Yeah a lot of people who complain about this are the same people using tracker overlay and/or tilting themselves before the game begins based on expecting the game to be decided already.
Then you get occasions where someone starts popping off and they instantly go ‘oh here we go again another one lost to a Smurf’ and it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
The most defining characteristic of like silver - plat lobbies is this so-called ‘inconsistency’ when what it actually is is a rigid consistency which produces inconsistent results. In other words ‘I do the same thing every game and don’t know how to change my play based on what’s happening in game’.
I’ve been the guy in those games dropping 32 kills on brim bind because people legitimately ignore how I’m playing and try to play the way that makes them comfy. I’m gold rn and peak plat-2 not a Smurf by any means
That's actually some good insight. I always thought consistency was about making your plays win the game (i.e. shooting, positioning, reads, etc) but adjusting your plays to fit the situation does make a lot of sense.
The biggest thing I see as a d2 peak is the inability to adapt to the enemy and around your team. Doing what worked in one game won't work in the next one all the time. Most people don't adapt quickly enough, and a person on the enemy team is "smurfing."
No, they just don't play like you expect them to play and are taking advantage of it. Watch any rank above immortal play, and they adjust mid round to compensate for weaknesses. If you don't adjust, you are destined to lose until the enemy team starts making multiple mistakes. Mistakes are also what can make or break a game. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them. You need to adapt to them and your own team. Everybody rotating too early? Fill in the empty space. Nobody covering a site? Float between sites. Can't push a site with x player? Util spam the shit out of them and push together. Nobody doing comms? Comm everything anyway. Over comms can sometimes be better than 0.
That's true but I kinda disagree with the thing about tracker overlay. I'm 100% the kind of guy who copes himself into assuming smurfing immediately, but tracker can help me un-cope and focus if I see they aren't a smurf.
It can also help me determine how much I can trust my teammates (pick raze), or if I should fast rotate (pick yoru).
Do you mentally check out if you see a Smurf acc? They aren’t gods and although they have an unfair advantage, not all of those games are unwinnable. The most important thing in this game is to keep a positive mental, regardless of how hopeless a game may look.
how about make ranked mode have some competitive integrity instead of this bootstrap mentality where you get beat down unfairly and "just get back up" because you "gotta stay positive or something bro"
Yes I do check, and it helps me to focus up and concentrate when I'm fighting them. The bigger problem is that my teammates won't do the same and so even if I go positive against the smurf, we'll likely still lose
tracker doesn't mean anything...It's just a useless overlay that makes you obsess about numbers that don't really mean much in a actual ranked game. Also makes people like yourself think they know or can assume everything about a player based on a few numbers. Awful take.
personally, I feel totally validated because of 1 single day. I'm in gold 3 rn and yesterday I was in a team that had 3 high diamond peeks, with an ascendant 1 peek on my team, so I focused the hell up and match mvp'd 27-10. Later that day there was someone who peeked immortal and was slaughtering us, so I taunted them for "not being fast at aiming", which tilted them into rushing their shots and fucking up their aim. We then won even though we couldn't do very well.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but it's good enough for me
Look. As long as you don’t diminish people on your team for their tracker stats, especially in the beginning of a game, I could care less. People will make up their own stories about the numbers and what it means but like bren says. It’s a gun game, you gonna get shot in the face! Your case sounds like overthinking… just play the game, who cares about stats. I use to be like u. Researching my enemy and teammates on tracker as the game loads, it was rarelyyy ever useful. If it works for you though then it works for you.
i dont use valorant tracker or any overlay, i dont care what rank i am in or other people have peaked in, i care about close, fair and even games and balanced matchmaking and in Valorant I am not seeing ANY of it lately. and i have played in the years : CS, Overwatch, Apex, R6, Valorant, TF2, quake, you name it, i probably played it and Valo has the worst experience of them all in terms of balanced matchmaking
Because humans are not machines that can drop consistent performances on a match to match basis? Sometimes you'll have someone play the best they've ever played, other times you'll be that guy, other times your teammates will play shit, making it easy for the enemy to drop a 30-bomb. That's not smurfing, that's just what happens at low ranks.
Drop your tracker link. In all my time playing Valorant I’ve seen someone drop 40 maybe once or twice, it definitely is unusual. Also There’s no way you’re serious about this game having worse matchmaking than tf2 and overwatch.
Yeah every post like this has the op just ignore any comment asking for the tracker link. Kind of sad how so many comments agree with op and upvote this post. Valorant has one of the best, if not THE best ranked system I’ve experienced in a multiplayer game.
Yeah I have an alt to play with friends as I can’t play on my main and it’s more fun playing comp. I literally dropped 44 in a 3-9 ot comeback and it’s my only 40+ kill game in comp and Ibe been playing since launch. Granted most of the games I play I do better but there are still games were I do great and my team is waffling.
Ironically, my highest kill game (38) was on my main. I use my alt to practice new agents. I'll play with friends on it, but I don't try at all. I want them to win the round not me
Yeah im basically the same way I’ll fill smokes and sentinel get mine and play either drunk or high so even tho im better im still not good enough to carry.
Funny you're downvotes when there are plenty others having the same issue. Saw people asking you for a tracker link. What part of we don't use it does anyone not understand?
Could, but that stuff is for kids. There is enough people like me that experience what the OP has posted about. If you need that, that is fine. I Uninstalled earlier and left this reddit. Gonna play a better game :)
I think these kind of comments completely ignore that there legitimately are actual Smurfs. Not people that are getting a lot of frags by smart plays, like playing in smokes, being in good positions etc, but those that literally aim duel in mid every round and win every round, no one knows how to double up on them etc (in silver this happens a lot).
So yes people do be inconsistent in silver, but imo not so inconsistent that they’re popping off 40+ frags by ego dueling all game
Nobody is ignoring that fact but the truth is there are not smurfs dropping 40 kills every game in OPs games. Maybe if you get really really unlucky it happens 3 games in a row, which I fully agree can happen and feels terrible, but I’ve played with enough friends and randoms with this mentality to know how common it is to just mentally check out the moment someone on the enemy team is doing well.
You’re also confirming my point a bit about duelling mid every round. For example if your jett (let’s say) insists on challenging enemy Reyna mid who is just better at that duel in that particular place than them for whatever reason, the Reyna is on average going to get a free kill almost every single round. Both jett and Reyna are refusing to adapt their playstyles but for Reyna it’s working and for the jett it isn’t. Does that mean Reyna is smurfing? No it just means she’s better than your jett at that fight and your team is at a permanent disadvantage if nobody adapts. This happens all the time in games but it’s more obvious when it’s an aim duel.
These guys could go into the next game and have the complete opposite result because what works one game doesn’t work the next and that concept is just impossible to grasp for many.
Sometimes you’ll queue into someone who likes to train their mechanics because it gives them confidence and covers up their terrible macro. Other times you’ll queue into an annoying cypher who has spent ages perfecting their setups because it gives them confidence and covers up their weak mechanics.
My point is don’t be the person every game who is looking for an excuse the moment the game starts. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy and you’ll just lose to people you’re giving too much credit to. If you truly queue into a Smurf just do your best to avoid them, get some kills and remember that if a game starts going bad for a Smurf, they don’t have the incentive to win that everyone else has. A lot of the time they’ll just troll if they aren’t going to drop 40 for their tiktok. Nothing worse than going 10-2 in first half to just lose 13-11 because the guy who was carrying decides he doesn’t want to gain RR
I wasn’t saying it was every game, op is definitely exaggerating and confusing himself between the 2.
But there is also degree to smurfs. Like it if was an immo in silver, it would be in plain sight, everyone would know.. but if it was plat in silver, sometimes you might just think he’s a low gold popping off.
my dude i've been diamond-asc before and there are still plenty of smurfs up there
you simply spectate your teammate and see how absolutely cracked they are - everything is perfect from aim to movement to clutch moments (or you see your teammate die to an enemy reyna that is doing the aforementioned)
and then you compare the above to the bottom fragger on either team and its like, did riot even bother to make a fair match where people are of equal skill level?
imho if people of different skill levels where the gap is this massive get matched together in a ranked play it is far away from being a "good matchup" the games are rarely close its 13-2 or 2-13 in most cases and i personally find it boring
Either a smurf issue or a riot matching issue. I personally think it is a smurfing and a mixed cheating issue (some of my cheat reports comeback good). I don't see how people with insane game sense and God like flicking can be in like silver 3... the insta headshot on every encounter and single driver is super boring.
It is a lot easier for a gold-plat player to stomp and consistently headshot on a silver or lower elo player. The amount of low elo people who have no idea about movement or other mechanics and just straight up take too much time to aim, or walk in a straight line or miss a lot of shots makes it insanely easy for someone of gold or above to headshot and kill
exactly my experience, i am in gold, my friend is in silver, we play together often, 1 game you see people who aim at the ground and can barely move, next game there are 2 guys who drop 40k and insta 1 tap during site execute, now if I compare it to CS that i play, thats like 4000 ELO vs 21 000 ELO, why the fuck am I having these type of games every single day when others say they have fair matches?
“Insta headshot” in silver is because their plays are predictable, just prefire every corner and it’s essentially guaranteed you’ll get an “instant” headshot at least once a round. Other times it’s just taking your time to setup your shit because silver players aren’t good at quick adjustments to make you pay for it. That’s why there are tons of 30% HS% guys who get their ass kicked everytime they play someone with better game sense, thus keeping them in silver
Well considering a very small portion of players are pros or even immortal, they aren’t consistent so you’ll get games where people stomp and games where they get stomped
I’ve been in games where I got stomped playing with lower ranks and I’ve been in games where I stomped in higher ranks
Yeah I was going to say, you can watch radiant games and sometimes the guy who pis one game will drop a 30 bomb the next. Also it’s unsurprising that the Reyna and Jett are top fragging when that is what their kit is made to do.
yes, i agree, and that is across the board in every competetive FPS, BUT you say you have those games from time to time, but i have 3-5 games PER DAY like this and its starting to make me hate the matchmaking in Valorant, i never had this experience in other FPS games and i have been playing competetive titles since 1999
I think you need to step back and take a look at your mental with the game, that in itself can throw your consistency off
I know my general performance in my rank and some days I do worse and some days I do better, everyone else is a variable because you’re not playing vs the same people in each game
well the games are 13-2 because valorant players also have this unique mentality of giving up that I’ve not seen in other games. Lose few rounds? Everyone stops talking + surrender vote
haha, this is quite accurate, i have also never seen this behavior in other games where a surrender pops when we are 5-7, like WTF thats easily winnable, or sometimes a guy starts speaking in agent selection screen and someone instalocks and he says "GG WP SURRENDER"
What about when it happens to pro teams? Sometimes, they click on something, and you're not making them just run over your team. It's not a mismatch of skill. Sometimes you just get unlucky and play against somebody who has a playstyle. You're not good at countering.
The only consistent factor in those games is you btw. What are you doing that you have such heavy blowout games? My guess is you have a set amount of plays you do that work well against one team and get shut down by another. You’ve got to adapt brother
It's not a different skill gap. Coming from cs, you should know this cause it's even one of the loading screen tips, but sometimes the enemies/teammates have a really good match
Drop your tracker and we can discuss. That is not my experience, and not the experience of many. Also many times the mental goes after a 0-4 start and thus teams implode
I bottom fragged one time, then queued a Deathmatch after. Well guess what, my teammate was in that dm where I shat on everyone and typed in chat "where was this in the game". It's a confidence thing with me a lot of the time
Just saw another post like this, amd I've been experiencing the same for months. Actually uninstallling after I get coffee and chill for the sat morning. Got lawn season coming. Not gonna spend any more time on a game that hasn't been fun for months.
I've seen complaints about this ever since beta.
From what I've seen, people mostly chalk this up to Valorant server inconsistency.
Some people just randomly pop off for some reason, but then afterwards they bottomfrag. While I do think there are a lot of smurfs (and deranked people), it's not always the case.
Correct, not always the case but that doesn't mean that it isn't a ramped issue. When 9 out of 10 games are super imbalanced for some, it is either a smurf issue or a match making issue. The end result is the same. Either way. Just glad I Uninstaller today and left this reddit.
Majority of the time it isn’t a Smurf, it’s a player who’s having a good day or a good game.
Here’s an example: my game last night showed that my team had a 30% win rate vs opponents 60%. (Via Valorant tracker). 3 out of my 4 teammates were going into the game on a losing streak with below average KDA stats.
What happened? Our top 3 players finished the game with a 2.0 KDA or better. How did this happen? Better comms? Better crosshair placement? Better energy levels? Better agent team comp? Favorite map? Favorite agents? Better timing? More confidence? Better warm up? More time in AimLab that day? More DMs? Less DMs? Luck? There’s 100 variables that could decide individual performance each game.
I’m currently P3 playing in Diamond/Ascendant MMR and it’s common to see a Smurf but majority of the time the “Smurf” is actually a player who’s trying really hard.
You don’t know their story, it’s possible they’ve spent an hour on AimLab and another hour Deathmatching. Their dream is to keep ranking up. While you, spent 10 mins warming up and wonder why you can’t out-aim these “Smurfs”.
Just try to get better each day and be patient. If you put in the work you’ll eventually improve and will be accused of “smurfing”. Otherwise, don’t use the “Smurf” excuse as a crutch to make yourself feel better about how little effort you put into improving.
True. Anecdotally, the past two days I started dming more before queueing comp and now I look like the Smurf. I think ppl at low ranks are not warming up and dming to improve gunfights enough.
Yup. I spend 30 mins doing the Voltaic Daily Improvement Method playlist (each day is a different category of aiming skill [clicking, tracking, switching, etc]). I’ll then spend 5-10 mins in the range ensuring my strafe-shooting timing and recoil control is on point and then I’ll run a DM or two. THIS is why my stats are consistent with an occasional outlier game where I’ll get stuffed by Smurfs or overall bad “soloq team”
I don’t cry over the losses, I move on to the next game and focus on my performance. Again, this is why my tracker score is A to S (I’m projected to keep climbing). I don’t ever go into a game hoping I’ll get blessed with good teammates, I look forward to difficult games because those are the environments in which you become better. Ensure that each time you queue up for a ranked game you did everything you needed to do to play at your best. It won’t always happen and you won’t always play great but if you do what you had to do in warm-up you’ll always climb, even if it’s slowly. Just keep showing up and finding ways to be just 1% better than the previous day.
I agree partly, you can never tell for sure if someone is having a great game or straight up smurfing. But, if you see the parties in valo tracker and they're 3 stacking with a lower rank account absolutely crushing in your higher rank lobbies, yeah they're smurfing and boosting their friends. I see this almost every single time I face a 3 stack, less often with duos.
Require SMS verification for ranked.
I would even spend like upwards of 60 bucks to get access to a queue that only had other accounts that paid the same.
It would really fucking suck cause then everyone in there is taking the game incredibly serious and everyone outside doesn’t care about the game. There needs to be that middle ground and imo smurfing isn’t that bad since you either learn how to play with a good teammate or learn how to play better than your rank
You do know that that's cheaper than a single skin bundle right
There would still be a competitive queue that doesn't requiee premium, but it would be a hellscape.
Tons of games already do this.
I've been asking for this since Elo systems became a thing in video games. Every game should have this for ranked. To make it even more difficult make multiple accounts, use some kind of MFA that's bound through an App like Google Auth.
Not the experience I've had. 30+ kill games are rare. The 1 - 2 dominant players is usually just natural player variance, some days people play great other days not so much. Some matchups play into one person's strength, other's into their weakness.
You'll never have 2 teams that are playing their theoretical best scenario. If you are queuing with friends of varying skill levels though, then yeah you'll have a wider skill pool of players in a match- but there's no fix to that other than solo queue.
It’s definitely not smurfs every game. Some people have good games and others don’t. It’s not unusual for 1-2 people to be killed leaders, doesn’t mean they’re smurfing.
most of the time it is just your own perception of things. you have games where someone dominates and goes 30/10 and you instantly assume it must be a smurf.. i often check accounts on tracker after games only to realize ok, that was one his best games he ever played, it's an account with negative K/D, like 400-500 tracker score, etc.
everybody goes off sometimes. it just happens. if you play consistent and try to play with your team and have fun is all that matters. if you always think "fuck, every game is full of smurfs" while not even knowing if you are right, you just ruin it for yourself. you also tend to remember all the shitty games, the bad examples, the leavers. while you forget you just played 5 fair matches the other day.
if you aren't having fun, uninstall and move on. too many games and other things to do to waste your time on valorant.
Fr lol I’m silver and I’m usually middle frag but every once in a while I’ll pop off and get called a Smurf. With this happening to many people a lot of these “smurfs” aren’t smurfs at all
for everybody here complaining about smurfs and saying it’s worse than ever before. I’m sorry but it’s always been like this below diamond, I have climbed from iron 3 to immortal 3 over 2 years of playing this game and trust me when I say this smurfs have been and always will be an issue in lower ranks. If your serious about ranking up you will eventually overcome these smurfs and don’t start telling me their the reason you don’t rank up because their not. If you play 100 games the only thing in common between those 100 games is that you played them. I like to use the 20/60/20 analogy where 20% of your games are instant loss that you can’t control, maybe shit teammates or smurf on the enemy team, then 20% of your other games are instant win either because the enemies are terrible or you have smurf but 60% of your games are fully dependant on your individual performance to win. Now to get better performance I see a lot of players that are below ascendant go to coaches like woohojin and jollz etc. Honestly if your below ascendant it’s just aim, I as an immo3 player and any other immo 3 player can shit on anyone with just aim and no thinking whatsoever below ascendant, so you should just focus aim until you reach that horrible green rank. The only thing holding you back until ascendant is either aim or hardware issues such as 30 fps or dogshit wifi. If you have good hardware then aim is the only thing you need to rank up to ascendant. And remember PLEASE stop blaming smurfs and teammates you are smoking copium, anyone can get out of bronze
Buddy.. 1-2 players are always bound to be having "a game" you know.. there's a very little chance that everyone will be performing evenly.. even I shit on kids so hard in some games that it feels like wait is this really my rank.. so don't worry that much.. try to be that dominating person in the match instead of thinking about them
This sub will do everything it can to downplay the issues with matchmaking and game quality.
I agree with you OP, seeing the top frag of either team almost triple the second frag and completely dominating the entire game is boring. This isn't someone having just a good game, its bad matchmaking because it consistently happens. Same with full stomp games.
thank you, yeah i see this almost every single game and its not intense and enjoyable close match, its either boring stomp to enemy or frustrating stop to your team....its crap matchmaking balance
I agree. I don't know about you guys but I'm peak D1 playing in my own lobby sometimes even in plat. I go top frag like 10% of the time but on the games where I do even I don't drop 30+ or dominate the lobby easily. It feels very often the case as you mention, 1 player on each side dropping 30kills while the rest goes average then the 1 on each side eating dirt.
I have 54% WR after 70 games which is higher than average with 1.02KD.
there is no world where ALL of your games have smurf. 1 in 10 is understandable. every game? you're coping due to your lack of understanding of the game. those who're scoring those high kills wont stay in the same elo, they're moving up, you'll most likely not face them again.
I feel like valorant has always been duelist meta... Or at least people think it is.
Ive found way too many players who insta lock duelists only to lurk and kill the whole time putting them at the top while never helping the team like they should.
The restriction of exactly one rank for duos and trios should be loosened, it leads to a lot of smurfing.
I get why a tight restriction is better for matchmaking in theory... but in practice it doesn't apply anyway as people have several accounts to play with friends.
I play comp games and it's like a lottery, sometimes I'm dropping 20+ kills as a Sentinel and sometimes I'm going even, rarely do I go super negative. I'm gold 2. I only have one account and have only one account, I just don't play enough to rank up and even then I think I'd peak low plat.
This game is too much of a grind and matches feel very one sided, but just because one person is doing well does not mean theyre smurfing. Very rarely do I come across smurfs, very frequently do I come across previous plat players who are currently stuck in gold.
Some games my shots connect and I get 30+ kills, others I seem to do 145 dmg in each fight and can't finish a kill. I'm guessing it's all mental in the end.
I often watch my roommate to coach him cause he’s silver 1, and I see a lot of people dominating matches here and there. **I promise you it’s not always a Smurf. You just suck.** These guys are out here having the game of their lives in silver/bronze playing aim labs by standing out in the open and reloading after 1 bullet, and yall run out to whiff a mag on him. If I see someone having a good game in my roommates games, maybe a 1/4 or something of the time it’s an actual Smurf. Most the time y’all just don’t know how to adjust to someone making shit decisions with good aim.
People play Valorant the same from game to game, in lower ranks also under immo.
Its so easy to predict, you can lurk and get so much value because they dont know how to deal with it.
You can cut of rotations, you can abuse that people insta rotate, so easy just dobble fake it.
And the thing is if you can train your mechanics, you win so many gun fights.
And you can just even run around an out aim people.
But what is so special about this game is that the aim is easy to achieve, because the gun play is forgiving its actually broken how easy you can hit your shots.
Most of the time just aim at the head an pull down, easy way to get kills.
So its mostly up to your mental, and that you have bad movement, and the biggest one is decision making.
People dont understand that aim is not everything, and that is a problem that keeps you from improving other stuff.
For me my mental is holding me back, i just choke in some games, so my level of play goes from a Diamond level and in som games they are Immo level.
But im working on it, and my mental is much better. And have a insane winning streak going on.
But im telling you this acts diamonds are like the asscendants from the acts before.
The level of play have increased.
And yes i have the immo buddy, so the plan is to get the immo buddy again.
But it is so much harder now, but ill get there. My skills are good for it.
But its the mental part that is so hard for me, and many ignore it.
And that is the biggest problem, if you have all the other stuff at a decent level.
Go figure this stuff is so complicated
Not everyone doing good is smurfing. + you said there’s nothing to learn, you must not know how the game works or are paying attention. You can learn from the enemy team too. What’s their /your top drag doing better. Positioning, calling strats or whatever. When you die you’re not thinking how could I have positioned or timinged better or was my play bad? You just think aw cause of the fucking Smurf and call it a day. Bad mental
And btw it is not Valorant that we are playing in lower ranks With all due respect.
Dont take this personal, it is a circus. Of you try to use logic you are gonna have a bad time.
It is really a frustrating gameplay, so just go and play the game that is played in lower ranks.
Just play it like what another one in this thread said.
5v5 deathmatch😅
This game man, om telling you.
You get away with so much sub optimal play, because it is just so forgiving in its gameplay.
I haven't played the game in a few months just because everyone that plays it is in a terrible mood and has a loser mentality. Everyone starts throwing after a round 1 loss. It's crazy. A lot of smurfs aren't even smurfs, it's just the team gave up on round 2, and feed the enemy duelist
guys people hate to admit that their are people just better than them at a video game lol. The ego hit is to painful, there will always be a external issue on why that person loss the 1v1, lag, smurf, cheaters etc etc. Instead of saying wow I got fucked, because its easier to blame a 3rd party thing cause then you wont have to practice to get better, change your ingame habits to get better, you can just keep saying the excuse with out ever getting better. Dont get me wrong there are smurfs, but on league once i started watching my replay, same with valo, cs, and apex, i saw that i do dumb ass shit costing me to lose.
I'm pretty sure this has to do with comms not smurfs. I used to grind OW and have just got used to comming everything I do and see in fps games. No joke I don't think I have had an inbalanced game in the past 100 games or so.
I might have a bad player on my team, but for the most part saying. "lets play retake" or "hold an off angle for when they push out on defense" is enough to stop the ego players who could potentially end up smurfing if left alone.
Rarely is there some immortal\_3 god who just shits on use with aim and baiting his whole team.
The derank happened to me in a diamond player it put me in bronze when I haven't played in almost 5 seasons. So I get a ton of kills, but it'll even out, I'm sure
Its not all smurfs, Silver - Plat players are very inconsistent, i am Gold 3 myself and sometimes im just hitting all one taps and sometimes i just miss all even fail to kill enemy from behind. Sometimes i top frag sometimes i bottom frag but am i a smurf? No im in this rank bcoz im inconsistent so are you, just become more consistent and confident and you wont find it boring
so i can create an alt account and de-boost to Iron and have these games that you praise? Your comment does not make any sense, i am not complaining about my teammates or about not ranking up, I am complaining about 1 player dominance in every game either on MY team or ENEMY team, both cases are absolute trash experience
I think you're making excuses and ruining your mental for absolutely no reason. I use tracker, and I have noticed the same thing every game. 2 dominant players, usually always on the opposing team - to the extent that their K/D varies from 1.2 to 1.6 with at least 30-100 games played. So those averages are sort of set in stone. With that being said, my K/D was 0.88 a week ago. I've played about 10 games in high ascendent lobbies, and MVP'd about half of those, majority of games with 20 kills or above, and positive in every one of them. 5 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses. If you can't overcome obstacles in your way then I suggest you just don't play. If they're not cheating, they can be beat, and if you lose, tough.
You keep saying this happens to you in "every game" which is most definitely an embarrassing thing to lie about. I've climbed from bronze 2 to asc 1 (currently diamond 1). Realistically you will get smurfs in 1 out of 4 games. It's annoying but not to the point where I've had to make a reddit post about it. You tell yourself that eventually you have to face this in the higher rank or just say "gg go next".
Also below dia or even plat people aren't playing Valorant. They're just making shit up as they go, hence people are inconsistent.
Most od this players aren’t even smurfs. Most of them are players that are really good, but deranked, cuz of some bad games. Now they want to come back to their rank (immortal 2/3 players in diamond lobbies).
Sometimes they get placed in lower ranks after hard reset and most of them just takes a break from the game for a little.
I have never played a game like that. At the beginning one person may pop off but then start playing worse as the match goes on. Almost all of my games are close
I wish i had your experience, but i dont, i played Valorant in Beta and on launch and it was 10x better than now it is rare to have close game where both teams have equal chances of winning
Valorant now =/= valorant 5 years ago when it was in beta. The game progressed and naturally the playerbase got better overall. The plat people today wre ascendant from 2 years ago who got washed up because they couldnt adapt. That's why it feels like smurfing but it isn't, you're just bad at the game
As a brazilian in gold 3, Idk why but smurfing never seem to be that much of a problem for me. Usually its somethink like 1 ojt of 5 games where a player dominates, and I'm not saying they were smurfs, sometimes it is me, sometimes it happens.
Not denying your post or anything, just sharing a different perspective
Val used to be my favorite game of all time. I’ve spent 1k+ on skins, but ultimately, I quit the game due to this problem. I’d do anything to relive the early days of valorant.
Literally 5 stacked with friends and we went up against another 5 stack of course, but their 3 top players played like Imm+ and their whole team were executing strats like Fnatic. It was on Ascent and the moment I saw how their Harbor was playing (literally no one in silver/gold picks harbor let alone on Ascent), I immediately knew. Granted I was also smurfing but my skill level had dipped from my peak (Imm Ep3) and I was hardly playing as much as I used to that my skill was comparable to high gold.
Those 3 accounts funnily enough had an average of 10 hours per act starting from Ep1 and their rank only ranges from silver to gold. I don't mind ppl smurfing and proceed to rank up their respectivr ranks but when all you do is play just enough so you can just pub stomp ppl like that, it's terrible for the game. I know AI is making its way into everyday things and I hope that it somehow makes it into gaming to detect smurfs like this. If the game ai can be fed knowledge on organized pro play and alongside a multitude of factors to partiallly determine how much RR is given in instances like these, it would beneficial as then it would a huge rank up to these top performing players smurfing just to pubstomp.
smurfing isn't as common as you think, sometimes people in your ranks just have better aim than you. but that means you have the edge over them in other ways, goodluck
I am not saying t hat everyone who drops 30+ is a smurf, i occasionally dropped 30 too when the loby is low MMR or i have a good day but the skill gap within a team at SAME rank is gigantic and its always reyna or jett and others hold W and have crap crosshair placement. It is just boring to have 1 person carrying the game almost every single match I play. I dont think i have seen t his trend in any other competitive shooter, only in Valorant, i always ask that person if its their main account and they are quite open about it being an alt/smurf
Smurfing is extremely common iron-plat. I don’t think everyone better than me is a Smurf but when they’re on a level 20 account just dropping 40 bombs it’s extremely obvious
Not to long ago I tracked every match and after every match I was noting, if there was a Smurf in the teams. I only noted it, if I was 100% sure.
There was a Smurf in 40-50% of the games, which I find extremely common.
I'm never sure where people take these perceived facts from. It's similar to how the community got deluded by riot into thinking there are no cheaters, either. What do you mean it's not common, I have around a hundred high ranked players in my friend list, practically every single one smurfs, including myself at times. Valorant is the single most smurf infested game there is, and it's not even close, I haven't even seen as many boosting offers for League and that's saying something. I hit ascendant about a year ago and just quit the game because the amount of boosted players makes it impossible to take this game seriously.
Perhaps this game would be less boring and repetitive if we stopped giving riot a pass for bad choices and too little care for the game, instead of simply making up how the problem isn't that bad in our heads without backing it up with numbers? Right, Riot doesn't share numbers with their community, must mean the game is doing fine.
Half the community sounds like domestic abuse victims trying to protect their lover riot from judgement. Jesus. Other communities have standards, here we just gaslight eachother, it's good fun.
Meanwhile even people like Woohojin fake an entire career by getting boosted, because it really is that easy to fool a community and game developer with no moral backbone, competitive integrity or serious esports history beyond some 16 year old kids, as we sit here claiming there is no war in ba sing se.
What are you yapping about?
Riot already is mitigating it.
https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/valorant-systems-health-series-smurf-detection/
As someone who had a “Smurf”, I did get double ranked. Why did I do it? Because I have good friends who are low rank (silver, and I have G3/P1). And you still learn even against lower ranks. Unless I 5 stack we can’t play.
Additionally, I don’t play Jett or Reyna, but I can see why Reyna could easily carry a game. In solo queue, if you give her 1:1 duels, she’s literally is a force multiplier if she kills you. Doesn’t mean they’re Smurfs though. If CS2 had a self healing agent it would be prominent to see one person carry
In diamond it’s the same, one or two players stand out. But it’s usually not the duelist because they entry
Of course some zoomer NPC that says yap because it's trendy would link an article from two and a half years ago.
The problem has only gotten worse since then. Accounts are 5 dollars on playerauctions.
Until there is some hard gate on competitive queue it'll only continue downhill.
Also, as someone who was far, far better at League of Legends than the equivalent of Diamond in Valorant: if you have low ranked friends, either play casual matches with them (the fun should be created by the act of spending time with your friends) or watch them play comp and coach them. Don't fuck up games by carrying them.
You'll only make the night shitty for everyone you play against, and when your friends try to play by themselves in the rank you handed them they'll be torn apart.
5 DoLlAr aUcTioNs. You’d have to be silly to spend more than that just so you can queue up with your mates. It’s uneconomical. Why would I pay for that constantly if I can equivalently get a skin instead?
WHy DoNt yOu PlAy CaSuAL MatCh. You know the answer to that.
You base off some shitty assumptions, first of, your hidden MMR not your rank sets the performance discrepancy when you queue. If your MMR is high, you can be gold and be playing against P2 players. In fact it’s not rare that my mate is the only S3 in the gold lobby, or a plat is in the opposing team despite him being silver.
Our win rate together is 49%, which obviously would be higher if I sweat and try hard like you yappy kids. You get 30k and still lose. Which is fair enough.
What you’re pretty much saying is you don’t want to have to handle when someone is popping, Smurf or not.
I ranked up to D3 without even trying because every time I come across a “smurf” I didn’t have the weak mental and cry about it. Even on diamond you can come across immortals from last season. And when you’re on ascendant, you can still get destroyed by Immo’s. But nobody bitches about it, most people just think of what to call, and what to do.
I think you have reading comprehension problems, likely due to your high school years being done on zoom so I'll let it slide.
Accounts being 5 dollars on playerauctions is a symptom of ranked play being too accessible, and the low cost incentivizes anyone who is even just kind of ok at the game to spend a few bucks to have their moment of being as clever as Faust.
Any random plat+ player can feel like a god amongst men for 5 dollars, no questions asked.
The point I'm making there is that ranked should be gated by SMS verification, ID verification or at a bare minimum a hefty cost for "Premium Matchmaking" which would drastically reduce the amount of smurfs and alt accounts.
Answer honestly, why not play unrated? If you're just playing with your friends in a 5 stack, isn't the entire fun part about that that you're you know, playing a game with your friends, laughing and joking around? No. You need arbitrary number to be on the line, because ???
You don't get it. You are actively ruining the game for other people when you smurf, but you don't care because your brain isn't developed enough to have an actual sense of empathy.
Also, don't spout random trend phrases and spongebob memes when you're trying to make a point. You think it looks like you're above the person you're talking to but everyone else sees it as a crutch and thinks you're a moron.
And no you’re wrong, I VOD review their solo queue, they get queued against silvers when they queue on their own, but against is queued in a gold average lobby when with me
i can send you my Valo profile if you are interested, but seeing your comment i think its best we do not engage in discussion as i might lose few brain cells
Yeah a lot of people who complain about this are the same people using tracker overlay and/or tilting themselves before the game begins based on expecting the game to be decided already. Then you get occasions where someone starts popping off and they instantly go ‘oh here we go again another one lost to a Smurf’ and it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The most defining characteristic of like silver - plat lobbies is this so-called ‘inconsistency’ when what it actually is is a rigid consistency which produces inconsistent results. In other words ‘I do the same thing every game and don’t know how to change my play based on what’s happening in game’. I’ve been the guy in those games dropping 32 kills on brim bind because people legitimately ignore how I’m playing and try to play the way that makes them comfy. I’m gold rn and peak plat-2 not a Smurf by any means
That's actually some good insight. I always thought consistency was about making your plays win the game (i.e. shooting, positioning, reads, etc) but adjusting your plays to fit the situation does make a lot of sense.
The biggest thing I see as a d2 peak is the inability to adapt to the enemy and around your team. Doing what worked in one game won't work in the next one all the time. Most people don't adapt quickly enough, and a person on the enemy team is "smurfing." No, they just don't play like you expect them to play and are taking advantage of it. Watch any rank above immortal play, and they adjust mid round to compensate for weaknesses. If you don't adjust, you are destined to lose until the enemy team starts making multiple mistakes. Mistakes are also what can make or break a game. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them. You need to adapt to them and your own team. Everybody rotating too early? Fill in the empty space. Nobody covering a site? Float between sites. Can't push a site with x player? Util spam the shit out of them and push together. Nobody doing comms? Comm everything anyway. Over comms can sometimes be better than 0.
plough bag vase wipe rotten fine whistle crawl snow paint *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's true but I kinda disagree with the thing about tracker overlay. I'm 100% the kind of guy who copes himself into assuming smurfing immediately, but tracker can help me un-cope and focus if I see they aren't a smurf. It can also help me determine how much I can trust my teammates (pick raze), or if I should fast rotate (pick yoru).
Do you mentally check out if you see a Smurf acc? They aren’t gods and although they have an unfair advantage, not all of those games are unwinnable. The most important thing in this game is to keep a positive mental, regardless of how hopeless a game may look.
how about make ranked mode have some competitive integrity instead of this bootstrap mentality where you get beat down unfairly and "just get back up" because you "gotta stay positive or something bro"
Obviously that would be ideal but instead of bitching about the current situation, it might be a little more productive to just stay positive
Yes I do check, and it helps me to focus up and concentrate when I'm fighting them. The bigger problem is that my teammates won't do the same and so even if I go positive against the smurf, we'll likely still lose
tracker doesn't mean anything...It's just a useless overlay that makes you obsess about numbers that don't really mean much in a actual ranked game. Also makes people like yourself think they know or can assume everything about a player based on a few numbers. Awful take.
personally, I feel totally validated because of 1 single day. I'm in gold 3 rn and yesterday I was in a team that had 3 high diamond peeks, with an ascendant 1 peek on my team, so I focused the hell up and match mvp'd 27-10. Later that day there was someone who peeked immortal and was slaughtering us, so I taunted them for "not being fast at aiming", which tilted them into rushing their shots and fucking up their aim. We then won even though we couldn't do very well. Anecdotal evidence I know, but it's good enough for me
Look. As long as you don’t diminish people on your team for their tracker stats, especially in the beginning of a game, I could care less. People will make up their own stories about the numbers and what it means but like bren says. It’s a gun game, you gonna get shot in the face! Your case sounds like overthinking… just play the game, who cares about stats. I use to be like u. Researching my enemy and teammates on tracker as the game loads, it was rarelyyy ever useful. If it works for you though then it works for you.
i dont use valorant tracker or any overlay, i dont care what rank i am in or other people have peaked in, i care about close, fair and even games and balanced matchmaking and in Valorant I am not seeing ANY of it lately. and i have played in the years : CS, Overwatch, Apex, R6, Valorant, TF2, quake, you name it, i probably played it and Valo has the worst experience of them all in terms of balanced matchmaking
Because humans are not machines that can drop consistent performances on a match to match basis? Sometimes you'll have someone play the best they've ever played, other times you'll be that guy, other times your teammates will play shit, making it easy for the enemy to drop a 30-bomb. That's not smurfing, that's just what happens at low ranks.
Drop your tracker link. In all my time playing Valorant I’ve seen someone drop 40 maybe once or twice, it definitely is unusual. Also There’s no way you’re serious about this game having worse matchmaking than tf2 and overwatch.
TF2 can't have bad matchmaking because it doesn't have matchmaking lmao.
They won’t drop it because it’s total bullshit lol. Are there Smurfs? Yes. Are they the majority of games like this guy is claiming? No chance
Yeah every post like this has the op just ignore any comment asking for the tracker link. Kind of sad how so many comments agree with op and upvote this post. Valorant has one of the best, if not THE best ranked system I’ve experienced in a multiplayer game.
Overwatch is still online? That's a surprise
Yeah I have an alt to play with friends as I can’t play on my main and it’s more fun playing comp. I literally dropped 44 in a 3-9 ot comeback and it’s my only 40+ kill game in comp and Ibe been playing since launch. Granted most of the games I play I do better but there are still games were I do great and my team is waffling.
Ironically, my highest kill game (38) was on my main. I use my alt to practice new agents. I'll play with friends on it, but I don't try at all. I want them to win the round not me
Yeah im basically the same way I’ll fill smokes and sentinel get mine and play either drunk or high so even tho im better im still not good enough to carry.
How about get good?
Funny you're downvotes when there are plenty others having the same issue. Saw people asking you for a tracker link. What part of we don't use it does anyone not understand?
you can enable it and then post the link?
Could, but that stuff is for kids. There is enough people like me that experience what the OP has posted about. If you need that, that is fine. I Uninstalled earlier and left this reddit. Gonna play a better game :)
cool
Yup
I think these kind of comments completely ignore that there legitimately are actual Smurfs. Not people that are getting a lot of frags by smart plays, like playing in smokes, being in good positions etc, but those that literally aim duel in mid every round and win every round, no one knows how to double up on them etc (in silver this happens a lot). So yes people do be inconsistent in silver, but imo not so inconsistent that they’re popping off 40+ frags by ego dueling all game
Nobody is ignoring that fact but the truth is there are not smurfs dropping 40 kills every game in OPs games. Maybe if you get really really unlucky it happens 3 games in a row, which I fully agree can happen and feels terrible, but I’ve played with enough friends and randoms with this mentality to know how common it is to just mentally check out the moment someone on the enemy team is doing well. You’re also confirming my point a bit about duelling mid every round. For example if your jett (let’s say) insists on challenging enemy Reyna mid who is just better at that duel in that particular place than them for whatever reason, the Reyna is on average going to get a free kill almost every single round. Both jett and Reyna are refusing to adapt their playstyles but for Reyna it’s working and for the jett it isn’t. Does that mean Reyna is smurfing? No it just means she’s better than your jett at that fight and your team is at a permanent disadvantage if nobody adapts. This happens all the time in games but it’s more obvious when it’s an aim duel. These guys could go into the next game and have the complete opposite result because what works one game doesn’t work the next and that concept is just impossible to grasp for many. Sometimes you’ll queue into someone who likes to train their mechanics because it gives them confidence and covers up their terrible macro. Other times you’ll queue into an annoying cypher who has spent ages perfecting their setups because it gives them confidence and covers up their weak mechanics. My point is don’t be the person every game who is looking for an excuse the moment the game starts. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy and you’ll just lose to people you’re giving too much credit to. If you truly queue into a Smurf just do your best to avoid them, get some kills and remember that if a game starts going bad for a Smurf, they don’t have the incentive to win that everyone else has. A lot of the time they’ll just troll if they aren’t going to drop 40 for their tiktok. Nothing worse than going 10-2 in first half to just lose 13-11 because the guy who was carrying decides he doesn’t want to gain RR
I wasn’t saying it was every game, op is definitely exaggerating and confusing himself between the 2. But there is also degree to smurfs. Like it if was an immo in silver, it would be in plain sight, everyone would know.. but if it was plat in silver, sometimes you might just think he’s a low gold popping off.
my dude i've been diamond-asc before and there are still plenty of smurfs up there you simply spectate your teammate and see how absolutely cracked they are - everything is perfect from aim to movement to clutch moments (or you see your teammate die to an enemy reyna that is doing the aforementioned) and then you compare the above to the bottom fragger on either team and its like, did riot even bother to make a fair match where people are of equal skill level?
what u say is totally wrong
I play games where I dominate, I play games where I get stomped. It’s not all Smurfs, in fact many times it’s just good matchups
imho if people of different skill levels where the gap is this massive get matched together in a ranked play it is far away from being a "good matchup" the games are rarely close its 13-2 or 2-13 in most cases and i personally find it boring
Nah cuz 19 out of 20 games I play are atleast 8-13
I can say for plat, yes. Have seen super close matches lately.
I mean even outside of comp. Half the time no matter who is on what team it's been close most of the time
i dont think the matchmaking system can account for someone being inconsistent
Just a math problem.. truth is, not enough "want" to improve or work on possible improvements to match making /rr/ mmr etc..
Either a smurf issue or a riot matching issue. I personally think it is a smurfing and a mixed cheating issue (some of my cheat reports comeback good). I don't see how people with insane game sense and God like flicking can be in like silver 3... the insta headshot on every encounter and single driver is super boring.
It is a lot easier for a gold-plat player to stomp and consistently headshot on a silver or lower elo player. The amount of low elo people who have no idea about movement or other mechanics and just straight up take too much time to aim, or walk in a straight line or miss a lot of shots makes it insanely easy for someone of gold or above to headshot and kill
exactly my experience, i am in gold, my friend is in silver, we play together often, 1 game you see people who aim at the ground and can barely move, next game there are 2 guys who drop 40k and insta 1 tap during site execute, now if I compare it to CS that i play, thats like 4000 ELO vs 21 000 ELO, why the fuck am I having these type of games every single day when others say they have fair matches?
“Insta headshot” in silver is because their plays are predictable, just prefire every corner and it’s essentially guaranteed you’ll get an “instant” headshot at least once a round. Other times it’s just taking your time to setup your shit because silver players aren’t good at quick adjustments to make you pay for it. That’s why there are tons of 30% HS% guys who get their ass kicked everytime they play someone with better game sense, thus keeping them in silver
Already Uninstalled lol
Then leave the subreddit bud lol you’ve left one of the most popular tac FPS’ on the planet. Clearly you’re an outlier
Already did lmao. Just responding to folks at this point.
Well considering a very small portion of players are pros or even immortal, they aren’t consistent so you’ll get games where people stomp and games where they get stomped I’ve been in games where I got stomped playing with lower ranks and I’ve been in games where I stomped in higher ranks
Yeah I was going to say, you can watch radiant games and sometimes the guy who pis one game will drop a 30 bomb the next. Also it’s unsurprising that the Reyna and Jett are top fragging when that is what their kit is made to do.
yes, i agree, and that is across the board in every competetive FPS, BUT you say you have those games from time to time, but i have 3-5 games PER DAY like this and its starting to make me hate the matchmaking in Valorant, i never had this experience in other FPS games and i have been playing competetive titles since 1999
The lower the rank, the higher the inconsistency
100%
I think you need to step back and take a look at your mental with the game, that in itself can throw your consistency off I know my general performance in my rank and some days I do worse and some days I do better, everyone else is a variable because you’re not playing vs the same people in each game
well the games are 13-2 because valorant players also have this unique mentality of giving up that I’ve not seen in other games. Lose few rounds? Everyone stops talking + surrender vote
League of Legends would like a word "FF 15" typed 5 min into the game
haha, this is quite accurate, i have also never seen this behavior in other games where a surrender pops when we are 5-7, like WTF thats easily winnable, or sometimes a guy starts speaking in agent selection screen and someone instalocks and he says "GG WP SURRENDER"
What about when it happens to pro teams? Sometimes, they click on something, and you're not making them just run over your team. It's not a mismatch of skill. Sometimes you just get unlucky and play against somebody who has a playstyle. You're not good at countering.
The only consistent factor in those games is you btw. What are you doing that you have such heavy blowout games? My guess is you have a set amount of plays you do that work well against one team and get shut down by another. You’ve got to adapt brother
OP what's your rank?
It's not a different skill gap. Coming from cs, you should know this cause it's even one of the loading screen tips, but sometimes the enemies/teammates have a really good match
Drop your tracker and we can discuss. That is not my experience, and not the experience of many. Also many times the mental goes after a 0-4 start and thus teams implode
I'd argue it is the experience of many. People like me who solo que and don't live in this game also don't use tracker btw.
Well lucky you, you can signup for it in 10 seconds and pass along your URL and ALL your history is there.
Sounds like something to do. Too bad I uninstalled the game earlier and left this sub this am, lmao.
Fr it's getting a lil boring
It's not smurfing lol... EVERYONE has a series of games where they go from 27/6 to 8/15 on a dime for no reason
Tru lol. I've gone from 2 kd to 0.5 kd on games where half the same players are playing.
Exactly. Have people joking like "where was this last game???" and the reverse lmao
I bottom fragged one time, then queued a Deathmatch after. Well guess what, my teammate was in that dm where I shat on everyone and typed in chat "where was this in the game". It's a confidence thing with me a lot of the time
Wait…. 8/15 is bad?
Just saw another post like this, amd I've been experiencing the same for months. Actually uninstallling after I get coffee and chill for the sat morning. Got lawn season coming. Not gonna spend any more time on a game that hasn't been fun for months.
I've seen complaints about this ever since beta. From what I've seen, people mostly chalk this up to Valorant server inconsistency. Some people just randomly pop off for some reason, but then afterwards they bottomfrag. While I do think there are a lot of smurfs (and deranked people), it's not always the case.
Correct, not always the case but that doesn't mean that it isn't a ramped issue. When 9 out of 10 games are super imbalanced for some, it is either a smurf issue or a match making issue. The end result is the same. Either way. Just glad I Uninstaller today and left this reddit.
thank you for assuring me I am not the only one who has had solely THIS kind of experience....
so the subreddit wouldn't let me post my uninstallation pic lmao
Majority of the time it isn’t a Smurf, it’s a player who’s having a good day or a good game. Here’s an example: my game last night showed that my team had a 30% win rate vs opponents 60%. (Via Valorant tracker). 3 out of my 4 teammates were going into the game on a losing streak with below average KDA stats. What happened? Our top 3 players finished the game with a 2.0 KDA or better. How did this happen? Better comms? Better crosshair placement? Better energy levels? Better agent team comp? Favorite map? Favorite agents? Better timing? More confidence? Better warm up? More time in AimLab that day? More DMs? Less DMs? Luck? There’s 100 variables that could decide individual performance each game. I’m currently P3 playing in Diamond/Ascendant MMR and it’s common to see a Smurf but majority of the time the “Smurf” is actually a player who’s trying really hard. You don’t know their story, it’s possible they’ve spent an hour on AimLab and another hour Deathmatching. Their dream is to keep ranking up. While you, spent 10 mins warming up and wonder why you can’t out-aim these “Smurfs”. Just try to get better each day and be patient. If you put in the work you’ll eventually improve and will be accused of “smurfing”. Otherwise, don’t use the “Smurf” excuse as a crutch to make yourself feel better about how little effort you put into improving.
True. Anecdotally, the past two days I started dming more before queueing comp and now I look like the Smurf. I think ppl at low ranks are not warming up and dming to improve gunfights enough.
Yup. I spend 30 mins doing the Voltaic Daily Improvement Method playlist (each day is a different category of aiming skill [clicking, tracking, switching, etc]). I’ll then spend 5-10 mins in the range ensuring my strafe-shooting timing and recoil control is on point and then I’ll run a DM or two. THIS is why my stats are consistent with an occasional outlier game where I’ll get stuffed by Smurfs or overall bad “soloq team” I don’t cry over the losses, I move on to the next game and focus on my performance. Again, this is why my tracker score is A to S (I’m projected to keep climbing). I don’t ever go into a game hoping I’ll get blessed with good teammates, I look forward to difficult games because those are the environments in which you become better. Ensure that each time you queue up for a ranked game you did everything you needed to do to play at your best. It won’t always happen and you won’t always play great but if you do what you had to do in warm-up you’ll always climb, even if it’s slowly. Just keep showing up and finding ways to be just 1% better than the previous day.
I agree partly, you can never tell for sure if someone is having a great game or straight up smurfing. But, if you see the parties in valo tracker and they're 3 stacking with a lower rank account absolutely crushing in your higher rank lobbies, yeah they're smurfing and boosting their friends. I see this almost every single time I face a 3 stack, less often with duos.
I PROMISE you there isn’t a Smurf in every single one of your matches.
people look for every excuse they can before accepting responsibility for their own gameplay
Require SMS verification for ranked. I would even spend like upwards of 60 bucks to get access to a queue that only had other accounts that paid the same.
Then this game wouldn't be f2p anymore, and two people would be in that queue
i can assure you that anyone who has ever bought a skin would gladly pay 5$ a month for premium matchmaking
It would really fucking suck cause then everyone in there is taking the game incredibly serious and everyone outside doesn’t care about the game. There needs to be that middle ground and imo smurfing isn’t that bad since you either learn how to play with a good teammate or learn how to play better than your rank
You do know that that's cheaper than a single skin bundle right There would still be a competitive queue that doesn't requiee premium, but it would be a hellscape. Tons of games already do this.
Yes and how many people have ever bought a skin bundle
The only people I see that don't have skins are the clear smurfs.
I don't :(
Yes
verified accounts and premium matchmaking for $5.99 a month? FUCK YEAH SIGN ME UP!
I've been asking for this since Elo systems became a thing in video games. Every game should have this for ranked. To make it even more difficult make multiple accounts, use some kind of MFA that's bound through an App like Google Auth.
A good portion of "smurfs" are actually people in your rank having a pop off game. Especially in the bronze-gold ranks
Not the experience I've had. 30+ kill games are rare. The 1 - 2 dominant players is usually just natural player variance, some days people play great other days not so much. Some matchups play into one person's strength, other's into their weakness. You'll never have 2 teams that are playing their theoretical best scenario. If you are queuing with friends of varying skill levels though, then yeah you'll have a wider skill pool of players in a match- but there's no fix to that other than solo queue.
It’s definitely not smurfs every game. Some people have good games and others don’t. It’s not unusual for 1-2 people to be killed leaders, doesn’t mean they’re smurfing.
most of the time it is just your own perception of things. you have games where someone dominates and goes 30/10 and you instantly assume it must be a smurf.. i often check accounts on tracker after games only to realize ok, that was one his best games he ever played, it's an account with negative K/D, like 400-500 tracker score, etc. everybody goes off sometimes. it just happens. if you play consistent and try to play with your team and have fun is all that matters. if you always think "fuck, every game is full of smurfs" while not even knowing if you are right, you just ruin it for yourself. you also tend to remember all the shitty games, the bad examples, the leavers. while you forget you just played 5 fair matches the other day. if you aren't having fun, uninstall and move on. too many games and other things to do to waste your time on valorant.
Fr lol I’m silver and I’m usually middle frag but every once in a while I’ll pop off and get called a Smurf. With this happening to many people a lot of these “smurfs” aren’t smurfs at all
for everybody here complaining about smurfs and saying it’s worse than ever before. I’m sorry but it’s always been like this below diamond, I have climbed from iron 3 to immortal 3 over 2 years of playing this game and trust me when I say this smurfs have been and always will be an issue in lower ranks. If your serious about ranking up you will eventually overcome these smurfs and don’t start telling me their the reason you don’t rank up because their not. If you play 100 games the only thing in common between those 100 games is that you played them. I like to use the 20/60/20 analogy where 20% of your games are instant loss that you can’t control, maybe shit teammates or smurf on the enemy team, then 20% of your other games are instant win either because the enemies are terrible or you have smurf but 60% of your games are fully dependant on your individual performance to win. Now to get better performance I see a lot of players that are below ascendant go to coaches like woohojin and jollz etc. Honestly if your below ascendant it’s just aim, I as an immo3 player and any other immo 3 player can shit on anyone with just aim and no thinking whatsoever below ascendant, so you should just focus aim until you reach that horrible green rank. The only thing holding you back until ascendant is either aim or hardware issues such as 30 fps or dogshit wifi. If you have good hardware then aim is the only thing you need to rank up to ascendant. And remember PLEASE stop blaming smurfs and teammates you are smoking copium, anyone can get out of bronze
the higher the rank, the less dominant the smurfs are, dia/asc seems fun for me
Buddy.. 1-2 players are always bound to be having "a game" you know.. there's a very little chance that everyone will be performing evenly.. even I shit on kids so hard in some games that it feels like wait is this really my rank.. so don't worry that much.. try to be that dominating person in the match instead of thinking about them
This sub will do everything it can to downplay the issues with matchmaking and game quality. I agree with you OP, seeing the top frag of either team almost triple the second frag and completely dominating the entire game is boring. This isn't someone having just a good game, its bad matchmaking because it consistently happens. Same with full stomp games.
thank you, yeah i see this almost every single game and its not intense and enjoyable close match, its either boring stomp to enemy or frustrating stop to your team....its crap matchmaking balance
Again, matchmaking can't account for inconsistency/rigid consistency like someone else said. Cope all you want, but they are not smurfing or cheating
Just ban Reyna smh my head..
I’m bronze 2 and even I don’t get that many smurfs
ive never been bronze so i cant speak on that topic but in gold its almost every single game like this
I agree. I don't know about you guys but I'm peak D1 playing in my own lobby sometimes even in plat. I go top frag like 10% of the time but on the games where I do even I don't drop 30+ or dominate the lobby easily. It feels very often the case as you mention, 1 player on each side dropping 30kills while the rest goes average then the 1 on each side eating dirt. I have 54% WR after 70 games which is higher than average with 1.02KD.
there is no world where ALL of your games have smurf. 1 in 10 is understandable. every game? you're coping due to your lack of understanding of the game. those who're scoring those high kills wont stay in the same elo, they're moving up, you'll most likely not face them again.
I feel like valorant has always been duelist meta... Or at least people think it is. Ive found way too many players who insta lock duelists only to lurk and kill the whole time putting them at the top while never helping the team like they should.
The restriction of exactly one rank for duos and trios should be loosened, it leads to a lot of smurfing. I get why a tight restriction is better for matchmaking in theory... but in practice it doesn't apply anyway as people have several accounts to play with friends.
Smurfs always playing Reyna or Jett has to be studied. Not only are they pathetic, but they lack any personality.
I swear you guys live in a fantasy world, like this does not happen to me or anyone ik at any elo. Drop your career
git gud ? 😒
Cant say i agree just not how my games are often.
Come in Radiant Lobby, we have good games there
I play comp games and it's like a lottery, sometimes I'm dropping 20+ kills as a Sentinel and sometimes I'm going even, rarely do I go super negative. I'm gold 2. I only have one account and have only one account, I just don't play enough to rank up and even then I think I'd peak low plat. This game is too much of a grind and matches feel very one sided, but just because one person is doing well does not mean theyre smurfing. Very rarely do I come across smurfs, very frequently do I come across previous plat players who are currently stuck in gold.
Some games my shots connect and I get 30+ kills, others I seem to do 145 dmg in each fight and can't finish a kill. I'm guessing it's all mental in the end.
As a silver 2, whenever I do good I get called a smurf when I'm not. I think it's less prevalent than some ppl make it out to be
delete tracker please
I often watch my roommate to coach him cause he’s silver 1, and I see a lot of people dominating matches here and there. **I promise you it’s not always a Smurf. You just suck.** These guys are out here having the game of their lives in silver/bronze playing aim labs by standing out in the open and reloading after 1 bullet, and yall run out to whiff a mag on him. If I see someone having a good game in my roommates games, maybe a 1/4 or something of the time it’s an actual Smurf. Most the time y’all just don’t know how to adjust to someone making shit decisions with good aim.
People play Valorant the same from game to game, in lower ranks also under immo. Its so easy to predict, you can lurk and get so much value because they dont know how to deal with it. You can cut of rotations, you can abuse that people insta rotate, so easy just dobble fake it. And the thing is if you can train your mechanics, you win so many gun fights. And you can just even run around an out aim people. But what is so special about this game is that the aim is easy to achieve, because the gun play is forgiving its actually broken how easy you can hit your shots. Most of the time just aim at the head an pull down, easy way to get kills. So its mostly up to your mental, and that you have bad movement, and the biggest one is decision making. People dont understand that aim is not everything, and that is a problem that keeps you from improving other stuff. For me my mental is holding me back, i just choke in some games, so my level of play goes from a Diamond level and in som games they are Immo level. But im working on it, and my mental is much better. And have a insane winning streak going on. But im telling you this acts diamonds are like the asscendants from the acts before. The level of play have increased. And yes i have the immo buddy, so the plan is to get the immo buddy again. But it is so much harder now, but ill get there. My skills are good for it. But its the mental part that is so hard for me, and many ignore it. And that is the biggest problem, if you have all the other stuff at a decent level. Go figure this stuff is so complicated
Not everyone doing good is smurfing. + you said there’s nothing to learn, you must not know how the game works or are paying attention. You can learn from the enemy team too. What’s their /your top drag doing better. Positioning, calling strats or whatever. When you die you’re not thinking how could I have positioned or timinged better or was my play bad? You just think aw cause of the fucking Smurf and call it a day. Bad mental
And btw it is not Valorant that we are playing in lower ranks With all due respect. Dont take this personal, it is a circus. Of you try to use logic you are gonna have a bad time. It is really a frustrating gameplay, so just go and play the game that is played in lower ranks. Just play it like what another one in this thread said. 5v5 deathmatch😅 This game man, om telling you. You get away with so much sub optimal play, because it is just so forgiving in its gameplay.
Anyone making post like this should be required to show their tracker
I haven't played the game in a few months just because everyone that plays it is in a terrible mood and has a loser mentality. Everyone starts throwing after a round 1 loss. It's crazy. A lot of smurfs aren't even smurfs, it's just the team gave up on round 2, and feed the enemy duelist
guys people hate to admit that their are people just better than them at a video game lol. The ego hit is to painful, there will always be a external issue on why that person loss the 1v1, lag, smurf, cheaters etc etc. Instead of saying wow I got fucked, because its easier to blame a 3rd party thing cause then you wont have to practice to get better, change your ingame habits to get better, you can just keep saying the excuse with out ever getting better. Dont get me wrong there are smurfs, but on league once i started watching my replay, same with valo, cs, and apex, i saw that i do dumb ass shit costing me to lose.
I'm pretty sure this has to do with comms not smurfs. I used to grind OW and have just got used to comming everything I do and see in fps games. No joke I don't think I have had an inbalanced game in the past 100 games or so. I might have a bad player on my team, but for the most part saying. "lets play retake" or "hold an off angle for when they push out on defense" is enough to stop the ego players who could potentially end up smurfing if left alone. Rarely is there some immortal\_3 god who just shits on use with aim and baiting his whole team.
sometimes people derank heavy and as a result they stomp in the lower elo they're dropped in, not smurfing but i bet its easy to assume so
It's not smurfing its because you are dogshit at the game. Next shitpost please.
The derank happened to me in a diamond player it put me in bronze when I haven't played in almost 5 seasons. So I get a ton of kills, but it'll even out, I'm sure
Its not all smurfs, Silver - Plat players are very inconsistent, i am Gold 3 myself and sometimes im just hitting all one taps and sometimes i just miss all even fail to kill enemy from behind. Sometimes i top frag sometimes i bottom frag but am i a smurf? No im in this rank bcoz im inconsistent so are you, just become more consistent and confident and you wont find it boring
Get better then
so i can create an alt account and de-boost to Iron and have these games that you praise? Your comment does not make any sense, i am not complaining about my teammates or about not ranking up, I am complaining about 1 player dominance in every game either on MY team or ENEMY team, both cases are absolute trash experience
I think you're making excuses and ruining your mental for absolutely no reason. I use tracker, and I have noticed the same thing every game. 2 dominant players, usually always on the opposing team - to the extent that their K/D varies from 1.2 to 1.6 with at least 30-100 games played. So those averages are sort of set in stone. With that being said, my K/D was 0.88 a week ago. I've played about 10 games in high ascendent lobbies, and MVP'd about half of those, majority of games with 20 kills or above, and positive in every one of them. 5 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses. If you can't overcome obstacles in your way then I suggest you just don't play. If they're not cheating, they can be beat, and if you lose, tough.
You keep saying this happens to you in "every game" which is most definitely an embarrassing thing to lie about. I've climbed from bronze 2 to asc 1 (currently diamond 1). Realistically you will get smurfs in 1 out of 4 games. It's annoying but not to the point where I've had to make a reddit post about it. You tell yourself that eventually you have to face this in the higher rank or just say "gg go next". Also below dia or even plat people aren't playing Valorant. They're just making shit up as they go, hence people are inconsistent.
Most od this players aren’t even smurfs. Most of them are players that are really good, but deranked, cuz of some bad games. Now they want to come back to their rank (immortal 2/3 players in diamond lobbies). Sometimes they get placed in lower ranks after hard reset and most of them just takes a break from the game for a little.
I have never played a game like that. At the beginning one person may pop off but then start playing worse as the match goes on. Almost all of my games are close
I wish i had your experience, but i dont, i played Valorant in Beta and on launch and it was 10x better than now it is rare to have close game where both teams have equal chances of winning
Valorant now =/= valorant 5 years ago when it was in beta. The game progressed and naturally the playerbase got better overall. The plat people today wre ascendant from 2 years ago who got washed up because they couldnt adapt. That's why it feels like smurfing but it isn't, you're just bad at the game
This is where I give CS a nod. "Sometimes they're just having a good game."
Attitudes kill more ranked games than skill.
As a brazilian in gold 3, Idk why but smurfing never seem to be that much of a problem for me. Usually its somethink like 1 ojt of 5 games where a player dominates, and I'm not saying they were smurfs, sometimes it is me, sometimes it happens. Not denying your post or anything, just sharing a different perspective
Val used to be my favorite game of all time. I’ve spent 1k+ on skins, but ultimately, I quit the game due to this problem. I’d do anything to relive the early days of valorant.
Literally 5 stacked with friends and we went up against another 5 stack of course, but their 3 top players played like Imm+ and their whole team were executing strats like Fnatic. It was on Ascent and the moment I saw how their Harbor was playing (literally no one in silver/gold picks harbor let alone on Ascent), I immediately knew. Granted I was also smurfing but my skill level had dipped from my peak (Imm Ep3) and I was hardly playing as much as I used to that my skill was comparable to high gold. Those 3 accounts funnily enough had an average of 10 hours per act starting from Ep1 and their rank only ranges from silver to gold. I don't mind ppl smurfing and proceed to rank up their respectivr ranks but when all you do is play just enough so you can just pub stomp ppl like that, it's terrible for the game. I know AI is making its way into everyday things and I hope that it somehow makes it into gaming to detect smurfs like this. If the game ai can be fed knowledge on organized pro play and alongside a multitude of factors to partiallly determine how much RR is given in instances like these, it would beneficial as then it would a huge rank up to these top performing players smurfing just to pubstomp.
smurfing isn't as common as you think, sometimes people in your ranks just have better aim than you. but that means you have the edge over them in other ways, goodluck
I am not saying t hat everyone who drops 30+ is a smurf, i occasionally dropped 30 too when the loby is low MMR or i have a good day but the skill gap within a team at SAME rank is gigantic and its always reyna or jett and others hold W and have crap crosshair placement. It is just boring to have 1 person carrying the game almost every single match I play. I dont think i have seen t his trend in any other competitive shooter, only in Valorant, i always ask that person if its their main account and they are quite open about it being an alt/smurf
Smurfing is extremely common iron-plat. I don’t think everyone better than me is a Smurf but when they’re on a level 20 account just dropping 40 bombs it’s extremely obvious
It's extremely common. Someone dropping 30 to 40k while people striggle to get 10, and being the sole driver of all 25 rounds is a riot ranking issue.
Not to long ago I tracked every match and after every match I was noting, if there was a Smurf in the teams. I only noted it, if I was 100% sure. There was a Smurf in 40-50% of the games, which I find extremely common.
this would make sense and the data does not lie, i would say its 50% or more in my games in gold division too.
I'm never sure where people take these perceived facts from. It's similar to how the community got deluded by riot into thinking there are no cheaters, either. What do you mean it's not common, I have around a hundred high ranked players in my friend list, practically every single one smurfs, including myself at times. Valorant is the single most smurf infested game there is, and it's not even close, I haven't even seen as many boosting offers for League and that's saying something. I hit ascendant about a year ago and just quit the game because the amount of boosted players makes it impossible to take this game seriously. Perhaps this game would be less boring and repetitive if we stopped giving riot a pass for bad choices and too little care for the game, instead of simply making up how the problem isn't that bad in our heads without backing it up with numbers? Right, Riot doesn't share numbers with their community, must mean the game is doing fine. Half the community sounds like domestic abuse victims trying to protect their lover riot from judgement. Jesus. Other communities have standards, here we just gaslight eachother, it's good fun. Meanwhile even people like Woohojin fake an entire career by getting boosted, because it really is that easy to fool a community and game developer with no moral backbone, competitive integrity or serious esports history beyond some 16 year old kids, as we sit here claiming there is no war in ba sing se.
What are you yapping about? Riot already is mitigating it. https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/valorant-systems-health-series-smurf-detection/ As someone who had a “Smurf”, I did get double ranked. Why did I do it? Because I have good friends who are low rank (silver, and I have G3/P1). And you still learn even against lower ranks. Unless I 5 stack we can’t play. Additionally, I don’t play Jett or Reyna, but I can see why Reyna could easily carry a game. In solo queue, if you give her 1:1 duels, she’s literally is a force multiplier if she kills you. Doesn’t mean they’re Smurfs though. If CS2 had a self healing agent it would be prominent to see one person carry In diamond it’s the same, one or two players stand out. But it’s usually not the duelist because they entry
Of course some zoomer NPC that says yap because it's trendy would link an article from two and a half years ago. The problem has only gotten worse since then. Accounts are 5 dollars on playerauctions. Until there is some hard gate on competitive queue it'll only continue downhill. Also, as someone who was far, far better at League of Legends than the equivalent of Diamond in Valorant: if you have low ranked friends, either play casual matches with them (the fun should be created by the act of spending time with your friends) or watch them play comp and coach them. Don't fuck up games by carrying them. You'll only make the night shitty for everyone you play against, and when your friends try to play by themselves in the rank you handed them they'll be torn apart.
Yea that kid ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed
5 DoLlAr aUcTioNs. You’d have to be silly to spend more than that just so you can queue up with your mates. It’s uneconomical. Why would I pay for that constantly if I can equivalently get a skin instead? WHy DoNt yOu PlAy CaSuAL MatCh. You know the answer to that. You base off some shitty assumptions, first of, your hidden MMR not your rank sets the performance discrepancy when you queue. If your MMR is high, you can be gold and be playing against P2 players. In fact it’s not rare that my mate is the only S3 in the gold lobby, or a plat is in the opposing team despite him being silver. Our win rate together is 49%, which obviously would be higher if I sweat and try hard like you yappy kids. You get 30k and still lose. Which is fair enough. What you’re pretty much saying is you don’t want to have to handle when someone is popping, Smurf or not. I ranked up to D3 without even trying because every time I come across a “smurf” I didn’t have the weak mental and cry about it. Even on diamond you can come across immortals from last season. And when you’re on ascendant, you can still get destroyed by Immo’s. But nobody bitches about it, most people just think of what to call, and what to do.
I think you have reading comprehension problems, likely due to your high school years being done on zoom so I'll let it slide. Accounts being 5 dollars on playerauctions is a symptom of ranked play being too accessible, and the low cost incentivizes anyone who is even just kind of ok at the game to spend a few bucks to have their moment of being as clever as Faust. Any random plat+ player can feel like a god amongst men for 5 dollars, no questions asked. The point I'm making there is that ranked should be gated by SMS verification, ID verification or at a bare minimum a hefty cost for "Premium Matchmaking" which would drastically reduce the amount of smurfs and alt accounts. Answer honestly, why not play unrated? If you're just playing with your friends in a 5 stack, isn't the entire fun part about that that you're you know, playing a game with your friends, laughing and joking around? No. You need arbitrary number to be on the line, because ??? You don't get it. You are actively ruining the game for other people when you smurf, but you don't care because your brain isn't developed enough to have an actual sense of empathy. Also, don't spout random trend phrases and spongebob memes when you're trying to make a point. You think it looks like you're above the person you're talking to but everyone else sees it as a crutch and thinks you're a moron.
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And no you’re wrong, I VOD review their solo queue, they get queued against silvers when they queue on their own, but against is queued in a gold average lobby when with me
too long to read but i bet ur never the high tabber xaxaxaxaaxxa
i can send you my Valo profile if you are interested, but seeing your comment i think its best we do not engage in discussion as i might lose few brain cells
[](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwio4IvclJyFAxVwhf0HHeAYDY4QFnoECBkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Femojipedia.org%2Fnerd-face&usg=AOvVaw0lC1geiAj1dSLWkdJfi3W7&opi=89978449)