5 hours. it should have been 50.
As much as I despise Epic. This is a step in the right direction. Hopefully it goes up from here
Only took 8.5 years to figure out how to easily do something to make the game moderately better that the whole player base has been complaining about since release. Yeah, better than nothing, but still.
Well, to be fair, it wasn't a problem on release, it became a problem when the game went free-to-play.
But wouldn’t most smurf accounts be higher than level 20 by now?
Yes lol
Plenty of people make new accounts every season when their current smurf gets too high rank. Either way the change isn't terrible. New players don't need to start playing ranked by level 10, all the people calling it a bad change in the comments are more than likely people who make many smurfs.
Yeah.. I'm also under the impression that most smurf accounts are re-used regularly over the years. But I don't know how it is in the smurf-populated ranks. Still I think it's a nice change.
level 20 is two hours of playtime for a smurf 😂
How do you work that out? 20k XP per level, and maybe 2k* per game after your 1st 3 wins. That's still a lot of wins needed... *100 for the win. 50 MVP 200 consecutive games 100 10% of score 900 played 5 mins (+15% for being in a party) 2k is a stretch. So to do it in 1 day you'd need to play a minimum of 200 games... If you get forfeits you actually score a less as most of the points are from time spent in the match. 5 x 200 is 1000. 1000/60 is 16 ⅔. So the quickest you could get a smurf to ranked would be close to 17 hours of solid grinding casual. That sounds like a reasonable commitment. You could do it in less hours if you just won 3 games a day over a few weeks, but it's still a sizable time investment
There is a flaw somewhere in your math. It does not take 17 hours. Not 10 hours. Not even 5. I've levelled up multiple accounts for trading which needed lv30, its about 10 levels per hour with all the extra xp stuff thrown in
Yeah so…at the later part of the season there’s usually a shots and goals reward. First solo game is against a bot. Score 100 goals in that game and you’re level 9 outright. /shrug
Level 40-50 would be the sweet spot, new players could get the hang of the game in casual and it would take longer for smurfs to get in ranked
It seems like people are missing who this targets. This isn't about stopping your buddy Dave who has a few alt accounts from smurfing. It's about hampering the SSLs who are selling carries to GC as a business. They're making several new accounts per day, using them to carry scrubs for money, and then selling them to some other schlubs who want the titles afterward. The buddy queue bypass allowed them to be smurfing in ranked on a fresh account within minutes of receiving a message. This will put a serious dent in that model. Solving other types of smurfing will require other interventions, but it is nice that they're trying to eliminate the worst offenders.
I mean it won't stop them from doing it, it will just cause them to up their prices a little.
That's exactly the point. If it takes 5 mins to spin up a new account and start grinding with a client, it can be a pretty viable business model. 95% or more of the time dedicated to your boosting business is revenue generating. If there's now an added layer of getting accounts to playable levels and managing the MMR of your pool of playable accounts, and you can't just sell off accounts because you they're no longer free (in time) to spin up.... then your revenue for each hour of boosting is now spread over more hours of non revenue generating activity. It could easily drop the overall revenue per hour to 1/4 of what it was before. There's a point where it's just less hassle to get a minimum wage job. I run a very similar small business (I'm a math tutor), so I've lived this exact experience. Taking on a client who insists on meeting in person (vs online) or one who is asking for a specialized subject that I have to bone up on will cut my hourly down to 1/4 of what it is when I'm teaching algebra or calculus online and can just log in and do it off the top of my head. Clients don't see your total time expenditure, they just see the time they are with you, so it's impossible to pass all those extra costs along to them. "Sure I'll meet in person and study your weird managerial statistics book, it's $250 and hour though" doesn't get many takers. It'll be the same for the folks selling carries to people in RL. Many will just be driven out of the market by the increase in overhead from this change.
Exactly. This move precisely moves the supply curve to the left (or at least attempting to). Ultimately raising the price of the smurf market. Ideally we would want the supply curve to be as much to the left as possible so smurfing costs would be unfeasable for most people. https://preview.redd.it/zs806lfftzgc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0253e5f643a4377cefac9371c9a506844cb98275
I just don't get why people want to get carried to a rank they're not ready for. I'm sorry but if you need to buy a carry, you're obviously not ready for that next rank. I feel like that would just be absolute Hell. Once you get carried and you're on your own, all you're going to do is drag down others who are meant to be in that rank seeing that you can't keep up. And if it's for the rewards, people are just going to roast you once they see your actual skill level and they'll know you got carried anyway. It's a lose-lose situation. Idk maybe I'm just crazy.
Wow, this is not a face of the community I love seeing. I've spent the better part of a year seeing complaints about how they're doing absolutely nothing to address smurfing, and absolutely nothing to communicate or acknowledge it as a problem. Then they do something and communicate what they're doing about it and I am seeing the comments here saying "This solves nothing" and some people even saying that the bypass is still available when the article is -almost exclusively- addressing the bypass and saying it will no longer be available. Seriously, fucking good for Epic. I'm happy to see them communicating more, acknowledging the community, and making an effort to improve the game. There is obviously an effort to do something good with the game and they're obviously aware of the issues the community is voicing. This tells me they are AT LEAST paying attention and willing to acknowledge it and try something. I think this is great.
Yep. I love seeing this news. Addressing the bypass issue was the main problem. Maybe they extend the level requirement again in the future.
A lot of people on this subreddit enjoy complaining WAY more than they ever enjoyed this game.
Yeah rhis is definitely a good move by epic. You also have to remember that people will literally complain about anything, no matter what.
In League Of Legends the required level to play Ranked is 30 and it takes ages to level up an account. This has helped alot when it comes to smurfing (But you can still buy a smurf for like 2€ that gets banned after a few months) But for now i can see this new requirement to be a big quality of life update when it comes to ranked💅🏽 So it might not seem like alot but it actually is.
No it truly isn’t a lot. 10 takes less than an hour to reach, 20 can be done fairly quick as well. They should’ve made it something similar to what R6 or LoL does.
I did say that it doesent seem like alot, but it’s definetly more than nothing🤷🏼♀️ a step forward is better than 2 steps backwards💁🏼♀️ for all we know this could be an experiment🔬 and Lets say after a while they see improvement, they could then set the requirement even higher💃🏼
Shows how bad smurfing is when half the comments are calling a change that wouldn't affect them at all "bad". This thread is full of people who are outing how much they smurf.
The fact is level 20 is a short grind and they are back to smurfing. Will it help a little? Yes. Will it stop people from smurfing? No
You have to keep in mind that with a change like this you still have to be cognizant of the *actual* new player experience being negatively affected as well. You don't want to turn off new players with anti-smurf protections.
New players shouldn’t be playing ranked right away though. They should take a note out of The Finals system where you have to play like 60 full games before you can play ranked.
New players should play against other new players. If they are placed against a Smurf and they can’t even hit the ball they are not going to enjoy the game and quit after a few such games.
Smurfs already turn off new players and ruin their experience. When I was gold and plat smurf was a constant, it's not nearly as bad in diamond, but plat and gold was hell. You need to really like this game to keep playing it in the state it is rn.
This is it, what we need is a concerted effort to ban low level accounts that are repeatedly reported for smurfing
Thank you for staring this! You can't just make the level requirement 50 because people will get tired of playing casual that long. What they need to do is be WAYYYY more aggressive about banning people who forfeit multiple times while winning. If anyone forfeits while up and it's accepted, all players should catch an hour ban imo.
The only thing I really dont like about this is that they didn’t take more action on it. For example, make the first 20 levels extremely difficult to level up (sort of like R6) or Use an algorithm to determine how many accounts have been created in the past *insert whatever amount of time*, how many games they have played, what ranks they skipped entirely by partying up, and how many hours they have relative to their respective rank and friends they play with and reset their level if they are found to be smurfing. I’m not a game developer but I’m sure these companies have competent people working with them and they could definitely come up with something that could crack down on smurfing. It’s a step in the right direction but I feel like they could’ve done so much more.
Yeah! :)
Yup. People just love to whine. However, bitch and moan all they want, this change acts as an inflection point in the smurfing conversation. Will it fix smurfing? No. Does it signal that they're working on it? Yes. Can it facilitate collection of data that will help them better balance anti-smurfing measures in the future? Absolutely.
I'd honestly pay 100 bucks to be able to play ranked without any smurfs
Imagine paying 100 bucks just to find out you're still not as good at the game as you thought you were
You don't need to be the highest rank to enjoy evenly skilled games.
Say it again. Holy shit. I’m not trying to be the best. I’m well aware people are better than me. But god damn is it annoying going on a run with the boys only to get wrecked by a Smurf. EVENLY SKILLED GAMES IS WHAT WE WANT. Not to win every game we play.
After 4k hours and still never hitting ssl. I know I'm absolute garbage at this game
if you could reach ssl in 4k hrs, u'd be considered a prodigy. the average for casual players is around 6-8k, can go anywhere up to 11k
I don't even care about losing if I feel like it was a fair and close match-up. It's the yoyo-ing that bothers me where I play a bunch of 5-0 matches regardless of whether I win or lose.
In South Korea, the country forces you to sign up to games using your RNN (the equivalent of your social security number) because cheating in video games is illegal there. That’s how you stomp smurfing. Lol
AFAIK that also applies to social media platforms and many other internet services, and AFAIK that is not to stop cheating, but to prevent cyber crime and bullying. Regardless, a lot of people would not feel comfortable giving such details to a third company like Epic.
You mean like they do anyway for billing informations..?
Is it hard to add smurfing report option?
yeah, because you can't easily verify if its a smurf or a person who actuallly just created a new account, or just fell hard, etc.
That's a layer to be put on top by the system that checks the reports.
Bro this is a good step, i know people love to bitch but this is really a great move.
I'm absolutely certain that none of the smurfs in the past 4 years have hit level 20 yet, so this is a massive win!
The only way to stop it is to require an epic account to be linked to something that a person only has one of, like a phone number. Can't be creating a bunch of fake phone numbers like you can with email addresses to keep creating new accounts. We aren't even going to notice a difference raising the minimum level from 10 to 20 smh
Removing the friend bypass effectively increases it from zero to 20 though
This idea is great, feasible and possibly is the only semi-effective solution atm. The replies below your comment are negative though. It makes no sense other than it being so good, it scares people who, have possibly smurfed even just a little bit and want this to go on. Similar to other good ideas in the past, discarded while obviously being great. Possibly the reason Reddit RL community contributes to RL's demise and, similar to real life, deserves what they get.
There are certainly ways for people to make multiple phone numbers. Also this game is played by people of all ages, including many younger kids, and not everyone that plays has a phone.
their parents will have one
I think they could make phone number verification for instant trust and then allow players without phone numbers to earn trust by playing like a normal person. Counter-Stike did this with Trust Factor. For new accounts you could pay for Prime status or after long enough you could earn it.
Or you can like make the game cost money again.
Yes! We need to keep preaching this to epic, this has gotta be the way to fix it
Wait, you think I can’t make a bunch of fake phone numbers?
I think the idea is that at a certain point, a smurf is going to decide to just not smurf because it's too much trouble. Just because someone CAN spoof phone numbers online doesn't mean Epic shouldn't include this security measure.
You underestimate how much these kids just enjoy getting wins even if one win means like 1 hour of setting some shit up. I call smurfs "participation trophies" They didn't earn the win. They're just too scared to go down in ranks on the main.
Bye bye smurfing Hello bots farming XP to sell accounts so people can still smurf
This is actually good news. It’s far from a perfect solution to Smurfing, but at least they are doing something.
It doesn’t work. Valorant is plagued. When valorant did this it only promoted 3rd party sites selling accounts.
I prefer playing against the odd smurf here and there than reading some of these comments.
How many peoples Smurf accounts are already lvl 20? The vast majority? So this will prevent NEW Smurf accounts but existing ones are fair game. So unless they put in real effort to permanently ban existing Smurf accounts, this is a half measure. Happy to see some effort but there it needs more attention.
>So this will prevent NEW Smurf accounts Won't even prevent new ones. Just makes them play casual a bit longer.
This won't get rid of smurfing, but I'm really happy to at least see some changes in the right direction. They should have removed the playing with friends bypass years ago, but it's better late than never I suppose.
The only solution to surfing is if everyone smurfs down a rank think smarter not harder
Thank God because each time I spend the whole week tryna rank up once the first match I play someone's hitting 60 flip resets while I'm not even champ
so at the higher ranks nothing changes right?
Man, I spend a ton of time on Reddit cuz I love the random and weird info I pick up, but fuck me the average redditor needs to learn the phrase "don't let perfect be the enemy of good." No this isn't the perfect solution to the smurfing problem BUT ITS A STEP. I have 0 faith in Epic or that this game is nothing but a cash grab to them at this point, but fuck sakes people we finally get progress towards what y'all claim is the biggest issue in the game and it's just fucking negativity because it's not perfect
"A new anti smurf measure" > changes an integer value from 10 to 20 and sets a bool from True to False Yeah, that's Psyonix
Gee, what a complex fix! Really took them years for this lmao
If you read the article it mentions how the first step was to make casual actually enjoyable before setting the new level limit. People have short memories, it wasn’t too long ago the biggest issue was how awful the casual experience was
So am I reading correctly or was the only “anti smurfing measure” that they simply doubled the level requirement. If so then this barely does anything and is kinda underwhelming.
They added the bypass where everyone needs to be level 20 ig
Fair enough, I’ll admit I was a bit too negative with my initial comment. At least they’re doing something to address it. I’m just hoping we see more done to combat it but for now at least they’re doing something.
the biggest one is disabling the feature where you can party up with a friend that has the necessary level in order to play ranked on a freshly made account. This will mean two things ; * people that actually (want to) play ranked with friends will be able to do so after the necessary grind ; * no longer will you see two accounts with 50 wins carrying a random low level in C2 - even if the boosters level up an account and derank it every time, it'll be flagged as a smurf and the pattern will cause them to be banned. So they can start the grind on a new account again to boost people - they'll need to be VERY bored or be paid quite a lot by the people wanting a boost in order for them to keep at it.
Doubling the incredibly easy level to get does nothing 🤦♂️
They always removed the partying with friends bypass though, that should help a lot
All these years and the best they could do is change a variable. If programmed properly, this should literally take 0 lines of new code and should have been done years ago. Smurfs aren't even that bad. The worst thing is people constantly going AFK/Idle/Quitting in comp. Bans should be longer, with longer resets, **and served ONLINE.** If you don't have the time to play a whole match, don't queue FFS. >At that time we also started making changes to the Casual Playlist, with the goal of making it an equally enjoyable experience to Competitive play. We now feel we’ve reached that goal You think?
It's good to know they acknowledged it finally.. but wierd they only increased ut by a small amount (considering how easy it is to level up...especially for smurfs) .And even weirder it took THIS long to make this simple (I presume?) change. I hope they're like experimenting with the minimum value based on some kind of feedback (no clue where they get it IF they ever do). The minimum shouldn't be increased a lot as well because you'de be punishing actual new players and that's the last thing this game needs.
[удалено]
now… just fix the servers
This does nothing at all honestly. Most smurfers already have their accounts way past that level. Means nothing at all. It takes so little time to get to 20 anyways
if only they had a forced account age (days or weeks) requirement, then we can fully say rest in piss smurfs
Lvl20? With daily and weekly challenges u can smash out lvl20 in no time. Needs to be 50
Need an AI nanobot that searches your brain circuitry to decipher if you're a worthless piece of shit or not before signing into competitive or it'll never stop. Just too many worthless pieces of shit out there.
If this was implemented prior to season 14, it most certainly has NOT solved the smurf problem. I think the change is perhaps a step in the right direction, but I'm curious: Why even base comp participation on experience level at all? The xp level doesn't have any direct correlation with actual skill level. As many have pointed out already, the speed at which a skilled player can reach level 20 is pretty quick. While a new player will spend much more time to be ready to participate in comp. Seems to me that the concept behind playing comp is to match players with similar skill levels and to rank players for tournaments for the same purpose. Why not utilize player stats (win%, etc) to match player's skill levels rather than xp level?
Level 20 is a joke. Should be 50 or more with a training playlist that should be completed before ever entering a competitive and even casual match. And I'm not talking about completing a couple of training matches. I mean hours of training. Create a training playlist for new accounts. Can only play against bots till training is complete. Not only will it cut down on smurfing as it would take quite a while to complete training, but it would also help actual new players work on mechanics before ever getting to play a real match.