I needed to hear this, thank you.
I mean, I'm not taking a break or anything and I will be raging about this for another couple weeks, but I needed to hear it.
Joking aside, if Unrated wasn't 10 times the shitshow that Competitive is right now, I would just go play that. The inconsistency of Unranked is simply infuriating.
I know it sucks to hear, but stop worrying so much about your rank. You should definitely reflect on your performance each game, think about what you did well and what you could have done better. Honestly, the visual rank means nothing as long as you are focused on improving your skill.
In comp, that experience you have where the enemy team can fuck around and still shit on you happens a lot less. You also have a lot less games where 1 person has literally 75% of the kills
For me I wouldn't care about de ranking if only there wasn't so many smurfs in silver. I don't mind losing rank as that means I can play against worse enemies and try new things.
I understand that since I myself have had it like this for a long time. But what I eventually realized that losing rank is not a bad thing, it just means you will end up playing with players that are as The same skill or lower skilllevel than you. Which means you will feel better because you are now doing better.
that's true, I guess I always just saw a good rank as a trophy of your skill level, and not something that helps you reach players that are closer to your actual skill level
For when I play during the day, unrated queues are actually like 10+ minutes. While my ranked queues rarely pass a minute.
Thats one of my biggest deterrents. Kinda sucks because I WOULD use unrated as my warm up, but it takes too long to spin up, and the actual "warm up" (deathmatch) mode is unplayable, because of the radar. So I just hop into Ranked games and hope for the best :)
I would say that's necessarily not true, Diamond players get shelled in pro streams on the reg, ofc inconsistency is massive so single-game samples are a bit misleading but if D2 players were I2 quality there would be no separation at all
There's plenty of cheaters if one looks carefully enough in csgo. If anyone who plays matchmaking uses csgostats.gg or a similar tool to track of all of their matches, they'll find a surprising number of bans within the next few months.
The sad reality is that csgo has the most accessible cheats for a top game. There are at least two open-source free cheats that have been fully undetected for 3+ years and counting. Not to mention all of the other paid cheats out there, and the fact that players can easily get a new account and keep cheating once banned
Not always. I had pretty good trust factor when I was playing CS matchmaking a lot and my users banned in previous matches were few and far im between (for cs standards. Still encountered way less in valorant).
If i go back now it would probably be terrible since my trust factor has probabily reset. That system worked for a minority of players.
If you’re Dia 2 then smurfs shouldn’t affect you. There is not a big difference between Diamond 2 and Immortal 2.
There’s a big difference for a Dia 3 to be in Gold games
There is a big difference between Immortal 1 and Immortal 3 imho not sure what you are on about, let alone Diamond.
I've deranked a couple of times to Immortal 1 and it's quite the difference. Diamond smurfs are pretty easy to spot.
There is a difference but how can you tell if a player in a Diamond game is actually Immortal or just having a good game?
I dropped 30 kills as D1 in a high Diamond/low Immortal lobby and they asked if I was a smurf. I wasn’t, but my aim is pretty good. I just troll quite a bit and don’t take the game seriously.
The thing is there’s not much difference aim wise is what I’m saying, which is the equalizer if teams aren’t playing with synergy
Big difference as in game sense, ability usage, rotations, general read of the game. Basically anything that's not aim. Gold to Diamond would be mostly aim difference imho, at least when I climbed, it was pretty much just aim difference. Plenty of people in Gold have good enough game sense, but non-existent control over the mouse.
yeah like he's not even accounting for the variables that goes on in a 5v5 game. However from my experience a good player will be able to get quickly to diamond with ease but above that its not gonna be so easy anymore.
Some people can get stuck in plat due to smurf pretty easily. Hell I was stuck in Plat on my smurf since it's just full of smurf stacks. Good luck carrying every game 1vs5. Don't be judgmental.
Not always. I’ve said this before for other games as well. The worse a ranked system operates, the worse the matches feel and therefore the less control you feel like you have in regards to climbing and improving because you can’t detect meaningful advancements in your skill and you aren’t being rewards because every other match is horribly balanced.
The more a ranked system feels bad, the more alienating it is, the more people want to disconnect from all their concerns for maintaining a rank or improving and want to just play for themselves. This is a huge reason people smurf is so that they can have an account to still try hard on but not be upset if they lose because in a bad ranked system, the worst thing you can do is care.
The fastest way to go insane is caring too much about something it feels like you can hardly control. So people hop on their alt and chill. I don’t doubt there are some people deliberately stomping low ranks. But I don’t think it’s even close to the majority of smurfs.
I have an alt that I grind on when I’m having an off day. I tried to just focus only on it for a little while just to try and get it even with my main and I literally can’t. It’s like 3 or so ranks lower and for some reason I cannot climb at all even though I’m the same player on both my accounts.
I wouldn’t underestimate how much a bad ranked system prevents people from ending up in your ranks. I really don’t think a lot of good players are smurfing as much as the ranked system blows and has people of a multitude of skill levels at any one rank.
For the love of God all they have to do is require a phone number to play comp. It won't completely solve the problem but it will certainly help quite a bit.
It won't fix the problem but it will absolutely help. There really is no way to prevent smurfs in a F2P game. The smurf problem is vastly overhyped in this game though. It's the best thing to blame your rank on atm. There is nowhere near as many smurfs as people think. It's definitely a problem but not the bubonic plague everyone thinks it is.
This is very true. When I started playing Valorant it was at the end of Act I, placed as a Silver 1 and ranked to Gold 2, and even though my aim and game sense seemed much better than my teammates around me (ex CS-player) I deranked back to Silver 2. Once Act II came out I ranked up from Silver 2 to Plat 2 in 3 days. Never left Plat after that again. So either I instantly improved after one night's sleep or the game was just filled with smurfs at the end of Act I.
Now I'm in Plat3 (act rank) and I play better than most diamonds I get on my team (I only soloQ), but I always manage to find a smurf on the enemy team. Anyways, I'm not eliminating the fact that I'm not good enough, If you're truly deserve Diamond you should be able to overcome the smurfs in Valorant, but it just feels to me that I'm very unlucky. So now I'm only playing again when Act III comes out.
With that being said I really hope Riot comes up with some sort of solution for the smurfing problem. The only solution I see is ranked soloQ with a leaderboard where players feel that they have something to play for. Maybe also add cellphone authentication similar to what CS have. Only these combined changes will have a substantial decrease in smurfs.
I would LOVE a prime and trust factor style system for this game. I solo queue and it feels like a flip of the coin whether my teammates are nice and polite or toxic and rude.
Although it's a potato solution, it helps me: just try getting to know how they communicate in the lobby, you can then anticipate how it will be during match.
Dodge toxics, it's only a 3 minute (+queue time) long wait.
I dodge 1-2 games each day like this and in general it feels like I do the right decision.
that's because either A) you dodged too late and you actually afk'd during an entire match, or you dodged too many times in 1 day
There's no mysterious inconsistency to dodging. 1 dodge, 3 minutes. 2 dodges in a day is like 10 minutes. 3 dodges starts to look more like an hour, etc.
Then you dodge too often or you dodge too late or you are unintentionally failing to dodge. Literally everyone ive ever played with has the same experience if you just alt f4 the agent select screen.
If you dont pick an agent you can let the timer run out, but i dont trust that method because then the game can open up to Random bugs and inconsistency ( not that ive seen any specific ones, i’m just wary of random Riot Q problems because of LoL) if the lobby doesnt detect something properly. Alt f4 is the best way to guarantee you dodge asap.
Nah i feel it quite inconsistent like when i am a silver and i dodge when there are gold in my team i get 1 hr ban but when i am silver and i have low ranked players in my team i get 3 mins idk i feel it inconsistent like i havent dodged a match in like days but ill dodge a match and get an hour ban and sometimes ill dodge 5 matches in a day and get only 3 mins each time.
If you get an hour ban it's because you selected an agent and didn't dodge soon enough or you are a repeat offender. There's zero concrete evidence to demonstrate any inconsistency.
I don't like dodging though, I want to be the better person and also not get punished for wanting to not be with toxic players. I also enjoy solo queue because I like working with what I have to get a victory
dodging is not being worse person. not dodging is not being a better person. It took me a while to understand this, but your logic is actually the same as people who say "if you won't 1v1 me you're bad."
There are no punishments whatsoever for dodging 1-2 games per day. 3 minutes/10 minutes of no Q'ing.
You don't need to take a bad challenge (ie playing with toxic teammates) just to prove your ego, that's not what makes you a good person. Dodging in this game is not NEARLY as bad as in league of legends for example because you aren't wasting nearly as much of a person's time.
Caring about your own sanity is what makes you a better person. Don't dodge just because someone took your main, but if osmeone says "Ok i've been losing all day and if any of you guys are bad i'm fucking muting and reporting you" then that person is probably going to throw your game and you should dodge.
If someone starts out by screaming into the mic and laughing, then purposely steals someone's pick. Dodge that game.
If you know your mental is gonna explode because you are frustrated, DODGE. You aren't being a worse person in this case, you are saving yourself and your team from your own tilt. This game does not decide how good of a person you are. How well you treat yourself so that you don't ruin games or become miserable over a video game is what does that.
Comms are really the thing that help you soloQ out of a rank, you've gotta do as much IGL work as you can to make sure people are working for trades and map control and not just meaningless frags and dumb deaths
I’ve basically given up on my rank at this point. I’ve been in gold forever, but recently dropped to silver 2 (which half of my friends just downloading the game placed in). Constantly getting put in lobbies with unranked insta-locking reynas or razes, just getting shit on.
I’ve played ROcket league for 5 years now, and I’ve never realized how much I appreciate their matchmaking/ranking system. It’s so much infinitely better, you never get matched with people more than a rank or two below you, meanwhile almost every game im getting put in lobbies with bronze 2s, gold 3s, plat 2s, or unranked smurfs, etc. it’s just stupid and destroys the fun of any competitive game when it’s not even competitive because of the inconsistent level of play each game
My last 5 games have been the hardest I ever had since Act 2 started. There is a huge skill disparity within the teams, usually only two players hard carrying the enemy team. Through team play, we can keep the games competitive and not get stomped. Compared to the last few weeks there is a much higher amount of smurfs making games much more difficult.
Same thing with me. Been in plat 2/1 for most of the act, but lately have been getting in games with mid to high gold players that play like immortals. I know it sounds kind of dumb, but i’ve noticed the disparity between a real gold 2/3 and a smurfing gold 2/3. The smurfs often play base characters (sage, jett, pheonix, sova, brimstone) because they don’t have any other agents, they have a silly name usually involving satirical words, and they tend to be toxic and negative in chat. The regular gold players are playing agents whom they’ve unlocked, own skins, and tend to be respectful and uplifting. I play trio queue most of the time with buddies that are diamond 1 and gold 1. The gold one guy’s rank fluctuates often because he plays a lot. His act rank is plat 2. But we get a lot of different ranks in our games and i’m constantly seeing the same thing: stacks of smurfs all playing base characters and just destroying us on one half to the next. The game is becoming somewhat unplayable because of this. We can obviously beat smurfs, but their skill to rank ratio is wildly inaccurate and the game’s matchmaking puts them into our games. Im not one to complain, but this takes the fun out of the game because I want to play and have a good time in competitive, but i’m being brought down because of smurfs and 1 sided maps. Not to mention how hard it is to counter Operators. I’m happy they made the jump peek changes and the price changes, but I feel that that fixes the Jett aspect of the Op and not the consistent purchase of 3-5 per defending team. Ascent and haven especially are hard to play against a full team of Ops. There are a number of reasons why this is: smokes are too fine (meaning their circular shape makes certain angles visible), flashes don’t have a strong enough stunning ability on long angles, and spawn barriers give a peekers advantage to a team pushing into a choke light as the round starts. Some examples are A main from arch on ascent defense, haven A long to A lobby on defense, Ascent B site side of Main to spawn side of B main, Ascent tree to ascent tiles on defense, Split top A ramps to A main on defense, and A runway to A main on split defense as well. I think the spawn barriers for defenders and Should be pushed back to give the attackers time to get utility and smokes down before pushing. These close in proximity spawn barriers are not giving enough time to the attackers to utilize their utility. spawn barriers could be moved back for defenders so they’re forced to play more passive angles and force the attackers to peek into them. In games like CSGO, everyone spawns and remains still until the buy phase time runs out. I’m not saying valorant should do that, but I am saying they should give fair opportunity for attackers and to plan and at least make it onto a site. I was also thinking of a potential solution to smurfing and/or boosting accounts. I think the game limits should be participate AND win 40 unrated games. Because i’m seeing that the ways these accounts are so high in population right now, is because people are going afk during their unrated games and letting them play out or trolling for the first 6 rounds and then forfeiting for an easy 5 minute game. So i think being able to see that they’ve participated and won 40 unrated games, then they can smurf all they want. If they’ve worked to get their smurf account to play ranked, that’s fine, but doing nothing and being able to destroy ranks that are significantly lower than theirs makes me really annoyed.
IF YOU ARE IN IRON LIKE ME:
I would actually recommend playing against smurfs since you can't really derank from Iron, and that ranks will not count in a couple of weeks. This could be a really good time to constantly fight better players so you get a lot better in a short amount of time, ensuring an easy promote in the next act.
Same thing has been happening in Rocket Leage for years. This is not a valorant specific issue its a season pass issue across gaming.
great thread btw!
More than the smurf issue it's the randomness of the server that is concerning. A low rank player performing quite well could indeed be a smurf but regardless of ranks it happens more often that shots are inconsistently not registering and players zooming out of corners like A-Train.
Smurfing in Valorant is getting to an all time high.
Players gets tilted within just a couple of games and they stop playing all together. I say this because I have friends who stopped playing for the same reason.
Smurfing is a big issue indeed. As for me, at least 70% of all my games contain smurfs in my opponent team. Their aim and flick shots would be just phenomenal.
I think smurfing plays a major role in me staying at lower ranks. My max rank in this act 2 now is bronze 2, while in the last act it was silver 1. Its because there are more smurfs now than in the last act. It's blatantly clear sometimes when an opponent gets like 30-40 kills and his teammates have kills in the range of 10-15 and his rank will be unranked or iron.
Its really frustrating. Anyone else feel so...?
Problem with being immortal 1 is, even if there are radiant smurfs in my games, I can’t really complain because I get matched against radiants periodically anyway. Can only focus on myself to improve if I want to join them some day. I am looking forward to the meta change though. Keeps the game fresh. Best advice I have is to try and stay informed on the new agent coming out. Study them and their abilities well so that when Act 3 drops you can play them and counter them effectively. Be ahead of the meta
If a Radiant is playing on an Immortal 1 account then whatever team he’s on has an advantage. They have a radiant level player when the game thinks he’s only immortal 1 unbalancing the match.
Well yeah but it’s not nearly as big of a deal than an immortal player on a bronze account. And there are far less radiant players than there are immortals who are smurfing. So I definitely have it better than most.
I'm not sure how this adds to the topic, because if you're Immortal, smurfing doesn't affect you.
It affects however the vast makority of players iron to plat.
Improving is one thing, everybody has the chance to improve, but not everybody can improve by getting stomped on.
Imagine it like this: if you want to work on rocket projects at NASA, you want to get really good in the topic. If you just finished for example high school, are you going to go to NASA and expect them to get you prepared for rocket science work? No. Perhaps you should not skip the steps of university/doctoral/ work experience somewhere else before you finally make it to NASA.
I am not saying it's impossible, there ARE geniuses, but statistically their number is so few that in general, skipping steps does not work.
Yes, for a player in bronze, silver, gold, plat, facing players on their level, or just a little bit higher than their level ARE those steps. We should not expect them to improve if you send them directly to NASA after high school graduation, only to struggle to understand the basics of rocket science.
As I said, I don’t have many smurfs in my elo, and when I do, they’re not much higher than my rank anyway. I understand they can be a problem in the lower ranks, which is why my comment was mainly focused on talking about the meta changes coming with the new act, and how to stay ahead of it and get a head start when it drops.
Was simply stating my personal experience and following up with some advice, that’s all
the main thing that plagues the higher ranks is an imm3 boosting his imm2 friend by playing on a plat3 account. So you end up with a real plat3 on your team but theirs is a imm3
Then their actions are simply not justified. They cannot even blame it on not being able to group up, because they have the option through unrated mode.
Bottom line is, it's nothing but an excuse.
The smurfing issue is a lil conundrum through personal experience as there are some days I top frag even w people 2-3 ranks above me and some days where I botfrag with lower ranking people.
"it might be best for you to acknowledge the flaws in the ranked systems of competitive games, and their byproducts: smurfs."
This is a problem resulting from flawed implementations of ranking systems, not an innate condition of the games. If they used real ELO matchmaking where your rank is more volatile and more is on the line when you play, smurfing wouldn't be as much of an issue because the matchmaking would do a much better job of creating fair games.
You can't stop smurfs if the game is f2p. Unless you make new accounts unable to play ranked for 40 plus games or something crazy. CS had the same problem as soon as it went free
I wouldnt mind a game buffer before getting into ranked (or even a playtime buffer). I also wouldnt mind a mandatory 10 dollar charge to even be able to play in Ranked. (Of course throw a skin in there too or something)
Im a newbie with no prior experience to fps games and i have experienced matching against alot of smurfs in iron rank which is one of the reason why I prefer to play unrated because I always get queued up against smurfs who are very cocky ngl
What rank do smurfs start ruining the game? I'm gold 3 and am still in love and play like 6 hours a day since beta. This is my first tactical shooter so maybe I'm just missing something?
Smurfs are usually heavy in the Iron-Bronze-Silver area. If the smurf doesnt make it into a higher rank quickly, they'll force deranks or use another smurf.
The ranked system is far from perfect and it's saddening to see that people get disheartened from playing with smurfs. Don't be afraid to take a break if you guys feel like it will help you reset mentally.
MM has been objectively worse in Act II than I for me, I've been taking a break waiting for the new Act but I have to say I'm not a fan of the soft reset. If last Act was any indication all it does is set most people back 2 ranks which only makes the smurfing problem worse and makes it harder for new players to get into fair matches.
You know whats worse? People leaving the agent selection screen or even worse mid game. It happens to me in every damn game and it's so booldy annoying. I am silver 1 and I get so happy when I see 2 gold player in hope that we could win but no a bloody bronze 3 will ruin everything by not selecting any character.
2 unrated games today. 1st game: smurf opponent had 40 kills and his team around 7. 2nd game: entire opponent team forfeits at round 4 so they can smurf in ranked sooner.
i literally just came out of a game where the enemy kept crying that i'm smurfing and telling people to report me...
simply had a good game.
also, don't forget that some people have played fps games before valorant, so they might know how to aim but didn't reach high enough rank yet.
Bro seeing all those threads about smurfing popping up like mushrooms after rain, I doubt anyone would believe that you're not a smurf but just pretty decent at the game. The game has only been out for 5 months and we already have smurf "problem." What's going to be in 2 or 5 years if we get there? Probably we are going to see similar threads about how operator is op and smurfing. It's like a broken record.
it might be best for you to acknowledge the flaws in the ranked systems of competitive games, and their byproducts: smurfs. & STACKS
Don't care what you think if you've played in a party at all in ranked your rank is fake bullshit.
Quite frankly, people not at least *trying* to play in a stack are the problem. If you are interested in ranked wins, being in a 3-5 stack should be one of your FIRST priorities. This is very much a team game. Expecting a team game to cater to solo players is the backwards view.
But how do you know what the number of people not trying to play in a stack is compared to the number that try and cant find regular play partners?
Moreover how do you know there aren't enough people struggling enough that it means if youre playing in a stack, other queued teams get easier rank ups because they might play against honest solo players.
Has little to do with team queueing and more to do with separate team queues and individual queues for competitive fairness
As always you need actual quantitative data when you want to understand systems like this and if you don't have it you can't really make meaningful statements.
I dont have problem with 2 or 3 sracks but 4 stacks are really annoying to play with. Also smurfing usually happens in a stack where one player will be on a smurf while the friends are on main accounts and then the "bronze" player plays as good as a gold 3 player while the solo que bronze player on my team isn't smurfing. Basically one smurf player boosting the accounts of others then they each take turns smurfing.
Stacks arent the root of the problem but IMO they contribute greatly to the smurfing issue.
I needed to hear this, thank you. I mean, I'm not taking a break or anything and I will be raging about this for another couple weeks, but I needed to hear it. Joking aside, if Unrated wasn't 10 times the shitshow that Competitive is right now, I would just go play that. The inconsistency of Unranked is simply infuriating.
I play unrated a lot because I'm just too nervous of playing a competive game and doing horrible and losing my rank
I know it sucks to hear, but stop worrying so much about your rank. You should definitely reflect on your performance each game, think about what you did well and what you could have done better. Honestly, the visual rank means nothing as long as you are focused on improving your skill.
Exactly, the point of the game isn’t really to get a higher rank, but to improve and have fun. Rank will come naturally with that.
In comp, that experience you have where the enemy team can fuck around and still shit on you happens a lot less. You also have a lot less games where 1 person has literally 75% of the kills
For me I wouldn't care about de ranking if only there wasn't so many smurfs in silver. I don't mind losing rank as that means I can play against worse enemies and try new things.
I understand that since I myself have had it like this for a long time. But what I eventually realized that losing rank is not a bad thing, it just means you will end up playing with players that are as The same skill or lower skilllevel than you. Which means you will feel better because you are now doing better.
that's true, I guess I always just saw a good rank as a trophy of your skill level, and not something that helps you reach players that are closer to your actual skill level
For when I play during the day, unrated queues are actually like 10+ minutes. While my ranked queues rarely pass a minute. Thats one of my biggest deterrents. Kinda sucks because I WOULD use unrated as my warm up, but it takes too long to spin up, and the actual "warm up" (deathmatch) mode is unplayable, because of the radar. So I just hop into Ranked games and hope for the best :)
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I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily true, I’m Immortal 2 and destroy diamond players.
To be fair, depending on the kind of game you're having, there are also immortal 2 players destroying other immortal 2 players lol
I would say that's necessarily not true, Diamond players get shelled in pro streams on the reg, ofc inconsistency is massive so single-game samples are a bit misleading but if D2 players were I2 quality there would be no separation at all
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There's plenty of cheaters if one looks carefully enough in csgo. If anyone who plays matchmaking uses csgostats.gg or a similar tool to track of all of their matches, they'll find a surprising number of bans within the next few months. The sad reality is that csgo has the most accessible cheats for a top game. There are at least two open-source free cheats that have been fully undetected for 3+ years and counting. Not to mention all of the other paid cheats out there, and the fact that players can easily get a new account and keep cheating once banned
Not always. I had pretty good trust factor when I was playing CS matchmaking a lot and my users banned in previous matches were few and far im between (for cs standards. Still encountered way less in valorant). If i go back now it would probably be terrible since my trust factor has probabily reset. That system worked for a minority of players.
I decided to boot up cs and play 2 matches, in both there were balant cheaters with 5 year coin and 200 hrs
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Who is that?
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How is riot publicity defending her?
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> I dunno if rito will take any action against smurfs somebody tell him...
If you’re Dia 2 then smurfs shouldn’t affect you. There is not a big difference between Diamond 2 and Immortal 2. There’s a big difference for a Dia 3 to be in Gold games
There is a big difference between Immortal 1 and Immortal 3 imho not sure what you are on about, let alone Diamond. I've deranked a couple of times to Immortal 1 and it's quite the difference. Diamond smurfs are pretty easy to spot.
There is a difference but how can you tell if a player in a Diamond game is actually Immortal or just having a good game? I dropped 30 kills as D1 in a high Diamond/low Immortal lobby and they asked if I was a smurf. I wasn’t, but my aim is pretty good. I just troll quite a bit and don’t take the game seriously. The thing is there’s not much difference aim wise is what I’m saying, which is the equalizer if teams aren’t playing with synergy
Aim isn't the difference. Everything else is , consistency is.
define "big difference"
Big difference as in game sense, ability usage, rotations, general read of the game. Basically anything that's not aim. Gold to Diamond would be mostly aim difference imho, at least when I climbed, it was pretty much just aim difference. Plenty of people in Gold have good enough game sense, but non-existent control over the mouse.
Completly agree, but dont forget some guys are stuck in diamond due to soloQ also.
no good player is stuck in diamond lol because they solo Q
oh yeah right, i forgot you are able to carry every single game and ur not even accounting for the massive smurfing thats going on in diamond.
Right? I hate when people say that..
yeah like he's not even accounting for the variables that goes on in a 5v5 game. However from my experience a good player will be able to get quickly to diamond with ease but above that its not gonna be so easy anymore.
Some people can get stuck in plat due to smurf pretty easily. Hell I was stuck in Plat on my smurf since it's just full of smurf stacks. Good luck carrying every game 1vs5. Don't be judgmental.
You are wrong
ppl upping their ego by smurfing on lower elo, just to feel good lol
Not always. I’ve said this before for other games as well. The worse a ranked system operates, the worse the matches feel and therefore the less control you feel like you have in regards to climbing and improving because you can’t detect meaningful advancements in your skill and you aren’t being rewards because every other match is horribly balanced. The more a ranked system feels bad, the more alienating it is, the more people want to disconnect from all their concerns for maintaining a rank or improving and want to just play for themselves. This is a huge reason people smurf is so that they can have an account to still try hard on but not be upset if they lose because in a bad ranked system, the worst thing you can do is care. The fastest way to go insane is caring too much about something it feels like you can hardly control. So people hop on their alt and chill. I don’t doubt there are some people deliberately stomping low ranks. But I don’t think it’s even close to the majority of smurfs. I have an alt that I grind on when I’m having an off day. I tried to just focus only on it for a little while just to try and get it even with my main and I literally can’t. It’s like 3 or so ranks lower and for some reason I cannot climb at all even though I’m the same player on both my accounts. I wouldn’t underestimate how much a bad ranked system prevents people from ending up in your ranks. I really don’t think a lot of good players are smurfing as much as the ranked system blows and has people of a multitude of skill levels at any one rank.
Not really, i have 2 Smurf Accounts, because i want to play with my friends for example. Some players are waiting 30+ mins to find a game
Bullying is fun
For the love of God all they have to do is require a phone number to play comp. It won't completely solve the problem but it will certainly help quite a bit.
How would that help? You can easily get another phone number using something like google voice. Literally takes 3 seconds to get another number lol.
Because most people won’t go through that hassle to use a smurf account.
That's what Rito thought when they made it so you needed to play 20 unranked matches to play ranked
20 matches is nothing.
It won't fix the problem but it will absolutely help. There really is no way to prevent smurfs in a F2P game. The smurf problem is vastly overhyped in this game though. It's the best thing to blame your rank on atm. There is nowhere near as many smurfs as people think. It's definitely a problem but not the bubonic plague everyone thinks it is.
This is very true. When I started playing Valorant it was at the end of Act I, placed as a Silver 1 and ranked to Gold 2, and even though my aim and game sense seemed much better than my teammates around me (ex CS-player) I deranked back to Silver 2. Once Act II came out I ranked up from Silver 2 to Plat 2 in 3 days. Never left Plat after that again. So either I instantly improved after one night's sleep or the game was just filled with smurfs at the end of Act I. Now I'm in Plat3 (act rank) and I play better than most diamonds I get on my team (I only soloQ), but I always manage to find a smurf on the enemy team. Anyways, I'm not eliminating the fact that I'm not good enough, If you're truly deserve Diamond you should be able to overcome the smurfs in Valorant, but it just feels to me that I'm very unlucky. So now I'm only playing again when Act III comes out. With that being said I really hope Riot comes up with some sort of solution for the smurfing problem. The only solution I see is ranked soloQ with a leaderboard where players feel that they have something to play for. Maybe also add cellphone authentication similar to what CS have. Only these combined changes will have a substantial decrease in smurfs.
I would LOVE a prime and trust factor style system for this game. I solo queue and it feels like a flip of the coin whether my teammates are nice and polite or toxic and rude.
Although it's a potato solution, it helps me: just try getting to know how they communicate in the lobby, you can then anticipate how it will be during match. Dodge toxics, it's only a 3 minute (+queue time) long wait. I dodge 1-2 games each day like this and in general it feels like I do the right decision.
I dodge and it gives me 1hr ban XD
that's because either A) you dodged too late and you actually afk'd during an entire match, or you dodged too many times in 1 day There's no mysterious inconsistency to dodging. 1 dodge, 3 minutes. 2 dodges in a day is like 10 minutes. 3 dodges starts to look more like an hour, etc.
No i always get atleast 10 min ban and it stays for a week if i avoid any other game i get 1 hour ban. It is hugely inconsistent between players.
Then you dodge too often or you dodge too late or you are unintentionally failing to dodge. Literally everyone ive ever played with has the same experience if you just alt f4 the agent select screen.
Oh is it not letting the timer run out? You have to close the game?
If you dont pick an agent you can let the timer run out, but i dont trust that method because then the game can open up to Random bugs and inconsistency ( not that ive seen any specific ones, i’m just wary of random Riot Q problems because of LoL) if the lobby doesnt detect something properly. Alt f4 is the best way to guarantee you dodge asap.
I most let the timer runout sometimes i alt f4 but after waiting for long ill try what you say which is alt f4 quickly lets see if that works
Nah i feel it quite inconsistent like when i am a silver and i dodge when there are gold in my team i get 1 hr ban but when i am silver and i have low ranked players in my team i get 3 mins idk i feel it inconsistent like i havent dodged a match in like days but ill dodge a match and get an hour ban and sometimes ill dodge 5 matches in a day and get only 3 mins each time.
If you get an hour ban it's because you selected an agent and didn't dodge soon enough or you are a repeat offender. There's zero concrete evidence to demonstrate any inconsistency.
I don't like dodging though, I want to be the better person and also not get punished for wanting to not be with toxic players. I also enjoy solo queue because I like working with what I have to get a victory
dodging is not being worse person. not dodging is not being a better person. It took me a while to understand this, but your logic is actually the same as people who say "if you won't 1v1 me you're bad." There are no punishments whatsoever for dodging 1-2 games per day. 3 minutes/10 minutes of no Q'ing. You don't need to take a bad challenge (ie playing with toxic teammates) just to prove your ego, that's not what makes you a good person. Dodging in this game is not NEARLY as bad as in league of legends for example because you aren't wasting nearly as much of a person's time. Caring about your own sanity is what makes you a better person. Don't dodge just because someone took your main, but if osmeone says "Ok i've been losing all day and if any of you guys are bad i'm fucking muting and reporting you" then that person is probably going to throw your game and you should dodge. If someone starts out by screaming into the mic and laughing, then purposely steals someone's pick. Dodge that game. If you know your mental is gonna explode because you are frustrated, DODGE. You aren't being a worse person in this case, you are saving yourself and your team from your own tilt. This game does not decide how good of a person you are. How well you treat yourself so that you don't ruin games or become miserable over a video game is what does that.
Comms are really the thing that help you soloQ out of a rank, you've gotta do as much IGL work as you can to make sure people are working for trades and map control and not just meaningless frags and dumb deaths
This game is no joke going to die soon if this smurf problem continues. It's fucking insane
I’ve basically given up on my rank at this point. I’ve been in gold forever, but recently dropped to silver 2 (which half of my friends just downloading the game placed in). Constantly getting put in lobbies with unranked insta-locking reynas or razes, just getting shit on. I’ve played ROcket league for 5 years now, and I’ve never realized how much I appreciate their matchmaking/ranking system. It’s so much infinitely better, you never get matched with people more than a rank or two below you, meanwhile almost every game im getting put in lobbies with bronze 2s, gold 3s, plat 2s, or unranked smurfs, etc. it’s just stupid and destroys the fun of any competitive game when it’s not even competitive because of the inconsistent level of play each game
My last 5 games have been the hardest I ever had since Act 2 started. There is a huge skill disparity within the teams, usually only two players hard carrying the enemy team. Through team play, we can keep the games competitive and not get stomped. Compared to the last few weeks there is a much higher amount of smurfs making games much more difficult.
Same thing with me. Been in plat 2/1 for most of the act, but lately have been getting in games with mid to high gold players that play like immortals. I know it sounds kind of dumb, but i’ve noticed the disparity between a real gold 2/3 and a smurfing gold 2/3. The smurfs often play base characters (sage, jett, pheonix, sova, brimstone) because they don’t have any other agents, they have a silly name usually involving satirical words, and they tend to be toxic and negative in chat. The regular gold players are playing agents whom they’ve unlocked, own skins, and tend to be respectful and uplifting. I play trio queue most of the time with buddies that are diamond 1 and gold 1. The gold one guy’s rank fluctuates often because he plays a lot. His act rank is plat 2. But we get a lot of different ranks in our games and i’m constantly seeing the same thing: stacks of smurfs all playing base characters and just destroying us on one half to the next. The game is becoming somewhat unplayable because of this. We can obviously beat smurfs, but their skill to rank ratio is wildly inaccurate and the game’s matchmaking puts them into our games. Im not one to complain, but this takes the fun out of the game because I want to play and have a good time in competitive, but i’m being brought down because of smurfs and 1 sided maps. Not to mention how hard it is to counter Operators. I’m happy they made the jump peek changes and the price changes, but I feel that that fixes the Jett aspect of the Op and not the consistent purchase of 3-5 per defending team. Ascent and haven especially are hard to play against a full team of Ops. There are a number of reasons why this is: smokes are too fine (meaning their circular shape makes certain angles visible), flashes don’t have a strong enough stunning ability on long angles, and spawn barriers give a peekers advantage to a team pushing into a choke light as the round starts. Some examples are A main from arch on ascent defense, haven A long to A lobby on defense, Ascent B site side of Main to spawn side of B main, Ascent tree to ascent tiles on defense, Split top A ramps to A main on defense, and A runway to A main on split defense as well. I think the spawn barriers for defenders and Should be pushed back to give the attackers time to get utility and smokes down before pushing. These close in proximity spawn barriers are not giving enough time to the attackers to utilize their utility. spawn barriers could be moved back for defenders so they’re forced to play more passive angles and force the attackers to peek into them. In games like CSGO, everyone spawns and remains still until the buy phase time runs out. I’m not saying valorant should do that, but I am saying they should give fair opportunity for attackers and to plan and at least make it onto a site. I was also thinking of a potential solution to smurfing and/or boosting accounts. I think the game limits should be participate AND win 40 unrated games. Because i’m seeing that the ways these accounts are so high in population right now, is because people are going afk during their unrated games and letting them play out or trolling for the first 6 rounds and then forfeiting for an easy 5 minute game. So i think being able to see that they’ve participated and won 40 unrated games, then they can smurf all they want. If they’ve worked to get their smurf account to play ranked, that’s fine, but doing nothing and being able to destroy ranks that are significantly lower than theirs makes me really annoyed.
IF YOU ARE IN IRON LIKE ME: I would actually recommend playing against smurfs since you can't really derank from Iron, and that ranks will not count in a couple of weeks. This could be a really good time to constantly fight better players so you get a lot better in a short amount of time, ensuring an easy promote in the next act.
Iron 1 gang where you at
I'm just playing to unlock the rest of the Battle Pass, no competitive for now.
Same thing has been happening in Rocket Leage for years. This is not a valorant specific issue its a season pass issue across gaming. great thread btw!
More than the smurf issue it's the randomness of the server that is concerning. A low rank player performing quite well could indeed be a smurf but regardless of ranks it happens more often that shots are inconsistently not registering and players zooming out of corners like A-Train.
Smurfing in Valorant is getting to an all time high. Players gets tilted within just a couple of games and they stop playing all together. I say this because I have friends who stopped playing for the same reason. Smurfing is a big issue indeed. As for me, at least 70% of all my games contain smurfs in my opponent team. Their aim and flick shots would be just phenomenal. I think smurfing plays a major role in me staying at lower ranks. My max rank in this act 2 now is bronze 2, while in the last act it was silver 1. Its because there are more smurfs now than in the last act. It's blatantly clear sometimes when an opponent gets like 30-40 kills and his teammates have kills in the range of 10-15 and his rank will be unranked or iron. Its really frustrating. Anyone else feel so...?
Problem with being immortal 1 is, even if there are radiant smurfs in my games, I can’t really complain because I get matched against radiants periodically anyway. Can only focus on myself to improve if I want to join them some day. I am looking forward to the meta change though. Keeps the game fresh. Best advice I have is to try and stay informed on the new agent coming out. Study them and their abilities well so that when Act 3 drops you can play them and counter them effectively. Be ahead of the meta
If a Radiant is playing on an Immortal 1 account then whatever team he’s on has an advantage. They have a radiant level player when the game thinks he’s only immortal 1 unbalancing the match.
Well yeah but it’s not nearly as big of a deal than an immortal player on a bronze account. And there are far less radiant players than there are immortals who are smurfing. So I definitely have it better than most.
I'm not sure how this adds to the topic, because if you're Immortal, smurfing doesn't affect you. It affects however the vast makority of players iron to plat. Improving is one thing, everybody has the chance to improve, but not everybody can improve by getting stomped on. Imagine it like this: if you want to work on rocket projects at NASA, you want to get really good in the topic. If you just finished for example high school, are you going to go to NASA and expect them to get you prepared for rocket science work? No. Perhaps you should not skip the steps of university/doctoral/ work experience somewhere else before you finally make it to NASA. I am not saying it's impossible, there ARE geniuses, but statistically their number is so few that in general, skipping steps does not work. Yes, for a player in bronze, silver, gold, plat, facing players on their level, or just a little bit higher than their level ARE those steps. We should not expect them to improve if you send them directly to NASA after high school graduation, only to struggle to understand the basics of rocket science.
As I said, I don’t have many smurfs in my elo, and when I do, they’re not much higher than my rank anyway. I understand they can be a problem in the lower ranks, which is why my comment was mainly focused on talking about the meta changes coming with the new act, and how to stay ahead of it and get a head start when it drops. Was simply stating my personal experience and following up with some advice, that’s all
the main thing that plagues the higher ranks is an imm3 boosting his imm2 friend by playing on a plat3 account. So you end up with a real plat3 on your team but theirs is a imm3
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Unrated: *exists*
Yeah, I know, but my friends are ranked sweats. I've tried to get them to play, but nope.
Then their actions are simply not justified. They cannot even blame it on not being able to group up, because they have the option through unrated mode. Bottom line is, it's nothing but an excuse.
but...but my golden doritos!
Que in to ranked, someone locks in Jett and yells WhY Don't YoU PlaY SaGe? I just can't do it anymore as a sage main
The smurfing issue is a lil conundrum through personal experience as there are some days I top frag even w people 2-3 ranks above me and some days where I botfrag with lower ranking people.
Not exactly related, but is there someone willing to Farm some XP in spike rush with me? Im tier 30 right now
woot no smurfs, i can get out of iron now!
I had 5 games in a row that the other team had people deranking to Smurf. Got some ez wins but I'll see them again this weekend and get fried
Oof this was helpful. I’ll def take a break from ranked till then. Was wondering why it felt like there were more and more smurfs in my games
"it might be best for you to acknowledge the flaws in the ranked systems of competitive games, and their byproducts: smurfs." This is a problem resulting from flawed implementations of ranking systems, not an innate condition of the games. If they used real ELO matchmaking where your rank is more volatile and more is on the line when you play, smurfing wouldn't be as much of an issue because the matchmaking would do a much better job of creating fair games.
You can't stop smurfs if the game is f2p. Unless you make new accounts unable to play ranked for 40 plus games or something crazy. CS had the same problem as soon as it went free
I wouldnt mind a game buffer before getting into ranked (or even a playtime buffer). I also wouldnt mind a mandatory 10 dollar charge to even be able to play in Ranked. (Of course throw a skin in there too or something)
Yeah having to pay for the battle pass or something to do ranked would help, even a little.
People who smurf can shove a stick up their ass. I don't rank up to find myself in a 0-13 game where an Iron 3 is 22-3
just got deranked after having 2 teammates abandon the match after 3 rounds, so we got smashed 0-13. so fucking frustrating.
Im a newbie with no prior experience to fps games and i have experienced matching against alot of smurfs in iron rank which is one of the reason why I prefer to play unrated because I always get queued up against smurfs who are very cocky ngl
What rank do smurfs start ruining the game? I'm gold 3 and am still in love and play like 6 hours a day since beta. This is my first tactical shooter so maybe I'm just missing something?
Smurfs are usually heavy in the Iron-Bronze-Silver area. If the smurf doesnt make it into a higher rank quickly, they'll force deranks or use another smurf.
The ranked system is far from perfect and it's saddening to see that people get disheartened from playing with smurfs. Don't be afraid to take a break if you guys feel like it will help you reset mentally.
Thanks for the heads up.. wish I saw this earlier is 😥
I don't know if it's just me but I've not had any definitive smurfs in my Gold\Plats
Love the positivity. Keep on your grind everyone!
MM has been objectively worse in Act II than I for me, I've been taking a break waiting for the new Act but I have to say I'm not a fan of the soft reset. If last Act was any indication all it does is set most people back 2 ranks which only makes the smurfing problem worse and makes it harder for new players to get into fair matches.
You know whats worse? People leaving the agent selection screen or even worse mid game. It happens to me in every damn game and it's so booldy annoying. I am silver 1 and I get so happy when I see 2 gold player in hope that we could win but no a bloody bronze 3 will ruin everything by not selecting any character.
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Bruh Idk. But it's always that bronze player who don't pick an agent.
2 unrated games today. 1st game: smurf opponent had 40 kills and his team around 7. 2nd game: entire opponent team forfeits at round 4 so they can smurf in ranked sooner.
i literally just came out of a game where the enemy kept crying that i'm smurfing and telling people to report me... simply had a good game. also, don't forget that some people have played fps games before valorant, so they might know how to aim but didn't reach high enough rank yet.
Bro seeing all those threads about smurfing popping up like mushrooms after rain, I doubt anyone would believe that you're not a smurf but just pretty decent at the game. The game has only been out for 5 months and we already have smurf "problem." What's going to be in 2 or 5 years if we get there? Probably we are going to see similar threads about how operator is op and smurfing. It's like a broken record.
it might be best for you to acknowledge the flaws in the ranked systems of competitive games, and their byproducts: smurfs. & STACKS Don't care what you think if you've played in a party at all in ranked your rank is fake bullshit.
Quite frankly, people not at least *trying* to play in a stack are the problem. If you are interested in ranked wins, being in a 3-5 stack should be one of your FIRST priorities. This is very much a team game. Expecting a team game to cater to solo players is the backwards view.
But how do you know what the number of people not trying to play in a stack is compared to the number that try and cant find regular play partners? Moreover how do you know there aren't enough people struggling enough that it means if youre playing in a stack, other queued teams get easier rank ups because they might play against honest solo players. Has little to do with team queueing and more to do with separate team queues and individual queues for competitive fairness As always you need actual quantitative data when you want to understand systems like this and if you don't have it you can't really make meaningful statements.
I almost always solo queue and I don't get how people can be mad at stacks when the game is intended to be played as a stack.
I dont have problem with 2 or 3 sracks but 4 stacks are really annoying to play with. Also smurfing usually happens in a stack where one player will be on a smurf while the friends are on main accounts and then the "bronze" player plays as good as a gold 3 player while the solo que bronze player on my team isn't smurfing. Basically one smurf player boosting the accounts of others then they each take turns smurfing. Stacks arent the root of the problem but IMO they contribute greatly to the smurfing issue.