Smurfing ruins the game

Smurfs have a right to enjoy the game as much as anyone else. Seems boring to me, but if they want to spend their SC2 time bashing noobs, so be it. For the people being bashed, look at it as a learning experience. You can probably learn a lot from watching those smurfs’ replays.

What if he plays against people in his league like everyone else?. That’s not enough?. It is not the fault of others that he does not tolerate losing. I find it sick that someone finds it funny to crush noobs. What is the purpose of that?

Am i smurfing if I master one race, and decide to learn an offrace, and use a strategy that I’ve lost to and do it well, and d!ckstomp someone in a low league, because my offrace is low mmr?

Fun fact: 50% of 1v1 players leave the game before the match is over. The other 50% are the winners.

No, the problem is people who quit games to lower their mmr.

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Please define what you call smurfing.

To smurf is to play on an account which isn’t your main one.

  • High level players (M1 → pros) use this not to be spied upon (builds, moves) while laddering.

  • Regular users (M2 → gold) use this in conjunction to freelosing, deliberately lowering their MMR in order to play lower level users.

Both can be called smurfs. And though the first use is legit, the one you’ll see most users complain about is the second one.

The main difference between those two types of smurfs, is that only the second sort will freelose.

More detailed information below if you want :

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So…my mmr is plat and I’m really a d1 or m3… I purposely lost games last season not to play bronze etc. I actually just wanted the bronze title to hear the rage of people saying they dont want me on their team or in game they say things like “man we got a bronze here. This gonna be rough” to go ahead and perform well and exceed expectations. I’m 15-0 this season as you see I’m not winning and then losing to stay low league and just abuse lower level players. I’m actually in the process to climb back up cause I’m going to be getting involved in more ranked games now so headed to the sky! Many of these smurfs are usually top level players though and many gms do it too. I’m guessing they dont want the publicity? Either way. Making this post only fuels the reason smurfs do what they do. Best way to play is treat every opponent. Regardless of league as if you’re facing a gm…because you might be. If your outmatched…think of it as a learning experience…fyi I achieved master league after going against a gm friend of mine over 200 times as a plat 1. You’ll learn alot when you constantly lose to good competition. I enjoy being outmatched and being cheesed is my favorite as it will teach you how to react under pressure…which is essentially one of the most important aspects to get out of the lower leagues. Tl dr I’m out

Which is why you play 1K MMR under yours. Q.E.D.

I guess it depends on the purpose of the smurf… If they are playing people below their skill to avoid losses then they are toxic to the community. Its like going outside and playing a 10year old in basketball and bragging that you beat them.

If they are doing a tutorial or just trying to teach or give tips then that is ok…

Now there is this grey area… which is where people like beasty falls under. and that is the bronze to GM builds. where half of the things they do will work just because they are better than the person they are playing against. I guess if they announced what they are doing its ok. but what if they don’t announce. is it the same as the smurf that are playing people 2k mmr below their own. I don’t know.

Do you know Smurfs that brag about beating lower league players? Lol that’s the most absurd metaphor.
Do you know people who play ten year olds in basketball and brag about that, too?

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About those, I guess that could be seen as a second legit use for it as well. I mean once they’ve reached low enough, they do stop freelosing, and the purpose is to show builds appliable to specific leagues and share them into structured channels.

And indeed, the execution being that of a higher league player kinda decreases the relevance, though experimented casters do try to limit their APMs/multitask while doing so.

Those really are a minority though. :thinking:

Some actually do. It may no be so obvious especially if you are a fan of that person but there is some bragging involved if nothing else they go on an ego trip.

Didn’t ask that. Asked if you knew these alleged Smurfs.

Do I know these smurfs personally. no. not at all. but b/c I don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t do it…

The same goes for people that beat 10 year olds in basketball and brag about it.[

I once created a topic registering the IDs of those I confirmed via the freelose method. There were a bit more than 50. The topic got closed 'cause it “degraded the wellbeing of use” of those users, lol.

As for if they do brag for it, most don’t wanna endure the trashtalk their smurfing induces. So a lot of them just disable chat with anyone not on their friendlist. Or will just deny it until there is too much evidence of it (and then switch to lowly insults). So most probably aren’t proud of it, and won’t want to talk about anything related to it.

But, in some rare/extreme case, some do boast about it, specially when they managed to win using some particularly humiliating/trolling strategy. JustMonica is an example of those. To give you an idea he smurfs 2500 MMR below his real one (5K MMR M2 KR) in gold league, just to troll the opponents, and then goes as far as sending his replays to casters.

_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Age4eNRUMrk

Special mention to Lowko noticing the micro is much higher level than the played league. He is more right than he suspects on that one . ^^ Though he’s a M1-GM, so he doesn’t know about that kind of smurfing (hopefully one gets somewhat harder to troll as he ranks up).

As for it being absurd ; it certainly is.

thats funny because we get an update once per year and they “have their hands full”

Well, when they used to make one Community feedback per month/two months, I actually managed to get their attention on a handful of things. But that was before F2P brought us so many smurfs.

If we get a community feedback, I’ll try my luck once again, 'cause this is a pain from D3 to bronze (a gold leaguer from my clan boasted about trolling some bronzes recently ; to illustrate how pathetic this can get).

If you think no one has enough time to look into the account you are mistaking.

All ranked JustMonika’s _https://www.rankedftw.com/search/?name=JustMonika

None of the accounts show the major swing of the win/losses ratio. So algorithm put them on appropiate mmr level all…

You’re missing the original account :

_https://www.rankedftw.com/search/?name=justmonica
_https://www.rankedftw.com/ladder/lotv/1v1/mmr/?team=3073988

You can’t see if a player is smurfing by win/lose ratio (as long as the MMR has already been lowered in a previous season, if he freeloses 1 game over 2, current ratio will still be 50/50) ; you have to check their ingame history to spot the freeloses. And of course, he most probably won’t do it on his main account (cf. definitions above).

If you really think that the guy who played Z in Lowko’s video is a gold player, then you’re not good at spotting differences in skill. To me it’s obvious since the four first lings, which he microed so superiorly that he killed 10 probes while microing continuously over 3 minutes, while macroing at home ; and didn’t even lose them in the end. Do you commonly see 4 lings running into your base unharmed for 3’ minutes long ? You can’t do that if you’re a gold player (which by definition hasn’t mastered multitasking), and you couldn’t pull that unless your opponents’ reactions/micro are really inadequate (I even wonder if DroneTMX wasn’t rather a silver since he didn’t know how to properly wall, which is the very first thing you learn to know in PvZ). Hence the smurfing.

Now, it’s been years since I’ve been at this MMR, so I haven’t played this user personally for an equally long time. I do not know this DroneTMX, so I have no reason to lie or give false information. Can you say the same, Shadowstorm ? What’s your interest in this ?