Smurfs: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Q&A

gms have done low apm challenge so apm doesn’t mean anything
200-400 apm= most of it is spam

There are quite a lot of popular competitive games, such as LoL/DOTA-likes, FPS, Fighting games, simulated sports. I suppose one of the aspects involved in a game’s popularity is the perceived ease of getting started with it, despite its gameplay becoming more complex at deeper levels.Just like soccer, which is extremely easy to understand and to get started with, yet way harder to master.

SC2 and RTS are perceived as complex or demanding games since the start, and at a lesser extent fighting games are as well. Hence why the perceived as easier LoL and FPS could be more popular.

But we’re straying away from the thread’s topic.

Indeed, APM isn’t an indicator of skill, due to spam. Yet high APM coupled to significantly better macro compared to MMR can be considered as a hint.

There are certainly some of them who enjoy in inducing rage and frustration in others ; but the more I get information about them, the more I don’t think that’s the incentive behind most freelosing smurfs. I believe the most frequent reason behind smurfing is frustration, perception of the game being too hard/not rewarding enough at their own levels, or of some match-ups feeling like unfair to them.

So most of them aren’t there to bully lesser leagues, but just there because they cannot handle anymore the frustration of a regularly challenging ladder.

That being said, that doesn’t improve the consequences of freelosing smurfing in any way. It has been suggested :

  • to double the waiting time before a game can be queued again each time a freelose is performed, or if a too great amount of those are made in a short time.
  • or to give a fixed provisionnal MMR to people freelosing too much (for example master 3 MMR for 25 games).

Both those solutions would greatly hinder (if not completely remove) freelosing smurfing without the need of banning anyone. If would not prevent smurfing for non-freelosers, as they could still create a new account ; but as there are also some legit uses for this, it shouldn’t be as problematic. :slightly_smiling_face:

SMURFS REPORT - W24 → 26 2020

How to read : cf. above post or first post (Part II).

Quickie :
Over 114 users played :

  • 22.81% of confirmed smurfs
    (21.05% of freelosers + 1.66% of non freelosing).

  • 77.19% to 58,77% of regular players.

This data is remarkably close to W22-23 report, which suggest we’re not that inaccurate despite the limitations and biases of the gathering method.

I think we’re good regarding most of the criteria, but regarding non freelosing smurfs , I’d like to modify the °4 to only take in account 32 games (corresponding to two screens of a players’ recent history). That to avoid being fooled by series of freeloses just prior to recent matchs. Which gives us :

  1. Total career games too low for MMR ( < 50 for platinum, < 100 for diamond)

  2. ≥ 2 leagues ≥ 2 times with the same race.

  3. ≤ 2 leagues of his opponent outside of provisional MMR.

  4. ≥ 75% 1v1 winrate over the last 32 games.

I’m not fully satisfied with that last criteria, but it’ll have to do for the moment.


And now, some fun facts :

  • A lot of smurfs seems to encounter sudden communications issues. I’m currently trying to question them over the reasons of their behavior, in order to get more insight on their motivations. And, despite writing you 3 lines per 20s while playing, some of them suddenly start having technical issues, or not understanding english anymore, or turn to the offline status in spite of the icon displaying normally queued games afterwards. Seriously, guys… :rofl:
    .
  • Since technical issues are on topic, I was matched against a Z player, Nooby***, on the Submarine map. He was three tiers under my league so already suspicious to begin with, without even mentioning his battletag. I do glhf, nothing happens. And then, two minutes later, he suddenly glhf and starts writing walls of text like what he was AFK, and was sorry, and would try to play normally afterwards.
    Of course I didn’t believe him even one second, even more since his hatch, pool gaz, timings seemed normal at my SCV scout. The only slightly unusual thing were the spines, about one by base, when I went for my pre-push creep cleaning medivac harass.
    Yet , when my 2 bases push timing came, around 8-9’, creep was nearly midmap and, while going to the usual B3 my army started attacking midway : it was his B4. And had already 6 bases including two over my side of the map. @_@
    2020 06 28 Undefined AFK — Postimages
    Luckily for me, rally points of zerg ninjas don’t fare that well against a midmap hostile army. :partying_face:
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Just wanna say that I’ve had a huge reduction in quality of games in the last year or so and that no, playing against a smurf doesnt make you better. They are just bad for the game period

Hi Mattao,

If you’re alluding to the smurfs issue, then it’s one of the side effects from SC2 going F2P. While it was mostly beneficial due to the renewed influx of newcomers, it also made the creation of smurf accounts easier. And most of the time, it’s not used in a good way.

They are mostly bad for the game, in terms of MMR shifts, of matchmaking randomness, of waiting times and of frustration. Yet, while saying that one could improve by playing a smurf is usually a smurf’s speech, it’s not completely wrong. I mean if the smurf plays seriously, then it will be an occasion to test your build and reaction against higher league timings.

However, due to frustration (induced or willingly triggered), the hidden nature of smurfing, and to their tendency to troll (like opening with an unreasonable amount of expands, or going mono-units to create themselves a challenge), to the superior influence of mechanics differences ; I agree with you, the benefits are more than limited, and in no way comparable to a friendly higher league coaching match. :slightly_smiling_face:

SMURFS REPORT - W27-30
→ W27-29
→ First report in other leagues !

Hey folks, there are news !

In the first exchanges of the thread, there was feedback like what the reports I made over smurfs ratio suffered from the bias of being limited to my league, and not independent from my gaming habits. Well, several weeks later, I discussed once more with Cheezecake, and while he still hasn’t a knack for nuanced debates, he suggested SC2 API as a possible alternative source.

I inquired about it with the quite friendly creator of the excellent RankedFTW website (who obviously excels at programing), who confirmed it was possible and provided me with greatly useful advice. Go support his site if you can !
I’d also like to thank SC2Stalk’s creator, who diligently answered the few questions I had left.

So, additionally to the usual smurfs report from my league, there will be the first smurfs report from another league, completely independent from my own wanderings. :smiley:

https://www.rankedftw.com/ladder/lotv/1v1/mmr/
http://sc2stalk.ninin.me/


SMURFS REPORT - W27-29 (PLATINUM 1)

https://i.postimg.cc/CxGF0yyz/Smurf-data-W27-29.jpg

The usual report from my ladder.
How to read : cf. above post or first post (II).

Quickie :
Over 93 users played :

  • 24.73% of confirmed smurfs :cowboy_hat_face:
    (22.58% of freelosers + 2,15% of non freelosing).
  • 75.27% to 55.92 of regular players.

This is once again not that different from the previous reports, so I think we’re getting to a point where we’ve got enough data on my league, and will probably stop reporting it once a sample of about 500 players is reached.

I’ve got some doubts about the career games criteria though, I wonder if I shouldn’t make it 100 for platinum and 150 for diamond. I’m also wondering is 75% winrate isn’t a too high cutoff, but it would be unsafe to tweak it too much so I’ll leave it at that for the moment. Here are the current criteria for non freelosing smurfs, for the record :

  1. Total career games too low for MMR ( < 50 for platinum, < 100 for diamond)
  2. ≥ 2 leagues ≥ 2 times with the same race.
  3. ≤ 2 leagues of his opponent outside of provisional MMR.
  4. ≥ 75% 1v1 winrate over the last 32 games.

SMURFS REPORT GOLD1 - PROTOTYPE

So, I was able to get past my programing complete lack of knowledge and OAuth to retrieve the normally inaccessibly Match History of players never encountered by my account. This was made using SC2 API for clanless players (/24 games), and using the ingame rosters menus (/48 games) for clan belonging players. Profiles discrepancies were analyzed using RFTW and Battlenet web or ingame profiles.

The criteria I used were the same than those used to detect smurfs in my own ladder : ≥ 3 freeloses for freelosers ; and those just above for non freelosing smurfs.

SC2 community APIs provides me with the 24 last games played by an user, dated in seconds and with their results. It comes under that form :

    {
      "map": "Deathaura LE",
      "type": "1v1",
      "decision": "Loss",
      "speed": "Faster",
      "date": 1592593370
    },
    {
      "map": "Submarine LE",
      "type": "1v1",
      "decision": "Loss",
      "speed": "Faster",
      "date": 1592593314
    },

That’s an example taken from an actual user from the very bottom of gold league. As you can see one game was played at 93 314s, while the other one at 93 370, all the other digits being the same. Hence by substracting those 93 314-93 370, I get = 56s, that’s a freelose.

That was also a good opportunity for me to realize I hadn’t set down subtractions in ages. Good exercise ! :laughing:

However, compared to checking ingame history, that method is vastly less precise : it can only detect freeloses if the two games are played immediately consecutively, if there’s a game played after the freelose, and if the waiting time wasn’t unusually high. Furthermore, I get only a 24 games sample, compared to the 48 of game’s menus.

So I had to define a somewhat large cutoff for freeloses, which I defined as game lost in less than 60s of waiting + loading time, with the game then left in less than 1’30 (earliest attack timing). So all loses ≤ 150s from another game were considered freeloses.

So, here are the results for gold 1 :

https://i.postimg.cc/hGKKPCgM/Smurf-API-data-W30.jpg

  • 32,0% of confirmed smurfs
    (14% of freelosers and 18% of non freelosers).
  • 68,0% to 42% of regular players.

Don’t get carried away, I believe those results are inaccurate. And that for two reasons :

  • I did only randomize the players at each MMR sample : using a random number generator set from 1 to 10, players getting even numbers were included, those with uneven results, discarded. But I did still chose manually the MMR samples : the top, the bottom of gold, and then in-betweens. This proved exaggerating the importance of top gold users, and of bottom gold players, and doesn’t accurately reflects their amount in the overall gold population.
    .
  • Second, I included all the gold ranked players. But, surprisingly enough, there are gold players with 3580 MMR (which is near Diamond 2 :laughing: ), and also some with as low as 1145 MMR (which is Bronze 3 :woozy_face:). And of course, 80% of those are smurfs. So, at one hand it overly exagerates the ratio of smurfs, but at another hand it answer to the question « How many smurfs are gold players ? » and not « How many smurfs are encountered by gold players ? ». After due deliberation (with myself XD). I decided the question I want to answer to is the second one, in other words « How many smurfs are encountered at gold MMR ? ». Hence I won’t use the gold filter anymore, and will lose previously spotted smurfs, but will get a more accurate feel of how many smurfs you gold players are being plagued with.

So week 30’s first API report will be considered as a prototype, and not included into the first post’s pooled data. For the next versions :

  • The definition of studied samples will be made by MMR borders within the studied league tier, and not by league anymore. This implies that only players effectively playing at gold MMR will be included into the gold sample.
  • Every MMR point, for each inclusion, will be randomized within the studied tier MMR borders ; additionally to the players then eligible being randomized a second time. This implies that there will be much more MMR points studied, and that I won’t choose them.

You can expect a reasonably more accurate report of the whole gold league in about three weeks. :cowboy_hat_face:


Fun facts :

  • So, there are gold players who have as high as 3580 MMR. How is that possible will you ask me ? Well it’s simple, this kind of smurf do only use their profile for a handful of ranked games (1-6) each season, and then only unranked. That way they do stay indefinitely in provisional MMR (with the league that goes with it). And so they can troll P1-D2 players with a gold league frame. As I could see there however, this type of smurf does not freelose, they want to win, and the more overwhelming the better. That’s still rather dumb from them, as the opponent could suspect right away the smurfing.

  • And on the contrary, there were gold users with bronze 3 MMR : simply rank yourself, and then freelose. And it happens that on week 30, one of the most spectacular examples… was an officer, from a significantly large clan (with separate recruiting and official players groups, and even clanwars dedicated groups). The guy was diamond 2 and spent his time destroying bronzes at 1145 MMR.
    W30 Officer smurf — Postimages
    And the best part, is that that win was earned only because he was matched against another smurf, who left in 0:00s. Also randomized a similar one, who also had a freewin against another smurf, and then proceeds to develop a 130APM play against 30 APM newbies.
    Truly inspiring. :roll_eyes:

I recently had a funny mirror game against a smurf, but this post is already quite long, so I will keep that for the next report. See ya. :partying_face:

API REPORTS METHODS

I’ll keep there a trace of the methods I’ve used to sample and detect smurfs in other leagues than my own.


V1.1

Research Q°: How many smurfs are there at gold MMR ?
= What’s the proportion of smurfs are encountered by gold players ?

  • Randomized MMR sample (within the MMR boundaries of studied tier) for every player).
  • The players from a same MMR are randomized once again, depending on the numbers of players, to determine which one will be screened, from the top to the bottom (for example if the random number is 5, the 5th player from the top will be selected).

Players with less than 8 1v1 in recent game history are discarded. If a player is discarded, then only the player is randomized once more, not the MMR.

For example for gold 1 EU :
→ Randomizing and MMR from 2720 to 2839 : 2727
→ if 10 players at 2727, randomizing from 1 to 10 : 2
→ second 2727 MMR player’s profile from the top analyzed
→ repeated for each player.

  • Profile analysis

    Criteria for non freelosing smurfs :

    Career games < 40 gold, < 80 plat, < 160 diam (MMR reached)
    More than 70,0% ratio with ≥ 20 games played
    ≥ 2 leagues compared to current ≥ 2 times with same race
    ≤ 2 leagues of opponents with ≥ 25 games played (≈ equivalent of provisional placement)

  • Games history analysis :

    Criteria for freelosing smurfs :

    ≥ 3 freeloses in recent history (24 games for web API, 48-80 games for ingame profiles).

  • FL if ≤ 150s from previous match for web API checks(estimated waiting (queuing + loading time) ≈60s, FL if left ≤ 1:30 + waiting time).
  • FL if left before opponent attack for ingame checks.

Players without freeloses nor profile inconsistencies => regular players
Players with minor profile inconsistencies => undefined

Discussion :

  • I had to define a minimal career amount for reaching gold league MMR, as I had done for platinum and diamond.
  • Slightly tweaked the values of those minimal career games, and of the maximum unsuspicious winrate, as those weren’t satisfactory. I partly based myself on a Reddit thread where players exchanged about after how many games they reached X league, and mad sure to stay below those while providing values that seemed likely to me for extremely gifted + coached players. Those are still comparable to the ones I used in my player-experience report in P1-D3.
  • Rephrased the definition about deliberately playing with a displayed league lesser than the opponent, since that kind of smurfs often makes in fact sure never to reach the 25 games ending the provisional MMR state.

For future versions, I’m considering randomize up to two players by MMR sample (instead of one), to speed things up while keeping the randomization procedure.


V1.1b

Same than 1.1, but for small details :

  • Users with < 8 1v1 played are only discarded if match history is needed to define their category.
    If a player is randomized twice the same day, the second randomization is also discarded.
  • Players whom usable data is too scarce to assess with acceptable confidence are categorized undefined (same than those with minor inconsistencies).

V1.1c

Same than 1.1b, but for some details, mainly defining procedures regarding extreme MMR zones (where there are less players than MMR points) :

  • If a player is randomized twice the same week, the second randomization is also discarded (=> better screening power).
  • If no suitable user can be found at the randomized MMR (all discarded, no players at that MMR), the MMR is randomized again.
  • For extreme leagues (≥ M1 and ≤ B3) if there are no users at the randomized MMR, the closest MMR where there are players is selected instead. If there are two equally close MMRs available, the choice between the two is picked at random. For example if there are no users at 1500 MMR, but there are at 1499 and 1501, the choice between the two will be random.

Websites & tools used :

SMURFS REPORT W30-32

GOLD LEAGUE

Alright folks ! So, contrary to the usual, this is a fully randomized report about smurfing within gold league. It may not seem like it, but it’s a tiny revolution compared to previously, as the results are now completely independent from me as a player, and also completely randomized (MMR sampled, players sampled) to ensure maximum reduction of selection bias.

Anyway, here are the results :

How to read : cf. first post (Part II).
Method used : cf. above post.

Quickie :
Over 105 users at gold MMR :

  • 23.81% of confirmed smurfs
    (11.43% of freelosers + 12.38% of non freelosing). :cowboy_hat_face:

  • 76.19% to 42.86% of regular players. :slight_smile:

Several remarks about this data :

  • There is a certain degree of uncertainty due to the small size of the sample. It could be appreciated by providing a confidence interval, but I haven’t learned yet how to calculate it and, hey, we’re just talking about an RTS game. However it’s quite close to what I’ve reported within my league, which suggest both reports provide acceptably accurate results.
    .

  • Though certainly theoretically less biased than my player-experience reports, this method has a number of shortcomings, as its wayyy less sensitive when it comes to freeloses detection : I’ve got only 24 games to work with, minus the last game played (can’t deduce duration), minus any custom/co-op/teamgame/arcade map. And if the games are played apart from each other, they will look like normal games into the API. Hopefully, if a player is in a clan, I can switch back to his ingame history which is much more detailed. And… well I’ve got an easier access to their league progression, which is in fact also a solid hint about non freelosing smurfs. That’s why this method probably underestimates the amount of freelosers, but compensates by better detection of non freelosing smurfs (which reflect the original use of smurfs accounts).
    .

  • If we sum-up, that’s about one fourth (25%) of smurfs at gold MMR, compared to roughly one fifth (20%) at platinum. That’s quite a lot, and as I expected, the proportion of smurfs seems to increase while the level lowers. The next reports will confirm or not.

PLATINUM 1

The usual report at P1-D3 MMR :

Quickie : 20,90% of smurfs (including 14.93% of freelosers), 79.10% of regular players, over a 67 users sample.

With this report, we’ve reached a 500 players sample, which I consider is enough, so I will stop my platinum player-experience reports there.

I’d like to thank all the smurfs who unwillingly participated to this study by trying to steamroll (a less and less) unsuspecting player ; to those who almost fell off their chair discovering that I had guessed right away ; and to those who allowed me to report them by stooping to lowly insults.

I’ve met a few smurfs that were actually pretty chill guys, and I’m sorry if I didn’t extend the conversation for overly long, but you guys should understand that what you’re doing is far from chill/good. It would be a pleasure to meet again the two or three of you, in another league, once you’ve stopped smurfing. :star2:


FUN FACTS

  • The girly pseudos being associated to smurf accounts seem to be a thing even in gold league. But in fact, it also applies to more generally lousy, dumb, or somewhat trolling names that are linked to smurfing, as some of them can’t resist the idea of starting to troll right away. It verified more than once through this gold report. If you see someone with a joke-like name (for example OmegaPoop, Rosie, or IreallyLoveU (I’m making those up, not quoting real users)), or a barcode, start considering the possibility that someone is trying to smurf you. I may make a best of of all the hints you can get in the future.

Once upon a time, there was a platinum player, that we will call Obiwan. He was matched against an unranked barcode, that we’ll refer as Anakin. He thought to himself « Damn, I’m 80% sure this is another one. I’m gonna cheese him, at least the game will be short ». Obiwan was wise, but he hadn’t foreseen at what point he would be true, until this happened :

We both had the same idea. Only, Anakin the Barcode committed to his plan despite being scouted right away, while the gentle platinum decided to cancel and build back rax and bunkers at home.

And though minute, the defender’s advantage of having the high ground was decisive, as though losing a lot of SCVs, it allowed the platinum player to snipe the enemy’s repeatedly sent SCVs, and then to finish his own bunker. And that is how the highground, once again, ended up being fatal to Anakin. :laughing:

That’s all folks, see you in three weaks for silver league ! :smiley:

1 Like

I would say that freelosing, is one sign that is a smurf, but there are more ways to find them. Today I played like 6-7 games all of them where smurfs, why I said that 1) low amount of games. This game is 10 year old, I would say that having less than 3k or 2k games in your account is a smurf
2)nicknames, I think this a great clue, as smurfs does not care about the account, they always put silly names.

I think if you follow those 2 behaviours you will find more smurfs than just checking for freelosing.

This is in essence stratified sampling, so you need to make sure that the sample sizes for each mmr range are reflective of percentage of the population in gold league, also your sample size is ridiculously small, you should have at least 20.

So at least I can put a name over what I’m doing. Thanks for the suggestion of using SC2 API btw, originally it came from an idea of yours in another thread. :+1:

My « sample » size is of 35 users per tier, which makes 105 users current total. There are roughly about 78 [56-101] players per MMR point, which makes around 28 000 players currently playing at gold MMR in EU. It seemed they were equally spread through the whole league though, there weren’t significantly more players per point in G3 than in G1.

So of course 105/28 000 is small, and would I make it 500, it’d still be small. The thing is it takes a ton of time to do (around 1h20 for 10 players), as the double randomization slows things down, and the amount of players barely playing 1v1 (thus being discarded) seems higher as the league lowers. And let’s not forget that, at the root, I’m still a player. So I also want to use part of my freetime to play. :wink:

Would those reports consistently attract attention from the community or from the devs though, I might be willing to increase progressively the total sample size over time, just like I did with my previous player-experience report.

Maybe regular players from platinum and leagues below do. I also imagine that if you’re a bronze/silver beginner and you get repeatedly crushed by seemingly much higher level users, it might discourage you from continue the game altogether.

Why should intermediate to high level users care about lower level players will you ask me ? I think the answer is the same than when any user made something beneficial for the community : some do create and maintain exceptional websites (such as rankedFTW), others do tutorials on youtube, and some threads on forums. :slightly_smiling_face:

Also, from what I’ve seen, most smurfs seem to just hate it when they suspect the other user is also smurfing. Some would leave right away, others will start writing walls of text while the very game hasn’t ended, and some even insult you. It’s funny how while being smurfs they don’t have any idea how to make sure. Anyway, if even smurfs hate getting smurfed, why shouldn’t regular players ? And what if you’re a gold 3 player, and that’s not one game but one over four or five ?

The thread is quite long so I understand if people don’t read it completely. Searching for freeloses is my primary criteria for finding smurfs, as it allows to find those who elect to smurf while remaining at one same MMR.

For the other types of smurfs, the one who don’t freelose but prefer to create new accounts and grind the leagues from the bottom to the top, I’ve defined (and even refined) other criteria :

So as you can see, I do take in account the total career games when tracking down smurfs. There are great differences about when players reach some leagues depending on their age, their spontaneous affinities with multitasking, their tendency to cheese and their being coached or not. So the cutoff I’ve set are quite conservative.

Yet it seems the earliest diamond reach in Reddit was 200 games career, so I’ve set for a 160 games cutoff for that league, with 80 for platinum, and 40 for gold league. Any account reaching those MMR with less career games than those is considered a smurf account. And there are. :cowboy_hat_face:

As for the silly names, it’s a thing indeed, but there could be regular users with funny names too, so though it raises suspicion, you can’t say for sure you’re facing a smurf basing yourself on the pseudo alone. :wink:

Although I’m currently not done surveying the silver league (only one tier done ! :cowboy_hat_face:), there was two testimonies interesting enough to be mentioned in this thread :

The first one is about the consequences of smurfing on unexperienced players :

This confirms what I supposed about the consequences of smurfing on less experience players : frustration, and for some, a deterrent to even play the game.
That’s why I think smurfing in those leagues slowly kills the game, and why it’d be important for the devs to realize it.

The second, on the contrary, relates to what leads to match-up smurfing :

The interesting part is that it’s a perfect example of what leads some users to become match-up smurfs : despite allegedly not complaining about balance anymore, freelosing entirely one match-up in fact relates to the intimate conviction those match-ups are imbalanced. And that nothing those individuals could do or say would change that : so after complaining, then cheesing, the next step is freelosing some match-ups entirely.

There’s a fix suggested, though, the possibility to veto some match-ups on the ladder :

  • I think that it wouldn’t be fair to have users playing only one or two match-up instead of three, thus discarding the less favorable ones, to be ranked in the same place than those who made the effort to overcome the more difficult ones.
  • However, it might be a good idea for unranked, since unranked doesn’t ranks players, is more meant as a training ground ; and since that may allow for match-up smurfs to stop freelosing.

Match-up smurfs are minority though ; but even for training purposes that suggestion could come in handy. :thinking:


I’ll also use the occasion to underline the first post has been updated and revisited. :slightly_smiling_face:

So he posted to say that him and a bunch of other high level players he knows have smurfed a bunch of times, and by doing so have confirmed smurfing is not a problem. Okay… Your well thought out and insightful post is no match for that logic.

1 Like

I think blizzard should solve the problem by changing your MMR proportionately to the length of the game. That way Freelosing wouldn’t affect your MMR at all, or at the least would be much more time consuming and difficult to do.

That’s an idea. The cons would be that if would affect cheesers and alliners as well. And in a tournament, even if you’ve lost to a 12 pool spine rush or a proxy 5 rax, well if you leave the game, the game is lost and cost you just as much as a 40’ macro game.

So I’m quite fond of queue time fixes : you freelose, you get a 5 minutes queue time penalty ; and that penalty doubles each time you freelose if you do so in a short time interval. That, that would be dissuasive, as it would increase the time required to stay at a wrong MMR exponentially ; and this without affecting regular players in the least.

But either way, the point is that it would be a good thing if the devs implemented freeloses detection. From there, anything can be discussed, but we haven’t made that step yet. :thinking:

I think you might be alluding to D3stryw4p0n or Cheezecake. Actually, a few months later I discussed with the second one, in a more appeased way, and he made a quite useful suggestion. So, despite not having studied himself the topic, in the end he was one of the guys who allowed me to transform my purely observational reports into real randomized surveys. So, however tensed that his word have been, it wouldn’t be fair to reproach him those, as ultimately they contributed to improve my work’s quality. :slightly_smiling_face:

Also, his observations refer to the first iterations of this thread’s first post. Since then, it has been reworked, documented and updated quite a lot of time. So that’s why some of his remarks may look less relevant today than several months ago.

Regarding the substance of the debate though, smurfing frequency ; it appears that smurfing does not make you suddenly more informed on the topic. A good quarter of smurfs do not even know what smurfing means for starters ; and as it’s most of the time concealed, can’t really be aware of the extent of the phenomenon.

So here’s where my small work can get some value: delimiting the extent of smurfing as precisely as possible. :mag:

Thanks for your appreciation, LightWarrior. :slightly_smiling_face:

I disagree with this completely. As a master player, it feels exactly the same fighting a gold player and a platinum player. They are both significantly worse than me and I can do anything I want to win. Not to mention the skill differences in these leagues vary so wildly its insane. I’ve seen legit gold players that I thought had plat level macro but were god awful at holding cheeses so they stayed in gold league. You simply cannot know for sure as a master player if who you are facing is actually in that league or not.

Its a bit easier to tell once you get to platinum as diamond players will be fairly competent at the game. So will stick out among the plat players still struggling to remember when and where to place their buildings. Still easy to beat but they are noticeably better than the plats.

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All this being said though I have no idea why anyone argues about this though.

I agree that the smurfing issue isn’t a big enough issue to completely derail someones climb up the ladder. But that should not be an excuse to dismiss the problem entirely. There shouldn’t be this issue to begin with.

There 100% needs to be a system in place to at the very least make it more difficult for players to smurf. Anyone who is against this is likely one of the smurfing trolls to begin with. So their opinion is jaded at best.

If you want a 2nd account for anonymity and its within 1 or 2 leagues of your real account thats fine, no real issues. I can at least see the merit in it. Maybe you want to practice off meta stuff or something.

But if you are the person who is auto losing games in order to troll low league players then you should be ashamed of yourself. Grow some balls and play at your own skill level.

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That’s more or less what I thought. To take an example, it won’t make much of a difference to a black belt karate-ka if he faces a yellow belt or a green one. And a gold player will feel quite strained against opponents from just one league above.

However, I think that a master player would know better than the lowleagues about the progression in the leagues close to masters. But it have to focus on those to notice : and while it would indeed be easier for a master to do so upon casting a replay or a stream ; when playing himself, in the fog of war, it might be way harder to differenciate a gold 3 from a silver 2 since both won’t have enough micro/reactivity, and so will lose in the first minutes anyway.

So far it seems that those who opposed this indeed were smurfs themselves, regularly or not. :mag:

I don’t see how having a matchmaking doing a better job at match-making could be seen negatively from regular users. The only possible hinder of having a freelose-detection system would be to Bronze-to-Masters tutorial makers. But considering that a new account requires only 10 days to get (more vespene gas or additional pylons put aside ^^), and that those account could be led to bronze MMR in rather few games, they could get around this without too much trouble. :thinking:

Getting a second account is extremely easy, you just have to play on another server. As for having it one league or two below yours, as long as it’s not deliberate (for example people may really be 2 leagues under theirs in offrace situations), that’s not a issue. The issues come with the freeloses, that’s the heart of the problem.

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Watching the replay post game yes its easier to tell. But in the actual game itself it is near impossible for me to make an accurate determination of if this is a silver/gold, or a gold/plat player. Nothing these players can do will even remotely tax my abilities so they are all going to feel on average the same to play against.

A good player will naturally make someone in plat look like a gold leaguer. There is just nothing the plat player can do to me when i am significantly better at every aspect of the game. So they will feel like a gold player. But if the plat plays vs a gold those small differences in skill will come through allowing the plat to win the majority of his games while smurfing. Someone of higher league in the low metal leagues just does not have the same perspective that an actual player of that skill has.

Yeah thats what I ment. Like as long as you aren’t deliberately keeping it there I don’t see a problem with it. Like just for example. For me to keep an account below diamond 2 (hell even diamond 1) I would have to actively try. No matter what I do I can usually crush anyone below diamond 2, even if I am doing just ridiculous builds. So nobody should have an account more than 2 leagues below their real account in my opinion.

I could for sure keep an account in Diamond 1 legitimately, if I am doing builds out side of my norm however. Diamond 2 I feel like I would have to be doing some very weird stuff. But I’ll grant people the wiggle room and say 2 leagues below is fine even though I feel like 1 league below is probably the more realistic and fair compromise.

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So if you’re master 3, and that you feel having a diamond 1 or 2 account for occasional builds experiments ; you’re not meaning two leagues, but two tiers below your actual one. The precision is important !

Because, if on your main race, two leagues below (for example gold 1 if you’re diam 1) would seem unlikely if not deliberate.

For my part, in my current 1.1 procedure for my smurfs reports, I’ve considered that two leagues (4-6 tiers) or more below your past level, with your main race, can’t be anything but deliberate. For example if I spot a Terran in silver 2, while he has been several times platinum in the past, I do straight categorize him as a smurf. And I think current criteria are good, as it often happens that when someone is a smurf, he often meets several of those criteria simultaneously. :mag:

This isn’t true for offraces though. I’ve now screened a lot of profiles, and it seems that for Protoss or Zerg mains, Terran is a bit more awkward to handle. And so it’s not infrequent that Protoss or Zerg players have a terran offrace two leagues below their main. So as long as its offrace, I’ve not set any league floor limit. :slightly_smiling_face: