“Smurfing is not really a huge problem”

Nope, since private profiles, because lower ranks are likely to be less interested in using third party sites to look at their data, and are just generally more inclined to hide it anyway; the proportions hidden are much greater in low ranks compared to higher ranks who are interested in analysing and showing off their data, giving the illusion of a shift.

Same reason third party sites always showed massive spikes at rank borders where people went to update their stats when they ranked up.

Real average has always been about 2300.

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So if you agree that mathematically there is a difference, even as low as 2%. In the long run, it will have an influcence

It just means you have to grind more matches than you should, which is pretty annoying.

None of this really addresses match quality in any case. It bluntly assumes players are solely interested in climbing, whatever it takes.

Smurfs, whether you win with them or lose against them, just generally lead to having pretty rubbish matches because they’re one sided and dominated by players out of their rank.

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Not counting the likelyhood of winning or losing those matches (finding stats on that would be exceedingly difficult), that would still only mean that you’ll climb like 10-15% slower. It certainly isn’t going to stop anyone from climbing.

So you admit it does matter, thank you, case proven

That’s exactly the problem.
There’s a chance there’s a thrower. And a chance of a pro. And a chance of a smurf. And on and on and on. So there’s like a 90% chance a match will be trash. This is an FPS, not an MMO. There should be no grind.

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It has an influence, the thread however claims that it is a huge problem, which it clearly isn’t. It would be a huge problem if it actually had an effect on your rank. It only affects the speed at which you will climb, and nothing else.

Yah but some people are not that bothered about climbing, and don’t have time to grind out the rng. they just want matches with as little rng time wasting as possible.

Even if we have time, we’re in the rank we belong. We don’t deserve to have our matches trashed by players being jerks; whether that’s being toxic or running a bronze to GM stream, or just hanging around low ranks stomping because they can.

Skill ranks are a bell curve because that’s the natural distribution. If it was just about either playing or being GM, no one would exist in Plat, Diamond or Masters Ranks; they’d be in GM because they could climb there, or Gold and below.

That’s clearly untrue, as Bronze-to-GM players win well over 90% of their matches. The rest of us still affect as many of our non-smurf matches… we just may not be good enough to win them, but it’s our skill vs. the skill of others at our ranking that determines that outcome.

The idea that you can only affect 1/3rd of your matches or 20% of your matches or the like is just a thought experiment, and it’s predicated on the notion that you’re already nearly your correct rank. It’s not real math, just a fancy way to say ‘not all matches are winnable’.

Which the vast majority of players are, unless they’re on a brand new account or actually smurfing.

You should never assume that you deserve a higher rank than what you already are.

I think smurfing is just the community “fixing” the bad game balance . High elo players want to play their characters, not boring metas where only a handful of characters are viable. if the game balance makes it so they can’t play at their current elo they will just go to a lower elo where they can play what they want.

Speak for yourself. I play on console. Low level players in plat are smurfs( honestly like idk between 30 and 40 pe4cent if i had to guess)
The top 500 list out of the top 10 last i checked last month was smurfs. The entire top 10 are smurfs…yeesh.

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You keep making this about the ‘able to climb’ strawman.

I have never said that smurfs are stopping my climb or anyone’s climb. They don’t.

They just slow the climb and fill it with unfair, unfun matches.

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Most new players end up in either gold or plat, regardless of platform. Either way, I’m mainly referring to the PC platform.
Solving smurfing on console is a different issue which has more to do with how ownership of games on console works than the actual game.

That’s still only about 1 in 8 matches, most of the crappy matches people get have absolutely nothing to do with smurfs unless you’re one of the few people who take great joy in all matches (including the ones with 6 DPS, etc) except the ones with smurfs.

Do note: I’m not saying they have no effect on the overall quality of the game. I’m saying that people are blowing the smurfing issue massively out of proportion.

Eh, I have stats that are closer to diamond than plat. I have been to diamond plenty of times… I deserve diamond. Still a plat. The system is kind of garbo, but I do not mind because it just means I can play against worse players and the game literally wants me to do it. I am into it.

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Stats are contextual and can’t be compared between ranks. The accuracy stat of a bronze player isn’t vastly lower than that of a diamond, it just happens to be against players who move differently or not at all.