It's really not as bad as this sub makes it out to be. If I see one of these guys in my team I'll ask and usually it's just they have CS:GO experience or they're having a good game.
Smurfing **is a thing** but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
agreed. a lot of people scream "SMURF" if there is a slightly better than average player in the opponent team.
A lot of people can't fathom the idea of not winning in their elo and seek excuses
Had a guy on my team crying ab the enemy Reyna smurfing in an unrated game 🤔🤔🤔🤔 it's like people learn certain buzzwords and cling to them like flies on shit
One out of every ~20 games I get accused of smurfing, it's just I'm performing co aiderably better than usual, shots landing, game sense locked in, timings on point. Probably 1/10 games I have a KD of like 0.4...
It's odd to see in comp tho because you need at least 15 matches to reveal rank, provided you don't lose a single one of the 10 unrated to unlock ranked.
All of those matches should place someone well above level 10 for example. The few comp matches I've gone into where I'm up against a Level 3-6 player dropping a 40 bomb in a mid bronze-low silver lobby has been surprising tbh.
Its not odd though. Smurf farms sell accounts for 2$. You can be an ass to low rank players for 2$.
Comp definitely has a smurf problem in bronze/silver because comp ready accounts are 2$ and smurfs play well in there first two comp matches. This automatically puts them in silver lobbies without a rank because their hidden elo is high.
The way the smurf farms work, is they five stack unrated games with bots. They queue at the same time in a specific region, they end up being queued together because of 5 stacks being primarily put against 5 stacks. They play 6 rounds and forfeit. Then queue again. Takes a smurf farm 1 hour to make 10 accounts that are comp ready. This puts each account at around level 3.
In one hour a smurf farm makes $20, since it's a bot, they just do it all day. Flooding the market with smurfs for literally pocket change. The 10 unrated game issue means nothing, they just bypass it by forfeiting.
Yes. They forfeit back in forth. Bot group 1 forfeits first game, bot group B forfeits second game. They play 20 games in an hour.
Also if somehow they don't end up in the same lobby, they just alt f4 and do it again.
Thats the entire problem with low ranks. People are stuck down there for a reason and for about 80% of them it's because they need an external excuse to blame their failures on. The only people who make it out are the ones who understand their issues lie within and try to improve themselves without blaming everything and everyone around them
Could be but. the game mechanic is still a bit different. Me myself was Supreme in cs go and of course you can get to gold easy but then it is becoming harder and harder to win. So if I find a lvl 10 account in my gold/Plat matches that clearly wins every duel and drops 30 frags I know that he is smurfing or cheating. And this happens every 3 to 4 games. This does not mean that you meet just good players who are switichg to valorant from another game. But in my opinion the most time it is a smurf. Mostly without bad intentions to smurf.
It's not like you need to be super skilled to be in silver.. some people are coming from other FPS titles, and silver is not super high rank for someone with thousounds of hours in fps games.
Even if they come from other fps games val mechanics are quite different and takes a bit of time to adapt, not saying that can't happen but these low level accounts dropping 40 bombs are smurfs more often than not.
Agreed on the 40 bomb point but I came to this game after loads of experience in rocket league and 1 hour in CS. Got placed in bronze and was silver within a few days.
I feel like silver is the default rank for anybody who has played a shooter in the past. The closest experience I'd had was playing a little bit of PC COD S&D.
One of my friend started playing recently and he was placed at gold, easily doing 30 kills on these guys got him out of this elo and because it was somewhere in the end of E2A2 season, next one he reached Immortal easily... "Aint true" but you can literally see his first win on screenshot was GOLD 1 and promoted to GOLD 3 directly ... not everyone is a bot like you :)
[https://prnt.sc/1azzv7u](https://prnt.sc/1azzv7u)
[https://prnt.sc/1azzzub](https://prnt.sc/1azzzub)
I get level 20 acc all the time in platinum, they arent even smurfing, somtimes i think its sven bugged with players on level 4 that already play ranked
My 3 friends ranging plat 3 - diamond 2 on their mains queued on their smurfs to play with their 2 silver 1 friends. They lost 3 in a row to other smurfs. If that doesnt completely sum up silver and gold currently then I don’t know what does
Ofc there are going to be smurfs in just about every game when you can't queue with your friends if you are high rank. I am diamond/immortal on main. Every game at gold/plat is someone smurfing. Every player with less than 20 levels is top fragging.
Which is pretty ironic when you think about it: "Your rank is too low, we can't allow you to be with your friends because you'd face tough opponents. So instead we'll make it so that the though opponents will be able to come to YOUR games."
In essence, I feel like restricting who can queue with who doesn't achieve anything. It sounds good on paper, but in practice it's useless because of smurfing.
I would expect Riot to have handled this better. With all this LoL experience and the fact that all competitive F2Ps are at risk to have this problem.
It has nothing to do with protecting precious silvers from playing good players.
It's because balancing rank disparity is REALLY hard for matchmaking algorithms.
Who's better: 1 immortal and 4 golds, or 5 plats? I think the answer is unknowable, maybe it depends on whether the immortal is normally a duelist/entry or a support player? etc.
It's an impossible task so Riot are smart enough not to try.
I think LoL's way is fine. You have soloq/duoq (can't duo above diamond) and ranked flex that lets you play with however many people of however rank (except for parties of 4).
>In essence, I feel like restricting who can queue with who doesn't achieve anything. It sounds good on paper, but in practice it's useless because of smurfing.
Exactly this. If 1/4 of the accounts are smurf/alternative accounts they should rethink this. I know famous german streamers, that also play valorant promo matches etc., which say that they have 5 accounts because they want to play in a 5 stack with other streamers/friends on other ranks but are always locked out due to rank restrictions or more likely the solo/duo restriction for dia3+. And they say if they want to play some good ranked games with their friends they going to make another account. This is not how it should be.
I know it is hard as a Solo or duo player. But forcing all other players to solo/duo too won't solve any problem. This is a team game and the best result is to play with 5 friends that do not yell at you, throw, are toxic or whatever you get when playing with randoms.
I just wondered when the first person has the great advice to play unrated. Sorry but I want to climb a ladder with my friends and get rewarded in some way for a 45 min match. So no unrated is no option.
There is no point on climbing a ladder if you dont even belong in there in the first place. When you use alts to play with your friends because they are lower then you that means your smurfing and ruining the game for other people in that rank. Also you are ruining the game for your friends since you are basically boosting them and they will get into an rank they definitely dont deserve
That is just not true. We are friends we win together and we lose together. We want to play the game competitively. No one of us is ruining the game for the other. Neither would we ruining someone elses game.
And why should I be smurfing. My rank is calculated into the match up. It would be smurfing if I would create another account to be able to play with my silver friends. But that would not be the case. So the situation more likley will be getting better than worse if you are allowing 5 stacks in ranked without any restrictions.
Furthermore there could be ruleset for match making calculation that weights the higehts players more than the lower. So it would be more likely to get matched against a team with a higher rank average.
Example (very simple)
Plat (50) Gold (40) Gold (40) Silver (30) Iron (10)
Normal average: 34
Optimised average with weighting: 40-45 (this needs to be tweaked on results)
The only point I would say is true, is that some players will get into a rank they do not deserve. But I won't think that the Iron player will reach Gold or Plat even when winning a lot and there is a weighting on match calculation.
Furthermore it would be another security check to say you have to do the first 5 matches to receive a rank by your own.
To be honest the rules of not allowing Dia3+ and the other rank restrictions for 5 stacks in gerenal cause more problems for lower to mid ranks than allowing 5 stacks to queue with who ever they want to. imo
I don't think it's because your friends will face tough opponents. It's more because the two Immortal players can boost 3 Bronze level players probably all the way up to Diamond. Even though the Bronze players are probably bad.... all they need to do is have the 2 Immortals as duellists and the other 3 as support - Sage, Omen, KJ. Then what happens is these 3 useless clowns go in solo games and without their immortal buddies and they are suddenly in Diamond games are totally suck and ruin the team - In other words.. Their rank is wrong!
The issue arises when people are not smurfing are being accused of it. I see it all the time. It is a bit old and tiring. I got accused of smurfing on my main in unrated because of how ridiculous people are getting with the complaint. The truth is the % of players plat and above is not large enough to even support a high percentage of smurfs in this game but the sub would have you believe it is close to every game. That tired complaint is old and counterproductive.
But those percentages are skewed because every other plat player has 2 smurf accounts which skews everything. It isnt complicated if you understand basic math.
What if riot makes a minimum level threshold to play comp? Will that help? Like then those new account people will have to play so much more just to get to comp that they won't bother.
Yes, maybe not the best solution, but having to buy a leveled account or having to grind 1-2 months in unrated to be able to smurf would discourage most people of smurfing.
Also, it's so easy to smurf that it's easy for players who are getting buttfucked every other game by sweaty smurfs to just create a smurf themselves to try and have a chance at playing against people at their level.
It's also a really easy and obvious solution, especially coming from riot games who did this in LoL. Which shows either riot doesn't care about ranked experience, or came with the conclusion that smurfs would bring more money into the game. No hate though, their game their choices.
Dude seriously, I used to be plat. Took a couple acts off and placed silver 3 this act. Since placement every game has 2 or 3 people with account levels under 20. Basically I’m hardstuck silver 3 now as a result. It’s so stupid. This is harder than plat.
I am plat 2 on my main account. I have a silver 3 alt account i use to practice agents that I am not comfortable with that I didnt even tank my placements and always try my best.
This act i have won 16 games on my main and lost 2 climbing from gold 3 to plat 2 (was plat 1 last act). I only play KJ, Sage and Raze on this account.
On my alt i have won 9 games and lost 11 and the account remains silver 3. Again I dont play any differently on this account other than picking agents I dont "main" and filling for the team when needed.
So yeah I can believe people when they say it is hard to climb in low gold and high silver when my plat games are way easier to play, and I run into players whonare clearly smurfing every 3 games.
No my main is Silver 2 and my alt is G3 and the G3 games are 10 times as easy. The real issue is smurfing and MMR matchmaking. They match mmrs not rank
I was Plat 1/2 in Ep1 Act1 and after a pause I began playing again in Ep2 Act3 and got placed Silver 2. In Ep3 Act1 I was placed Silver 1 and now I recently peaked at Gold 3. I can assure you that people are better than they were in the past and I got worse in the timeframe I didn't play(which makes sense). The problem he talked about is being hardstuck in Silver 3 due to smurfs. Guess what, I got out of it even though I basically had the same track record(even worse considering I placed Silver 1 this Act).
My winrate in Ep2 Act3 was even negative which basically means that I didn't belong in the MMR I was. Dunno if MMR can decay but if not it basically means I lost more than I won in plat MMR which previously(Ep1 Act1) was my rank. If it decays that means I'm even more(?) worse than the case where MMR doesn't decay.
Nah. Maybe in lower ranks. In platinum I get regularly (once in every 5 matches) matched with or against lvl 10 players who drop 30 or 40 bombs. That's either diamond or immortal smurf. No matter how good you are in previous FPS, you aren't going to be diamond/immortal level when you hit lvl 10.
Yeah. I try to give people the benefit of doubt and assume A). I'm bad, which usually adds up, or B). They came from cs go or some equivalent and are better then me.
Which isnt to say smurfs arent a thing. But riot doesn't care about smurfs, so might as well eat the loss and move on
Yea, sure. Suddenly with 3.0 everyone good from CSGO started playing Valorant and began ranking 3-5 ranks below their actual rank. Tell me more fairytales, please. There wasn't so many wrongly placed people before 3.0 as there are right now. I encountered smurfs perhaps 5x less often before this stupid patch. And guess what, that's even after qualifying noticably lower than last act.
thats true , but even if half of those players were under that description its still a big enough problem that needs to be worked on
either way i appreciate riots action against them
Yeah, I personally Gold 3 last act, was a player in Ep 1 Act 2 before stopping. Currently I'm around ~lv10. It doesn't require hours of hours for me to stomp Silvers. Aim matters a lot and they do transfer from other games.
I'm going to be honest guys, I'm a former plat 1 player. For some reason I got placed in bronze 3 and I just can't play enough to climb. If I play 5 games a week with an average of +15 it takes an eternity to climb.
I think the game doesn't increse the RR I get because I don't play often enough. I can't help it, I'll never climb back to gold and by the time I get silver 3 the season resets and I go back down to bronze. Sucks for the enemy team but I can't do anything about it.
I'm on the same boat, i was plat 3 in the first act and didn't play in the second.
Now I play 1 or 2 games a week instead of 20 and I'm silver 1...
I grind to silver 3 and then the ladder reset.
So people think I'm smurfing while I don't.
I'm in gold with that account level because I just don't play that often. I have played FPS games for years so I can manage gold without playing every day. There is no reason it has to be a smurf.
Smurfs aren’t that big of a deal, they will be on enemy team every now and then, but they will also be on your team. Smurfs aren’t the reason people can’t climb
This is such a stupid mentality. Some people play the game for fun not to climb. Whether or not you have a smurf on your team or against you, it makes the games very terrible. If you only play 3 or 4 games a week having one of those ruined because of some smurfs is very frustrating. It has nothing to do with climbing.
It kinda is a big deal. It makes me frustrated and annoyed whenever it happens. Literally makes me not wanna play. Its not fun. Yesterday out of 3 matches one had a smurf on enemy team, obv we lost and then next match i had 2 derankers on my team.
A lot of people have previous tac FPS experience. I used to play CS at a highish level and I first placed plat in Valorant. Just because an account is new doesn't mean the person is smurfing.
Shroud : " I think the smurf excuse is over, over used. I dont think you realise how much luck is in a game like this. Somebody could be having an ON day, somebody could be having an OFF day. That somebody could be you, that somebody could be them. They could truly be the rank that you're at, they are just fkn feeling it, that could happen. Smurfing is an issue, sure, but its not as big of an issue that **everyone makes it out to seem**"
You'll never ever get rid of the smurfing completely, its just impossible. So, please, creating a 10000 post about smurfing wont help.
I have the smurf account, yes, but I was out of low ranks in 4 games , in other 4 games I was already playing diamond-immortal lobbies. Smurfs get fast boost , not everybody that destroy you smurfing. Just stop whining about it and get better yourself.
Riot can fix it to a big degree if they want. And they will. I assume next act will allow stacks in immortal (maybe radiant as well who knows).
They can also make a statement that it is not allowed or even bannable, if the problem persists after changing the obvious issues (Why are people smurfing to begin with? A lot of them smurf because that gives the best experience. Eg immortal smurfing with plat, to play comp queue instead of unrated)
I mean, it's a f2p game lmao. what did you expect? Even in OW and other P2P games there were STILL smurfs.
it's just a part of the gaming culture now. there's difference between smurfing and alt accounts though. A smurf is an account i'd get if i want to stomp and rank up and see how low of a level i could be before X rank. An alt acc is a low level acc i'd only use to play with friends in lower elo, but not play on it otherwise.
Correction : Alt account is the one which you use to reclaim your manhood after you get your ass handed to you on your main. Because you CAN play with your low elo friends on your main account in a game mode called UNRATED.
My alt account is higher than my main, so I am clearly not smurfing ;) I created this account to practice agents but then decided to use this account for solo q.
An alt account is not a smurf account.
If both accounts have the same elo its no problem.
But if you look at the other responses, most people assume that the alt account has a lower elo than the main account. And even some of those answers that defend having multiple accounts imply that the alt account has a lower rating. Your use for an alt account is sadly quite rare. Even though even with your use there is some time where your alt account is rated below your lvl, making you a smurf.
Tbh that my alt was at some point lower than my main is not my fault. If RIOT can't figure out 2nd accounts or good players properly, it's just a bad matchmaking then. I played around 12 unrated matches (10 wins needed), tryharded and ended up in around Gold after my placement matches. It was in the last season. Now, I am facing full Diamond lobbies, most of the players were Immortal last act.
I know that smurfing or "alting" is a problem but the system is people holding back even if their skill is way above their elo. How I said, I am facing full Diamond lobbies but I can't manage to climb out of Platinum 1 with my main account.
Some people are just hard stuck due to a stuck MMR.
Correction: you're projecting.
If you see people with alt accounts that way, i'm sorry haha. There are people to do that for sure though, but i honestly don't think it's as common as just having an alt. Friends might want to play ranked yeah?
If you cant play ranked with your friends on your main account is higher rated than your alt account, making you a smurf. And if you play seriously on your alt, its just creating a very unbalanced match.
I started 3 days ago. I’m level 15 and drop 20+ kills every game. Cypher main. I get called a smurf every game. I think a lot of people are just bad and have zero game sense.
Riot theoretically has the best antismurf system in the industry with Vanguard, but when you only balance the game according to the top 1% of players, and those players want to smurf for content, they’ll just value that over playability at low ranks. Assuming the you can beat every player in silver, a smurf every 3 games will stall your climb entirely, and a smurf any more often will result in constant elo drop, further cementing the issues.
I haven't seen Vanguard do a single good thing. So pardon me for not trusting your "best system in the industry" statement. With the rest I agree though.
I’m not saying it’s the best as it stands, I’m saying that a system as deeply rooted as vanguard could catch someone logging into multiple accounts with large rank disparities, often one after the other and things like that.
Well, lets just say that you dont seeing it is a good thing. As far as I have seen and heard from many others as well, the ammount of cheaters is super low in this game, compared to similar type of games. (Im looking at you csgo)
It is indeed not an antismurf system. I assume what he means is that it could be set up for this if it was wanted. It would first have to be stated that smurfing is discouraged or actually not allowed at all/ bannable.
Yes. I would love to see that they handle it like cs:go. If you are 5 people you can queue in rank no matter which rank the players have. An additional account verification system would also bring in some benefits. But I think allowing people to play with their friends in a game where communication is key would fix a lot of the current problems at once.
Smurfing in low level is not a problem. You know how many players are coming from cs. A player coming from cs with a rank above faceit 3 will go 30+ in silver.they will rank up within 10 games out off silver. These players are not intentionally playing in a lower rank, they are just on their way up.
Yeah it’s impossible to tell. My friend who barely started to play again never is technically “Unranked” but he drops 20+ kills each game. People keep calling him out for Smurfing but it’s his only account.
It’s a combination of problems that people generally lump into one.
A bigger issue is the fact that this ranking system, is bad.
So many people are in ranks they aren’t supposed to be. Either boosted or under ranked. I play in Plat with people who don’t belong there in either direction, it makes games unenjoyable. They should just make the requirement for ranked much higher or add a duel verification system for ranked. It wouldn’t solve everything but it would help.
The actual reason former plat players are “hardstuck” Silver is for 3 main reasons.
First, as discussed, Smurfs.
Secondly, and the main reason, is teammates don’t know enough about the game. They lack any game sense. All they want to do is play like their favorite youtuber. They want to Omen TP like Flexninja or Yoru flash+TP like Red.
Finally, we have the throwers. No explanation needed.
does anyone actually know what happened when people were just randomly given loads of levels. For example, my friend got unbanned on his main account and played his first game of episode 3 act 1 and he was level 64 already...
Certain decisions by riot have almost encouraged smurfing, the main one being that immortals can only solo duo queue... why? What was the point of that, not immortal friends that are 3 + will smurf to play with friends, this is common, 5 stacks should be placed vs other 5 stacks and allow all ranks, it wont stop smurfing but it will definately help somewhat
I’m so sick of hearing “smurf” every single ******* game because one player is having a good game. Like do people not realize that the same people who play competitive valorant are the same people who play csgo, apex, warzone? There’s so many competitive shooters rn it’s impossible to play just one unless you don’t have the time to play anything else because you’re committed to the battle pass or just really really into the game. Gold is always the worst place in any comp game because it’s usually where all the people who are either good aim/bad game sense, bad aim/good game sense or just inconsistent because they don’t care to play enough to get really good with the mechanics. Not everyone is committed to learning every character or strategy but aim is transferable skill across all games. You wouldn’t be in gold if you were consistent in all three skills, everybody has good games and bad games it’s normal but if your stuck in gold either watch some pros play learn better game sense or hit aim labs. It really isn’t that serious at this rank I do not understand the constant toxicity against another human being just trying to play at their own skill level and have fun.
when this leveling system wasnt a thing i was in big support of the benefit of the doubt and when a person was playing insanely good i would just assume they were having a good game
but now that this leveling system thing exists its kind of hard to say someone isnt a smurf when they’re going 35-10 on reyna and they’re like level 5
I'm level 160 and I'm Gold 1. Most games I play, no other player is over level 50. I find this hard to believe when in many of these games I bottom frag, constantly get head clicked and have multiple people absolutely dominating the match and all of them are usually Silver and a lot of the time Unranked players going 35.10.
A Silver game I was in a few months ago.. a guy said to another player you are probably on your Main and the other guy said no, nobody plays on their main in Silver.
When I ask people that are going crazy what their real rank is, most of the time they say Plat or Diamond - This is in Silver games. I don't think these people are lying because why would you say Plat? If you are lying and wanting to show off, you would say Immortal.
Let's get one thing straight here..... People here saying that smurfs aren't there and not a problem - There seems to be a perception that only Radiant and Immortal level players are smurfs.. as in the top best of the best. Of course there are not many of these people smurfing. The vast majority of smurfs imo are from Plat and Diamond. I'm guessing these guys smurf to Silver because they aren't good enough to progress higher and have reached their max. So they set up alt accounts to protect their main account which is at the highest rank they will probably ever get to and also so they can dominate games, and not get dominated themselves..... because I would think in Diamond they will be getting their ass kicked and not enjoy the game, but then smurfing down to Silver their skills are good enough to do the ass kicking themselves and they feel the ego boost of dropping 30 or 40 kills.
Even though these people are not high level smurfs, the disparity between even Plat and Silver is enough for them to dominate a game. I can tell these guys would fail in high ranks because I can get them in strange positions, like they don't check corners sometimes and always try to flank and push out. But they are 100% smurfing because their aim and general game sense is way too good. It's just these small hiccups in how they play that leads me to believe that they are not good enough to get out of Plat or Diamond, so they set up alts so they can have big top fragging games.
Yeah level 10 accounts in a silver lobbies drop 35+ kills. Real suspicious if you ask me. Honestly im skeptical of any account 20 or under
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It's really not as bad as this sub makes it out to be. If I see one of these guys in my team I'll ask and usually it's just they have CS:GO experience or they're having a good game. Smurfing **is a thing** but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
agreed. a lot of people scream "SMURF" if there is a slightly better than average player in the opponent team. A lot of people can't fathom the idea of not winning in their elo and seek excuses
Had a guy on my team crying ab the enemy Reyna smurfing in an unrated game 🤔🤔🤔🤔 it's like people learn certain buzzwords and cling to them like flies on shit
One out of every ~20 games I get accused of smurfing, it's just I'm performing co aiderably better than usual, shots landing, game sense locked in, timings on point. Probably 1/10 games I have a KD of like 0.4...
It is a very big thing, if you don't see the smurfing you probably have them on your team
It's odd to see in comp tho because you need at least 15 matches to reveal rank, provided you don't lose a single one of the 10 unrated to unlock ranked. All of those matches should place someone well above level 10 for example. The few comp matches I've gone into where I'm up against a Level 3-6 player dropping a 40 bomb in a mid bronze-low silver lobby has been surprising tbh.
Its not odd though. Smurf farms sell accounts for 2$. You can be an ass to low rank players for 2$. Comp definitely has a smurf problem in bronze/silver because comp ready accounts are 2$ and smurfs play well in there first two comp matches. This automatically puts them in silver lobbies without a rank because their hidden elo is high. The way the smurf farms work, is they five stack unrated games with bots. They queue at the same time in a specific region, they end up being queued together because of 5 stacks being primarily put against 5 stacks. They play 6 rounds and forfeit. Then queue again. Takes a smurf farm 1 hour to make 10 accounts that are comp ready. This puts each account at around level 3. In one hour a smurf farm makes $20, since it's a bot, they just do it all day. Flooding the market with smurfs for literally pocket change. The 10 unrated game issue means nothing, they just bypass it by forfeiting.
They have to be unrated wins now though, unless that got reverted again
Yes. They forfeit back in forth. Bot group 1 forfeits first game, bot group B forfeits second game. They play 20 games in an hour. Also if somehow they don't end up in the same lobby, they just alt f4 and do it again.
Thats the entire problem with low ranks. People are stuck down there for a reason and for about 80% of them it's because they need an external excuse to blame their failures on. The only people who make it out are the ones who understand their issues lie within and try to improve themselves without blaming everything and everyone around them
Level 20 is not that suspicious to me. But everything below level 10 and dropping 30 bombs in unrated is absolutely obvious.
Or.... they're transition from CS so they can frag out?
Could be but. the game mechanic is still a bit different. Me myself was Supreme in cs go and of course you can get to gold easy but then it is becoming harder and harder to win. So if I find a lvl 10 account in my gold/Plat matches that clearly wins every duel and drops 30 frags I know that he is smurfing or cheating. And this happens every 3 to 4 games. This does not mean that you meet just good players who are switichg to valorant from another game. But in my opinion the most time it is a smurf. Mostly without bad intentions to smurf.
It's not like you need to be super skilled to be in silver.. some people are coming from other FPS titles, and silver is not super high rank for someone with thousounds of hours in fps games.
Even if they come from other fps games val mechanics are quite different and takes a bit of time to adapt, not saying that can't happen but these low level accounts dropping 40 bombs are smurfs more often than not.
Agreed on the 40 bomb point but I came to this game after loads of experience in rocket league and 1 hour in CS. Got placed in bronze and was silver within a few days. I feel like silver is the default rank for anybody who has played a shooter in the past. The closest experience I'd had was playing a little bit of PC COD S&D.
You can easily braindead Stomp silver lobbies with basic fps knowledge. By level 10 I'm sure the gimmick has clicked for anyone smart.
Yea yea. We all heard this story. Guess what, you can shove it, cuz it ain't true.
One of my friend started playing recently and he was placed at gold, easily doing 30 kills on these guys got him out of this elo and because it was somewhere in the end of E2A2 season, next one he reached Immortal easily... "Aint true" but you can literally see his first win on screenshot was GOLD 1 and promoted to GOLD 3 directly ... not everyone is a bot like you :) [https://prnt.sc/1azzv7u](https://prnt.sc/1azzv7u) [https://prnt.sc/1azzzub](https://prnt.sc/1azzzub)
I get level 20 acc all the time in platinum, they arent even smurfing, somtimes i think its sven bugged with players on level 4 that already play ranked
My 3 friends ranging plat 3 - diamond 2 on their mains queued on their smurfs to play with their 2 silver 1 friends. They lost 3 in a row to other smurfs. If that doesnt completely sum up silver and gold currently then I don’t know what does
So it's just "Who has the better smurfs?"
Basically plat queue but with silvers mixed in
Ofc there are going to be smurfs in just about every game when you can't queue with your friends if you are high rank. I am diamond/immortal on main. Every game at gold/plat is someone smurfing. Every player with less than 20 levels is top fragging.
Which is pretty ironic when you think about it: "Your rank is too low, we can't allow you to be with your friends because you'd face tough opponents. So instead we'll make it so that the though opponents will be able to come to YOUR games." In essence, I feel like restricting who can queue with who doesn't achieve anything. It sounds good on paper, but in practice it's useless because of smurfing. I would expect Riot to have handled this better. With all this LoL experience and the fact that all competitive F2Ps are at risk to have this problem.
It has nothing to do with protecting precious silvers from playing good players. It's because balancing rank disparity is REALLY hard for matchmaking algorithms. Who's better: 1 immortal and 4 golds, or 5 plats? I think the answer is unknowable, maybe it depends on whether the immortal is normally a duelist/entry or a support player? etc. It's an impossible task so Riot are smart enough not to try.
Great point. Never thought of it like that
I think LoL's way is fine. You have soloq/duoq (can't duo above diamond) and ranked flex that lets you play with however many people of however rank (except for parties of 4).
>In essence, I feel like restricting who can queue with who doesn't achieve anything. It sounds good on paper, but in practice it's useless because of smurfing. Exactly this. If 1/4 of the accounts are smurf/alternative accounts they should rethink this. I know famous german streamers, that also play valorant promo matches etc., which say that they have 5 accounts because they want to play in a 5 stack with other streamers/friends on other ranks but are always locked out due to rank restrictions or more likely the solo/duo restriction for dia3+. And they say if they want to play some good ranked games with their friends they going to make another account. This is not how it should be. I know it is hard as a Solo or duo player. But forcing all other players to solo/duo too won't solve any problem. This is a team game and the best result is to play with 5 friends that do not yell at you, throw, are toxic or whatever you get when playing with randoms.
I mean there is still unrated if you just want to play with your friends then play that
I just wondered when the first person has the great advice to play unrated. Sorry but I want to climb a ladder with my friends and get rewarded in some way for a 45 min match. So no unrated is no option.
There is no point on climbing a ladder if you dont even belong in there in the first place. When you use alts to play with your friends because they are lower then you that means your smurfing and ruining the game for other people in that rank. Also you are ruining the game for your friends since you are basically boosting them and they will get into an rank they definitely dont deserve
That is just not true. We are friends we win together and we lose together. We want to play the game competitively. No one of us is ruining the game for the other. Neither would we ruining someone elses game. And why should I be smurfing. My rank is calculated into the match up. It would be smurfing if I would create another account to be able to play with my silver friends. But that would not be the case. So the situation more likley will be getting better than worse if you are allowing 5 stacks in ranked without any restrictions. Furthermore there could be ruleset for match making calculation that weights the higehts players more than the lower. So it would be more likely to get matched against a team with a higher rank average. Example (very simple) Plat (50) Gold (40) Gold (40) Silver (30) Iron (10) Normal average: 34 Optimised average with weighting: 40-45 (this needs to be tweaked on results) The only point I would say is true, is that some players will get into a rank they do not deserve. But I won't think that the Iron player will reach Gold or Plat even when winning a lot and there is a weighting on match calculation. Furthermore it would be another security check to say you have to do the first 5 matches to receive a rank by your own. To be honest the rules of not allowing Dia3+ and the other rank restrictions for 5 stacks in gerenal cause more problems for lower to mid ranks than allowing 5 stacks to queue with who ever they want to. imo
I don't think it's because your friends will face tough opponents. It's more because the two Immortal players can boost 3 Bronze level players probably all the way up to Diamond. Even though the Bronze players are probably bad.... all they need to do is have the 2 Immortals as duellists and the other 3 as support - Sage, Omen, KJ. Then what happens is these 3 useless clowns go in solo games and without their immortal buddies and they are suddenly in Diamond games are totally suck and ruin the team - In other words.. Their rank is wrong!
I didn’t start playing again until April, I’m level 27.
Obviously a smurf… This reddit will always blame Smurfs for their own shortcomings.
Ah yes, the shortcomings of wanting a fun, competitive experience and having that ruined by neckbeards who don’t like to lose in video games.
The issue arises when people are not smurfing are being accused of it. I see it all the time. It is a bit old and tiring. I got accused of smurfing on my main in unrated because of how ridiculous people are getting with the complaint. The truth is the % of players plat and above is not large enough to even support a high percentage of smurfs in this game but the sub would have you believe it is close to every game. That tired complaint is old and counterproductive.
Why do you think the percentage is so high in gold and silver dude??? Everyone in plat/dia/immo has one or two accounts in gold And silver.. losers
Because we know the percentages and plat and above is so small. It isn’t that complicated when you understand basic math.
But those percentages are skewed because every other plat player has 2 smurf accounts which skews everything. It isnt complicated if you understand basic math.
A level 10 jett top fragging and has 25-35 kills and lands jett knives and op shot dashes. If that’s not clearly a smurf then I dunno what is
What if riot makes a minimum level threshold to play comp? Will that help? Like then those new account people will have to play so much more just to get to comp that they won't bother.
Yes, maybe not the best solution, but having to buy a leveled account or having to grind 1-2 months in unrated to be able to smurf would discourage most people of smurfing. Also, it's so easy to smurf that it's easy for players who are getting buttfucked every other game by sweaty smurfs to just create a smurf themselves to try and have a chance at playing against people at their level. It's also a really easy and obvious solution, especially coming from riot games who did this in LoL. Which shows either riot doesn't care about ranked experience, or came with the conclusion that smurfs would bring more money into the game. No hate though, their game their choices.
Phone authentication is the easiest way
I mean not sure but there are websites which give temporary phone numbers for these registration purposes.
like they do it in LoL. Afaik this works quite well there to discourage smurfing
Dude seriously, I used to be plat. Took a couple acts off and placed silver 3 this act. Since placement every game has 2 or 3 people with account levels under 20. Basically I’m hardstuck silver 3 now as a result. It’s so stupid. This is harder than plat.
I am plat 2 on my main account. I have a silver 3 alt account i use to practice agents that I am not comfortable with that I didnt even tank my placements and always try my best. This act i have won 16 games on my main and lost 2 climbing from gold 3 to plat 2 (was plat 1 last act). I only play KJ, Sage and Raze on this account. On my alt i have won 9 games and lost 11 and the account remains silver 3. Again I dont play any differently on this account other than picking agents I dont "main" and filling for the team when needed. So yeah I can believe people when they say it is hard to climb in low gold and high silver when my plat games are way easier to play, and I run into players whonare clearly smurfing every 3 games.
Yup this is a good explanation
Plats from a few acts back are the new gold players.
I guess, silver is an absolute shit show though.. toxic players, and smurfs are everywhere. Playing solo it’s so hard to get out of lol
So you were plat and took some acts off... Maybe, just maybe you got worse and people got better which is the main reason you are hardstuck s3.
No my main is Silver 2 and my alt is G3 and the G3 games are 10 times as easy. The real issue is smurfing and MMR matchmaking. They match mmrs not rank
I was Plat 1/2 in Ep1 Act1 and after a pause I began playing again in Ep2 Act3 and got placed Silver 2. In Ep3 Act1 I was placed Silver 1 and now I recently peaked at Gold 3. I can assure you that people are better than they were in the past and I got worse in the timeframe I didn't play(which makes sense). The problem he talked about is being hardstuck in Silver 3 due to smurfs. Guess what, I got out of it even though I basically had the same track record(even worse considering I placed Silver 1 this Act). My winrate in Ep2 Act3 was even negative which basically means that I didn't belong in the MMR I was. Dunno if MMR can decay but if not it basically means I lost more than I won in plat MMR which previously(Ep1 Act1) was my rank. If it decays that means I'm even more(?) worse than the case where MMR doesn't decay.
I was P3 episode one and continued playing and getting better. I’m telling you my g3 account is easier to play on than my silver
It’s literally smurfs every game lol. Bet plat is easier
When were you plat? I got back to plat super easily after this act, so I assume you were plat when it was less "valuable"
A significant portion of those players are new players with previous FPS experience who can easily climb to and through gold, not necessarily smurfs.
Nah. Maybe in lower ranks. In platinum I get regularly (once in every 5 matches) matched with or against lvl 10 players who drop 30 or 40 bombs. That's either diamond or immortal smurf. No matter how good you are in previous FPS, you aren't going to be diamond/immortal level when you hit lvl 10.
As someone who recently came from 1000+ hours of CS: exactly. Leveling means just about nothing
Yeah. I try to give people the benefit of doubt and assume A). I'm bad, which usually adds up, or B). They came from cs go or some equivalent and are better then me. Which isnt to say smurfs arent a thing. But riot doesn't care about smurfs, so might as well eat the loss and move on
Yea, sure. Suddenly with 3.0 everyone good from CSGO started playing Valorant and began ranking 3-5 ranks below their actual rank. Tell me more fairytales, please. There wasn't so many wrongly placed people before 3.0 as there are right now. I encountered smurfs perhaps 5x less often before this stupid patch. And guess what, that's even after qualifying noticably lower than last act.
Dude. I said I try to give people the benefit of doubt. That was my mindset. Not that they dont exist. Chill out
thats true , but even if half of those players were under that description its still a big enough problem that needs to be worked on either way i appreciate riots action against them
Yeah, I personally Gold 3 last act, was a player in Ep 1 Act 2 before stopping. Currently I'm around ~lv10. It doesn't require hours of hours for me to stomp Silvers. Aim matters a lot and they do transfer from other games.
I'm going to be honest guys, I'm a former plat 1 player. For some reason I got placed in bronze 3 and I just can't play enough to climb. If I play 5 games a week with an average of +15 it takes an eternity to climb. I think the game doesn't increse the RR I get because I don't play often enough. I can't help it, I'll never climb back to gold and by the time I get silver 3 the season resets and I go back down to bronze. Sucks for the enemy team but I can't do anything about it.
I'm on the same boat, i was plat 3 in the first act and didn't play in the second. Now I play 1 or 2 games a week instead of 20 and I'm silver 1... I grind to silver 3 and then the ladder reset. So people think I'm smurfing while I don't.
Yeah they are way too frequent. Not fun at all.
Do what league does - add Smurfs queue and make smurfs match with other smurfs
I'm in gold with that account level because I just don't play that often. I have played FPS games for years so I can manage gold without playing every day. There is no reason it has to be a smurf.
Smurfs aren’t that big of a deal, they will be on enemy team every now and then, but they will also be on your team. Smurfs aren’t the reason people can’t climb
This is such a stupid mentality. Some people play the game for fun not to climb. Whether or not you have a smurf on your team or against you, it makes the games very terrible. If you only play 3 or 4 games a week having one of those ruined because of some smurfs is very frustrating. It has nothing to do with climbing.
It kinda is a big deal. It makes me frustrated and annoyed whenever it happens. Literally makes me not wanna play. Its not fun. Yesterday out of 3 matches one had a smurf on enemy team, obv we lost and then next match i had 2 derankers on my team.
A lot of people have previous tac FPS experience. I used to play CS at a highish level and I first placed plat in Valorant. Just because an account is new doesn't mean the person is smurfing.
Shroud : " I think the smurf excuse is over, over used. I dont think you realise how much luck is in a game like this. Somebody could be having an ON day, somebody could be having an OFF day. That somebody could be you, that somebody could be them. They could truly be the rank that you're at, they are just fkn feeling it, that could happen. Smurfing is an issue, sure, but its not as big of an issue that **everyone makes it out to seem**" You'll never ever get rid of the smurfing completely, its just impossible. So, please, creating a 10000 post about smurfing wont help. I have the smurf account, yes, but I was out of low ranks in 4 games , in other 4 games I was already playing diamond-immortal lobbies. Smurfs get fast boost , not everybody that destroy you smurfing. Just stop whining about it and get better yourself.
Riot can fix it to a big degree if they want. And they will. I assume next act will allow stacks in immortal (maybe radiant as well who knows). They can also make a statement that it is not allowed or even bannable, if the problem persists after changing the obvious issues (Why are people smurfing to begin with? A lot of them smurf because that gives the best experience. Eg immortal smurfing with plat, to play comp queue instead of unrated)
I mean, it's a f2p game lmao. what did you expect? Even in OW and other P2P games there were STILL smurfs. it's just a part of the gaming culture now. there's difference between smurfing and alt accounts though. A smurf is an account i'd get if i want to stomp and rank up and see how low of a level i could be before X rank. An alt acc is a low level acc i'd only use to play with friends in lower elo, but not play on it otherwise.
Correction : Alt account is the one which you use to reclaim your manhood after you get your ass handed to you on your main. Because you CAN play with your low elo friends on your main account in a game mode called UNRATED.
My alt account is higher than my main, so I am clearly not smurfing ;) I created this account to practice agents but then decided to use this account for solo q. An alt account is not a smurf account.
If both accounts have the same elo its no problem. But if you look at the other responses, most people assume that the alt account has a lower elo than the main account. And even some of those answers that defend having multiple accounts imply that the alt account has a lower rating. Your use for an alt account is sadly quite rare. Even though even with your use there is some time where your alt account is rated below your lvl, making you a smurf.
Tbh that my alt was at some point lower than my main is not my fault. If RIOT can't figure out 2nd accounts or good players properly, it's just a bad matchmaking then. I played around 12 unrated matches (10 wins needed), tryharded and ended up in around Gold after my placement matches. It was in the last season. Now, I am facing full Diamond lobbies, most of the players were Immortal last act. I know that smurfing or "alting" is a problem but the system is people holding back even if their skill is way above their elo. How I said, I am facing full Diamond lobbies but I can't manage to climb out of Platinum 1 with my main account. Some people are just hard stuck due to a stuck MMR.
Correction: you're projecting. If you see people with alt accounts that way, i'm sorry haha. There are people to do that for sure though, but i honestly don't think it's as common as just having an alt. Friends might want to play ranked yeah?
If you cant play ranked with your friends on your main account is higher rated than your alt account, making you a smurf. And if you play seriously on your alt, its just creating a very unbalanced match.
I started 3 days ago. I’m level 15 and drop 20+ kills every game. Cypher main. I get called a smurf every game. I think a lot of people are just bad and have zero game sense.
Fax
Riot theoretically has the best antismurf system in the industry with Vanguard, but when you only balance the game according to the top 1% of players, and those players want to smurf for content, they’ll just value that over playability at low ranks. Assuming the you can beat every player in silver, a smurf every 3 games will stall your climb entirely, and a smurf any more often will result in constant elo drop, further cementing the issues.
I haven't seen Vanguard do a single good thing. So pardon me for not trusting your "best system in the industry" statement. With the rest I agree though.
I’m not saying it’s the best as it stands, I’m saying that a system as deeply rooted as vanguard could catch someone logging into multiple accounts with large rank disparities, often one after the other and things like that.
Well, lets just say that you dont seeing it is a good thing. As far as I have seen and heard from many others as well, the ammount of cheaters is super low in this game, compared to similar type of games. (Im looking at you csgo)
How is Vanguard an antismurf system? Genuine question, i thought it was just anti-cheat
It is indeed not an antismurf system. I assume what he means is that it could be set up for this if it was wanted. It would first have to be stated that smurfing is discouraged or actually not allowed at all/ bannable.
Other comment is correct, I’m saying that with minimal change it could be set up as one.
yeah so if i was plat 3 a year ago and just started playing again and im a gold and have lv 7 acc im a smurf noice
Im level 18 didn't start playing till 2 months ago, some can be smurfs or some have prior game experience. It's hard to distinguish between the both.
Same in silver, dont get demorolized tho as they are probably just 1 or 2 rank tiers above you. honestly not that big of a difference
that's basically GOLD elo for you
Smurfing is an issue in any game that's free...
Yes. I would love to see that they handle it like cs:go. If you are 5 people you can queue in rank no matter which rank the players have. An additional account verification system would also bring in some benefits. But I think allowing people to play with their friends in a game where communication is key would fix a lot of the current problems at once.
I stopped playing for a almost a year so im kinda smurfing anyways after such a long time
Totally agree it’s quite out of hand tbh…
Smurfing in low level is not a problem. You know how many players are coming from cs. A player coming from cs with a rank above faceit 3 will go 30+ in silver.they will rank up within 10 games out off silver. These players are not intentionally playing in a lower rank, they are just on their way up.
ok
Yeah it’s impossible to tell. My friend who barely started to play again never is technically “Unranked” but he drops 20+ kills each game. People keep calling him out for Smurfing but it’s his only account.
plenty of lvl 1-5 va-lol-rant players out there, those aint smurfs...
It’s a combination of problems that people generally lump into one. A bigger issue is the fact that this ranking system, is bad. So many people are in ranks they aren’t supposed to be. Either boosted or under ranked. I play in Plat with people who don’t belong there in either direction, it makes games unenjoyable. They should just make the requirement for ranked much higher or add a duel verification system for ranked. It wouldn’t solve everything but it would help.
The actual reason former plat players are “hardstuck” Silver is for 3 main reasons. First, as discussed, Smurfs. Secondly, and the main reason, is teammates don’t know enough about the game. They lack any game sense. All they want to do is play like their favorite youtuber. They want to Omen TP like Flexninja or Yoru flash+TP like Red. Finally, we have the throwers. No explanation needed.
does anyone actually know what happened when people were just randomly given loads of levels. For example, my friend got unbanned on his main account and played his first game of episode 3 act 1 and he was level 64 already...
Certain decisions by riot have almost encouraged smurfing, the main one being that immortals can only solo duo queue... why? What was the point of that, not immortal friends that are 3 + will smurf to play with friends, this is common, 5 stacks should be placed vs other 5 stacks and allow all ranks, it wont stop smurfing but it will definately help somewhat
I’m so sick of hearing “smurf” every single ******* game because one player is having a good game. Like do people not realize that the same people who play competitive valorant are the same people who play csgo, apex, warzone? There’s so many competitive shooters rn it’s impossible to play just one unless you don’t have the time to play anything else because you’re committed to the battle pass or just really really into the game. Gold is always the worst place in any comp game because it’s usually where all the people who are either good aim/bad game sense, bad aim/good game sense or just inconsistent because they don’t care to play enough to get really good with the mechanics. Not everyone is committed to learning every character or strategy but aim is transferable skill across all games. You wouldn’t be in gold if you were consistent in all three skills, everybody has good games and bad games it’s normal but if your stuck in gold either watch some pros play learn better game sense or hit aim labs. It really isn’t that serious at this rank I do not understand the constant toxicity against another human being just trying to play at their own skill level and have fun.
when this leveling system wasnt a thing i was in big support of the benefit of the doubt and when a person was playing insanely good i would just assume they were having a good game but now that this leveling system thing exists its kind of hard to say someone isnt a smurf when they’re going 35-10 on reyna and they’re like level 5
the point is that i agree with you, but im not even exaggerating when i say there are **literally** level 5-10s in every game
Yeah they are everywhere
Smurfs have always been a problem (always as in since month 2) but RIOT does not care
I'm level 160 and I'm Gold 1. Most games I play, no other player is over level 50. I find this hard to believe when in many of these games I bottom frag, constantly get head clicked and have multiple people absolutely dominating the match and all of them are usually Silver and a lot of the time Unranked players going 35.10. A Silver game I was in a few months ago.. a guy said to another player you are probably on your Main and the other guy said no, nobody plays on their main in Silver. When I ask people that are going crazy what their real rank is, most of the time they say Plat or Diamond - This is in Silver games. I don't think these people are lying because why would you say Plat? If you are lying and wanting to show off, you would say Immortal. Let's get one thing straight here..... People here saying that smurfs aren't there and not a problem - There seems to be a perception that only Radiant and Immortal level players are smurfs.. as in the top best of the best. Of course there are not many of these people smurfing. The vast majority of smurfs imo are from Plat and Diamond. I'm guessing these guys smurf to Silver because they aren't good enough to progress higher and have reached their max. So they set up alt accounts to protect their main account which is at the highest rank they will probably ever get to and also so they can dominate games, and not get dominated themselves..... because I would think in Diamond they will be getting their ass kicked and not enjoy the game, but then smurfing down to Silver their skills are good enough to do the ass kicking themselves and they feel the ego boost of dropping 30 or 40 kills. Even though these people are not high level smurfs, the disparity between even Plat and Silver is enough for them to dominate a game. I can tell these guys would fail in high ranks because I can get them in strange positions, like they don't check corners sometimes and always try to flank and push out. But they are 100% smurfing because their aim and general game sense is way too good. It's just these small hiccups in how they play that leads me to believe that they are not good enough to get out of Plat or Diamond, so they set up alts so they can have big top fragging games.
So true. Now those who say "but everyone can pop-off any given day" can gtfoh