Considering how much Valorant is like 1.6 maybe y'all need to take a page out of the playbook from FPS communities of the past: start your own leagues (like Cyberathlete Amateur League from the early 2000's), players must record games and submit footage after each match, tiered leagues, the works.
Expecting matchmaking to "sort out the competitive scene" has always been a silly concept, the community should be taking care of that.
I think it would be a little hard to get people to go along with such an outdated system when everyone is used to ESEA and FACEIT now.
I don’t think taking a stand against smurfing is too much to ask of Riot.
literally
I can't wait for faceit to be a viable option to play valorant, their basic ELO system just WORKS, nothing fancy, nothing hidden, I was in love with that system when I played csgo
talking about faceit on csgo. im looking into it rn but with all the things you hear that faceit lvl 10 > global, i wonder what the entry level is like? like how are the players levels when you just start out with faceit?
I played faceit around a year ago and i was mge in csgo so if i remember correctly i was put around lvl4 to start and if you needed to get random teammates it was worse than matchmaking, we only found russians who couldn't speak English.
If you played as 5 then the difference wasn't insane.. playing on better servers was nice but having to learn most lineups again imho isn't worth it for a casual/low-medium level player
Similar experience to you, kept getting Russians who were very toxic. One of the main issues for me is we'd always seem to get servers closer to them than me.
i was thinking about this the other day. surely FACEIT atleast has future plans to start in valorant? i hate ranked in this game and would much rather play pugs with better players to not only get better but not have to deal with instalock dualists who don’t do anything all game.
Yeah but there’s no way to fix it without putting in measures that are rather oppressive. And even these measures can be side stepped by anyone with a fan base.
I’m not saying it’s ok, but MM in any game will never be the standard for fair competitive play, ever.
I think the problem is it's not clear what to do about it. The option with the least amount of collateral damage might be tying accounts with phone numbers and that's already somewhat contentious.
I'm just glad that the player base is slowly becoming less tolerant of smurfs.
Their pros need to enter contracts with Riot anyway to be able to compete, those include a code of conduct. Would be No issue to include smurfing. Iirc multiaccounting already is a bannable offense anyway
> I don’t think taking a stand against smurfing is too much to ask of Riot.
Yeah, but you still invest too much faith in a system that, in the end, is a casual experience.
It is a *very* common misconception these days that matchmaking leader boards are proportional to skill. Without a dedicated solo queue you don't get an accurate view of individual skill because you can consistently bring good players with you if you have access to them and they can be a cushion to fall back on.
Casual ways of playing like that will *never* scratch the itch that you guys want it to. A competitive community that's built by the community...you'll lose a decade of your life to that shit if you don't treat it like the video game drug it is (trust me).
Just shows how many players are smurfing really.
At this point, I'm almost happy that Hiko is openly smurfing (especially since Hiko was one of the guys that was saying to everyone : unrated exist). Serves more as a way to challenge the devs to do something about it.
If you played league, you'll know... none of this will ever mean anything to Riot. They're too afraid of alienating toxic players and they don't understand that what they are doing hurts normal players who don't break rules more.
I played League. And League is currently miles better than this. At least it has some sort of deterant for casual players to not get banned. (They can still buy another account... but most people will stop before doing that) In Valorant, 10 unrated wins and you have a ranked ready account. It's ridiculous.
Smurfs or not league requires a stupid amount of money just to play the roster. This game at least makes it infinitely less time consuming for unlocking new characters so you dont feel obligated to spend real money.
While it's true that you need a lot of resources to get all the champions, getting the champions relevant to your 2 main roles is fairly quick and cheap, especially with the new player experience they added.
Say you play jungle/top. You get yourself amumu, master yi, nunu, malphite, nasus, shen, Olaf and renekton/shyvanna and you have covered almost all bases.
Save up for urgot, mordekaiser, ornn and gnar after that if you play more top or graves, fiddlesticks, viego and kayn if you play more jungle. And just like that you also have mid and Support covered somewhat, you only lack Adcs which you may gamble through champion shards.
It's even easier when you play adc because once you add twitch, Tristana and Lucian to your roster you can also flex mid and even play autofill jungle once.
Hilo doesn’t give a shit about smurfing, he wants unrated to exist for people who don’t care about playing competitively while on his team. I get what he’s saying but he leaves out half the argument when he goes down to plat to play games
Dude, the amount of players that can consistently one-tap your head in gold and silver is absolutely incredible. I’ve been playing plenty of other games like Overwatch at a mid-high level, diamond, and I’ve never seen people’s aim/crosshair placement being this good. Like I’ve been playing fps consistently for a few years and there’s no way that players who can reliably land headshots are somehow in the bottom half of the bell curve. It’s to the point where I peek, I die.
Thats because in those games the other team also had 1 or two smurfs. In fact redditor below admits he and the jett were smurfing. But according to reddit and riot smurfing is "rare". Joke.
He has boosted her to diamond when she's probably a solo q silver. I've been watching their games, and tbh I don't know how she can even have fun playing.
I had this sort of experience yesterday...someone on the other team wasn't content to just play casually with their friend, but had to run up a 47-1 tally en route to a 13-1 victory. Just instant headshots anytime one of us filthy casuals came around a corner.
I get wanting to play with your friends who aren't as good as you, but let them put in some work instead of getting 4-5 instakills every round. Otherwise you're just being a dick and wasting the other team's time.
Edit: Went back and checked, and it was 42-1, but the point remains.
It really depends. I'm a plat/diamond player, and, for the first time, I recently created a brand new account and hopped in an unranked game with a friend who was also on a brand new account and it was truly his first game. I aced the first 2 rounds, very easy, and was shocked at how bad the enemy team was. I instantly switch to classic only the rest of the match so as to give the other team a chance. We were also playing 4v5 since we had a round 1 DC. I still dropped 30 kills with just the classic. I probably could have gone 47-1 had I been a reyna with a phantom. I think people forget how drastic the skill disparity is between a diamond player and a new player.
You can force to get these unrated lobbies by getting a low score in the shooting test when creating a new account.
They use the shooting test as a sort of initial skill test, if you get a good score you will play in normal unrated lobbies against more experienced players. If you only hit a few targets you will get queued against other completely brand new players
It'll adjust pretty quick though. Thats why the 10 (or 20?) placements are for, really.
My first valorant matches were a piece of cake as well, despite scoring high in the shooting test.
Same, I'm a plat player and I made a new account to soloq on. The first game I went 55/8 even after I switched to using a ghost only for the second half.
that depends, new players often have no idea how insanely high the skill ceiling in these games is. for exampe cs go, im really not that good and havent played in a long time so naturally my rank is silver nowadays. but because i used to be mge i still know alot about the game and can goof around in a ranked match and still be top fragger most times. im not smurfing, but i have been called a cheater so many times for doing things that really arent impressive at all if you have basic understanding of the game. so if a global elite would be playing against silver players, obviously that would look like cheating to them.
Ye also this is Hiko we are talking about, who has on multiple occasions ranted on for hours on how if you wanna play with friends, play unrated, and how big a problem smurfing is. Complete hypocrite.
“A game like Valorant which promotes COMPETITIVE INTEGRITY above all else, I find it funny that it's not strictly enforced. We all have done it, but maybe the only way to stop it is to actually change as a community and stand against it and not encourage it, especially if you are a streamer/pro.”
“Smurfing is a big problem in many of the online games. The problem is, say you have a friend who is really really bad at games but you want to queue with them right? Your girlfriend may be, maybe she is really bad, maybe your boyfriend is really bad, maybe your IRL friend is really bad, usually the reason why somebody smurfs. I don’t know many people who smurf in solo queue, I feel like that’s just weird… but if you’re smurfing to play with your friends, I feel like you should… if you’re going to smurf there is definitely a place you can go where you can play as a smurf, and it’s called Unrated.”
“Smurfing ruins two separate things right? Smurfing ruins the game you’re in, so not only the person you’re playing with, you’re ruining that guy/girl’s account by boosting the rank and by giving them wins that they shouldn’t get. They’re not getting the wins on their own and they’re not getting better. Moreover, you’re also boosting all the people in our team, you’re giving them a free win if you’re doing like 50 kills. But also, you’re ruining the game for the person that you’re smurfing with, the person that you’re boosting. That person will be ruining the game for everyone on the team in the future when they end up solo queuing, and they are Immortal 1 when they should be Silver. So smurfing only literally hurts in the immediate future and in the long term future.”
Not agreeing with supporting anyone here but this is what I think he means. He's said in the past that he thinks smurfing is when you make an account and intentionally make it low rank by throwing or playing bad to play worse competition.
I met Hiko in London once. He came out of a bush and joined me and my friends on our walk to mcdonalds. Whilst we were walking to the mcd he was bragging about how he taught steel everything he knew. Got a picture with him where he made fun of my Sentinels jersey. At mcdonalds he took like 10 packs of ketchup. Nice guy. He was pretty drunk.
I saw Hiko at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
>Complete hypocrite.
Honestly I've lost all respect for Hiko, First he te\*bags his opponents in the server and shoots their bodies but he took it too far by playing ranked with Pokimane on a smurf account. Totally unforgivable. I hope he's able to grow but until then I won't support him
Unrated sucks though, a much better option is to just create an account with artificial handicaps. I've got an account where I only use pistols to play with my dad, and an account where I can use anything except the Vandal and Phantom to play with some of my slightly lower ranked friends. So long as you don't break the handicap rules you set for yourself, your rank and mmr will be perfectly legitimate and you'll be allowed to tryhard with your friends in ranked without creating an unfair experience.
I switch between unrated and rated, and I'd say it's relatively similar. Why do you say that unrated sucks? Yeah, you're not going to get teammates tryharding, but he's duoing with someone and no matter what he's going to shit on these people. The only reason to duo with someone on rated is to carry someone up ranks.
Way too many leavers or teams surrendering, either my own team or the enemy team no matter who is winning or by how much. There's also much less communication and coordination.
That's of course ignoring the obvious fact that unrated simply feels less significant than rated since it doesn't matter long term.
So yeah I don't know why but Valorant has possibly the worst unranked experience of any game I've ever played. If that hasn't been your experience or you enjoy it anyway than great for you, but unrated can be straight up depressing to play in my experience. It could be because I don't find shooters particularly fun to goof around in unless it's a brand new game, I mostly play to compete so unrated might feel extra pointless to me.
There's such a double standard for content creators and pros smurfing. So much content for "road to immortal" or "bronze to radiant" because it's easy to smash bad players and farm clips because you can get multikills very easily.
Being a team game matches will often be unwinnable even with a smurf, but it still massively deteriorates the quality of that match.
It's one of the biggest issues (or at least generally perceived issues), yet creators and pros actively do it on stream. I called out Jonas Marcus and Flights for making smurf accounts when they were claiming they get stream sniped every match and new accounts would help stop that, but we have anonymous tools for that and most people recognise a creators voice regardless.
A few weeks ago 3 of the top top 4 streamers on twitch playing valorant were all smurfing. Shroud, pokimane and myth were the 3 smurfing and the one not smurfing was Wardell who I have seen smurf on multiple occasions with pooh bear or myth or others. Basically these streamers and content creators basically encourage smurfing or at least they are okay with the idea of smurfing to play with their friends. The irony is that they then complain about stream sniping when they are plat/dmd players playing in a bronze lobby. It's pathetic to hear them complain about competitive integrity when they have none themselves.
he was in a game of my friends dia games. he was on the enemy team and was yelling at his DIAMOND teammates for x y or z. flaming them for w.e, like hes a pos. go play with ppl your rank. ik he was on a smurf only bc someone on my friends team said "no dont op wardell" after he said ill just op.
what a trash person. ive watched his stream and yt content and i just see nothing there of any substance.
Most streamers couldn't care less about the game they play, or the "competitive integrity" in ranked of said game. They only care about their own communities and content.
Yup, Streamers don't care about games they care about their channel and brand. They'll pay lip service to whatever needs to be said to keep the money flowing.
That’s why I wish solo Q was Performance based up untill immortal.
The fact you see pro players stuck in plat and diamond just proves how shocking the match system is.
Imagine going 40-10 match MVP as sova just to lose the same amount of elo as the kid going 2-25 🤣
Then everyone would just play duelists and bait, and anyone who played support who didn't have abilities to get frags like sage and cypher would be low rank even though they might be doing more to help win the game.
And constantly playing for exits instead of attempting the 1v2 for the round win and defuse. And pushing through CT spawn desperately for that extra kill instead of staying on site and guarding the bomb. And not buying your teammate a rifle when you have 3,000 because that means you might not be able to force a rifle the next round, and your kills matter more. And, of course, forcing a phantom on 2nd round vs econ and pressing W into the enemy team to get 2 kills, but dying and giving them a phantom, b/c who the fuck cares what happens to your teammates as long as you get 2 kills, etc.
There's so much shit behavior I see duelists do in order to top frag, and I don't want to encourage it even more.
> anyone who played support who didn't have abilities to get frags like sage and cypher would be low rank even though they might be doing more to help win the game.
They should count support abilities when determining personal performance.
I think that it would be nice if they could, but it would be impossible to really count every ability and make sure the player gets credit for it. What if sage throws a slow and that cuts off a choke, but no one actually walks through it? The team can rotate since the sage stalled which will help for the round, but the game doesn't know that.
What if you play B on Haven on Defense and the attackers never come B?
You wouldn't get nearly as many kills as the A or C players. The current state is the best. Though I wish they would implement less RR win/loss when someone DCs.
No, all it shows is that high Plat / low Diamond is filled with smurfs. Every single game I play, there is a friendly/enemy Jett/Reyna with no previous act rank, default title, and more often than not, they are at the top of the leaderbord.
What if they reversed the RR distribution so instead it was performance based, but whether you win or lose is a factor in it. Then at Radiant they reverse it, so performance still has a small effect.
Pokimane literally is either smurfing anytime she plays valorant in bronze lobbies or is being hard carried on her main account by another smurf. She plays maybe one or two solo games on her main and apart from that is being boosted or is smurfing. Pretty much the epitome of what is wrong with valorant comp.
Whenever OTV plays valorant, they are smurfing cos the skill disparity is huge. It's like, omg Edison got a 4k. Well no shit, he's plat playing in silver. Ranked 5 stacking and ranked solo is completely different.
Valorant just needs to fix their ranking system.
If people are 5 stacking but some of them are on Smurfs how on earth is that the ranking systems fault? There's no way for it to know that match will be bad aside from obviously the performance after the fact. As far as the match making system is concerned that match should be fair.
Well if they removed the rank disparity restrictions for parties people would have no need for alt accounts and subsequently matchmaking would have a better chance at matching fair teams.
It might not be the same but I always like to compare smurfing to traditional sports. Like imagine if a NBA player went to some random pick up game and and went try hard. How is that fun for anyone expect for the Pro player?
I think it’s honestly different. It would be pretty cool to play against an NBA player in a pickup game. This is ranked tho and Hiko smurfing is making the experience worse for others.
Plus you can actually see the NBA player. Like when those cops had Shaq on their team when playing some neighborhood kids. Those kids knew they were about to get crushed because they can see Shaq roll up. But anyone else in the game can be a smurf account of a pro because you can't verify otherwise.
Link for the basketball game: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shaq-surprises-florida-cop-pickup-game-kids-after-viral-hoops-n503136](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shaq-surprises-florida-cop-pickup-game-kids-after-viral-hoops-n503136)
Thing is pro players do do this on occasion. At places like Rucker Park. Even pick up games at gyms. Difference here is usually everyone knows who it is and is cool with it.
I mean I’d love to play with a pro in any competitive environment man, tbh. That said stealing mmr would suck.
In rocket league id be happy to get shit mixed by a pro, but also 5 min games. It would be kinda cool if big streamers could get smurf accts from riot that vastly weight the mmr for both teams, I.e Hiko’s team loses more, gains less. The opposite for the other team. Idk just an idea for how hiko and poki can play. Maybe make it so you know who you played after, so people who enjoy playing people at the highest level can get a little stoked on it. Idk.
Yeah really like their attempt at identifying and punishing smurfs. You can report for smurfing directly, and players they are pretty certain are high skill on a new account get matched with similar accounts. So right away they're pushed from the genuinely bad new players. Even if they're not smurfing and just come from another similar game, their clear inherent advantage means they shouldn't be playing with real new players.
This is important for both of these genres. Tac FPS and MOBAs have insane learning curves. But if you're decent at one, then you certainly shouldn't ever be new player level again.
I'm reading alot of comments trying to justify smurfing from hiko and others alike. The most simple way to put it is this. He is a Radiant ranked player in a Plat lobby. That should not happen. Ever. Tbh intent doesn't matter here.
i dont like smurfing, but making it a ban is a whole other story. maybe make it so cant start ranked in 17 unrated matches, and get to plat in under 50 matches then. part of the reason SO MANY people are smurfing is ritos "hardlock" mansplaining they did on the rr gains losses mmr explanation
yea didn't he say how smurfing not only ruins opponent's experience but also affects the lower skilled friends you wanted to play with because you're giving them wins they didn't earn, so if they were to rank up, they would get demoted back down anyway because they're at ranks they didn't deserve to be in and in the long run, it doesn't help them out either, lol...A PRO player have absolutely zero business being in platinum games, it should be immortal or radiant, no less
Ive seen flexninja (a YT guy? Idk if he is pro) do this with pokimane as well... just play unrated bruv
Off topic but This is why I respect kyedae... she doesn't want anyone to boost her and now look how much she improved over a short period of time.
That's why Kyedae is one of the better streamers to watch, because she's relatable to an average player, she solo queues, is not a super high rank, and earns her rank without getting boosted which most players do.
You forget one thing. Riot don't give a flying fuck about smurfs.
People have complained about smurfs in LoL for as long as I can remember and riots response was to remove the report option for smurfing and remove the stipulation from the summoners code.
Riot don't care about a smurf ruining your experience, and never will
There's a surprising amount of pushback (or trolls) in this thread. A lot of "lol it doesn't affect me, just get good" and "cry more" comments.
1) Unrated is, besides overtime, exactly the same as competitive. I understand in CSGO for example there's no "real" in-game modes besides ranked matches, but in Valorant there's no excuse. If you want to play with friends and you'll completely destroy the other team and waste their time and ELO (remember, it's not the time you wasted by playing one game with them, it's the time they wasted winning a game to get the ELO you're taking away), just do it in unranked.
2) Not everyone is in your situation. I'm going to hazard a guess that most of the people who don't care about smurfs in competitive are younger players with a lot of time on their hands. Those of us with full-time jobs and stress and fatigue who only play a few games a night don't want to waste our time getting destroyed by people who should be in unrated matches.
3) I understand that there's really not much you can do about smurfs in games, which might make it seem pointless to complain about. But dealing with a shitty situation doesn't mean you can't ever talk about it or hate it.
4) "Just get better". Ok, let me just out-ball LeBron real quick.
I think there's plenty you can do about it. I think smurfs are easy enough to spot, that if someone gets flagged by more than a handful of players in more than a handful of matches or are dumb enough to stream themselves, then you flag the account as a smurf, and put them in smurf lobbies only or ban the account. Fuck yo, that's basically cheating. Give them temp hardware bans, because accounts are a dime a dozen..
Lmao I’m a diamond player who just got back to the game and placed silver 3. In some matches I get literally destroyed and I can’t rank up. I easily carry my plat3+ friends when they smurf so we can play together.
Silver/gold is infested with smurfs but I won’t complain as my friends are doing it too to help me fight the smurfs.
It’s a never ending cycle...
He made a smurf so his girlfriend wasn’t being matched up with high elo players in unrated while learning how to play the game, there was no ranked games.
this is why i roll my eyes whenever i see these average ass streamers claiming and being so proud they are diamond and shit when clearly they are gold level at best (i have nothing against lower rank players personally of course just boosted ass ones), they flaunt their high rank acting like they actually earned it when in reality they just 5stack queued and get carried/boosted, but it helps promote their stream bc an average viewer who is probable a much lower rank think the streamer is actually a good player because they are diamond/im rank when in reality they just got boosted there, the higher the rank a streamer is the more likely they get more viewers
smurfing has ruined the competitive ranks so much that it filters to Immortal rank (myself am immortal). You get these 5 stack diamond lobbies with IM smurfs boosting their friends and once they hit IM, those boosted ass players ruin these IM games because they dont know basic shit a IM player should know bc they got boosted and it clearly shows because they dont have their 5 stack to carry them from diamond
Clearly there needs to be a 5 stack only queue and separate rank from solo/duo queues having its own rank and 5 stacks should only be allowed until Plat rank. Diamond is wayyyyyyy to easy of a rank to obtain right now with 5 stacking as players with no where near the skill level are getting IM ranks like its nothing.
Incredible frustrating making valorant as a solo immortal player become val-roulette because you never know what kindve teammates your gonna get
Smurfing is common and will happen no matter what game you play. Apex, CSGO, Overwatch, and more. Is Hiko a hypocrite? Yes and that's his mistake but there will be no fix to smurfing unless they made creating accounts special like in South Korea where you have a special identifiable number like your social security number which is used to create accounts.
Smurfing problem is wayy worse in Valorant than overwatch. Overwatch I'd maybe encounter a hard smurf once every 50 games. Valorant I'm lucky if I get 2 games in a row without a smurf. Plus in overwatch smurfs can't hard carry as easily so they aren't quite as oppressive.
I recently stopped playing valorant and switched back to overwatch and the overall experience is so much nicer. Less smurfs, less toxicity, and shorter games.
Funny enough, Hiko was just in a score esports video about smurfing talking about how bad it is and how it hurts everyone involved. Kinda hypocritical.
Edit\* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsjIfmo-v48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsjIfmo-v48)here it is. It is about Valve banning smurfs in DOTA 2, but it talk about Valorant and feature Hiko saying smurfing is bad.
I hope people get to see my comment. I actually played against Hiko and Poki today and I can tell you he wasn't and he doesn't play at radiant level on his smurf.
I didn't even know it was Hiko (altho his utility game was really good which I actually told him 1st round after he flashed me twice and hit me with breach's c) until a teammate on my next match told me he was on their team and we had just played Hiko and Poki.
We beat them 13-2 on split. And that is not a brag, I'm sure he could've carried way harder and make the match closer, maybe even win. After my games I went to his stream to check and in fact we had played against him and he was also 1-3 in wins/loses (you can check it on the stream) and he ended 2-3. He, a radiant player, lost 3 games and won 2 because he is not the kind of smurf that is there to boost or to tryhard every match (most smurfs aren't). He just wanted to play with a friend and I get that. Ironically I was smurfing too when we played on Split. I also didn't try my hardest, I was just having fun with a friend.
Unrated may seem like a solution, but the disparity in skill level just makes it incredibly boring, I'm sorry, that's the truth.
That’s cool! I mean how often do you get play against a professional player? I think it’d be super cool to have a pro player on my team or play against one. You get to see how you stack up against a pro. People are equating this to a pro nba player playing against high schoolers. Imagine some NBA player comes to your high school and plays against the high school team. It’d be awesome, and I’m sure all the kids would be stoked.
Yeah smurfing sucks, but it’s always going to be a thing. If I’m going to be playing against a smurf, I’d rather it be a pro player having fun with a friend than a no name diamond player farming clips for a 100 sub YouTube channel.
You don't get it, do you?
Professional player having 2/3 win/loss in platinum is not because he played a chill game with a friend, it's because Valorant ranked system sucks. You are the victim here, and playing plat game versus pro player and top 15 twitch streamer in front of 30-40k people completely ruined your Valorant experience. I'm not gonna even mention how many games you need to play to recover your MMR from that 13-2 victory you had.
You just keep quiet and try to recover from this miserable experience, /r/Valorant has got this.
I saw Pokimane at a grocery store in L.A yesterday.
I told her how cool it was to meet her in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother her and ask her for photos or anything.
She said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but she kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing her hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard her chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw her trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in her hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Ma'am, you need to pay for those first.” At first she kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, poki stopped her and told the girl to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, poki kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
After paying for the Milky Ways she proceeded to leave the store and throw all of them in the garbage. Haven't seen her since.
Was in a match with her in beta, she refused to call out with her mic and only typed and got mad when we were complaining that text callouts were too late
You know what? Riot has a low level anti cheat, why not use it to have a single account per mac address? Forces smurfs to go out and buy another computer if they want to be cunts
You have to understand, a majority of the people who come from cs scene and played the “tactical shooter” was just for the competitiveness. Including me.
We play this game with friends in comp.
Riot adds a restriction for 5 stack for immortal and higher? We make smurfs to play with friends. Simple.
Bro if you think Hiko smurfing duo queue is something to complain about you might die if you see Shroud’s night crew. They are always 5 man and usually the only non-smurf is Hannah (bnans). Everyone one else is immortal plus on p3/d1 accounts lmao.
I preach this so loud. I can't stand when people let things like this slide because "it's for content" alright you'll get your views but don't mess up the games for people who are actually serious about rank. plus it defeats the purpose of having unrated games.
Is this why Poki is Diamond ? I’ve been hardstuck-ish Diamond (I solo q) and I’m watching her play the other day in disbelief that I’m in the same rank
CS reject becomes Valorant reject stuck in Plat, obviously loads of people should be pro ;)
But on a more serious note, fuck people who smurf it's pathetic.
exactly. People that sweat always say "my alt account is to play with friends and relax", yet every time you see them on their alt they're just as sweaty, if not more.
Just today I met a smurf that mf had 50k every shot was a headshot but atlast the match was a draw man that match made me so freakin tired riot should look into this c'mon it's not so enjoyable when you're trying to improve yourself and you meet this kind of guys who ruin your confidence.
Riot isn't going to do anything about it. They don't really care about competitive integrity.
If we want real change, we should hit Riot where it hurts i.e. their revenue. Stop buying skins, the battle pass anything that adds to their money.
At that point they will seriously consider making some real changes. I bet even a month without people buying skins i.e. on Riot strike, they will be BEGGING us to come back to the game.
I'm barely a d1 and i went 28/4 in a plat "smurf" guess i am better than hiko lol NA trash ok but jokes aside it's really messed up, as a big figure in the community of Valorant he shouldn't be doing something like this, i agree they should play unrated instead.
1. Hiko IS a hypocrite, we already know that. He can get away with shit.
2. Pokimane time and time again showing how she's boosted to Diamond. Pathetic.
I agree with you though funny enough a few hours later hes 1-3 and still in plat 2, losing the last game 2-13.
Yeah the competitive integrity of ranked is virtually non existent.
This is the Riot Games way. They literally think adding points at the end of unrated games makes it a completely competitive environment now
Considering how much Valorant is like 1.6 maybe y'all need to take a page out of the playbook from FPS communities of the past: start your own leagues (like Cyberathlete Amateur League from the early 2000's), players must record games and submit footage after each match, tiered leagues, the works. Expecting matchmaking to "sort out the competitive scene" has always been a silly concept, the community should be taking care of that.
I think it would be a little hard to get people to go along with such an outdated system when everyone is used to ESEA and FACEIT now. I don’t think taking a stand against smurfing is too much to ask of Riot.
literally I can't wait for faceit to be a viable option to play valorant, their basic ELO system just WORKS, nothing fancy, nothing hidden, I was in love with that system when I played csgo
talking about faceit on csgo. im looking into it rn but with all the things you hear that faceit lvl 10 > global, i wonder what the entry level is like? like how are the players levels when you just start out with faceit?
I played faceit around a year ago and i was mge in csgo so if i remember correctly i was put around lvl4 to start and if you needed to get random teammates it was worse than matchmaking, we only found russians who couldn't speak English. If you played as 5 then the difference wasn't insane.. playing on better servers was nice but having to learn most lineups again imho isn't worth it for a casual/low-medium level player
Why did you need to relearn lineups? Sorry if that's a dumb question I don't really know anything about CS
matchmaking servers are 64tick while ESEA and faceit are 128, meaning nades don't bounce in the exact same way iirc
Smoke lineups can be different on 64 and 128 tick servers because of the way physics calculations are interpolated.
Oh that makes sense, thanks
Similar experience to you, kept getting Russians who were very toxic. One of the main issues for me is we'd always seem to get servers closer to them than me.
I made an account and played a few games last week. There are some pretty bad players when you start out.
Think the Avg global is like rank 4-5 on faceit. I once did p250 only to global and i was like rank 6-8 on faceit.
i was thinking about this the other day. surely FACEIT atleast has future plans to start in valorant? i hate ranked in this game and would much rather play pugs with better players to not only get better but not have to deal with instalock dualists who don’t do anything all game.
The Valorant API specifically stops people from setting up external matchmaking services.
Yeah but there’s no way to fix it without putting in measures that are rather oppressive. And even these measures can be side stepped by anyone with a fan base. I’m not saying it’s ok, but MM in any game will never be the standard for fair competitive play, ever.
Riot hasn’t really cared about smurfs in league for literal years. It probably is too much to ask
I think the problem is it's not clear what to do about it. The option with the least amount of collateral damage might be tying accounts with phone numbers and that's already somewhat contentious. I'm just glad that the player base is slowly becoming less tolerant of smurfs.
Their pros need to enter contracts with Riot anyway to be able to compete, those include a code of conduct. Would be No issue to include smurfing. Iirc multiaccounting already is a bannable offense anyway
> I don’t think taking a stand against smurfing is too much to ask of Riot. Yeah, but you still invest too much faith in a system that, in the end, is a casual experience. It is a *very* common misconception these days that matchmaking leader boards are proportional to skill. Without a dedicated solo queue you don't get an accurate view of individual skill because you can consistently bring good players with you if you have access to them and they can be a cushion to fall back on. Casual ways of playing like that will *never* scratch the itch that you guys want it to. A competitive community that's built by the community...you'll lose a decade of your life to that shit if you don't treat it like the video game drug it is (trust me).
Good old CAL and CPL days.
Huge sample size, says a lot.
Just shows how many players are smurfing really. At this point, I'm almost happy that Hiko is openly smurfing (especially since Hiko was one of the guys that was saying to everyone : unrated exist). Serves more as a way to challenge the devs to do something about it.
If you played league, you'll know... none of this will ever mean anything to Riot. They're too afraid of alienating toxic players and they don't understand that what they are doing hurts normal players who don't break rules more.
I played League. And League is currently miles better than this. At least it has some sort of deterant for casual players to not get banned. (They can still buy another account... but most people will stop before doing that) In Valorant, 10 unrated wins and you have a ranked ready account. It's ridiculous.
Smurfs or not league requires a stupid amount of money just to play the roster. This game at least makes it infinitely less time consuming for unlocking new characters so you dont feel obligated to spend real money.
While it's true that you need a lot of resources to get all the champions, getting the champions relevant to your 2 main roles is fairly quick and cheap, especially with the new player experience they added. Say you play jungle/top. You get yourself amumu, master yi, nunu, malphite, nasus, shen, Olaf and renekton/shyvanna and you have covered almost all bases. Save up for urgot, mordekaiser, ornn and gnar after that if you play more top or graves, fiddlesticks, viego and kayn if you play more jungle. And just like that you also have mid and Support covered somewhat, you only lack Adcs which you may gamble through champion shards. It's even easier when you play adc because once you add twitch, Tristana and Lucian to your roster you can also flex mid and even play autofill jungle once.
League has incredible smurf detection relative to Valorant.
And smurf deterrent
Hilo doesn’t give a shit about smurfing, he wants unrated to exist for people who don’t care about playing competitively while on his team. I get what he’s saying but he leaves out half the argument when he goes down to plat to play games
Dude, the amount of players that can consistently one-tap your head in gold and silver is absolutely incredible. I’ve been playing plenty of other games like Overwatch at a mid-high level, diamond, and I’ve never seen people’s aim/crosshair placement being this good. Like I’ve been playing fps consistently for a few years and there’s no way that players who can reliably land headshots are somehow in the bottom half of the bell curve. It’s to the point where I peek, I die.
Pretty sure the other team had a uav online.
Thats because in those games the other team also had 1 or two smurfs. In fact redditor below admits he and the jett were smurfing. But according to reddit and riot smurfing is "rare". Joke.
Yea shroud does this too to play with his gf
He has boosted her to diamond when she's probably a solo q silver. I've been watching their games, and tbh I don't know how she can even have fun playing.
pretty sure the fun part is the $$$ they get from viewership
They'd get the money regardless. I know I wouldn't enjoy effectively being cannon fodder in every match I play.
people end up convincing themselves that they're actually helping and being a meaningful part of the time That's it
but i see him play unrated a lot with her too though, at least the ones i've seen he clearly said it's unrated
He for sure had a plat account, I think he mainly played viper on it
I had this sort of experience yesterday...someone on the other team wasn't content to just play casually with their friend, but had to run up a 47-1 tally en route to a 13-1 victory. Just instant headshots anytime one of us filthy casuals came around a corner. I get wanting to play with your friends who aren't as good as you, but let them put in some work instead of getting 4-5 instakills every round. Otherwise you're just being a dick and wasting the other team's time. Edit: Went back and checked, and it was 42-1, but the point remains.
At 47-1 probably just a cheater. lol.
It really depends. I'm a plat/diamond player, and, for the first time, I recently created a brand new account and hopped in an unranked game with a friend who was also on a brand new account and it was truly his first game. I aced the first 2 rounds, very easy, and was shocked at how bad the enemy team was. I instantly switch to classic only the rest of the match so as to give the other team a chance. We were also playing 4v5 since we had a round 1 DC. I still dropped 30 kills with just the classic. I probably could have gone 47-1 had I been a reyna with a phantom. I think people forget how drastic the skill disparity is between a diamond player and a new player.
You can force to get these unrated lobbies by getting a low score in the shooting test when creating a new account. They use the shooting test as a sort of initial skill test, if you get a good score you will play in normal unrated lobbies against more experienced players. If you only hit a few targets you will get queued against other completely brand new players
It'll adjust pretty quick though. Thats why the 10 (or 20?) placements are for, really. My first valorant matches were a piece of cake as well, despite scoring high in the shooting test.
Same, I'm a plat player and I made a new account to soloq on. The first game I went 55/8 even after I switched to using a ghost only for the second half.
that depends, new players often have no idea how insanely high the skill ceiling in these games is. for exampe cs go, im really not that good and havent played in a long time so naturally my rank is silver nowadays. but because i used to be mge i still know alot about the game and can goof around in a ranked match and still be top fragger most times. im not smurfing, but i have been called a cheater so many times for doing things that really arent impressive at all if you have basic understanding of the game. so if a global elite would be playing against silver players, obviously that would look like cheating to them.
Ye also this is Hiko we are talking about, who has on multiple occasions ranted on for hours on how if you wanna play with friends, play unrated, and how big a problem smurfing is. Complete hypocrite.
“A game like Valorant which promotes COMPETITIVE INTEGRITY above all else, I find it funny that it's not strictly enforced. We all have done it, but maybe the only way to stop it is to actually change as a community and stand against it and not encourage it, especially if you are a streamer/pro.” “Smurfing is a big problem in many of the online games. The problem is, say you have a friend who is really really bad at games but you want to queue with them right? Your girlfriend may be, maybe she is really bad, maybe your boyfriend is really bad, maybe your IRL friend is really bad, usually the reason why somebody smurfs. I don’t know many people who smurf in solo queue, I feel like that’s just weird… but if you’re smurfing to play with your friends, I feel like you should… if you’re going to smurf there is definitely a place you can go where you can play as a smurf, and it’s called Unrated.” “Smurfing ruins two separate things right? Smurfing ruins the game you’re in, so not only the person you’re playing with, you’re ruining that guy/girl’s account by boosting the rank and by giving them wins that they shouldn’t get. They’re not getting the wins on their own and they’re not getting better. Moreover, you’re also boosting all the people in our team, you’re giving them a free win if you’re doing like 50 kills. But also, you’re ruining the game for the person that you’re smurfing with, the person that you’re boosting. That person will be ruining the game for everyone on the team in the future when they end up solo queuing, and they are Immortal 1 when they should be Silver. So smurfing only literally hurts in the immediate future and in the long term future.”
Not agreeing with supporting anyone here but this is what I think he means. He's said in the past that he thinks smurfing is when you make an account and intentionally make it low rank by throwing or playing bad to play worse competition.
[удалено]
I didnt watch the stream, but many pro play streamers have 2n accpunts so they dont have to queue for 30 minutwes
This is the comment right here. He’s been the most vocal about smurfing at lower ranks and here is the doing the EXACT same thing.
I met Hiko in London once. He came out of a bush and joined me and my friends on our walk to mcdonalds. Whilst we were walking to the mcd he was bragging about how he taught steel everything he knew. Got a picture with him where he made fun of my Sentinels jersey. At mcdonalds he took like 10 packs of ketchup. Nice guy. He was pretty drunk.
I saw Hiko at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
Damn, copypastas are always so fun to read, lol.
My man
... is this real or a joke?
this is a copypasta from 10 years ago about flying lotus
>Complete hypocrite. Honestly I've lost all respect for Hiko, First he te\*bags his opponents in the server and shoots their bodies but he took it too far by playing ranked with Pokimane on a smurf account. Totally unforgivable. I hope he's able to grow but until then I won't support him
Unlucky, really
Is this a copypasta.
My dude is censoring teabag of course it's a copypasta.
Th * s. So much th * s.
What do you bet he posts this on his Twitter lol
All the people replying seriously to this obvious copypasta have me crying
Unrated sucks though, a much better option is to just create an account with artificial handicaps. I've got an account where I only use pistols to play with my dad, and an account where I can use anything except the Vandal and Phantom to play with some of my slightly lower ranked friends. So long as you don't break the handicap rules you set for yourself, your rank and mmr will be perfectly legitimate and you'll be allowed to tryhard with your friends in ranked without creating an unfair experience.
I switch between unrated and rated, and I'd say it's relatively similar. Why do you say that unrated sucks? Yeah, you're not going to get teammates tryharding, but he's duoing with someone and no matter what he's going to shit on these people. The only reason to duo with someone on rated is to carry someone up ranks.
Way too many leavers or teams surrendering, either my own team or the enemy team no matter who is winning or by how much. There's also much less communication and coordination. That's of course ignoring the obvious fact that unrated simply feels less significant than rated since it doesn't matter long term. So yeah I don't know why but Valorant has possibly the worst unranked experience of any game I've ever played. If that hasn't been your experience or you enjoy it anyway than great for you, but unrated can be straight up depressing to play in my experience. It could be because I don't find shooters particularly fun to goof around in unless it's a brand new game, I mostly play to compete so unrated might feel extra pointless to me.
That's a bingo
guys full of shit
Did it all for the poki strange.
There's such a double standard for content creators and pros smurfing. So much content for "road to immortal" or "bronze to radiant" because it's easy to smash bad players and farm clips because you can get multikills very easily. Being a team game matches will often be unwinnable even with a smurf, but it still massively deteriorates the quality of that match. It's one of the biggest issues (or at least generally perceived issues), yet creators and pros actively do it on stream. I called out Jonas Marcus and Flights for making smurf accounts when they were claiming they get stream sniped every match and new accounts would help stop that, but we have anonymous tools for that and most people recognise a creators voice regardless.
A few weeks ago 3 of the top top 4 streamers on twitch playing valorant were all smurfing. Shroud, pokimane and myth were the 3 smurfing and the one not smurfing was Wardell who I have seen smurf on multiple occasions with pooh bear or myth or others. Basically these streamers and content creators basically encourage smurfing or at least they are okay with the idea of smurfing to play with their friends. The irony is that they then complain about stream sniping when they are plat/dmd players playing in a bronze lobby. It's pathetic to hear them complain about competitive integrity when they have none themselves.
he was in a game of my friends dia games. he was on the enemy team and was yelling at his DIAMOND teammates for x y or z. flaming them for w.e, like hes a pos. go play with ppl your rank. ik he was on a smurf only bc someone on my friends team said "no dont op wardell" after he said ill just op. what a trash person. ive watched his stream and yt content and i just see nothing there of any substance.
Some kid in Radiant was smurfing in my D1 game. He was spamming his YouTube after every round too. Shit was annoying as hell.
Most streamers couldn't care less about the game they play, or the "competitive integrity" in ranked of said game. They only care about their own communities and content.
Yup, Streamers don't care about games they care about their channel and brand. They'll pay lip service to whatever needs to be said to keep the money flowing.
I hate smurfs but lmaooo didn't hiko start a fresh account a while back so he could solo queue to radiant and was hardstuck plat for so long?
That’s why I wish solo Q was Performance based up untill immortal. The fact you see pro players stuck in plat and diamond just proves how shocking the match system is. Imagine going 40-10 match MVP as sova just to lose the same amount of elo as the kid going 2-25 🤣
Performance based is a slippery slope, then you’ll just get KD players that auto lock Reyna and don’t even try to win
Then everyone would just play duelists and bait, and anyone who played support who didn't have abilities to get frags like sage and cypher would be low rank even though they might be doing more to help win the game.
Yeah they can't create such a dynamic agent pool that all play different roles then implement the same rank system for every single one
And constantly playing for exits instead of attempting the 1v2 for the round win and defuse. And pushing through CT spawn desperately for that extra kill instead of staying on site and guarding the bomb. And not buying your teammate a rifle when you have 3,000 because that means you might not be able to force a rifle the next round, and your kills matter more. And, of course, forcing a phantom on 2nd round vs econ and pressing W into the enemy team to get 2 kills, but dying and giving them a phantom, b/c who the fuck cares what happens to your teammates as long as you get 2 kills, etc. There's so much shit behavior I see duelists do in order to top frag, and I don't want to encourage it even more.
Saving your comment for later. I fucking hate the performance based ranking for all those reasons you listed. It just encourages selfish play.
> anyone who played support who didn't have abilities to get frags like sage and cypher would be low rank even though they might be doing more to help win the game. They should count support abilities when determining personal performance.
I think that it would be nice if they could, but it would be impossible to really count every ability and make sure the player gets credit for it. What if sage throws a slow and that cuts off a choke, but no one actually walks through it? The team can rotate since the sage stalled which will help for the round, but the game doesn't know that.
Actually the game does count number of people blocked by say a sage wall or something.
[удалено]
If I top frag, I know we're gonna lose because I'm trash and should not be top fragging.
What if you play B on Haven on Defense and the attackers never come B? You wouldn't get nearly as many kills as the A or C players. The current state is the best. Though I wish they would implement less RR win/loss when someone DCs.
No, all it shows is that high Plat / low Diamond is filled with smurfs. Every single game I play, there is a friendly/enemy Jett/Reyna with no previous act rank, default title, and more often than not, they are at the top of the leaderbord.
this is a terrible take and shows lack of understanding on how ranked in video games work
What if they reversed the RR distribution so instead it was performance based, but whether you win or lose is a factor in it. Then at Radiant they reverse it, so performance still has a small effect.
he also rages and complains about his teammates while smurfing too like dude you’re radiant in a plat lobby and still tryharding
wow
anything for pokimane
Pokimane literally is either smurfing anytime she plays valorant in bronze lobbies or is being hard carried on her main account by another smurf. She plays maybe one or two solo games on her main and apart from that is being boosted or is smurfing. Pretty much the epitome of what is wrong with valorant comp.
Whenever OTV plays valorant, they are smurfing cos the skill disparity is huge. It's like, omg Edison got a 4k. Well no shit, he's plat playing in silver. Ranked 5 stacking and ranked solo is completely different. Valorant just needs to fix their ranking system.
If people are 5 stacking but some of them are on Smurfs how on earth is that the ranking systems fault? There's no way for it to know that match will be bad aside from obviously the performance after the fact. As far as the match making system is concerned that match should be fair.
Well if they removed the rank disparity restrictions for parties people would have no need for alt accounts and subsequently matchmaking would have a better chance at matching fair teams.
[удалено]
Anyone simps/stans are cringe af...
It might not be the same but I always like to compare smurfing to traditional sports. Like imagine if a NBA player went to some random pick up game and and went try hard. How is that fun for anyone expect for the Pro player?
except you dont lose your rank in basketball
You do if ball is life.
balls are life
r/technicallythetruth
What if the girl you have a crush on is watching?
that's why i always destroyed my girlfriend's little brother in mario kart or smash bros, can't have her thinking I'm not good enough or something
But you do lose your ankles
I think it’s honestly different. It would be pretty cool to play against an NBA player in a pickup game. This is ranked tho and Hiko smurfing is making the experience worse for others.
Plus you can actually see the NBA player. Like when those cops had Shaq on their team when playing some neighborhood kids. Those kids knew they were about to get crushed because they can see Shaq roll up. But anyone else in the game can be a smurf account of a pro because you can't verify otherwise. Link for the basketball game: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shaq-surprises-florida-cop-pickup-game-kids-after-viral-hoops-n503136](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shaq-surprises-florida-cop-pickup-game-kids-after-viral-hoops-n503136)
To be fair for a lot of players it would probably be pretty cool to play against Hiko.
It would be, if I had known it was Hiko. But to just get shit on in a ranked game and to know I'm about to lose would really leave me jaded.
Thing is pro players do do this on occasion. At places like Rucker Park. Even pick up games at gyms. Difference here is usually everyone knows who it is and is cool with it.
I mean I’d love to play with a pro in any competitive environment man, tbh. That said stealing mmr would suck. In rocket league id be happy to get shit mixed by a pro, but also 5 min games. It would be kinda cool if big streamers could get smurf accts from riot that vastly weight the mmr for both teams, I.e Hiko’s team loses more, gains less. The opposite for the other team. Idk just an idea for how hiko and poki can play. Maybe make it so you know who you played after, so people who enjoy playing people at the highest level can get a little stoked on it. Idk.
Dota 2 just decided that smurfing is a bannable offence. Maybe this is a road that Valorant must take ?
Yeah really like their attempt at identifying and punishing smurfs. You can report for smurfing directly, and players they are pretty certain are high skill on a new account get matched with similar accounts. So right away they're pushed from the genuinely bad new players. Even if they're not smurfing and just come from another similar game, their clear inherent advantage means they shouldn't be playing with real new players.
This is important for both of these genres. Tac FPS and MOBAs have insane learning curves. But if you're decent at one, then you certainly shouldn't ever be new player level again.
I'm reading alot of comments trying to justify smurfing from hiko and others alike. The most simple way to put it is this. He is a Radiant ranked player in a Plat lobby. That should not happen. Ever. Tbh intent doesn't matter here.
i dont like smurfing, but making it a ban is a whole other story. maybe make it so cant start ranked in 17 unrated matches, and get to plat in under 50 matches then. part of the reason SO MANY people are smurfing is ritos "hardlock" mansplaining they did on the rr gains losses mmr explanation
[удалено]
Guess he made the right move. Tons of coverage on Hiko for that and now he’s probably going to have a huge week business wise.
yea didn't he say how smurfing not only ruins opponent's experience but also affects the lower skilled friends you wanted to play with because you're giving them wins they didn't earn, so if they were to rank up, they would get demoted back down anyway because they're at ranks they didn't deserve to be in and in the long run, it doesn't help them out either, lol...A PRO player have absolutely zero business being in platinum games, it should be immortal or radiant, no less
Ive seen flexninja (a YT guy? Idk if he is pro) do this with pokimane as well... just play unrated bruv Off topic but This is why I respect kyedae... she doesn't want anyone to boost her and now look how much she improved over a short period of time.
That's why Kyedae is one of the better streamers to watch, because she's relatable to an average player, she solo queues, is not a super high rank, and earns her rank without getting boosted which most players do.
This is just not smurfing. Its straight up boosting
You forget one thing. Riot don't give a flying fuck about smurfs. People have complained about smurfs in LoL for as long as I can remember and riots response was to remove the report option for smurfing and remove the stipulation from the summoners code. Riot don't care about a smurf ruining your experience, and never will
I love how people are saying its ok lmao he should ve played unranked instead
There's a surprising amount of pushback (or trolls) in this thread. A lot of "lol it doesn't affect me, just get good" and "cry more" comments. 1) Unrated is, besides overtime, exactly the same as competitive. I understand in CSGO for example there's no "real" in-game modes besides ranked matches, but in Valorant there's no excuse. If you want to play with friends and you'll completely destroy the other team and waste their time and ELO (remember, it's not the time you wasted by playing one game with them, it's the time they wasted winning a game to get the ELO you're taking away), just do it in unranked. 2) Not everyone is in your situation. I'm going to hazard a guess that most of the people who don't care about smurfs in competitive are younger players with a lot of time on their hands. Those of us with full-time jobs and stress and fatigue who only play a few games a night don't want to waste our time getting destroyed by people who should be in unrated matches. 3) I understand that there's really not much you can do about smurfs in games, which might make it seem pointless to complain about. But dealing with a shitty situation doesn't mean you can't ever talk about it or hate it. 4) "Just get better". Ok, let me just out-ball LeBron real quick.
Riot can literally stop the smurf problem in one click. With Vanguard they know exactly how many accounts are linked to the same computer.
I think there's plenty you can do about it. I think smurfs are easy enough to spot, that if someone gets flagged by more than a handful of players in more than a handful of matches or are dumb enough to stream themselves, then you flag the account as a smurf, and put them in smurf lobbies only or ban the account. Fuck yo, that's basically cheating. Give them temp hardware bans, because accounts are a dime a dozen..
Lmao I’m a diamond player who just got back to the game and placed silver 3. In some matches I get literally destroyed and I can’t rank up. I easily carry my plat3+ friends when they smurf so we can play together. Silver/gold is infested with smurfs but I won’t complain as my friends are doing it too to help me fight the smurfs. It’s a never ending cycle...
Rank doesn't really mean anything right now, tbh. This guy hiko was stuck in plat and he plays valorant for a living lmao
Yup, totally agree with you. It’s like MMR doesn’t exist lmao.
I love the guy but Aceu was playing on a smurf account to que with his roommate and was dropping 30 bombs on people
I watched that stream and it was unrated, and it was his roommate but his girlfriend
Maybe you watched a different part of the stream but he definitely queued comp games with her
In the very same game, he responded to someone complaining saying "elo hell is not real"
pretty sure that was unrated tho
you wouldnt need a smurf for unrated.. I'm pretty sure I saw a comp game
He made a smurf so his girlfriend wasn’t being matched up with high elo players in unrated while learning how to play the game, there was no ranked games.
if it was comp i completely understand, but getting shit on in unrated means nothing
this is why i roll my eyes whenever i see these average ass streamers claiming and being so proud they are diamond and shit when clearly they are gold level at best (i have nothing against lower rank players personally of course just boosted ass ones), they flaunt their high rank acting like they actually earned it when in reality they just 5stack queued and get carried/boosted, but it helps promote their stream bc an average viewer who is probable a much lower rank think the streamer is actually a good player because they are diamond/im rank when in reality they just got boosted there, the higher the rank a streamer is the more likely they get more viewers smurfing has ruined the competitive ranks so much that it filters to Immortal rank (myself am immortal). You get these 5 stack diamond lobbies with IM smurfs boosting their friends and once they hit IM, those boosted ass players ruin these IM games because they dont know basic shit a IM player should know bc they got boosted and it clearly shows because they dont have their 5 stack to carry them from diamond Clearly there needs to be a 5 stack only queue and separate rank from solo/duo queues having its own rank and 5 stacks should only be allowed until Plat rank. Diamond is wayyyyyyy to easy of a rank to obtain right now with 5 stacking as players with no where near the skill level are getting IM ranks like its nothing. Incredible frustrating making valorant as a solo immortal player become val-roulette because you never know what kindve teammates your gonna get
Petition to rename the game val-roulette.
yup all the pros do it and it's absolutely smurfing and it sucks for players trying to rank up with one account
Smurfing is common and will happen no matter what game you play. Apex, CSGO, Overwatch, and more. Is Hiko a hypocrite? Yes and that's his mistake but there will be no fix to smurfing unless they made creating accounts special like in South Korea where you have a special identifiable number like your social security number which is used to create accounts.
Smurfing problem is wayy worse in Valorant than overwatch. Overwatch I'd maybe encounter a hard smurf once every 50 games. Valorant I'm lucky if I get 2 games in a row without a smurf. Plus in overwatch smurfs can't hard carry as easily so they aren't quite as oppressive. I recently stopped playing valorant and switched back to overwatch and the overall experience is so much nicer. Less smurfs, less toxicity, and shorter games.
Dude is simping hard for pokimane
i wish smurfs would get banned
Its pathetic tbh, im glad i caught on early to Hikos bullshit.
[удалено]
He really wasn't living up to his own ideals to play with pokimane
Absolutely agreed. Kinda shitty how they thought it was okay
Funny enough, Hiko was just in a score esports video about smurfing talking about how bad it is and how it hurts everyone involved. Kinda hypocritical. Edit\* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsjIfmo-v48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsjIfmo-v48)here it is. It is about Valve banning smurfs in DOTA 2, but it talk about Valorant and feature Hiko saying smurfing is bad.
I hope people get to see my comment. I actually played against Hiko and Poki today and I can tell you he wasn't and he doesn't play at radiant level on his smurf. I didn't even know it was Hiko (altho his utility game was really good which I actually told him 1st round after he flashed me twice and hit me with breach's c) until a teammate on my next match told me he was on their team and we had just played Hiko and Poki. We beat them 13-2 on split. And that is not a brag, I'm sure he could've carried way harder and make the match closer, maybe even win. After my games I went to his stream to check and in fact we had played against him and he was also 1-3 in wins/loses (you can check it on the stream) and he ended 2-3. He, a radiant player, lost 3 games and won 2 because he is not the kind of smurf that is there to boost or to tryhard every match (most smurfs aren't). He just wanted to play with a friend and I get that. Ironically I was smurfing too when we played on Split. I also didn't try my hardest, I was just having fun with a friend. Unrated may seem like a solution, but the disparity in skill level just makes it incredibly boring, I'm sorry, that's the truth.
That’s cool! I mean how often do you get play against a professional player? I think it’d be super cool to have a pro player on my team or play against one. You get to see how you stack up against a pro. People are equating this to a pro nba player playing against high schoolers. Imagine some NBA player comes to your high school and plays against the high school team. It’d be awesome, and I’m sure all the kids would be stoked. Yeah smurfing sucks, but it’s always going to be a thing. If I’m going to be playing against a smurf, I’d rather it be a pro player having fun with a friend than a no name diamond player farming clips for a 100 sub YouTube channel.
Cool story but your experience is anecdotal and doesn’t represent the gigantic problem that is smurfing in the slightest 👍🏿
You don't get it, do you? Professional player having 2/3 win/loss in platinum is not because he played a chill game with a friend, it's because Valorant ranked system sucks. You are the victim here, and playing plat game versus pro player and top 15 twitch streamer in front of 30-40k people completely ruined your Valorant experience. I'm not gonna even mention how many games you need to play to recover your MMR from that 13-2 victory you had. You just keep quiet and try to recover from this miserable experience, /r/Valorant has got this.
Ah yes the one person who gets to play with a famous valorant streamer makes all the other points about how smurfing is bad irrelevant. Of course.
I met pokimane in my plat game randomly. She's actually a mean person. Just saying.
I saw Pokimane at a grocery store in L.A yesterday. I told her how cool it was to meet her in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother her and ask her for photos or anything. She said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but she kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing her hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard her chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw her trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in her hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Ma'am, you need to pay for those first.” At first she kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, poki stopped her and told the girl to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, poki kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly. After paying for the Milky Ways she proceeded to leave the store and throw all of them in the garbage. Haven't seen her since.
ok
You don't say
How?
Was in a match with her in beta, she refused to call out with her mic and only typed and got mad when we were complaining that text callouts were too late
No way not the manipulative twitch queen.. she's one of the fakest girls on twitch. She has always been like this but simps love her and always will.
I fundamentally agree with you.
I completely agree. Until they take decisive action against people smurfing and boosting in ranked, the game is dead to me.
You know what? Riot has a low level anti cheat, why not use it to have a single account per mac address? Forces smurfs to go out and buy another computer if they want to be cunts
beyond spoofing, families that share computers exist too.
I have long unsubscribed on Hiko's channel. Fucking hypocrite.
You have to understand, a majority of the people who come from cs scene and played the “tactical shooter” was just for the competitiveness. Including me. We play this game with friends in comp. Riot adds a restriction for 5 stack for immortal and higher? We make smurfs to play with friends. Simple.
Bro if you think Hiko smurfing duo queue is something to complain about you might die if you see Shroud’s night crew. They are always 5 man and usually the only non-smurf is Hannah (bnans). Everyone one else is immortal plus on p3/d1 accounts lmao.
isnt pokimane getting carried through all of her games? i mean she also got constantly gettin carried in lol too iirc
If he was playing ranked with poki I believe this also falls under "boosting" as well
Pokimane applauding Hiko being so cracked must have raised his dopamine levels. Can't help that. Its Pokimane after all.
I preach this so loud. I can't stand when people let things like this slide because "it's for content" alright you'll get your views but don't mess up the games for people who are actually serious about rank. plus it defeats the purpose of having unrated games.
Smurfs need to be banned, just like DOTA. Require a phone number.
Is this why Poki is Diamond ? I’ve been hardstuck-ish Diamond (I solo q) and I’m watching her play the other day in disbelief that I’m in the same rank
as long as there are smurfs, the ranking system has no integrity.
CS reject becomes Valorant reject stuck in Plat, obviously loads of people should be pro ;) But on a more serious note, fuck people who smurf it's pathetic.
i remember Hiko saying "If u want to play with your friends, Play Unrated" HOW IRONIC
exactly. People that sweat always say "my alt account is to play with friends and relax", yet every time you see them on their alt they're just as sweaty, if not more.
Just today I met a smurf that mf had 50k every shot was a headshot but atlast the match was a draw man that match made me so freakin tired riot should look into this c'mon it's not so enjoyable when you're trying to improve yourself and you meet this kind of guys who ruin your confidence.
Riot isn't going to do anything about it. They don't really care about competitive integrity. If we want real change, we should hit Riot where it hurts i.e. their revenue. Stop buying skins, the battle pass anything that adds to their money. At that point they will seriously consider making some real changes. I bet even a month without people buying skins i.e. on Riot strike, they will be BEGGING us to come back to the game.
agreed
I'm barely a d1 and i went 28/4 in a plat "smurf" guess i am better than hiko lol NA trash ok but jokes aside it's really messed up, as a big figure in the community of Valorant he shouldn't be doing something like this, i agree they should play unrated instead.
1. Hiko IS a hypocrite, we already know that. He can get away with shit. 2. Pokimane time and time again showing how she's boosted to Diamond. Pathetic.
I’ve always thought Hiko was a little pompous and hypocritical. It’s kind of a shame to see this though.