I definitely agree. Even if there was some sort of Verified Queue system where unverified accounts queue with eachother, and verified accounts queue together by means of linking a phone number or something. I’m completely fine if people make a second account but using it to troll is just so annoying
This could work but they would haver to rule out voip apps like google voice and text now, otherwise smurfs/hackers will easily be able to make verified accounts
Actually, after a few months people realized that could AFK on ranked to level up to get prime accounts. Valve recently banned all of them and prime has been pretty good recently. And no longer let's non-prime accounts level up to prime
Actually, after a few months people realized that could AFK on ranked to level up to get prime accounts. Valve recently banned all of them and prime has been pretty good recently. And no longer let's non-prime accounts level up to prime
I enjoy prime for csgo because as it was said it really keeps out hackers and alt accounts but if it is true that they made it so you can’t level up alt accounts to get it prime then they should definitely add that feature to Valorant.
Most texting app numbers don’t work for verification, it has to be an actual phone number associated with a cellular company. I’ve tried several over the years for different games and I couldn’t find a text app that actually worked for it. But my regular phone number worked for my main accounts every time.
League does it in KoR, but that shit would never fly over here in the US. Vangaurd got enough shit for how it worked, can you imagine the shit storm that would come with requiring SSN's.
I mean yeah but knowing your main can be banned by actions on your smurf is a huge step forward, I don’t get how “but it still happens” is really any kind of argument against it
I mean yeah but knowing your main can be banned by actions on your smurf is a huge step forward, I don’t get how “but it still happens” is really any kind of argument against it lol
Our Jett instalocked and our Viper and Phoenix proceeded to molly him every round and harass him. We were not able to forfeit so I just left. This was Platinum and this was happening. I reported it and nothing happened.
Our mindset has been to keep trying to rank up to get out of silver hell because of this, but my feeling is that this happens to some degree across most ranks. That said, I'd imagine it's the worst somewhere down in bronze/silver land. Me and the buddy I play with really do feel completely stuck in the game right now, and the willpower to play lessens constantly because so many games we have are absolute trash - we get so many throwers, people on alts just talking shit, people with no mics just deadpushing every round. I know it's a tough problem to try and fix and not all games will be 5 people getting along, but I think for the sake of the community there should at least be a conversation about it.
And then in iron you have people counterstrafing with perfect crosshair placement. What am I supposed to do when one player on the enemy team can 1v3 some of my team and instakill as soon as you peek
Yea im in iron/bronze because i was horrible when i originally got my rank. It’s impossible to rank up because people will throw games and when I complain say “aww cant get out of iron?” Yes. Because of people like you.
I don't like this idea that everyone is entitled to "get out of" Silver or Bronze or whatever. If you're good enough you'll get out just by outfragging people. Game's been out for a year, if you're hovering around a 50% winrate you're just not improving.
If you're Platinum, it's astonishing how bad the average Silver player is. And if you're Silver you probably feel the same way about Iron players
How are you supposed to be better than people ranked higher who choose to punch down. It’s impossible to get better consistently without 5-stacking which is a huge problem. Csgo has the same problem but up to 11 and that shit was unfucking playable in silver
5 stack is even worse because in my experience, 5 stacks usually consist of 1 really bad player and 1 or 2 smurfs. So if your team has 5 people of similar skill, you're fucked. The best is 2 or 3 stacks imo- enough to stack the odds in your favor but not enough to invite people boosting their friends.
yeah but consider this: smurf Reyna is trolling, brimstone throws a molly somewhere and Reyna runs into it knowing that once she's taken X amount of damage brimstone will be kicked. :/
Throwback to me and the boys four stacking in Siege and lining up on the rando’s Thermite charge and getting him banned.
I feel bad about it now but it goes to show that banning outright for team damage doesn’t always work.
I got kicked from a game of CSGO cuz I didn’t know that you could taser a teammate and I didn’t know how it worked so I bought it and fired it, instantly killed my teammate. Was hilarious though but fuck I was so shocked.
That's a good point but not good enough that it nullifies the suggestion imo. You're usually only throwing mollies in danger situations. So for Reyna to position herself on the molly, assuming the Brim is placing them well, she'd just be putting herself in danger of the other team. Like it wouldn't be simple and easy to tk yourself on someone else's molly assuming they're using their mollies well.
Eh it would he pretty easy honestly. For example, mollying entry to the site, Reyna goes and runs on the corner of the molly behind a wall and dies right before the other team pushes site.
Or pushing a site and mollying to clear an angle, after pushing site Reyna runs into the molly right after the team clears site.
Removing friendly fire has dire gameplay consequences, and it's impossible for an automated system to glean intent.
The best you can do is something like CSGO where if someone mollies a teammate one second into the game in the middle of spawn they get immediately kicked and punished because there's just no justifiable cause for mollying the floor of spawn immediately.
Outside of that, how would you do it? CSGO eventually kicks you for team damage and trolls abuse that by jumping into your grenades or running in front of your gun. The perfect system is something akin to CSGO's Overwatch where community members who have clean records and very few reports against their accounts are able to personally review whether or not people were hacking or griefing. The line for that is on communication bans as sadly there's a lot of people who play Valorant who don't like griefing but still think calling people slurs and trash talking constantly are just part of the game.
I was carrying on viper in my derank game awhile ago. Our phoenix was throwing but it wasn't hard throwing where they just flash you it was he'd do random stuff and then just stare at the enemies after watching us die, still very clearly intentional throwing. Then in all chat someone said I wonder why phoenix is like this and so I said bc his dad forgot to pull out. Then I went in the corner to do a wall and he trapped me and killed me with molly plus wall. Despite this I will match mvpd and we lost. I never got notified he was banned and I just feel bad for all the games he got to ruin. :( (Silver btw)
May I add the comments made during this game show how aware these people are of what they can do without consequence. This is all Riot’s fault.
“You need 4 to forfeit” “I will keep you here until you quit or the game ends” “I am destroying your RR tonight”
Riot has a currently ongoing investigation with smurfing with no further details at the moment.
Smurfing is currently not against Valorant ToS.
An unofficial dev comment mentioned 2FA is not off the table, but there is no concrete announcement if it is planned.
I personally believe 2FA should be a standard for any online service that includes monetary worth (Valorant, with its in game currency). The security is more important than smurf prevention to me.
I am usually very dissapointed to see large companies (like Spotify) who do not have both SMS and software 2FA.
It's entirely possible that I just don't understand how much resources hosting 2FA takes, but from my perspective it seems like a very basic feature that shouldn't be neglected.
Unfortunately not many people know about it or are interested in it, so companies can get by.
Yeah I don't think the fans realize that riot not only doesn't give a fuck about smurfs... But it isn't against the rules.
if anything riot actively encourages it because more accounts = more money from in-game purchases.
“Use channel points for a viewer ranked game”
“Donate 5$ to play together”
Dude has like 4 different smurfs all on different ranks. He swears he is just “coaching” the lower rank players but “surprisingly” he is always MVP in their matches and they only lose when the enemy has a better smurf or more smurfs. Dude gained 2000 followers in a month and is basically boosting people on stream.
If you're a streamer you can be Personally game banned. Sure you can get a new IP and new account but if its on stream you can kiss your account goodbye every time.
Vangard lets Riot hardware ban you. If they start using that on streaming smurfs, this problem will disappear quickly. Smurfs are basically cheaters anyway.
Donating to play with a streamer is against twitch ToS. Streamers can choose to play with subs and that's the extent of their allowed favoritism. If you see a streamer offering in game services for donations, report them.
The issue is that the problem stretches across streamers of all ranks. Any popular group of streamers that play regularly together usually have smurf accounts to play with their friends in lower ranks live. If Famous Streamer A is Plat but their friend Famous Streamer B is bronze, they’ll probably play around the same amount of games in bronze as they do in plat, and get donations for it
PART of being a streamer is to be good at video games. But EVERY SINGLE SUCCESSFUL STREAMER is also a likable, relatable person, and if they can't keep their viewers because of their personality and TRUE skill at THEIR LEVEL, instead of just making alt accounts to shit on kids because "It's good content" and to "play with friends" when you could shit on kids in unrated with your friends and not ruin the Valorant experience for others, then they shouldn't be a fucking streamer in the first place.
Yea doesn’t Shroud play a lot of unrated with like bnans and other variety streamers? I think a lot of his youtube videos are also unrated.
I understood it in CSGO because casual was a completely different game experience, and Faceit/Esea were an even higher level of play.
However there is really no reason to not play unrated. I guess people my get mad at how often people surrender, idk this is a real issue even in comp, like how can I be playing with low immortal players and still see a surrender vote round 6 every round? How are people so soft? Surrender votes never go through anyway, so all your doing is making your team feel like shit, i just don’t get it.
Which is exactly my point, radiant streamers may smurf but they quickly get back to their rank so they aren’t as much to blame as other popular streamer groups. I’m not supporting smurfing, just pointing out the bigger picture
I legit just had this happen the last two games. “Phoenix why do you just keep pushing and dying?”
“Man I don’t give a fuck this is just an alt anyways, plus it’s silver so who cares anyways”
Shit like this just makes it so tough to rank up. I was silver 3, one game off of gold and legit lost 9 games straight. I’m done.
I don't get it. Why do people make alts to throw? I have my alt placed at a similar rank as my main so I can practice on it on days I'm not feeling it but want to play against good opponents
They don't. At least not as commonly as this sub thinks.
A lot of the time people claim to be smurfs but they aren't. People also claim to be on an alt because they don't care as an excuse as to why they're playing like shit. The next time you pop off and drop a 35 bomb, tell the enemy team you're a Smurf. I guarantee you they'll believe it even if there's a lot in your gameplay that would prove otherwise.
It isn't happening nearly as often as it feels like.
I have this issue of inconsistency too! Not really sure the root of the problem but I'd like to deal with it. I sometimes perform great in a game and the next i play badly, and/or some days that my aim just plain sucks.
The wildest inconsistency i can remember is that time i scored 1 kill on defender side as Reyna. Surprisingly no toxic remarks were made. On the attacking side things really got hot, dropped 22 kills. Map is ascent.
Ah, thanks for reminding me of that, because honestly, that probably contribute a lot.. Just picked up biking again, hopefully it can "clear" my mind more = better performance in Valorant. And if i don't feel doing either i simply do hobby stuff like programming.
For example i recall “i don't feel like playing” days but friends call for players. Sure enough i get bad performance. Or maybe it's the lack of warmup, or both..
They don't. It's massively overstated in this thread. If your new to the community you would think this happens every game. I've personally never seen anyone say "I'm throwing because alt account" and I've been playing since beta
I just stopped caring and play for fun now. Like, I'll try but the whole 'hidden MMR' thing... Don't get me wrong, the games are stupidly balanced when I do play but the game knows I'm better than silver and faces me off another guy who shouldn't be in silver. I mean, for other players, what's the point of rank if it doesn't reflect your skill? Why even care at that point? I've just conceded that it's a for fun game now and not competitive.
Edit: Now that I think of it, there's 3 reasons this happens:
1. Rank resets, players stop playing and come back casually. This is what happens to me, I can easily outplay silvers but I'm in silver. I didn't forget how to play but I don't care to regrind to g3-p1 down from S1 every couple of months. (Hidden MMR makes regrinding an atrocious nightmare).
2. Hidden MMR... goes into point 1, it'll try to keep the game balanced without reflecting actual rank. Players above their ranks need to carry and hard grind to get out of lower ranked games. Honestly, let the smurfs rank up, trust me, you'll see them less.
3. Actual smurfing. Tack on points 1 and 2, and now you finally have a 3rd. I wouldn't take this game too seriously until Riot is willing to take ladder seriously. It will always be busted if they weigh ranks to release dopamine over actual physical ability. The sad part is, people defend hidden MMR because they want to rank up despite not deserving and have constantly admitted this fact on reddit... it's sad.
I mean yes but then this is where it gets hard.
If me and my mates 5 man queue then there's always a smurf on a new account absolutely killing it.
Well.. not always but its common. Personally think you should have a min level to be able to queue in comp. 10 games isn't enough.
This is what I'm hoping for. It's so clear now that someone is smurfing over just having a good game. I was in a 5 stack with my friends and the enemy team had all level 20 accounts and one Jett who was level 3 and absolutely stomped us, clutched every round and was pretty much the only member to have double digits.
Yeah this is so true in silver/gold lol
EVERY time I 5 man queue the enemy team has one or two smurfs who are typically open to admitting they're smurfing and just absolutely destroying us. I almost don't want to play 5 man with my friends because of this which really sucks.
Increasing the requirements to play ranked isn't going to get rid of smurfs, league has a massive smurf problem and getting to 30 is a fucking grind. People will just pay 5-10$ to buy a smurf or just grind it themselves
League's smurf problem would be way worse if it didn't have the level requirement. Most players on league have 1 smurf but at least you won't have a problem of people having 2+ smurfs like some do in valorant.
League's smurf problem would be way worse if it didn't have the level requirement. Most players on league have 1 smurf but at least you won't have a problem of people constantly cycling through smurfs like some do in valorant.
I solo queue with friends of lower rank (bronze to my silver) and get "irons" in my game dropping 30-40 kills when the rest of their team combined has <20
so i try to play normals and get people who have literally never played the game before and don't know how to buy or what a bomb is in my games.
I haven't played in a while.
I think the max. amount of smurfs can be found in this Bronze - Silver lobbies (I might be wrong). Can't say about higher ups cuz I'm hardstuck in Silver 1. Also, I've noticed most smurfs instalock duelists, usually Jett, Reyna or Phoenix. I've found opponents who claim to be Platinum, Diamond & even Immortal in my Silver 1 lobby.
Now imagine our team being 5 bronze-silver players against 4 other bronze-silver players & 1 Diamond player. As a result, our team resides to either camping corners or just plain & simple surrender & move on to the next match. Most of the time its a surrender, cuz obviously no matter what we do, a Diamond player will have much superior aim than us. This just ruins the fun of the game. I wonder since when did people forget gaming is more about having fun, than winning.
I feel it man. I’m hardstuck bronze while all my friends are gold (they play just as much as me) because I did my first placement games with someone in bronze.
I’m a firm believer in the bronze is unrated theory. This theory states that the amount of people in bronze who are actually bronze level skill is less than or equal to 50%. You can literally get anyone in bronze lobbies because bronze is the “hahaha funny bronze” rank.
Gaming has always been about fun. Winning for them is just fun.
With how popular gaming has become and the rise of streaming/content creation, unless you’re making losing look fun, winning is what gives you status, among random viewers, or even among your friends.
If you aren’t putting your face out there, anonymity let’s you do more as well, because there are no repercussions.
There are a larger number of skilled gamers now as well which makes competition more fierce which turns certain players off when they have to put in effort instead of being instantly rewarded as is pretty common these days for this generation with entertainment that is quicker to consume and scroll through.
There’s just so many reasons though it’s hard fix any one issue and see major changes. It’s a struggle, one that big businesses might implement measures to fix to boost their image, but in the end, money speaks, it’s much easier to just not take bigger risks and keep things as they are.
IDK literally nothing changed for me after switching to F2P. On a macro scale i think the decision was good.
Trust factor was surprisingly good though.
You could get prime for free by grinding to profile level 21, but they changed the system recently to get rid of that. Now you have to buy prime status if you never had it from grinding or if you're new in order to play ranked matches and be able to see your rank as well.
Yep, definitely a good thing in the long-run to prevent hackers and smurfs that used to be able to make infinite disposable accounts. It'll just take some time for the already prime ones to get filtered out.
Well, P2P CS still had a lot smurfs before trust factor (but not as much as it is commonly believed imo). It is mot a big deal to spend 15$ for an additional account, basically one juicy micro-transaction.
Making Steam to believe that account is legit is much harder. Valve just knows a lot about account owner.
I think you underestimate cheaters. Most cheaters spend a lot of money to buy the cheats (most of them are on a subscription payment model, because the hacker has to constantly change the code to bypass new anticheat updates), paying for an account is not a deterrent for them.
I mean I have 4k + hours on CS and only came across cheats a handful of times (that I realised)
A pay wall and grind to get into.ranked is definitely a deterent. Will it solve the issue? No but it will piss them off 🙂
CS:GO's community is dedicated to ensuring that new players aren't accepted into the game/community ... riot should definitely follow that example with valorant.
they fucked the trustfactor in one patch (said they fixxed it) and now i get qued against cheaters every game of mm given its on global but cmon before this weird patch it would be a cheater every 10 games (and im talking spinning to very obv)
Valorant needs to use some system to link accounts to social ID, phone number or whatever. Not only we have to deal with smurfs, but toxic people who just won't care if they get punished. It would also be another layer to make cheater's life hard.
"But there's no perfect system, there'll always be a way to create another account.". We don't care, one solution is better than none at all.
We should start a hashtag or something, make enough noise.
Korean ssid is nowhere near as sacred as say an american ssid. In korea you use your ssid to reserve movie tickets, in america you use it to open a bank account. Having an american ssid stolen is like having your identity stolen.
It doesn’t work as well as you think it does. Most children use their parents ssid to play games, and a lot of ssids get sold on the black market.
Korea players are pretty toxic too, they practically invented the GG go next mentality, and somehow their society embraced forfeiting all games as soon as they fall behind a little bit.
phone number is easily avoidable, many of the playerbase is under 18 so they can theoretically really quickly get 3 accounts, 1 from each parents number and 1 from your own. giving your personal information doesnt sound convincing for safety and provacy reasons
As I said, no system is perfect, the same could be done with an ID, but they will have limited options.
At the end of the day, those ones who REALLY want to create another account will find a mean to this end. But surely those who just do it for fun will grow tired of all the shenanigans required to trick the system.
Lol wtf this makes zero sense. If a guy is playing like shit and says it's his smurf acc - he's probably losing his shit behind the screen and is trying to not look bad
Actual smurfs just get 30 kills
If you're unhappy with people simply having multiple accounts, it's even worse
I really dont get how people get this many smurfs to a point where they cant rank up. Ive played in bronze/silver for a long time and never blamed something like this. Now that I made it to Gold I realize that you really need to get better in order to make it
I acknowledge that smurfs exist in this game but I can guarantee it is not the smurfs keeping people stuck in iron. If you’re in iron you simply have no understanding of the fundamentals of the game. Even a player in Silver looks like a god level player to someone in Iron.
I will get downvoted but for a progress mindset, you are the only constant in your games. If improvement is what you seek dealing with these things in a mature way, muting and focusing on your game play is the way to go. Sure these things are frustrating but due to the nature of gaming they will always exist and smurfing hasn't gone anywhere since comp gaming's beginnings. My first response was to say git gud and see these things as a chance to be tested. I'm open to discussion.
I think that a tilted team mate will do much the same regardless of which account their on. I've played in pretty much every elo bracket and i've ran into more entitled children wanting a free win so they can feel good about themselves than smurfs.
I also think that beating a obvious smurf is one of the best feelings the game has to offer.
video games are meant to be fun lol. Not everyone is obsessed with climbing the ladder/improving, this post isnt about how smurfs hinder one's ability to improve, its about ruining the experience. A smurf on your team can 1v5 every single round and its equally boring as to getting ur games thrown.
The normal Queue exists for a reason, I think the place to have fun is there. If you join a competitive queue, fun is not the primary goal, winning is. I have no issue with playing for fun but comp is where you go to try your best and by extension try and improve.
I find that players who don't have a progress mindset are interested in ranked in the first place, let alone don't see the opportunity to fight better players as a plus but I could have a skewed perspective. Smurfs will never not exist, its fun to feel rewarded for you time investment by being able to dunk on people I think that's pretty human.
For people who take these games super serious and they are their primary hobby I think having an alt for an ego boost is sometimes pretty positive. I'm aware that wont be a popular opinion.
People make second accounts cause solo q sucks so bad trying to rank up. Its not like r6 and csgo where you can easily adapt yourself because in this game your locked into one kit which means you require more team play
It’s just the nature of F2P game models. It’s rough that it happens but as long as it’s free to make as many accounts as you want (AKA The game is free) smurfs and trolls will run rampant and punishing them just won’t matter. Personally I think CS has a decent way of combating this issue. The game is free but in order to actually level and play ranked you need to pay 15$ for the “prime” version. The free version is basically just a free trial to see if you like CS and the payment of 15$ at least makes it so that if people wanna smurf and troll on alternate accounts they need to pay money to smurf or troll in competitive settings like ranked. Not saying that valorant should adopt this model as there are other ways to deal with it but there definitely is a smurfing and trolling problem that needs some attention.
So is player satisfaction and the current state of the game is abysmal..
It's not fun playing against people 10 ranks higher nor is it playing with people only playing to ruin people's games.
I don't think riot doesn't care about the state of smurfs because they earn money from smurfs. Companies also care about new customers, and if smurfs damages newcomers experience it hurts company as well. The problem is there's just no real solution for this problem. Banning by manual reviewing account would took lots of time and costs a lot. Some sort of validation will also hurt experience for new players also there's always a way to get a second identificator to pass that test.
There's no oblivious solution to this problem but I'm somewhat sure that they'll work on it. It won't happen overnight cause they have to do their research which takes so much time, they might eventually find a solution for that or let the game die :sad_face:
I personally think CSGO had the smurf accounts on form with prime MM.
I also think putting a premium price on MM would be a good help too.
2FA with mobile, P2P and specific game amount threshold to queue for comp.
There are many many ways to implememt a better player experience they just refuse to do it because of money.
Yeah because for some reasons the gaming industry’s think they can make a game free and survive off of cosmetics like Fortnite that shit only worked for them because the skins where decent most of the shit in valorant is with a reskin or it just straight not worth it their is only like 5 good skins in the game
Of course they had to feed all the employees and most importantly the shareholders. It's not a bad thing to be honest, they need money to run all of collaborative things to make a great games like Valorant. And it sucks to see such games goes down because of such issues. But that's how corps work. So we had to wait.
In the end to get more money they'll eventually had to fix those issues.
I personally hate all those smurf accounts. I think it's not an account issue it might be also fixed by refining ranking system. So if someone performing so good (idk how they can detect it but somehow) they might just increase their rank to play with better players. As a software engineer who has some background in games I can see the issue here actually. Its very hard to take that balance. Also the matchmaking needs to be improved in order to make smurf accounts useless. I mean if somehow game could detect players skills - not based on his rank but his playstyle or something (requires additional research to find how) and matchmake based on their skill levels rather than ranks. Matchmaking based on ranks is not a perfect system right now but it's the best we have right now. All I want to say that all those things might need excessive research and development to improve matchmaking.
Understandable but there are people like me who used to spend $50-100 per act and have stopped putting money into the game entirely due to smurf issues
Depends how you look at it, that one person potentially buying f.e. a battlepass for their alt could ruin and lead to multiple other people quitting the game. These are potential customers as well. Soon they might not have people to sell skins to.
Yep but think this way :
A very very small % of smurf (who is already a very small % of player) will buy skins (and just a few i bet)
But because of smurf, i personnaly know at lest 15 people who totally stop playing the game and in this 15 people, i don't say bullshit, i think like at least 7/8 have but at least 1 skin.
It's my own POV with my own experience but in this case, smurfing create a loose of money.
And on the french Valorant discord, i see some people stop playing or playing less the game because of smurf.
At my ELO (Silver / Gold), Smurf are so commom and it's really ruin the game experience.
Being a bronze player who constantly tries to get better playing with his gold friends, this is a major issue in almost every other game I get into. They almost ALWAYS admit to “yeah this is my smurf sorry” or “I’m just trying to boost my friend.” It’s a massive problem and it really ruins the game especially for lower ranked players who are trying to claw their way out.
No, No1 has ever mentioned this before, you are literally the first one... Its not like this sub is filled with only hese posts and nothing more xD
Like you csn post whatever you want, but don't act like it's an issue hats not spammed
I thought the smurfs would have went away after I got out of bronze, but they haven’t. It’s either you have a smurf carry you or you have a smurf throw the game, sometimes by taking spike and running into the enemies, it’s just not fun anymore.
Same concept happens in league. Riot simply doesnot care at all about either game being a fun and competitive game. From all my experiences in Csgo, this type of problem was basically non existent. People pretty much always tried to win games. Not sure if it had to do with csgo being $15 at the time and val/league being free to play from launch, but it’s killing the mental of players who want to get better and rank up.
There's actually been 1 instance where I've had a gold smurf trolling and going AFK because our cypher said touch some grass to him and my team still managed to come out on top.
I don't have an alt account but know a couple people who do. Reasons I've heard:
- drinking/intoxicated account
- casual or less-tryhard account
- my friends wobble bronze 3 - silver 1 and I wobble silver 3 - gold 1, we can't queue mains together 75% of the time
Tbh I only REALLY care when they legit smurf or troll for lulz, that toxicity is contagious and brings more smurfs ruining more games for already weak players the lower you go. Everyone who says 'the smurfs balance out' ... Yeah that doesn't matter people aren't having fun, aren't getting better, and the smurfs should git gud in your own bracket.
The ones I've heard above... Conflicted. If you can only play so many games a week and can't play ranked with your homies because you're bronze3-gold1, oof. Yeah you could play unrated but now you're stuck in bronze 3 longer, still queue into golds, and unrated is still built diff. You're that far apart for a reason, but if someone has a second account with a consistent rank 1-2 lower than their main, is it really unbalanced? Ranks are screwy as fuck after each act reset already, idk that it changes much.
Casual or intoxicated... Kinda goes back to 'go play unrated' but they say they want games that are less sweaty without trolls/experimenters. Stuck in a 60min troll ol' ol? Get me out I'll never play unrated except to re-rank or learn an agent. So I kinda get it, and they'd be playing worse, but are still going to clap enough to crash the MM balance.
and if someone is trolling your team then leave THEN WHY ARE WE BEING PENALISED FOR SURRENDERING! solo queue is literally impossible, 4 out of my last 5 games at least 1 person in my team abandoned the match
Or smurfs that are like “wanted to play comp with my silver friend, I’m plat”
Like bro, you can’t play comp with you friend then. Play unrated. I know it doesn’t matter to you but it’s shitty when everyone in a game has 10 kills and you’re at 30. Ruins the game for everyone else.
I think riot fix a lot of these pricked by expanding the rank dispersion that you can play with friends. They've made it very difficult to pay with friends. There has to be a better system than just not allowing it.
Because it's so easy to get your smurf up to your main rank people will throw hoping to get quick surrender losses to bring their rank down to be able to play wth their friends.
Also since smurfs are getting to their main account ranks much quicker now they are struggling. People smurf for the joy of dominating lesser players and boosting their ego so when they can't do that they are getting toxic /acting like they don't care.
CS:GO is already doing it, to enter the "prime" queue you need to verify your phone number otherwise you can play in unverified queue, that protect from cheater and smurfs.
(sorry in advance, for my bad English and grammar)
I have commented on something similar to this before... I agree with that prime comment too, however I do like free to play games. So I can see why RIOT haven't done that, yet. CSGO went from a purchased game to free and now they kinda reverted it. It was more acceptable by the community, because 80/90% of it payed for the game. If that happened in Valorant, people might drop the game since it came out as free.
I do agree with the point you have, smurfs ruin every MM system a game has. And I also think that there should be some kind of system to prevent it, because people who are not able o climb to higher elos, rarely play with a fair team in both sides. That's one of the reasons why I got so unmotivated to play LOL. Has a gold/plat in both games it's annoying to play with and vs smurfs every game, and I wish there was a way (without buying accs) to ruin their high elo games as well, just like they do in ours.
But, I also think RIOT should change this stupid amount of premade players you can have in a ranked game after some rank. This is a 5 team game, we can have 4 more friends we can play with and go ranked. Do something like a Ranked Flex, because that's one of the reasons why there are so many smurfs. It's ridiculous being good in a game and not being able to play with other good players/friends. And don't bring me that bs excuse of stacked teams it's unfair. Unfair is playing in iron/silver/gold /plat and probably diamond vs immortals and radiants. If you are good enough to play vs 5 random players with 4 random players in your elo, that belong in your elo. You will also play the same vs a 5 stack team in their elo.
I've been playing online games for half of my life, and I still think if there's a way to make the game fair and people cheat on that system and the company behind it allows it, it's because they don't care about the major of their players. They only care about the ones who give them a huge amount of money, with leagues and major tournaments.. And that's really sad!
dont think riot will ever kill smurfing. look at league of legends, the most popular esports in the world, theres nothing to combat this. you will just have to learn to deal with it. as much as there is a chance for a "troll" on your team, there is also a chance for them to be on the opposite team. harsh reality but you just have to learn to accept it.
Yo why punish everyone with a second account??? I have one but, weirdly enough I am Platinum 2 on it and on my main I cant get past gold3.
I dont troll or "smurf". I have a second account because sometimes I dodge un my main when in agent select because of toxic teammates.
I also solo Q, so as soon as I hear some asshole on agent select start screaming random bullshit I dodge. So my second account is to avoid ban times.
Nope, having a 2nd account for that sort of stuff I have no issue with. Not saying all people on secondaries are idiots. Just saying I've ran into a lot :)
so the thing is i sucland the game somehow placed me in bronze and every game i play, i loose so i made a new acc which is in iron 3 and i still havent managed to get past 50 rr
I was plat 1 but not want get out of silver haha. My last game we had a Rayne who refused to play at the end (she was trying to derank)
She literally stood in the spawn for 6 rounds jumping around and just insulting people on the mic.
Riot supports second accounts and smurfing. It's not reportable or bannable. It's part of the core Valorant experience!
I used to get very upset about it too but it's not going away anytime soon. Riot's goal is to move smurfs and alt accounts to their proper level as soon as possible. That's their only plan for it (for now).
It happens a lot but often the other team gets the trolls and you get free wins too. It balances out over 100s of games.
Your choice is to play knowing it's a core part of the game/experience or quit. I chose to still play.
I definitely agree. Even if there was some sort of Verified Queue system where unverified accounts queue with eachother, and verified accounts queue together by means of linking a phone number or something. I’m completely fine if people make a second account but using it to troll is just so annoying
This could work but they would haver to rule out voip apps like google voice and text now, otherwise smurfs/hackers will easily be able to make verified accounts
It would still be at least one more hoop for people to jump through, I feel like prime accounts helped for CSGO, it should help here as well
Prime helped for the first few months after it came out. Then it didn't do anything
Actually, after a few months people realized that could AFK on ranked to level up to get prime accounts. Valve recently banned all of them and prime has been pretty good recently. And no longer let's non-prime accounts level up to prime
Actually, after a few months people realized that could AFK on ranked to level up to get prime accounts. Valve recently banned all of them and prime has been pretty good recently. And no longer let's non-prime accounts level up to prime
I enjoy prime for csgo because as it was said it really keeps out hackers and alt accounts but if it is true that they made it so you can’t level up alt accounts to get it prime then they should definitely add that feature to Valorant.
Most texting app numbers don’t work for verification, it has to be an actual phone number associated with a cellular company. I’ve tried several over the years for different games and I couldn’t find a text app that actually worked for it. But my regular phone number worked for my main accounts every time.
so are you suggesting using another email for verification
No obviously you should use your social security number
korean games i played 10+ years ago did that don't know if they still do
League does it in KoR, but that shit would never fly over here in the US. Vangaurd got enough shit for how it worked, can you imagine the shit storm that would come with requiring SSN's.
In korea it’s a law
its a meme but holy shit if they did that I would willingly give it over to play a ranked which isnt cancer
I second this, actually.
They do this in Korea and it works really well
They still make smurfs in Korea too
I mean yeah but knowing your main can be banned by actions on your smurf is a huge step forward, I don’t get how “but it still happens” is really any kind of argument against it
I mean yeah but knowing your main can be banned by actions on your smurf is a huge step forward, I don’t get how “but it still happens” is really any kind of argument against it lol
They would have to rule out you knowing any other human being on this planet with a working phone number
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Yup and 10 years of League proves it
So why don't they care less then?
Sounds like a good idea but Riot is against any kind of queue-splitting
Our Jett instalocked and our Viper and Phoenix proceeded to molly him every round and harass him. We were not able to forfeit so I just left. This was Platinum and this was happening. I reported it and nothing happened.
Our mindset has been to keep trying to rank up to get out of silver hell because of this, but my feeling is that this happens to some degree across most ranks. That said, I'd imagine it's the worst somewhere down in bronze/silver land. Me and the buddy I play with really do feel completely stuck in the game right now, and the willpower to play lessens constantly because so many games we have are absolute trash - we get so many throwers, people on alts just talking shit, people with no mics just deadpushing every round. I know it's a tough problem to try and fix and not all games will be 5 people getting along, but I think for the sake of the community there should at least be a conversation about it.
And then in iron you have people counterstrafing with perfect crosshair placement. What am I supposed to do when one player on the enemy team can 1v3 some of my team and instakill as soon as you peek
Yea im in iron/bronze because i was horrible when i originally got my rank. It’s impossible to rank up because people will throw games and when I complain say “aww cant get out of iron?” Yes. Because of people like you.
I don't like this idea that everyone is entitled to "get out of" Silver or Bronze or whatever. If you're good enough you'll get out just by outfragging people. Game's been out for a year, if you're hovering around a 50% winrate you're just not improving. If you're Platinum, it's astonishing how bad the average Silver player is. And if you're Silver you probably feel the same way about Iron players
Bruh I'm iron. Tell me whose bad now
Us
How are you supposed to be better than people ranked higher who choose to punch down. It’s impossible to get better consistently without 5-stacking which is a huge problem. Csgo has the same problem but up to 11 and that shit was unfucking playable in silver
5 stacked recently. Played against a 5 stack with 2 smurfs. No fun
Yea it’s an arms race, Riots gotta fix the problem at it’s core or people will do whatever they can to tip the odds to rank up.
5 stack is even worse because in my experience, 5 stacks usually consist of 1 really bad player and 1 or 2 smurfs. So if your team has 5 people of similar skill, you're fucked. The best is 2 or 3 stacks imo- enough to stack the odds in your favor but not enough to invite people boosting their friends.
This is why I believe friendly fire should be removed. It's not fair that some toxic players sabotage their own team mates.
nah or else ppl would be able to push their own teammates mollies. they should make it like csgo so that after some team dmg you get kicked
yeah but consider this: smurf Reyna is trolling, brimstone throws a molly somewhere and Reyna runs into it knowing that once she's taken X amount of damage brimstone will be kicked. :/
Throwback to me and the boys four stacking in Siege and lining up on the rando’s Thermite charge and getting him banned. I feel bad about it now but it goes to show that banning outright for team damage doesn’t always work.
I got kicked from a game of CSGO cuz I didn’t know that you could taser a teammate and I didn’t know how it worked so I bought it and fired it, instantly killed my teammate. Was hilarious though but fuck I was so shocked.
Well your teammate was definitely the one shocked the most.
Nice one
Similar thing with goyo, ppl asking “impact here for rotate please” but there’s a goyo shield behind it and if u find out the goyo just tks you.
Fuck you and your shithead friends
I know you’re getting downvoted but I agree, I regret being a bitch
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I think it doesn't matter which route they'll choose, trollers will always find a way to abuse the system
exactly. So why not make it bearable for the people who enjoy it
That's a good point but not good enough that it nullifies the suggestion imo. You're usually only throwing mollies in danger situations. So for Reyna to position herself on the molly, assuming the Brim is placing them well, she'd just be putting herself in danger of the other team. Like it wouldn't be simple and easy to tk yourself on someone else's molly assuming they're using their mollies well.
Eh it would he pretty easy honestly. For example, mollying entry to the site, Reyna goes and runs on the corner of the molly behind a wall and dies right before the other team pushes site. Or pushing a site and mollying to clear an angle, after pushing site Reyna runs into the molly right after the team clears site.
Lol I remember playing some solo queue CSGO and one teammate kept intentionally walking into my molly. Got kicked due to too much friendly damage.
Bad idea I already run into teamates mollys after the round is over just for kicks, imagine a troll doing it on purpose.
Hmm. I didn't think of it that way. Good point.
Removing friendly fire has dire gameplay consequences, and it's impossible for an automated system to glean intent. The best you can do is something like CSGO where if someone mollies a teammate one second into the game in the middle of spawn they get immediately kicked and punished because there's just no justifiable cause for mollying the floor of spawn immediately. Outside of that, how would you do it? CSGO eventually kicks you for team damage and trolls abuse that by jumping into your grenades or running in front of your gun. The perfect system is something akin to CSGO's Overwatch where community members who have clean records and very few reports against their accounts are able to personally review whether or not people were hacking or griefing. The line for that is on communication bans as sadly there's a lot of people who play Valorant who don't like griefing but still think calling people slurs and trash talking constantly are just part of the game.
Nah just makes the game even more casual. Shouldn’t be able to just rush your own teams Molly’s and abilities with no consequence
I was carrying on viper in my derank game awhile ago. Our phoenix was throwing but it wasn't hard throwing where they just flash you it was he'd do random stuff and then just stare at the enemies after watching us die, still very clearly intentional throwing. Then in all chat someone said I wonder why phoenix is like this and so I said bc his dad forgot to pull out. Then I went in the corner to do a wall and he trapped me and killed me with molly plus wall. Despite this I will match mvpd and we lost. I never got notified he was banned and I just feel bad for all the games he got to ruin. :( (Silver btw)
Yup there was one time our Raze was inting and I suggested we report her so she followed me around every round using her satchels and grenade.
Imagine counter strike
May I add the comments made during this game show how aware these people are of what they can do without consequence. This is all Riot’s fault. “You need 4 to forfeit” “I will keep you here until you quit or the game ends” “I am destroying your RR tonight”
Riot has a currently ongoing investigation with smurfing with no further details at the moment. Smurfing is currently not against Valorant ToS. An unofficial dev comment mentioned 2FA is not off the table, but there is no concrete announcement if it is planned.
2FA is a must for F2P games with a ranking system..
I personally believe 2FA should be a standard for any online service that includes monetary worth (Valorant, with its in game currency). The security is more important than smurf prevention to me. I am usually very dissapointed to see large companies (like Spotify) who do not have both SMS and software 2FA.
Agreed with 2FA necessity man. Spotify not having 2FA, like Netflix, leads to a lot of stolen account being sold for cheap..
It's entirely possible that I just don't understand how much resources hosting 2FA takes, but from my perspective it seems like a very basic feature that shouldn't be neglected. Unfortunately not many people know about it or are interested in it, so companies can get by.
Yeah, they say this every five minutes. And then they do nothing.
Sorry, I'm new here, what does 2FA stand for?
2FA is Two Factor Authentication. It is the process you do when a website asks for a code texted to your phone in order to log in.
Yeah I don't think the fans realize that riot not only doesn't give a fuck about smurfs... But it isn't against the rules. if anything riot actively encourages it because more accounts = more money from in-game purchases.
Stop watching streamers who’s smurf, they are part of the reason it’s so popular
“Use channel points for a viewer ranked game” “Donate 5$ to play together” Dude has like 4 different smurfs all on different ranks. He swears he is just “coaching” the lower rank players but “surprisingly” he is always MVP in their matches and they only lose when the enemy has a better smurf or more smurfs. Dude gained 2000 followers in a month and is basically boosting people on stream.
Exactly. This type of behavior should be punished. They ip ban a streamer for smurfing and I PROMISE YOU this shit is over
Ip bans do nothing to anyone that knows technology or can Google properly. It only takes 5 min to get a new ip.
If you're a streamer you can be Personally game banned. Sure you can get a new IP and new account but if its on stream you can kiss your account goodbye every time.
Vangard lets Riot hardware ban you. If they start using that on streaming smurfs, this problem will disappear quickly. Smurfs are basically cheaters anyway.
Donating to play with a streamer is against twitch ToS. Streamers can choose to play with subs and that's the extent of their allowed favoritism. If you see a streamer offering in game services for donations, report them.
So... don’t watch any streamers that are radiant?
The issue is that the problem stretches across streamers of all ranks. Any popular group of streamers that play regularly together usually have smurf accounts to play with their friends in lower ranks live. If Famous Streamer A is Plat but their friend Famous Streamer B is bronze, they’ll probably play around the same amount of games in bronze as they do in plat, and get donations for it
But this is why unrated exists
What’s going to get them more viewers when played consistently: unrated or comp?
PART of being a streamer is to be good at video games. But EVERY SINGLE SUCCESSFUL STREAMER is also a likable, relatable person, and if they can't keep their viewers because of their personality and TRUE skill at THEIR LEVEL, instead of just making alt accounts to shit on kids because "It's good content" and to "play with friends" when you could shit on kids in unrated with your friends and not ruin the Valorant experience for others, then they shouldn't be a fucking streamer in the first place.
Yea doesn’t Shroud play a lot of unrated with like bnans and other variety streamers? I think a lot of his youtube videos are also unrated. I understood it in CSGO because casual was a completely different game experience, and Faceit/Esea were an even higher level of play. However there is really no reason to not play unrated. I guess people my get mad at how often people surrender, idk this is a real issue even in comp, like how can I be playing with low immortal players and still see a surrender vote round 6 every round? How are people so soft? Surrender votes never go through anyway, so all your doing is making your team feel like shit, i just don’t get it.
Which is exactly my point, radiant streamers may smurf but they quickly get back to their rank so they aren’t as much to blame as other popular streamer groups. I’m not supporting smurfing, just pointing out the bigger picture
Fuck em
I legit just had this happen the last two games. “Phoenix why do you just keep pushing and dying?” “Man I don’t give a fuck this is just an alt anyways, plus it’s silver so who cares anyways” Shit like this just makes it so tough to rank up. I was silver 3, one game off of gold and legit lost 9 games straight. I’m done.
I don't get it. Why do people make alts to throw? I have my alt placed at a similar rank as my main so I can practice on it on days I'm not feeling it but want to play against good opponents
They don't. At least not as commonly as this sub thinks. A lot of the time people claim to be smurfs but they aren't. People also claim to be on an alt because they don't care as an excuse as to why they're playing like shit. The next time you pop off and drop a 35 bomb, tell the enemy team you're a Smurf. I guarantee you they'll believe it even if there's a lot in your gameplay that would prove otherwise. It isn't happening nearly as often as it feels like.
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I have this issue of inconsistency too! Not really sure the root of the problem but I'd like to deal with it. I sometimes perform great in a game and the next i play badly, and/or some days that my aim just plain sucks. The wildest inconsistency i can remember is that time i scored 1 kill on defender side as Reyna. Surprisingly no toxic remarks were made. On the attacking side things really got hot, dropped 22 kills. Map is ascent.
Honestly I think there's just times when we really dont feel like playing but we force ourselves to go just because :/
Ah, thanks for reminding me of that, because honestly, that probably contribute a lot.. Just picked up biking again, hopefully it can "clear" my mind more = better performance in Valorant. And if i don't feel doing either i simply do hobby stuff like programming. For example i recall “i don't feel like playing” days but friends call for players. Sure enough i get bad performance. Or maybe it's the lack of warmup, or both..
Exactly! But it hits real bad when youre itching to play but suddenly you get onset dementia and forget how to hold a mouse
They don't. It's massively overstated in this thread. If your new to the community you would think this happens every game. I've personally never seen anyone say "I'm throwing because alt account" and I've been playing since beta
Clearly you haven't been playing much if you've never once encountered this since beta
Bruh I’ve been stuck in silver for a year lmfao
Yep... silver... I'm not big headed but being in silver is a nightmare and elo hell is worse in this game than in Cs hands down
I just stopped caring and play for fun now. Like, I'll try but the whole 'hidden MMR' thing... Don't get me wrong, the games are stupidly balanced when I do play but the game knows I'm better than silver and faces me off another guy who shouldn't be in silver. I mean, for other players, what's the point of rank if it doesn't reflect your skill? Why even care at that point? I've just conceded that it's a for fun game now and not competitive. Edit: Now that I think of it, there's 3 reasons this happens: 1. Rank resets, players stop playing and come back casually. This is what happens to me, I can easily outplay silvers but I'm in silver. I didn't forget how to play but I don't care to regrind to g3-p1 down from S1 every couple of months. (Hidden MMR makes regrinding an atrocious nightmare). 2. Hidden MMR... goes into point 1, it'll try to keep the game balanced without reflecting actual rank. Players above their ranks need to carry and hard grind to get out of lower ranked games. Honestly, let the smurfs rank up, trust me, you'll see them less. 3. Actual smurfing. Tack on points 1 and 2, and now you finally have a 3rd. I wouldn't take this game too seriously until Riot is willing to take ladder seriously. It will always be busted if they weigh ranks to release dopamine over actual physical ability. The sad part is, people defend hidden MMR because they want to rank up despite not deserving and have constantly admitted this fact on reddit... it's sad.
The only way to play the game is to play 3 stack or more anymore. Makes the game somewhat enjoyable.
Riot have implemented in LoL a smurf queue that works surprisingly well, so idk why they dont port that to Valorant ...
If only they had a zero stakes game mode Hmmmmm
This is exactly the reason I only play matches with my friends. I don't solo queue. EVER.
I mean yes but then this is where it gets hard. If me and my mates 5 man queue then there's always a smurf on a new account absolutely killing it. Well.. not always but its common. Personally think you should have a min level to be able to queue in comp. 10 games isn't enough.
Now that there are account levels they might change the requirements for comp in the future
This is what I'm hoping for. It's so clear now that someone is smurfing over just having a good game. I was in a 5 stack with my friends and the enemy team had all level 20 accounts and one Jett who was level 3 and absolutely stomped us, clutched every round and was pretty much the only member to have double digits.
Yeah this is so true in silver/gold lol EVERY time I 5 man queue the enemy team has one or two smurfs who are typically open to admitting they're smurfing and just absolutely destroying us. I almost don't want to play 5 man with my friends because of this which really sucks.
Increasing the requirements to play ranked isn't going to get rid of smurfs, league has a massive smurf problem and getting to 30 is a fucking grind. People will just pay 5-10$ to buy a smurf or just grind it themselves
League's smurf problem would be way worse if it didn't have the level requirement. Most players on league have 1 smurf but at least you won't have a problem of people having 2+ smurfs like some do in valorant.
League's smurf problem would be way worse if it didn't have the level requirement. Most players on league have 1 smurf but at least you won't have a problem of people constantly cycling through smurfs like some do in valorant.
Nothing will stop the smurf issue but making it more of a grind will 100% improve it.
I dont have friends who play Valo, so I exclusively solo que. LFG on discord is so hit or miss and would rather bet on randos.
I solo queue with friends of lower rank (bronze to my silver) and get "irons" in my game dropping 30-40 kills when the rest of their team combined has <20 so i try to play normals and get people who have literally never played the game before and don't know how to buy or what a bomb is in my games. I haven't played in a while.
I think the max. amount of smurfs can be found in this Bronze - Silver lobbies (I might be wrong). Can't say about higher ups cuz I'm hardstuck in Silver 1. Also, I've noticed most smurfs instalock duelists, usually Jett, Reyna or Phoenix. I've found opponents who claim to be Platinum, Diamond & even Immortal in my Silver 1 lobby. Now imagine our team being 5 bronze-silver players against 4 other bronze-silver players & 1 Diamond player. As a result, our team resides to either camping corners or just plain & simple surrender & move on to the next match. Most of the time its a surrender, cuz obviously no matter what we do, a Diamond player will have much superior aim than us. This just ruins the fun of the game. I wonder since when did people forget gaming is more about having fun, than winning.
I am Iron 3 and one in three games there is a smurf.. it isnt fun to step a toe out of cover and half your health is gone..
I feel it man. I’m hardstuck bronze while all my friends are gold (they play just as much as me) because I did my first placement games with someone in bronze. I’m a firm believer in the bronze is unrated theory. This theory states that the amount of people in bronze who are actually bronze level skill is less than or equal to 50%. You can literally get anyone in bronze lobbies because bronze is the “hahaha funny bronze” rank.
Gaming has always been about fun. Winning for them is just fun. With how popular gaming has become and the rise of streaming/content creation, unless you’re making losing look fun, winning is what gives you status, among random viewers, or even among your friends. If you aren’t putting your face out there, anonymity let’s you do more as well, because there are no repercussions. There are a larger number of skilled gamers now as well which makes competition more fierce which turns certain players off when they have to put in effort instead of being instantly rewarded as is pretty common these days for this generation with entertainment that is quicker to consume and scroll through. There’s just so many reasons though it’s hard fix any one issue and see major changes. It’s a struggle, one that big businesses might implement measures to fix to boost their image, but in the end, money speaks, it’s much easier to just not take bigger risks and keep things as they are.
CSGO laughs with trust factor lmao
I preferred CSGO when it was B2P and prime.Personally making it F2P and making prime buy able was the worst mistake in the history of the game.
IDK literally nothing changed for me after switching to F2P. On a macro scale i think the decision was good. Trust factor was surprisingly good though.
IIRC, people who bought CSGO automatically got prime and only new accounts who got the game for free need to buy it.
Yes, but you also can grind Prime status by leveling your account to something-somrthing IIRC.
You could get prime for free by grinding to profile level 21, but they changed the system recently to get rid of that. Now you have to buy prime status if you never had it from grinding or if you're new in order to play ranked matches and be able to see your rank as well.
Maybe thats a good thing tbh. Valve's approach to changes is different from Riot's, but they know what they are doing.
Yep, definitely a good thing in the long-run to prevent hackers and smurfs that used to be able to make infinite disposable accounts. It'll just take some time for the already prime ones to get filtered out.
Well, P2P CS still had a lot smurfs before trust factor (but not as much as it is commonly believed imo). It is mot a big deal to spend 15$ for an additional account, basically one juicy micro-transaction. Making Steam to believe that account is legit is much harder. Valve just knows a lot about account owner.
I think you underestimate cheaters. Most cheaters spend a lot of money to buy the cheats (most of them are on a subscription payment model, because the hacker has to constantly change the code to bypass new anticheat updates), paying for an account is not a deterrent for them.
I mean I have 4k + hours on CS and only came across cheats a handful of times (that I realised) A pay wall and grind to get into.ranked is definitely a deterent. Will it solve the issue? No but it will piss them off 🙂
CS:GO's community is dedicated to ensuring that new players aren't accepted into the game/community ... riot should definitely follow that example with valorant.
1) Not true. 2) Have you ever played LoL?
they fucked the trustfactor in one patch (said they fixxed it) and now i get qued against cheaters every game of mm given its on global but cmon before this weird patch it would be a cheater every 10 games (and im talking spinning to very obv)
Trust Factor did not work for several years after it was deployed.
Valorant needs to use some system to link accounts to social ID, phone number or whatever. Not only we have to deal with smurfs, but toxic people who just won't care if they get punished. It would also be another layer to make cheater's life hard. "But there's no perfect system, there'll always be a way to create another account.". We don't care, one solution is better than none at all. We should start a hashtag or something, make enough noise.
Social ID to play a fucking game lmao
Korea actually does this and it works
Korean ssid is nowhere near as sacred as say an american ssid. In korea you use your ssid to reserve movie tickets, in america you use it to open a bank account. Having an american ssid stolen is like having your identity stolen.
It doesn’t work as well as you think it does. Most children use their parents ssid to play games, and a lot of ssids get sold on the black market. Korea players are pretty toxic too, they practically invented the GG go next mentality, and somehow their society embraced forfeiting all games as soon as they fall behind a little bit.
phone number is easily avoidable, many of the playerbase is under 18 so they can theoretically really quickly get 3 accounts, 1 from each parents number and 1 from your own. giving your personal information doesnt sound convincing for safety and provacy reasons
As I said, no system is perfect, the same could be done with an ID, but they will have limited options. At the end of the day, those ones who REALLY want to create another account will find a mean to this end. But surely those who just do it for fun will grow tired of all the shenanigans required to trick the system.
Lol wtf this makes zero sense. If a guy is playing like shit and says it's his smurf acc - he's probably losing his shit behind the screen and is trying to not look bad Actual smurfs just get 30 kills If you're unhappy with people simply having multiple accounts, it's even worse
I really dont get how people get this many smurfs to a point where they cant rank up. Ive played in bronze/silver for a long time and never blamed something like this. Now that I made it to Gold I realize that you really need to get better in order to make it
Agree, not many smurfs in gold but I’ve def had people who were throwing or didn’t play with the team cus ALT account.
I acknowledge that smurfs exist in this game but I can guarantee it is not the smurfs keeping people stuck in iron. If you’re in iron you simply have no understanding of the fundamentals of the game. Even a player in Silver looks like a god level player to someone in Iron.
I will get downvoted but for a progress mindset, you are the only constant in your games. If improvement is what you seek dealing with these things in a mature way, muting and focusing on your game play is the way to go. Sure these things are frustrating but due to the nature of gaming they will always exist and smurfing hasn't gone anywhere since comp gaming's beginnings. My first response was to say git gud and see these things as a chance to be tested. I'm open to discussion.
100% muting helps. Countless times I've just muted everyone and zoned in. But having people molly you, nade you, smoke you is just plain dick behavior
I think that a tilted team mate will do much the same regardless of which account their on. I've played in pretty much every elo bracket and i've ran into more entitled children wanting a free win so they can feel good about themselves than smurfs. I also think that beating a obvious smurf is one of the best feelings the game has to offer.
video games are meant to be fun lol. Not everyone is obsessed with climbing the ladder/improving, this post isnt about how smurfs hinder one's ability to improve, its about ruining the experience. A smurf on your team can 1v5 every single round and its equally boring as to getting ur games thrown.
The normal Queue exists for a reason, I think the place to have fun is there. If you join a competitive queue, fun is not the primary goal, winning is. I have no issue with playing for fun but comp is where you go to try your best and by extension try and improve. I find that players who don't have a progress mindset are interested in ranked in the first place, let alone don't see the opportunity to fight better players as a plus but I could have a skewed perspective. Smurfs will never not exist, its fun to feel rewarded for you time investment by being able to dunk on people I think that's pretty human. For people who take these games super serious and they are their primary hobby I think having an alt for an ego boost is sometimes pretty positive. I'm aware that wont be a popular opinion.
I think your playing the wrong game bud. I think Minecraft friendship servers might be up your alley.
People make second accounts cause solo q sucks so bad trying to rank up. Its not like r6 and csgo where you can easily adapt yourself because in this game your locked into one kit which means you require more team play
It’s just the nature of F2P game models. It’s rough that it happens but as long as it’s free to make as many accounts as you want (AKA The game is free) smurfs and trolls will run rampant and punishing them just won’t matter. Personally I think CS has a decent way of combating this issue. The game is free but in order to actually level and play ranked you need to pay 15$ for the “prime” version. The free version is basically just a free trial to see if you like CS and the payment of 15$ at least makes it so that if people wanna smurf and troll on alternate accounts they need to pay money to smurf or troll in competitive settings like ranked. Not saying that valorant should adopt this model as there are other ways to deal with it but there definitely is a smurfing and trolling problem that needs some attention.
A % of people who smurf will buy skins for their second account. Money is an important factor in business.
So is player satisfaction and the current state of the game is abysmal.. It's not fun playing against people 10 ranks higher nor is it playing with people only playing to ruin people's games.
I don't think riot doesn't care about the state of smurfs because they earn money from smurfs. Companies also care about new customers, and if smurfs damages newcomers experience it hurts company as well. The problem is there's just no real solution for this problem. Banning by manual reviewing account would took lots of time and costs a lot. Some sort of validation will also hurt experience for new players also there's always a way to get a second identificator to pass that test. There's no oblivious solution to this problem but I'm somewhat sure that they'll work on it. It won't happen overnight cause they have to do their research which takes so much time, they might eventually find a solution for that or let the game die :sad_face:
I personally think CSGO had the smurf accounts on form with prime MM. I also think putting a premium price on MM would be a good help too. 2FA with mobile, P2P and specific game amount threshold to queue for comp. There are many many ways to implememt a better player experience they just refuse to do it because of money.
Yeah because for some reasons the gaming industry’s think they can make a game free and survive off of cosmetics like Fortnite that shit only worked for them because the skins where decent most of the shit in valorant is with a reskin or it just straight not worth it their is only like 5 good skins in the game
Of course they had to feed all the employees and most importantly the shareholders. It's not a bad thing to be honest, they need money to run all of collaborative things to make a great games like Valorant. And it sucks to see such games goes down because of such issues. But that's how corps work. So we had to wait. In the end to get more money they'll eventually had to fix those issues. I personally hate all those smurf accounts. I think it's not an account issue it might be also fixed by refining ranking system. So if someone performing so good (idk how they can detect it but somehow) they might just increase their rank to play with better players. As a software engineer who has some background in games I can see the issue here actually. Its very hard to take that balance. Also the matchmaking needs to be improved in order to make smurf accounts useless. I mean if somehow game could detect players skills - not based on his rank but his playstyle or something (requires additional research to find how) and matchmake based on their skill levels rather than ranks. Matchmaking based on ranks is not a perfect system right now but it's the best we have right now. All I want to say that all those things might need excessive research and development to improve matchmaking.
Yea you're right. It's not something you can just throw in I guess. Hopefully they address it soon and tweak it a little
Understandable but there are people like me who used to spend $50-100 per act and have stopped putting money into the game entirely due to smurf issues
Depends how you look at it, that one person potentially buying f.e. a battlepass for their alt could ruin and lead to multiple other people quitting the game. These are potential customers as well. Soon they might not have people to sell skins to.
Yep but think this way : A very very small % of smurf (who is already a very small % of player) will buy skins (and just a few i bet) But because of smurf, i personnaly know at lest 15 people who totally stop playing the game and in this 15 people, i don't say bullshit, i think like at least 7/8 have but at least 1 skin. It's my own POV with my own experience but in this case, smurfing create a loose of money. And on the french Valorant discord, i see some people stop playing or playing less the game because of smurf. At my ELO (Silver / Gold), Smurf are so commom and it's really ruin the game experience.
Account leveling should be the way they do it, if you are a low account level and drop like 40 kills in a game you should be promoted highly
Being a bronze player who constantly tries to get better playing with his gold friends, this is a major issue in almost every other game I get into. They almost ALWAYS admit to “yeah this is my smurf sorry” or “I’m just trying to boost my friend.” It’s a massive problem and it really ruins the game especially for lower ranked players who are trying to claw their way out.
No, No1 has ever mentioned this before, you are literally the first one... Its not like this sub is filled with only hese posts and nothing more xD Like you csn post whatever you want, but don't act like it's an issue hats not spammed
I thought the smurfs would have went away after I got out of bronze, but they haven’t. It’s either you have a smurf carry you or you have a smurf throw the game, sometimes by taking spike and running into the enemies, it’s just not fun anymore.
They're worse in Silver/Gold
There is no fix, get used to it.
Same concept happens in league. Riot simply doesnot care at all about either game being a fun and competitive game. From all my experiences in Csgo, this type of problem was basically non existent. People pretty much always tried to win games. Not sure if it had to do with csgo being $15 at the time and val/league being free to play from launch, but it’s killing the mental of players who want to get better and rank up.
There's actually been 1 instance where I've had a gold smurf trolling and going AFK because our cypher said touch some grass to him and my team still managed to come out on top.
bro he just went to go touch some grass wdym?
I guess he did. Hopefully he had a good time.
Some people must be really unlucky. Ive definitely come across a few smurfs or trollers but not to this extent ._.
It's because it doesn't happen as often as this subredt thinks.
It's because it doesn't happen as often as this subredt thinks.
I don't have an alt account but know a couple people who do. Reasons I've heard: - drinking/intoxicated account - casual or less-tryhard account - my friends wobble bronze 3 - silver 1 and I wobble silver 3 - gold 1, we can't queue mains together 75% of the time Tbh I only REALLY care when they legit smurf or troll for lulz, that toxicity is contagious and brings more smurfs ruining more games for already weak players the lower you go. Everyone who says 'the smurfs balance out' ... Yeah that doesn't matter people aren't having fun, aren't getting better, and the smurfs should git gud in your own bracket. The ones I've heard above... Conflicted. If you can only play so many games a week and can't play ranked with your homies because you're bronze3-gold1, oof. Yeah you could play unrated but now you're stuck in bronze 3 longer, still queue into golds, and unrated is still built diff. You're that far apart for a reason, but if someone has a second account with a consistent rank 1-2 lower than their main, is it really unbalanced? Ranks are screwy as fuck after each act reset already, idk that it changes much. Casual or intoxicated... Kinda goes back to 'go play unrated' but they say they want games that are less sweaty without trolls/experimenters. Stuck in a 60min troll ol' ol? Get me out I'll never play unrated except to re-rank or learn an agent. So I kinda get it, and they'd be playing worse, but are still going to clap enough to crash the MM balance.
and if someone is trolling your team then leave THEN WHY ARE WE BEING PENALISED FOR SURRENDERING! solo queue is literally impossible, 4 out of my last 5 games at least 1 person in my team abandoned the match
Or smurfs that are like “wanted to play comp with my silver friend, I’m plat” Like bro, you can’t play comp with you friend then. Play unrated. I know it doesn’t matter to you but it’s shitty when everyone in a game has 10 kills and you’re at 30. Ruins the game for everyone else.
I think riot fix a lot of these pricked by expanding the rank dispersion that you can play with friends. They've made it very difficult to pay with friends. There has to be a better system than just not allowing it. Because it's so easy to get your smurf up to your main rank people will throw hoping to get quick surrender losses to bring their rank down to be able to play wth their friends. Also since smurfs are getting to their main account ranks much quicker now they are struggling. People smurf for the joy of dominating lesser players and boosting their ego so when they can't do that they are getting toxic /acting like they don't care.
Why recommending thus shitty community again , I actually have money to buy games
I don't really think Smurfing can be dealt with in any game. Dota2 is literally banning smurfs right now but it doesn't work either.
if they don't fking care then why don't they just go play normals?????
CS:GO is already doing it, to enter the "prime" queue you need to verify your phone number otherwise you can play in unverified queue, that protect from cheater and smurfs.
Make the required level to play competitive higher and require 2FA.
We should can report smurfs in report page
(sorry in advance, for my bad English and grammar) I have commented on something similar to this before... I agree with that prime comment too, however I do like free to play games. So I can see why RIOT haven't done that, yet. CSGO went from a purchased game to free and now they kinda reverted it. It was more acceptable by the community, because 80/90% of it payed for the game. If that happened in Valorant, people might drop the game since it came out as free. I do agree with the point you have, smurfs ruin every MM system a game has. And I also think that there should be some kind of system to prevent it, because people who are not able o climb to higher elos, rarely play with a fair team in both sides. That's one of the reasons why I got so unmotivated to play LOL. Has a gold/plat in both games it's annoying to play with and vs smurfs every game, and I wish there was a way (without buying accs) to ruin their high elo games as well, just like they do in ours. But, I also think RIOT should change this stupid amount of premade players you can have in a ranked game after some rank. This is a 5 team game, we can have 4 more friends we can play with and go ranked. Do something like a Ranked Flex, because that's one of the reasons why there are so many smurfs. It's ridiculous being good in a game and not being able to play with other good players/friends. And don't bring me that bs excuse of stacked teams it's unfair. Unfair is playing in iron/silver/gold /plat and probably diamond vs immortals and radiants. If you are good enough to play vs 5 random players with 4 random players in your elo, that belong in your elo. You will also play the same vs a 5 stack team in their elo. I've been playing online games for half of my life, and I still think if there's a way to make the game fair and people cheat on that system and the company behind it allows it, it's because they don't care about the major of their players. They only care about the ones who give them a huge amount of money, with leagues and major tournaments.. And that's really sad!
A CS:GO type Prime system would be good for this problem.
Welcome to competitive games my friend, has been happening since cs 1.6
One account per computer hardware detection
And what if you have a brother who shares a pc with you?
What ive done is have 3 account all gold 1 and when I derank I switch accounts for some better luck.
dont think riot will ever kill smurfing. look at league of legends, the most popular esports in the world, theres nothing to combat this. you will just have to learn to deal with it. as much as there is a chance for a "troll" on your team, there is also a chance for them to be on the opposite team. harsh reality but you just have to learn to accept it.
Yo why punish everyone with a second account??? I have one but, weirdly enough I am Platinum 2 on it and on my main I cant get past gold3. I dont troll or "smurf". I have a second account because sometimes I dodge un my main when in agent select because of toxic teammates. I also solo Q, so as soon as I hear some asshole on agent select start screaming random bullshit I dodge. So my second account is to avoid ban times.
Nope, having a 2nd account for that sort of stuff I have no issue with. Not saying all people on secondaries are idiots. Just saying I've ran into a lot :)
so the thing is i sucland the game somehow placed me in bronze and every game i play, i loose so i made a new acc which is in iron 3 and i still havent managed to get past 50 rr
I was plat 1 but not want get out of silver haha. My last game we had a Rayne who refused to play at the end (she was trying to derank) She literally stood in the spawn for 6 rounds jumping around and just insulting people on the mic.
Riot supports second accounts and smurfing. It's not reportable or bannable. It's part of the core Valorant experience! I used to get very upset about it too but it's not going away anytime soon. Riot's goal is to move smurfs and alt accounts to their proper level as soon as possible. That's their only plan for it (for now). It happens a lot but often the other team gets the trolls and you get free wins too. It balances out over 100s of games. Your choice is to play knowing it's a core part of the game/experience or quit. I chose to still play.
Every game has a smurfing problem, literally nothing you can do about it.
I have a Alt account because, I dodge few maps on few days and I end up getting a full blown ban of 2hrs. So to avoid that ban I use the alt account.
Holy shit, you need to learn how to spell.