I don’t think my post will make any difference, but this will be the first chest that i am not going to buy. i have 13000 games on sc2 and over 10000 on broodwar back in the day. The smurfing ruins the game. It seems that the fix would be that people who quit within the first 5 minutes of the game have no impact on their rank. I wish you would fix this. I love the game, watch on twitch, supported the brand from idra and boxer through to serral and raynor. Not really expecting a response, just wish that it could be fixed. gg starcraft
I agree with you, but despite having it reported several times, it seems currently the devs have their hands full with balance management and DLC creation.
— Your suggestion could be a fix, but 5’ is a bad threshold as you can truly lose a fully played game in 5’ to a 12 pool drones pull, proxy rax, canon rush or proxy gate. Most smurfs I’ve seen freelose their games within 10 seconds. Make that a minut to make sure it truly takes time to climb down the ladder and it’ll be fine.
— Another solution would be to give people having more than 5 freeloses a provisional 4,5k MMR, so that in fact their tries to avoid playing at their level result in the precise opposite of what they want.
— Another one would be to make a small smurf icon on their avatar, so that people know they’re facing a troll.
Anyway, I’m not sure the devs will hear it someday ; but meanwhile we, players, could go for a name and shame strategy in order to unmask them, and ruin their fun as much as they do ruin the one of regular players. I’ve done a list with all the confirmed smurfs (I. e. those with several freeloses in their recent history), and I’m thinking to create a thread for people to report them.
If you’re up contributing, I’ll send you a link when it’s done. =)
EDIT : here’s the thread. 
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The most logical would be at least to ban anyone who abandons many games and when he plays he wins always. There are people who don’t lose a game because they leave intermittently to keep their mmr low. I don’t understand how that is not punished because they are clearly abusing the system harming the experience of other users
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you wont EVER “fix” the problem of smurfing. the bnet doesnt know how good a player is, until he has played enough games. thats a fact, that you simply cant change. so EVERY new account, doesnt matter how good the player is, has to go through some low level opponents, until its at the place where it belongs.
quitting games within 5 minutes (or even 10 seconds) would be HORRIBLE for the game, because everyone would leave their laddermatches, until they play the mu/opponent they want. as a result, normal games wouldnt even be possible, since out of 10 games, you might be able to play maybe 2 or 3.
the suggestions from trias also doesnt make really sense. its not that blizz (or other game developers) want to frustrate their players, when they have to play against better opponents on smurfs, its just simply a fact, that you cant change in a competive game like sc2 with a ladder system.
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The function of the ladder is to look for fair games. If blizzard does nothing to defend that this becomes a jungle and the ladder doesn’t make sense as such. I don’t understand that mentality that only the best has the right to enjoy a game
You can’t ban people for losing, when 50% of the match up are meant to lose.
Losing is not the same as abandoning
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It is when the condition of a loss is to not be the last remaining player in game.
This is incredible easy for Blizzard to solve.
Rules:
- If a player quits a game their queue time for the next game becomes 5 minutes.
- If they quit again their queue time doubles each time.
- If the average game length of the last 3 losses are less than 4 minutes the last loss counts as a quit.
- If the average game length of the last 10 losses are less than 6 minutes the last loss counts as a quit.
- Do not publish the rules just implement them.
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and how do you wanna know, if a match is fair? seems like you dont get it. every ladder system, doesnt matter which game, needs a series of matches, to really be able to judge, how good a player is. in case of sc2, the system needs like 10 games, until youre there, where youre supposed to be (unless you lose intentionaly) theres no other way around. its not like blizz is watching you through your webcam and sees “oh, its that heromarine guy, lets put him against 6k opponents right away”.
and btw, i did play sc2 since wol beta around 4,5-5k and i almost NEVER played against high lvl smurfs. and even if i did, i didnt flame them. instead, i asked them what i did wrong or what i could do better. so from my opinion, people who whine, that they always lose against smurfers, are a) overexaggerating or b) at a skill lvl, where they shouldnt care about win/loss, since theyre that bad anyway lol.
tbh, its a general problem with the sc2 community. if you play against better opponents, most players will flame them, because its unfair und theyre getting so frustrated because of that loss. why not simply use such games as a chance to talk to a better player and get advices, or even a training partner. most players, who squash you, will help you, if you ask them nicely and aknowledge, that theyre better players. obv, there are always idiots who just smurf for the purpose of crushing noobs, but seriously, that not the majority. THATS the main reason, why the sc2 community is so toxic.
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The point is:
You get weaker if you smurf too much because you don’t get equal opponents and don’t improve.
I had the same thing with table tennis: I helped others and trained with them but I have to train with good players to help my team.
The question is: Is a loss that bad? What is your goal with Sc2? Winning all the time? Having fun? Streaming? Playing with friends?
You could like do the laundry after a loss or make some good food.
If you’re brooding too much over losses, you’ll have a sad time.
Not being your problem does not mean that it does not affect others or the quality of the ladder. I am also a master and the smurf does not affect me too much, But I understand why others might feel frustrated and this affects the game in the long run. Not everyone is master but everyone should enjoy the game
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I am bronze-silver and literally keep running into people who where once plat or diamond just not do anything the entire game. Sure its a free win but is it worth winning when another “no way you can reach 300apm” guy is going lower.
I don’t understand the problem with smurfing (not even sure I know what smurfing is).
Seems to me like it wouldn’t matter. If your opponent leaves the game right away, isn’t that good for you (free points). And if you lose to someone that is clearly much higher rank than you but is “smurfing”, you likely will not encounter them again. So when you encounter a smurf, you either lose one game or you get a free win. What’s the big deal?
Can someone explain why it’s an issue? Thanks.
Okay so you’ve played over 23k games but want to VS bad players? Doesn’t that kind of make you some sort of a wannabe smurf? Maybe you’re just being jealous.
Obviously, if you could just quit out right away without affecting the rank that is a way more easily abused system because you just avoid whichever match-up you don’t like and all the players you know will beat you.
Other dumb AF suggestions here like increasing queue time - you want to wait longer for your games? Name shaming smurfs: 1) You only can name the ‘smurf’ account so that’s not exactly connected to them and 2) they wouldn’t care even if it was.
Finally, you cannot really ban because 1) it’s a free game and 2) Blizzard is not going to IP ban because that results in innocents being banned. The best result from that would be huge collateral damage in exchange for someone instantly remaking an account that they didn’t care about anyways.
Waah waah waah you lost a video game against a better player. A video game with a built in system that already tries to force you to lose half of your games anyways. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn from whatever holes in your play were exploited and see an effective way to win games, you’re going to cry about it being unfair.
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I totally agree with your post, but i feel like the whining crowd prefers their feelings over facts.
It’s nothing but attempting to feel empowered by policing the world so that their feelings can’t be hurt.
some of us actually want to play the game and earn our points instead of getting free ones from smurfs. No…not a huge deal to re q, but how you can’t see any issue whatsoever with smurfing is…confusing…its not totally game breaking…doesn’t mean it’s a great thing either.
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I see many players losing 10 games in row and then winning 5-10 games in row , the problem is here but i doubt they gonna address that-
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Ther’e’s a complete full post about this here. You’ll understand both how a smurfs do stay at low level, and why they’re doing it.
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I’m not sure you understood.
1 - Longer queue time would be applicable one people with excessive freeloses only. In other words, only to people who want to lose fast a great number of games.
2 - Some people do smurf on their main account, just by maintaining it under their maximum league. Most smurfs use secondary accounts though, but the point is rather either for them to be forced to recreate new accounts (i.e. 10 days of wait) , or either for their opponents to know they’re trolls before hand. A prank is much less efficient/funny when your interlocutor knows since the start that you’re trolling.
As I said, you need 10 days before being able to play ladder on free accounts. Ask someone who leaves games in 0:01s to wait 10 days instead, you get the picture.
Plus, Blizzard wouldn’t even need to ban smurfs. There are editors that created functions like “disconnecters hell” in order to deal with that, the result of it being that disconnecters end up being primarily matchmaked with others disconnecters. Which would indeed make their smurfs attempts pointless.
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