The Truth About Smurfs In Rocket League

Smurfing in Rocket League is an issue that has existed since the game's launch. However, it's an issue that comes with a lot of questions. How bad is it? Does it actually ruin the game? Today, we answer these questions.
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Smurfing in video games has existed for decades and no developer has seemed to solve it. It's clear that smurfing is a bad thing, so why does it still plague so many online competitive games? Today, I dove deep into the topic of smurfing, particularly in Rocket League, to find out why developers still haven't solved the issue, if they even care about it, and how bad the smurfing issue actually is. In Rocket League particularly, the answers to those questions turned out to be pretty surprising.
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Thanks to Epic Games and Psyonix for the creator code.
:)

[@WaytonPilkin]

The comments are a battlefield today... tread carefully lol

[@notsevens1]

a

[@just_moon--]

Smurfs can be annoying but the feeling of beating a smurf is unmatched to anything else in rocket leauge i mean im in champ1 and think the feeling of beating someone i know is most likely a smurf who is at least a gc is amazing

[@notsevens1]

@@3ormorecharacterz a

[@Macaron_RL]

We realize wayton

[@anassright5342]

U forgot that smurf throw games to go down too

[@thomashawkins6597]

Dude surely you realize the only reason that a Smurf's win percentage is around 50 is because they throw so they can stay at that rank

[@Macaron_RL]

Even if they throw they are still helping two players and only hurting one.

[@Freznosis]

I think you are absolutely correct, but now that begs the difficult question of the morality of smurfing. If you are getting whooped and then still given the win, does that not make going against a smurf a *net* neutral/positive?

[@TheDarkbluerock]

​@@FreznosisI'd rather loose an even matched game than beeing given a win after beeing clapped around for 5 minutes

[@jayypea_rl]

mined 60% so i stay in diamond in 1s so fun smurfing

[@titiwa632]

So we can treat smurfs like minibosses that appear unexpectedly every once in a while. Interesting, seeing things like this almost makes it seem like they are beneficial for the average player 🤔

[@user-yo6xb6ud6d]

I'm actually more upset when I'm on a team with a smurf. One second you're destroying the other team, and then the next, they realize they need to lose so they don't rank up and they start hard throwing you to a loss.

[@itscraig77]

Literally my fav thing to do

[@Wraikey]

Thats why you always downrank with another smurf mate. It´s unfair to throw someones game on purpose

[@Knight0fTheSky]

In all my Plat2/3 games when I encounter a smurf, about 80% are against smurfs on the way up, 10% are with a smurf on my team who just hogs the ball for clips and the other 10% is an afk'er doing the minimum keypresses to not get kicked for being idle. I've not had a teammate actually smurfing it into our own net... yet

[@daynochez5779]

@@Knight0fTheSky 80% Is just incorrect and if it was 80% your tmm8s smurf percentage would also be higher

[@hydrodude10]

@@daynochez5779 try reading his comment again 💀

[@IndoDarahSSE033]

I think when it comes to smurf win percantages. You have to take in mind that they rank up with their friends. And after that they lose intentionally on solo games to stay in the same rank as their friends and still be able to boost them. Or rank down to stay in a rank where they feel comfortable in to clip on people and boost their ego. Which makes it like a gamble because sometimes you get carried by a smurf and other times you get completely obliterated.

[@jmo82592]

I remember once in a 2's match the smurf throwing on my team had to own goal because I was winning 2v1.

[@cauzt1cz]

I apologize for the long post, but I feel like it's worth reading. I might be a minority here, but here it goes. That's not true for everyone. My wife and I for example. She plays on an account that she only ques with me. Whether it's on my main just to see if she's improved and can hang at my level OR it's my alt that I only play with her on. I don't solo que and throw games. Ever. That's just lame. I give it my all every game. We play consistently around high champ 1 to champ 2. I'm not that much higher... I'm low GC1 at my best, but consistently champ 3. I've even fallen to champ 1 on a bad night. Last night she absolutely finessed some champ 1s on the ground multiple times and hit a nasty aerial redirect. At the end of the night, we lost 5 games in a row together around champ 1 div 4. We won the next game, then we did play till we lose, and we lost that game, ending the night around c1 div 2 and her in mid d3. It's not because I threw. But we just sucked. The other teams played better than us. That's it. I don't play games in gold, plat, or diamond, where players are pretty much completely defenseless against me. That's boring. How am I supposed to get better myself and improve if the opponent I'm playing against can't even defend my attack? (Edit: I learned in a comment below that Brawlhalla has a system like this.) Honestly, I wouldn't need an alt if Psyonix would introduce "team based" match making. I play with player "x". Together, our rating is 1200 and we play against other teams in the same "team based" que. I play with player "y". Our team rating is 1400. We play against teams of the same rating in the same "team based" que. The only problem I see with this system is that que times would be increased. Can't find a match after x amount of time? Throw us in the public que at an appropriate rating. I would gladly wait. However, it still wouldn't stop bad actors from intentionally throwing games to be at a lower rating. But, at the end of the day I just want to play competitive games with my friends. Rebuttal 1: Why not just play casual with your friends? Casual sucks. People will leave after a demo or two. I'm a demo heavy player. People will up and afk for half the match. People will just leave for whatever reason. It's not fun, nor competitive. I want to play games where everyone on the pitch is giving it their all, no matter what until the game ends. You can't get that consistently in casual. Rebuttal 2: Just play ranked on your main with your lower ranked friends. How is that different from intentionally throwing? Is it fair that we get crushed every game cause my m8 can't hang? Then I solo queue again and absolutely shred everyone on my way back up? TLDR: I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. Just because I want to play actual competitive games with my friends where everyone on the pitch is giving it their all. It's not fair I get labeled the asshole because people are so black and white on this. I don't "clip" on defenseless players. I don't intentionally throw games to boost people. I don't play at a rank that's significantly lower than my own. I play hard every game at an appropriate level me and my teammate can handle, where the games are balanced. I have to play against people better than me too. Yeah. It sucks when someone hits a clean double flip reset musty or whatever on me. But it's on me to get better and prevent it. I can't improve if I just blame them and get angry that I lost 10 mmr because they were better than me.

[@sonysdad4709]

@@cauzt1cz playing an entire division of ranks lower than you absolutely ruins the game for everyone else in the lobby even if your friends are bad you being significantly better is huge. On top of you clearly have no idea how competitive games work since you cannot do team based matchmaking since it makes boosting insanely easy with it being a huge problem a long time ago of people being insanely high rank and then having their friends be on super low mmr to go against the "average" of very low players. Just play customs if you like playing with your friends so much and if they don't like customs it's because it's not fun to play against someone significantly better than them which you do every game when you hop on to dumpster worse players.

[@cauzt1cz]

@@sonysdad4709 The games are even. What is so fucking hard to understand? I've been a competitive gamer at far higher levels than you I'm absolutely sure. Especially if you want to start bringing Quake 3 and Quake 4 in the mix where we didn't have these ranked systems. I'd get my ass clapped by pro level players daily for years, until I got good enough to hold my own and finally stand a chance or win. I've won money and prizes. Not enough for a liquipedia page, as I didn't have enough support to travel. But people in that arena fps scene still know who I am for the most part. I've had current pro's tell me how they were so excited that they beat me in a duel(Quake). Stop being a whiney little bitch and just get fucking good. How hard is that to understand? Constantly using others as an excuse. Maybe YOU shouldn't play competitive modes with your weak ass mentality. You're assuming I'm constantly "dumpstering" players when that's not the case AT ALL. I don't play completely defenseless players. You also assume people don't like playing against people significantly better. Which is also bullshit. There are plenty of people out there like me that do. If I have to play someone better than me, I give it my all and sometimes I perform better than I would if I were playing a lower/evenly ranked player. I don't blame the other person for being better than me like half of this weak ass community does. I simply desire to get better and improve. Just becauseYOU have a weak mentality don't assume everyone else does too. Brawlhalla gets their ranked matchmaking right. Team based competitive 2v2 with no rewards. Totally fine with that. Play solo 2v2 or 1v1 to get your rewards. Also great. You clearly don't have a shred of competitive mentality so kindly go fuck yourself. You're a casual that doesn't belong in ranked. Talk to me when you can stop crying about better players. Especially the ones that aren't so low ranked on their alts that they're "dumpstering" other players as you ignorantly assume.

[@Woodrow512]

​@@cauzt1cz If your friends suck compared to you, then take It to the chin, thats the only fair thing to do. You lose until you get to an average ELO where you're able to carry them and they are able to contribute some value to the team. Damned if you do damned if you dont? Not quite, you're just being selfish and ruining other players experiences to not lose your own ELO, but you make other players lose theirs unfairly. Your friends cant tango with your level? They gotta get good, or you gotta get worse (by de-ranking by getting pulled down by them), simple as that

[@coreyleighton7340]

Technically speaking, if there's at least a smurf 1 in every three games then that'd mean that it wouldn't be that uncommon for two smurfs to be in the same lobby, possibly playing against each other. Which would mean that the reason smurfs might not have as high of a win percentage is somewhat down to the fact that they are also playing other smurfs whilst on their smurfs. Lmao

[@1chunkabunk]

I’m definitely guilty of smurfing once or twice in the past. Generally its when two of my friends that aren’t good at the game want to play 3s. Did this the other day and lost a 3s game in gold against a top 100 1s player on his smurf and it ended up being fun as hell lol. Only questionable part is my man was solo queueing at 2 am on a sunday in gold.

[@RFB-gg7oh]

My luck I get both Smurfs other team and end up leaving.

[@connordupre6616]

always report the other smurf if you lose lmao

[@RFB-gg7oh]

@@connordupre6616 now that's funny 😁

[@Monkeyman-qt1sm]

@@1chunkabunk I don’t get this, if you want to play with your friends why not just play casual? You carrying them kinda defeats the whole purpose of their rank no?

[@DrNo007]

The bad thing about Smurfs is that in 2s the probability to get them against you is TWICE as high as having them with you (because you only got one team mate, but 2 opponents). So, they actively drag down people in 2s.

[@evenh4210]

The stats are way worse than that. You are a lot more likely to meet a team of 2 who are teamed up beforehand where one is a smurf. The stray solo smurf is probably a lot less common.

[@gang1798]

I know a glitch that gives you unlimited Smurf profiles on your main account 😎

[@Thanovic]

Beating a Smurf is one of the best feelings, everything leading up to that tho is way too sweaty

[@WhiteVipor]

Love your tutorials man!

[@Skorpien.]

Mostly only possible if the smurf is only like 2 ranks above you and or his mate is to bad for the current rank. If you have bad luck you and you mate can peak but still lose because the enemys worst is still obove your peak performance. (Only applies like below gc2-3)

[@rasmusmansson]

Well, a Smurf has to keep the 50% loss ratio to stay at that rank so in my games the Smurfs decide when to win and when to lose.

[@Kymynoji]

And you're still in oce ? I think you have your fair share of smurf

[@None-lx8kj]

I particularly love when they hang on to a 1-goal lead and just burn the clock, but then your team ties it up last second and beats them in overtime. You can practically feel their mald through the monitor as they insta-quit the lobby.

[@Michael5carn]

I don't like the win rate argument at the end simply because Smurfs can ff. The amount of times I've had a game where the other team destroys us with a probable Smurf, only for my team to win by ff while losing 7-1, is more than I can count. It's why I typically stay in the game rather than ff myself. Still doesn't feel good to play against. I would like to see some sort of better enforced requirement for new accounts to play ranked. Didn't even know about the duo queue exploit

[@mbrenneman0411]

the other day i had 4 almost in a row that went like this. obvious smurf, i was losing, other team ffs while winning...

[@WaytonPilkin]

That’s actually surprising because that has almost never happened to me. Also, if they were really trying to derank wouldn’t they try to reduce the amount of goals scored and ff as soon as possible? Idk I feel like even if that does happen, it wouldn’t nearly outweigh the amount of games where smurfs are actually trying to win 🤷‍♂️

[@benjaboi9817]

​@@WaytonPilkinI don't think so. You're assuming smurfs are trying to derank in the most optimal way, but you're forgetting the most fundamental part. Smurfs just want to clap on lower skilled players. So from their perspective they are enjoying their time hitting clips or whatever having their fun and ff'ing to stay in the rank

[@WhiteVipor]

Ya I can't remember the last time this has happened to me

[@WhiteVipor]

@@benjaboi9817not necessarily. Most smurfs just want a fair way to play with their lower leveled friends. I'd say the majority don't just hop on a smurf while solo queuing and beating on plats for fun

[@s0t33W]

There are two reasons why the win% is only 50-ish. a) They throw some of the games on purpose to stay low ranked, and/or b) they are playing with a significantly lower ranked tm8. If the match up is D1&GC vs D1&D1 like in the video, then yes, it's very unfair. But if it's for example a gold or plat player (boosted into C1) & GC (smurfing as a C1) vs two actual champs, then it's not so unfair anymore.

[@Kxlub]

Exactly the comment I was looking for. In order for a smurf account to continue being utilized as a smurf account the win rate has to be around 50% at most. Otherwise the Smurf would keep climbing to their normal rank which means they can no longer boost their teammate on that account.

[@sparrowhawk_4]

Yeah, exactly. I've won against smurfs before where they're clearly higher ranked than me, but playing with someone who is clearly boosted, so it works out as even. Still shit to play against, and should still be banned

[@taylorlastname9899]

It’s not unfair until that gold player starts solo queuing. Then some unfortunate player gets teamed up with a gold in a champ lobby.

[@DarthAgony]

Yep, just had one in tournament earlier (Diamond tournament). Was playing with a friend and he readied up but was afk then.. we were winning 2v3 against the other team and then the guy started playing against us and ended up losing 5-4. He clearly wanted to rank down for some reason -_-

[@saitama9994]

My alt account that is currently at c3 (but I've dropped to diamond 1 a couple times in order to carry friends) has a win percentage of 63%. Ive had to throw a lot but I tend to go up and down multiple ranks.

[@MrPixelMonster]

It's insane to think abt how I've been playing this game for 7 years and there has never been any real anti-smurfing systems implemented

[@InclinaProduction]

Almost impossible unless they ask for your id

[@devin6437]

Just don't be bad

[@captain_malaria]

​@@devin6437 how many times do you need to drop a baby on its head until they say things like you? 20? 30? Asking for a friend.

[@devin6437]

@@captain_malaria You have a child. Maybe you can test that out and let us know

[@justsomeguywhoownsacompute9732]

​@@captain_malariahe can't count that high

[@ismaelelouardi5998]

The problem with smurfs is that you can’t control your game against them. They either throw and you win or they decide to play and you can’t do shit or you need to play better than you ever played in your whole life to miraculously win the game. But this situation where there is basically a guy on the other team that decides wether or not you win is the most annoying thing to ever exist in competitive matchup. It just makes you want to stop playing since you’re not in control and you have no impact on the result.

[@DanniDerpy]

this^

[@KO_Manic]

Bro this is so true

[@icebox1954]

​​@@DanniDerpy I smurf because my main account was banned for "abusive language" so now I abuse worse players completely dominating them for four minutes and then forfeits. Thanks Psyonix, now I'm a blue boy and it's pretty fun.

[@nitroxylictv]

@@icebox1954 I hope you are joking. Thats pretty fucked up that you would decide to ruin the gameplay for new or inexperienced players just for your amusement. Thats cyberbullying.

[@icebox1954]

@@nitroxylictv Then call the cyber police and report the cyber crime haha. I won't actually derank just to play worse players as that's no fun. I'll just dominate them while getting to my actual rank.

[@Red-Query]

You can't say a smurf has no or little impact on a player base just because their win stat is only 50%. You have to take into consideration that, like many others have said, they will throw some matches so that they don't rank up. Also, that 50% win rate is not only playing against other players who are below the smurfs skill level, these guys also play against other smurfs who could just be better than they are. Like you pointed out in the video, 1/3 of the matches contain a smurf, that also counts towards them.

[@JimmyHey]

literally. Other people have pointed that out and Wayton expressed doubt, but you won't believe how many people airdribble, flipreset and doubletap on you for 4 and a half minutes while their friend is playing the role of a perma goalie or constantly whiff, just to end up forfeiting with 30 seconds left when they're beating you 10-1. They're still playing together with their friend, having fun, while you're excluded from it. The winstat not mattering is bs. Would you rather get beaten up by a smurf for 4 and a half minutes and still win, or would you rather play a fair game and maybe lose or maybe win. I think the choice is obvious. I don't wanna get boosted through smurfs throwing, winning isn't the end goal here. I want to have fun improving at the game that I love playing.

[@theone3337]

You’re 100% right, there’s so many Smurfs around that even the Smurfs play against even better Smurfs. It’s almost like everyone including the Smurfs will end up 1 rank or divisions lower cause of Smurfing.

[@dakzibbon6589]

@@theone3337 Simplifying, that's the case in around 9-10% of the games on the researched level

[@curlywhites]

@@JimmyHey Yeah, for what it's worth this is what I came up with. If 1/3 of my matches are smurfs and they win 50% of the time, I'm losing 1/6 of my games just from smurfs alone. That's not ineffectual. If I converted 1/6 of my losses to wins my winrate would be 62% instead of 54%. Meaning, as matchmaking does it's thing, I would level out higher than where I am right now (not sure where exactly, but plateauing at 62% doesn't seem normal, so no one can argue that I'd still be where I'm at (D2 average).

[@the1320brett]

When. I Smurf and I hit another Smurf team ITS GAME ON BROTHA!!!

[@navajooo8184]

I feel like you could also have mentionned another game that have a very good stance on it : Brawlhalla has 2 different kinds of MMR. The solo MMR, used when you do 1V1 (or maybe in RL case soloQ) and then there is the team MMR. Your team MMR is ONLY for one team. For example, player A teams up with player B. They start at 600MMR and have a big winstreak, ending up with 1250 MMR. The day after, player A teams up with player C, and they also start at 600 MMR.... Each new teammate is a reset of your MMR, but you also have placement games that makes the team go quite fast to their actual rank. Of course, the MMR is saved for each team. Player A+B will start queuing at 1250 MMR even if they play in a month from now. To me its a way more balanced way of seeing matchmaking. It's about what you can achieve as a team, and not individually. Obviously this change would affect a lot Rocket League, but it would encourage people to use their main account when playing with a lower-rank friend.

[@YourOneNOnly_]

That's actually sounds like an amazing idea. Having a party mmr vs a solo queue mmr would drastically effect rocket league for the better. It could also open the idea for club mmr (since most parties are mostly club members)

[@wgcdrelliot8989]

I think johnyboi had a similar idea. It sounds good. Even though it doesn't affect me. I don't have friends to play with 😢

[@WhiteVipor]

Okay this is the first good idea I've heard. As a GC2 playing in Champ 3 with my plat friend, I haven't thought smurfing is bad because there is no way I'm playing with my plat friend in GC2, but this may be the best work around. Then I could play with him on my main

[@HiHello-ey9pl]

but Brawlhalla also has individual player ELOs for 2v2.

[@lemon66111]

there’s a lot of things I could say about bh ranked system but while this could be annoying I guess it’s for the better I only got to gold in BH though and only had like 150 hours, 99% of it played casually with friends so it wasn’t really a pain compared to being d3 in rl

[@fredericmacconaill]

I think the biggest thing is to force solo queue only in the settings, so when you solo queue, you don't face smurfs in parties

[@peter-rhodes]

I've been calling for this for a long time

[@macgyveriii2818]

Great idea.

[@jayflay5585]

how do you do this i need this

[@ATier87]

Don't know why but in almost every game, no one does that. I remember even LOL had that issue, the duo system was notorious, everyone was against that but the devs never adressed it. Not only did it screw up the matchmaking and MMR gain but it either gave you a huge disadvantage or the game was already won for you. I think it's some corporate bs explanation for "inclusivity", they want to appease everyone who wants to play, either with buddies or solo.

[@FoxHoundMulder]

This already was a thing back in the day. They got rid of it because the lobbies were empty and the queue times were getting insane.

[@mandasdave]

I’d like to know how much the Smurf rate went up since the game went ftp… a cost barrier to smurfing is pretty significant.

[@coleradtke3603]

There really weren’t smurfs back then

[@coleradtke3603]

Unless you had a console disk you would have to pay every time

[@mandasdave]

@@coleradtke3603 yeah, that was my point. There were smurfs occasionally, but being ftp made the prevalence much higher I think.

[@wavylol1]

even when it wasnt f2p i had like 4-5 smurf steam accs, and ppl i knew still hella smurfed back then

[@TheDarkermanzz]

@@wavylol1 You were the exception, not the rule. Now smurfing is the rule, that's the problem.

[@justinquick6887]

I'm going to be honest, it isn't too hard to find it immediately in a game if you are playing against a smurf. I use RLTracker with the overwolf thing and prior to every match, it shows some stats for the player. One of those is how many wins they have, and assuming most people are within the 55%-60% (for like champ 3) then it's rather odd when people have less than even 1000 wins. This would mean they only have around 1900 games, if not less. When it's in the hundreds, it's just unfair. Another thing to note is how absurdly defensive they get whenever they get called out for it. Or their teammate and themselves are just pieces of shit in general, being annoyingly toxic for no reason. That, however, does actually help, since now you can report them for cheating and text harassment, but still, it isn't hard to point out when you play against smurfs. I have taken a steam screenshot for almost every smurf I go against (or at least I try to), and I probably lose about 85% of those games. And since they are so common (sometimes around 4 out of every 10 matches, even 3 matches in a row), it annoyingly hurts ranks. And half the time it's pretty clear they are a smurf too, because even if their mechanics aren't that good, they are consistently faster than everyone, always back, and just in general play better. A smurf could pretty easily hide their mechanics but not their habits and general playstyle. Plus, smurfing extends throughout almost all the ranks. Even a gc3 can get smurfed by a high ssl. Besides like, maybe bronze and top level, I'd say there are way to many smurfs.

[@theone3337]

💯💯💯 I’ll spot a Smurf super fast, even when they’re trying to remain low key. They usually play very solid defense and make crazy saves, letting their teammates win the game on offense but will takeover the second half of the game if the game is tied or they’re losing.

[@sparrowhawk_4]

Psyonix really needs to sort this out, it's actually shameful that they do so little to prevent smurfing

[@SloRush]

They made it worse by making this game Free 2 Play and people are FINALLY talking about it.

[@hhaste]

@@SloRush It's been talked about ever since they *announced* f2p, it's not just now being talked about.

[@hhaste]

At the end of the day, there's not really anything actually bad about smurfs. You get practice against a much higher opponent, which in return can give you a big advantage. After playing a smurf, surely you can queue in to your next ranked match and dominate, since they're on a much lower level than what you just played. Going against harder opponents is only a good thing, imo. The only downside is if you're on that smurfs team (if they're playing 2's or 3's) and they lose on purpose, so they can maintain a low rank.. but having a smurf as an opponent isn't bad.

[@SloRush]

@@hhaste it ruins the composition of the ranks. People who belong in Plat shouldn't be in GC and if they solo que, it's an automatic L for their teammate.

[@theone3337]

@@hhaste wrong, there’s nothing positive about playing against Smurfs.

[@psydunk1]

The fun aspect of the game is a lot more important than net mmr gain at the end of the day. Plenty of my friends stopped playing because they kept encountering air-dribbling smurfs in their silver-plat lobbies. Smurfs having a low impact on the mmr distribution (coz they intentionally throw half the games) should just not be used to downplay effects.

[@tazplatyrl]

Honestly I mean personally I never thought Smurf’s were that big a deal because of throwing to lower me but it really does make an already repetitive game into a game of repetitive smurf matches. Not fun

[@SoooNumb]

It almost make me give up in the early game session...Who the hell play air-dribble in plat rank while keep thinking if that player are hacking because I dont know before people can do air dribbling.

[@vignotum132]

@@SoooNumb I’m not saying smurfing is good, but try to learn defending against it by either pre-jumping while saving your flip or doing the easier version of challenging from the backboard. It’s actually a good opportunity to improve your defence

[@taylorsemeniuk3267]

​@@vignotum132 exactly

[@theone3337]

@@vignotum132 they’ll learn in time and when they need to learn it. No need to learning those things early cause of Smurfs when there’s something more important for their rank to learn cause there is always something to learn.

[@zRedPlays]

I 1v1 so many smurfs that now when I get a real Diamond player, they think I'm the smurf

[@BensMiniToons]

Same in plat!

[@Zicore47]

I came across a lot of smurfs in my 1v1 games, openly admiting using another account to only play ones and actually having GC or higher on main. That was quite the experience.

[@dr.babies5750]

that's the 1's grind for you. Wow, I'm doing great. Here comes a GC2 wanting to feel like Zen to shit on me

[@fastmadcow]

@@dr.babies5750 my favorite excuse from them is "I just want to free style"... okay... I always counter with "Go freestyle at your rank than. Why do you have to try to ruin my gameplay for clips? That doesn't seem very fair to me."

[@arbalest327]

​@@fastmadcowthen they pull: "stop whining bro" -idiot

[@afox1689]

​@@fastmadcowI literally just came across a youtuber who said that. They admitted to smurfing in unranked 1s just to clip farm. And people actually backed him up 🙄 Sad that this is such a common occurrence

[@dadbod4life]

I cant stand smurfs. My son and I compete pretty well in platinum, and every once in a while get blown away by a team doing resets, and freestyling like a pro. It takes the fun out. All we want is honest ranked matches against people close to us in rank. We expect to lose, but getting wiped out 10-0 in our own rank is absurd.

[@RFB-gg7oh]

Agree 100%

[@theone3337]

💯 I’ll start playing with a good attitude telling myself just do your best and the rank doesn’t matter. Next thing you know I’m fuming not cause of losing, but the Smurfs. I can spot a Smurf so easily. It usually starts with him trying to lay low on defense making crazy saves keeping the score very close or tied then making the game winning goal. I know everyone says Smurfs ff on purpose but those are freestylers in casual. I’m talking about the Smurfs carrying their friends to season rewards.

[@bigmood8370]

Smurfing is so prevalent in every game mode, and those times you do come up against them just sets you back. If you come up against them 15% of the time and the other times you’re playing games that you’re probably still fluctuating where you win some and lose some that game against the smurfs really demoralizes you. I remember when trying to reach C1 in 2s I went for it for 2 seasons stuck at D3 and almost every time I was nearing the promotion game I came up against a Smurf doing their “placements”

[@Patate7Frite]

right, the mental impact of facing a smurph lasts longer than a match and makes you so suspicious of others, it's more than a few win or losses.

[@KayOScode]

As a diamond3-champ 1 player I can definitely confirm the Smurf problem. Every couple of games the game just feels straight up unplayable, and we get crushed

[@sire5689]

get better and you wont have that problem anymore

[@bruh-wc1ol]

most inteligent rl player^

[@AnsXenic]

get better, thats all

[@user-ef8bf5xk9b]

@@sire5689 allow me to rephrase your comment- "spend a 1000 hours in freeplay and you wont have that problem anymore..." Mentally stable people will just quit after their 10th smurf game ( takes around 15 matches ) and uninstall the game; -Which is the reason of RL having almost no new players AT ALL - the new players in the statistics are just actual smurfs...

[@obsursion]

smurfs in my champ games wah wah brother, if you're champ then you're not getting smurfed on, you just don't belong in champ

[@CeriusDeluge]

I see a few people who don't mind smurfs. I agree that sometimes playing someone can help you "get gud" but please, not in ranked. Psyonics has taken the stance that smurfs are not welcome even in casual BUT if you have to Smurf that's the place to do it. If you need to get smurfed on you can always go to private tournaments. You can even join/create one with just the amount of smurfing you want. I would love to see them implement a "Nightmare/Free for all mode" where you get seeded into games regardless of MMR. You could have any rank in a lobby but teams would be close to even in skill (you wouldn't put 3 grand champs against 3 plats). You could cue up with friends but that doesn't mean you play on the same team (just the same lobby/game). I'm not sure if anyone would play but I would love to see it as an LTM.

[@asrock2577]

I just started a smurf account because I sometimes play with a gold and a diamond (I'm champ) and I don't want to play against 3 champs on the opposing team, we literally had a session where we lost ~15 games and I deranked to diamond 3 before we got our first win. The logical thing I did: create a smurf and win most my games until diamond 2, then stopped playing. So the best way to prevent smurfs from destroying low ranked games (so they get kinda close to their original rank but still under) would be to make a fairer ranking system where you play against smth like 3 diamonds and not always against 3 players of the highest rank in your party. This discourages playing with friends and I hate it. PS: I won most, not all, because I made it a challenge to never score, only pressure and pass. Kinda fun ngl, but the others in the lobby still hated me probably...

[@julianbolpez]

the animations in your edits are getting crazy good. respect.

[@rucolasalad]

Win percentages don't matter much. In C3-GC1 it's not too uncommon to see multiple new accounts in a single game, and there's at least one in around every third match as you stated. But most of these aren't that good of players. They just tend to play overly aggressively, and when it doesn't work out they tilt, blame their teammates and stop playing or straight up start throwing. Unfortunately ranked 2's around this level has been a complete clownfest for well over a year by now and at least for me it hasn't been worth it to solo queue in a long time.

[@TheimportError]

Agreed, Mates trying to freestyle in 2s and then rage quitting because they don't get the ball causing a 1V2 is just not okay.

[@matKilla9801]

The best is when they openly admit to smurfing and still whine and complain about their teammates. Like, motherfucker, instead of telling me to get to 1700, why don’t you just go back on your main account?

[@1DryWall]

Dude that 5-0 photos Probably from my own goaling xD

[@brydonthunder]

Rocket League was my first competitive game and I stopped playing after I plateaued around Grand Champion 2. Then I started playing League a game where smurfing is a normalized thing that high ranking people do and was really suprised by how just accepted it was. Obviously Smurfs in League were not as noticable in the 5v5 game where mechanics don't matter as much but I realized that it had a beneficial aspect to it. By people playing in lower level lobbies at higher skill then expected gradually increases the skill expectations on the game. Mimicing playstyle of better players allows you to become a better player yourself much faster. While I'm a sample size of 1, often times when I most noticably have improved in my games is where I've gone against or been teamed against pros and SSL's and am forced to playing uncomfortably to even play the game. I think 1 entire div smurfing is beneficial to improving overall skill by mixing players of different skill level more then usual. Etc: c1 smurfing in d1, gc smurfing in champ (not low champ) and gc3 and SSL's smurfing in gc 1

[@fastmadcow]

This is very true, it's also just more fun that way to some extent. Playing with or against better players than you will always improve you to some extent. But it should only be 1 whole rank above you. It's hard to learn anything from an SSL as a diamond for instance, you just can't keep up with how they think about the match, but a C3 or Gc1 can.

[@olliec9753]

So glad someone is finally shining a light on this. Recently queuing duos when partied up now seems to be more smurfs / new accounts than actual people at your level. It does become seriously draining after a while

[@Kirkyeehee]

It really is... One night queueing doubles with my cousin, we hit smurfs in the first 5 matches we played. Basic cars, getting 30+ MMR, and pulling off shit you just don't see in high plat and low diamond... All obvious signs of smurfing. It 's at the point for me the first signs of smurfing I see, I just quit right the and there. I am lucky if I play 1-2 nights a week now... and I used to play this each and every day at one point. It is so damn exhausting knowing you can't progress becasue it seems like more often than not you're going to hit a smurf, and when you do, your whole night is thrown out the window because it happens so often that it just leaves you feeling miserable and not wanting to play. (and if you do decide to keep playing, you start playing worse because it's just taken the wind out of your sails...)

[@jout738]

Im in diamond 1 in 2v2s and I have seen a lot of smurfs there in past few months. It feels like in every third game is smurf and sometimes in the opponent team is two smurfs, that then give no chance for me and my teamate to win, when they keep making thoese air dribble goals.

[@jout738]

I feel like diamond 1 in 2v2s is the most common smurf rank, when they come ruin it for the players who are practing air dribling in diamond 1. In 3v3s its like one in 30 games smurf, when typically most ball chase, but sometimes seen opponent team full of smurfs.

[@jout738]

@@Kirkyeehee If you que in mid-day to Rocket League. There is not much any smurfs, when they dont yet play, but late in evening in 2v2 diamond 1 it feels like every third game there is smurf in opponent team.

[@emiljankus3516]

I really dont get the people that said they see a smurf every 15 or 10 games. For me its like every 2nd or 3rd game, which actually matches the statistic Wayton showed. A smurf doesnt have to do insane mechanics. You can already spot them buy consistent clears that are stronger than you expect or faster recoveries than you used to and overall consistency (obviously depends on your rank, Im talking from a C2s perspective)

[@Freznosis]

I rarely see a smurf in my comp games, but I think the real issue with smurfing is in tournaments. I'm not exaggerating when I say almost every tournament I play has a smurf in it.

[@matKilla9801]

Smurfs aren’t always obvious, especially at the higher ranks. Just because you don’t see them, doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.

[@metaldiabolos86]

i feel the pain there, ive played tournaments against people with ssl tittles, im diamond btw

[@ragegaze3482]

I personally never play them because I think their titles mean nothing and are a joke, but the few times I have actually played them are when smurfing so you probably are correct. Tournaments aren't a real representation of rank at all, it's much lower, like when I won a gc 1-2ish tournament on my smurf account, the lobbies felt no better than c3 the entire way through. SSL tournaments are no higher than gc2-3 players. Seeing a tournament winning ssl is nothing like a real ssl, or they would use the real ssl title. tldr, if you see a season xx ssl tournament winner in your lobby, don't be scared or anything, they are just coping for not actually getting ssl.

[@matKilla9801]

@@metaldiabolos86 A lot of people buy their SSL titles. Websites sell boosting where SSL's add you to their team and proceed to carry you in an SSL tournament. Those could be diamond players who paid for the SSL tourny win boost.

[@gwenjulianna2372]

@@matKilla9801 Wow that is wild

[@gaaraboy5]

I think the main issue with the win rate is the fact the portion the study looked like was so small. What does the win rate look like at lower diamond levels or plat levels etc. I feel like that’s where there might be a bigger issues.

[@evilduck5691]

it's simpler than that - smurfs throw games on purpose to maintain a low rank. And the ones who don't will quickly leave the low ranks and therefore not be part of the dataset anymore

[@grayplzz]

i feel like smurfs are gonna be found more in higher champ lobbies to try and carry friends to GC

[@evilduck5691]

@@grayplzz They play at all sorts of levels - did you not just see the video that showed that 1/6th of D3-C1 2s games contain a smurf?

[@Patate7Frite]

exactly. If 50% of people have a smurph account, and they did their 10 placement matches, they've each f*cked up 10 lower ranked matches each. that's thousands of matches. then they need to play a few more games to reach C1 and again, have f*cked up a few more matches. the worst part is, it's better overall for the lower ranked players if they trash the 10 matches, so they can rank up faster and leave the lower ranks alone. if they play with a friend, they still sometimes make impossible plays for the level and it just makes the whole match annoying, and it doesn't matter if you win or not.

[@MothGirlHina]

​@@evilduck5691 1/3*

[@SimplyAnAxolotl.official]

As a silver 3 div 4, on my rank up match there was a smutf, and i tried tyo play a game but smurf again, and smurf again. At my level there is prob around 70% smurfs

[@draziwthewizard]

The chance that a smurf is watching this is very high

[@assassinredstone]

I feel like the main issue with smurfs is how often they create unfair matches, where it is completely in the hands of the smurf who wins or loses. As proven time and time again from countless youtube videos, a good enough player can just 1v3 anyone champ and below. This is why challenge smurfs or people queueing with friends, as long as your mmr is high enough, can be ok, because it still leads to a balanced match at the end of the day.

[@bradley2349]

As everyone else is saying, the win percentage stats don't mean anything when there are so many smurfs that they are often matching up against each other. Then there's the issue that these players are sometimes throwing matches, as well in order to stay where they're at. That being said - I do think a lot of alt accounts are lesser smurfs who are playing with friends that are much worse than them. Sometimes this is not with malicious intent, and they lose games from time to time simply from not being able to completely carry their friend. Personally - I don't like either scenario. Massive skill gaps in a single lobby doesn't promote getting better. On one hand, one of your opponents may whiff and play extremely passive, but then if the smurf comes at you, the pace of play is suddenly incredibly quick, by comparison. My biggest issue since F2P is that it feels like you never know what you're going to get in a ranked match. One game may feel incredibly easy, while another you're getting clipped on and feel completely out of your depth.

[@morganfreeman544]

Part of the issue about what you said that they're "lesser smurfs" playing with their pleb friends is that the stats we're looking at deal with D3-C1, which would need at LEAST a C3 or above to carry. I feel like at that point, with 100s or 1000s of hours in the game, a smurfing rate of 30% is absolutely unacceptable. I'm C3, so presumably I go against slightly less, but at this point in the game I can understand how frustrating hopping on to be absolutely smashed by some GC is. It's just not something someone trying to improve should experience. The other real issue here is tournaments. It's very hard to win a tournament fairly, because not only do you have to win, you have to beat the nearly overwhelming odds that you'll go against some GC.

[@matKilla9801]

Nah, Smurfing to play with lower ranked friends is a douchebag move used to excuse boosting. They can play on their main account with their low ranked friends if they queue casual matches. There is no legitimate reason for why they’d need to smurf instead of just playing casual.

[@ZUnknownFox]

@@matKilla9801 outside the fact a lot of them hate casual and think it's easier to play at a lower rank where no one can interrupt their ceiling flip reset musty double

[@ongon6813]

@@ZUnknownFox This my guy. That and I also think the hidden MMR of casual has killed those modes as well.

[@ragegaze3482]

@@ongon6813 no hidden mmr in casual makes it literally unplayable, It's boring to face garbage players, why would I ever play casual instead of ranked if I'm going to be put up against random opponents who 99% of the time are going to be garbage and make me fall asleep facing. The only reason to play casual nowadays is actually if you get high casual mmr, then you can atleast get good matches.

[@mattb.7713]

You also should've talked about the issue of tournaments being even more plagued by smurfs (reward structure incentivizes it, and doesn't even require a seperate account to do because it has a seperate MMR from ranked queue). After having encountered the most egregiously obvious form of smurfing I've seen (new account, default everything, named "boostthisguy" with a teammate way worse than Champ 1), I've stopped playing ranked. Smurfs have just made ranked unfun too often. Every session of playing comp 2s with my friend usually would end after we get matched against obvious smurfs, and it has completely ruined comp for me. Thankfully the game is still fun casual only, and as a nice benefit I play the game less too. I honestly doubt I will go back to competitive any time soon, barring Psyonix implementing a 30+ hour barrier to comp on new accounts. (And even then would that change anything if it doesnt retroactively apply to current accounts?)

[@smoothcannibal5371]

handing out 20 mmr per tournament match win is also stupid.

[@crit7514]

It's so obvious since so many people have SSL tourney winner titles in C3

[@fastmadcow]

@@crit7514 I've played with people with this tag and usually they are so bad I wouldn't even consider them C1. But who knows maybe they are throwing to drop mmr?

[@UberDragon]

I understand why smurfing is so popular. When I play (not even ranked! Casual!) with my friends who aren't 4k+ hours in the game I basically have the choice of: A. Play with my normal account and get around a 15% win rate and be happy if my friends got to touch the ball 5 times throughout a match while the enemy clips on us non stop because I can't beat 3 GCs solo; or B. Play with a smurf account to get a normal playing experience, where I don't have to hope that my friends aren't going to uninstall and never play the game again. The matchmaking in this game is so darn bad when you're queueing with varying skill levels, it's just not fun.

[@ivwvy]

Ok I’m at 4:23 everyone’s guesses are so low wtf! My guess is 1 Smurf every 3-4 games Edit: I just finished the video and my guess was pretty close. Also I feel like the average hours per rank thing has to be off, because I’m c1 and used to be high c2 and have around 400 hours, and I’ve played with people that weren’t smurfs and had 200-300 hours and were high c2 low c3

[@CanKarakuzulu]

I played rocket league for about 2 months, but specifically because of the smurf issue, I left the game. There are an incredible amount of smurfing occuring around silver-gold-platinium belt. The smurfs are so good compared to us the new players that the motto “git gud” becomes insignificant. That is unfortunate that devs do absolutely nothing about this issue, for these problems, I had to leave the game I loved so much.

[@seregener]

Absolutely a problem at the lower levels. When you see a silver aerial a double-tap, you know somebody's blue on the outside.

[@JimmyHey]

Just recently got from plat to diamond and it feels like the amount of smurfs I encountered doubled. They're airdribbling, doubletapping even flip resetting and generally playing quicker, faster and way more optimized than everyone else on the field to the point it's painfully obvious and you can't get away from them because they're literally in every third game. It's so frustrating. I frankly don't care for the excuses that they make up for smurfing, they're interfering and robbing other people of their enjoyment with the game. It's cool that they want to play with their friends, but why do I have to be the one to suffer because of that? Take their friends to THEIR own higher rank and see how much fun THEY have.

[@Sandfox07]

​@@JimmyHey The only argument they have is "get good". 🙄

[@itslogikz3828]

Everyone says it’s a problem but provide no solution

[@seregener]

@@itslogikz3828 The proposed requiring a player to be level 10 to even be part of a party in competitive would help. I would argue that players should be consigned to casual even longer (20? 30?) as it would get rid of the worst unranked players in competitive.

[@SlamDoink]

The fact we play the “watch a clip shot and guess ranks” is wild to me to begin with because at some point we all practice those anyway. We need a “watch this persons 50/50s and recoveries and challenges and field movement and guess rank” those things are more true to a persons rank. I don’t even get mad when a Smurf clips on me because at least I get to see a cool shot. I get mad the rest of the game when the Smurf is consistently beating me to the ball midfield or consistently winning 50/50s or moving around the field like they are on ice without losing any momentum. There’s gameplay giveaways that aren’t clip shots.

[@TheDarkbluerock]

Yes! If someone hits a flip reset on me, doesn't automatically mean it's a smurf. Maybe he went for that 15 times that day and this is the one he finally hit. But if he beats me to every ball and is always in the right spot, that's 99% a smurf.

[@CGcarmineCG]

Smurfs are a big problem. If they wanna play with their Friends, they can play casual matches. They play ranked just to piss other players off because they are not winning anymore at their rank. W % is 50 or so because they win one and then proceeds to throw the next one or start to play against their team mates because they are bored or want to stay at that rank. Even if you report them Psyonix barely ban some of them... Psyonix must introduce a double check, maybe phone number + a ID in order to play ranked, and of course raise the minimum hours to play ranked, I'd say at least 30 hours (50 the better).

[@SWIRFTV]

80% of games under diamond contain at least 1 smurf, and guess what smurfing isnt against ToS so they couldnt ban them anyway. if they arent throwing

[@LorenzoTamorri]

I actually estimated that me and my friend have something like a 40% chance of finding Smurfs in our 2v2 ranked matches (D3). That means approx on 6 matches we lose around 2/3 matches because of Smurfs. And i'm counting only CLEAR Smurfs into this. That not only makes IMPOSSIBLE to rank up, but also feeds anger and frustration. Even on a good session of play when we crush most of the "our real level" opponents, we close at the same level cause we lose a third of the games to Smurfs. This IS a problem. First of all they bring long time players to frustration and to abandon the game. Second, they prevent NEW players to enjoy the matches and to get addicted to this fantastic game. We are ranked D3 since a lot of time and we had great progression in skills. We noticed we actually normally do things once only "dreamed of". But we also noticed the level of our opponents grow up aswell. That because we are not the only ones hard stuck at this level because of Smurfs. It IS a problem. My shot Is that psyonix do not want to sort It out since It would cause a terribile drop on the actual "numbers" related to how many players actually play this game. As even you stated, most of ppl (not me) has at least one Smurf account. If you ban all this accounts, and prevent new Smurfs, you end up with less than a third of real active players on the game. But definitely, if they do not sort this out, less players will joint the game, more players will abandon It, and Smurfs numbers will grow and grow at the point where nobody at low ranks will enjoy the game anymore.

[@HeylookColin]

As a Diamond 3 in 3’s and a Champ 1 in 2’s, nothing in this video surprised me. I think you’re completely spot on with the percentages you came up with. It seems like 1 out of every 4 games I play I am either teamed with or playing against a smurf. And it sucks. But I still tend to break even on wins and losses.

[@everyone1liesd459]

Bro I complained about this constantly Posted proof about it on reddit got banned for it for "witch hunting" It kept happening so I just Uninstalled

[@cwevan6433]

Would be interesting to see a study on which rank has the most amount of smurfs. I'd guess probably D3.

[@unnq]

i also assume d3. hard enough to get to champ as it is, the psychological effect of then getting shitted on by the low grand champs has to be enough to drive anyone to smurf back down and get their nut off

[@deat-mq5xi]

The thing is, most of the Smurfs you see down there probably aren’t even Smurfs. Just c3s or c2s on an L streak

[@Rodney38913891]

@@deat-mq5xi Maybe, thats something i consider as well. My peak is c1 in 2s but i see all sorts of bull in d3 c1 that i cant always call someone a smurf for popping off

[@Rodney38913891]

@@deat-mq5xi It's more of if the one guy has 100 points and his mate has 1000 that I'm like ugh

[@charliehansen668]

All of plat. I was d1 for 2 seasons and this season I fell back into plat and literally every game i play is harder than being in diamond. At least 100% of the games I've played in 2s have a smurf, I'm working my way down plat further than I have in 5 seasons, and I know I've improved immensely since last time I was here, and for the first time ever both my 3s and hoops ranks are better than my 2s. Maybe it's my 14000 matches played, I don't know, but it always puts me against a team that just absolutely slaughters me and my random teammate who is even decent for this low rank. And the couple games I wasn't against a smurf there was still one in the game... me... an unintentional smurf

[@McLeanrl]

Guys I’ll explain… for me, the reason I Smurf is in 1s because I love to destroy toxic player and when they are nice I let them win so i don’t give any sht😂😂😂

[@Exile_G]

I do wonder what the stats would be over a broader data range through the different game modes as well. I feel that taking such a small data set might actually be hiding the true figures.

[@fastmadcow]

It was for hackers in Tarkov. Finding out that over 70% of players in a Tarkov match can be hackers made me quit all together. Every sus interaction I've had usually leading to my death become so much clearer that I had enough and uninstalled the game. I wont go back till it's fixed. For Rocket league though I'm at the rank where smurfs start to dwindle out. For instance I would say maybe 1-10 games is a smurf at my rank. C2-C3. If they have a 50% win rate than statistically It doesn't actually effect whether or not I rank up. Is it still annoying? Hell yes because it's so fucking obvious it's a smurf (Even when called out they lie about it). But does it effect my rank over the entire season if I play say 1000 games... no not at all because less than 100 of those games will have smurfs.

[@user-ef8bf5xk9b]

Jokes on u Wayton - I already knew the smurfing problem in RL was ENORMOUS and am actually glad someone 'big' from the community is finally talking about it! Since I started after the game went F2P- I had to go through hell to not just quit the game after the first 10 hours ( like all of my friends did ) I got mocked so hard for telling people that almost every single match I played had a smurf in it...

[@ZUnknownFox]

Same. I also started after F2P and even now looking back at some of my oldest replays I encountered a smurf in the first 6 matches I ever played

[@ongon6813]

I am making a data list similar to what the person in this video posed in their D1-C3 ranks for 3v3 in my old C2 rank. While my criteria are less strict I also use multiple factors, like rank at very first rank season. How many seasons they have been ranked and wins. Most other stats other than hours (which RLTracker does not show) are not reliable enough to use. While I have ranked out of the C2 range and into GC1. Back in C2 with my way of calculating smurfs, it came to about 20% where almost 100% smurfs with another ~10% on top of that being possible smurfs and around 75%+ of games having someone who was almost 100% smurfing. Cause when you think about it. With 5 other players in 3v3, if each one has about a 20% chance of being a smurf. The smurf % per game will be pretty high.

[@ragegaze3482]

@@ongon6813 smurfs in 3s will be a lot less common though, since people generally like 2s more. And smurfing in 3s is not satisfying at all, I am a smurf myself and I almost never touch 3s on any accounts I make. Once you get into like the champ ranks, you can't even do anything crazy anymore and have to actually try to win since 1 player has little impact you end up just playing defense like the entire game to guarantee a win, which is boring. While in 2s you can just mess around all the way into the gc ranks. And while smurfing myself I don't think 75% is very accurate at all. Obviously every game I am in has a smurf cus i'm in it, but I don't see that many opponents who make me suspicious, or maybe they are smurfing just from a lower peak where it doesn't bother me.

[@robertsnyder4480]

I really like how you highlight how difficult seemingly "simple" ideas are. Reminds me a lot of programming in a sense. I remember a blog post not that long ago by some of the newer rocket league devs responding to the backlash of the new queuing system and menu layout of the main screen. As a programmer I wondered why they touched it in the first place but the devs hinted at it by saying there was gameplay code inside the main menu code. So for us it seemed a simple 'I hate this, why would you spend your time on this??' when most people don't understand why they did it in the first place. What I mean to say is thank you Wayton for pointing out that it's not as simple as many might think to point out smurfs or how to fix the problem.

[@skiplogicgg]

I have an argument with one of my teammates every few weeks about this exactly. It's really hard to communicate this problem, to a non-programmer it seems like you should be able to apply the foul-language filters to every text input in the game easily. That would absolutely be the case if the game were built right to begin with, but it's closed source so we don't know. What we can observe is that changes to very small things come slowly, and the game is a money fountain for the publishers, that are understandably pretty anxious to disturb any part of it.

[@decoydesignz290]

I wholeheartedly agree, I've been playing games for many many years where time and time again I hear complaints from a non-programmer minded individual about what sound like simple problems to fix but to us can be an incredibly complex set of solutions and google searches to find some way to improve or fix said problem. It's even harder to explain to the individual about what challenges developers would have to go through to fix the problem they had been complaining about.

[@tinic1]

The stats about them having little impact is interesting, but I'm still going to complain about smurfs because it makes me feel better about not being ranked as high as I would like. 😁

[@ragegaze3482]

They definitely have high impact, those stats are misleading because most smurfs in that range are only a rank above or of equal rank and just got there again with the inflated mmr of a new account so they get stuck. I personally would get accounts through to gc with a 95%+ winrate easily, so if you face an actual good smurf, they have enough impact to almost gurantee you lose.

[@rafaeldcls]

lol I don't see many smurfs in my games... so my teamates get all the blame xD

[@MrReanden]

you clearly don't understand the problem here. You are watching the problem through a diamond players eye's .. Wake up

[@Melodia-.-]

[[ as posted on Luke's short on smurfing (kzbin.info/www/bejne/pnKpfKZnj76imtk) ]] I doubt you'll acknowledge this, but you and the GC KZbin community overall are giving a "green light" to smurfs, and helping to ruin the game thereby. I wish you were better. Do you remember this video? kzbin.info/www/bejne/hZ2vlIqJiK9sn9k Do you recall how uncomfortable every single moment felt in that very first match? That's exactly how it feels for us "normal" players when a highly skilled smurf enters the game. However, it's even more challenging for us because we don't have control over when they show up. As a former snowday main, I have encountered SSLs and CRLs in plat matches in snowday, and I can provide screenshots as proof. I mention this not to boast, but to establish that I can recognize high-level gameplay on the pitch in ball-modes not just from "clipping", but from observing players' movement and consistency overall. And with the help of Bakkes mod, I can see parties that take advantage of the difference in MMR. These parties consist of one highly rated player and two significantly lower rated players. As a result, the matchmaking system places random players like myself anywhere from 40 to 140+ MMR below the highest rated player in the smurf party which creates a substantial skill differential in the intermediate ranks. Now Luke: imagine if Zen or Rw9 entered your lobby when you were just trying to enjoy the game. Like... c'mon. Would your advice in still hold true? That's what it's like for us, and it's genuinely hellish. Suddenly, you're not playing Rocket League; you're playing against one or more players who are miles above your skill level. Given this context, I take serious issue with this video and the smurf video released by Wayton. The KZbin community of Grand Champion and higher players seems disconnected from the issues we face in lower ranks. While your mathematical arguments may hold true, they fail to reflect the reality on the ground. In brief, Wayton argued that since smurfs lose 50% of the time, it's not a big deal. However, I have footage of "professional" smurfs who profit from it (earning 50 credits/div) admitting that they intentionally derank back to lower ranks through solo-queue. I believe you can deduce the implications of that statement. Many of my friends have quit the game entirely directly because of the smurfing problem. I wish that KZbinrs in the Grand Champion and higher community would stop downplaying the impact of smurfing and instead help us "normal" players by shedding light on the actual damage it causes. The way you currently portray it inadvertently encourages the smurfing community. I wish you had discouraged it instead. The game used to be fun and competitive. Currently, at least for 'normal' people, it is neither. [[ this vid makes me wanna unsub from you, W. Not that you'd notice.... ]]

[@joebob4646]

Hot take: I think smurfs can actually help you improve. Some people never see a skill ceiling above what they see and play against every day. Smurfs can show a reachable level and give people new goals and an understanding of possibilities in the game.

[@ragegaze3482]

100% agree, but I think that only applies if the gap isn't insurmountable. Like maybe the smurf has a 10-20% chance to lose, if the smurf has a 100% chance to win, the other guy normally doesn't even get to play the game, but if there's some competition there's things to learn.

[@grubbygeorge2117]

That depends on how much higher the smurf is. If you're seeing a GC in silver, you won't learn a single thing. It's as if a grown man fought a toddler in a boxing ring. This isn't just hyperbole for the sake of an argument, I was in silver when I first started out with RL and had the exact thing happen to me more than once.

[@korkoo1]

It actually could be a thing, getting coaching from someone with a higher skill, who also could give some extra confidence because better in defence could make your progress significantly faster... if you are sittin on a smurf account you probably dont care about winning or loosing so much either which could explain the low win rate of smurfs.

[@Bleeglesplotch]

​@@korkoo1 I can tell you, personally when I make a smurf account, I enjoy keeping possession of the ball from any bronze-plat player and then intentionally losing the game. I can confirm you have seen this as I have done it several times and it might have been me you saw doing this. However, just know it's not for nothing. I don't smurf for myself, I do it for others to try and help bring them up.

[@UmVtCg]

You can watch Rocket Leauge video's on ytube and learn about air dribbles, flip resets and ceiling pinches.

[@HoraryHellfire]

Fun fact: Bypassing a requirement to queue matchmaking is something Psyonix had made a mistake on before. Back in OG Season 3 (2016), they implemented a restriction to queue ranked games on Steam if you had "Family Sharing" enabled. You could not queue Competitive at all. But if you partied with someone else, you could queue ranked. They did fix this shortly after when it started to become widespread. My question is, how the hell Psyonix made this mistake _twice_ ?

[@manu201701]

damn, why on earth did Psyonix restrict matchmaking if you had Family Share? that doesn't make sense at all lol glad they got rid of it

[@HoraryHellfire]

@@manu201701 Because smurfs heavily abused it.

[@manu201701]

@@HoraryHellfire hm, makes sense

[@rufusframelius2374]

the smurfs win rate is like that because they forfeit some matches to stay lower ranked

[@Macaron_RL]

Even so you are giving 2 players a free win and only hurting one.

[@rufusframelius2374]

@@Macaron_RL just to clarify im against this action

[@Macaron_RL]

I'm aware 🤣

[@Skorpien.]

​@@Macaron_RL yes that's but this shouldn't happen. You deont play ranked to either W/L a fair game or roll a dice if your smurf opponents let you win or not.

[@TheOriginalScurrah]

I think something to consider with those win percentages is intential losses or de-ranking. They need to stay the same rank as their friend so they de-rank solo without them. This could account for quite a fee of those losses.

[@yakobdou]

People have mentioned this in other comments but you worded it much more concisely

[@cauzt1cz]

But what about the ones that don't intentionally throw games? I fall into this category. I have specific accounts that I play with specific people on. If they solo que and lose the rank, tough shit. I'm playing on the account I've got dedicated to them no matter what the mmr is. It's not like my friends are silver- low diamond either. They're totally capable of solo queing champ 1-2 games. Which is where we typically play at together. Sometimes champ 3. Everyone has bad streaks sometimes and even I can fall down to high champ 1 on my own on a really bad night.

[@RazePvper]

the rank with the most smurfs is platinum 3. i get smurfs once every 3 games

[@alexaguirre9031]

It’s horrible I win for nothing when I know I’m gonna run into a Smurf it obvious when they are having amazing control in the air

[@ChrisMongelli-hn3ne]

What about the opposite of Smurfing which I like to call:O.E Smurf (O.E stands for opposite) and what I mean by what am saying is example:your a plat BUT you play like a silver…I think this is just as bad as smurfing if not worse

[@ronikiuru]

Key grand plat takeaway: Even the Smurfs can't survive a bad teammate.

[@connor4370]

As someone who kinda only works on mechanics, I can say that the people who say they play smurfs are probably mostly wrong, I’ve been called a Smurf on so many occasions for just playing in my normal rank, the thing about the average players is just that they see someone with mechanics and instantly their minds go to assume Smurf.

[@agentallstar7]

Being called a Smurf at my normal level a few times is the highest compliment I can get on RL 👍

[@badkoolaid22]

The data gathered in the survey had nothing to do with opinions, it was people with low amounts of hours at high ranks. As described, a normal D3/C1 will typically have over 1000 hours, and the data said that more than 1/3 of games had an account with less than 200 hours. Not to say that there aren't many "false positives" as well, as you are describing, but that likely comes from people seeing smurfs so GD often. If you think about it a bit, it is actually much more common to have a smurf in their game than someone who has very good mechanics for their rank. For someone to comment on it, you are probably around top 5% mechanics player for your rank, making you appear in only ~15% of games everyone else sees. It is less than half as likely to see someone like you than a smurf

[@Dr.Teddy.Wilding]

Devs need to add team ranks. Would probably cut the number of smurfs in half… more importantly, it would be fun and inviting for new players

[@jamieyes]

I have a smurf account but im a plat 3 so sometimes i want to play ranked with my silver friends, so i just only defend

[@ItzSupp]

I would get placed in high champ and get plats for tm8s.. so I stopped playing ranked entirely for almost 2 years. The grind just to hit gc is ridiculous. I’m forced to carry players that are either boosted or just got lucky with placements. People who can’t hit the ball.. aerial.. rotate.. or have the awareness not to go for a ball they are clearly getting beat to by the opponents. Ranked is just broken in general. Smurfs like me will throw so boosted tm8s will go back to their own rank. So if you hate smurfs for throwing… it’s not that they are trying to stay a low rank. It’s just that you do not belong in that rank and should focus on the basics before getting boosted and forcing players to carry you further into lobby’s you can’t compete with or comprehend. Nobody plays ranked 2s with the idea they will be forced to sweat in a 1v2. There i nothing more annoying. Smurfs like me are doing ranked a favor. The Smurf’s boosting shit players are what’s ruining ranked for everyone. So your welcome

[@brettgoldsmith9971]

Proposed solution: make a seperate que for playing with a differently ranked friend. Your team's rank is completely fresh (rank in other playlists is irrelevant) you then play against other people doing the same thing, and eventually you filter into competitive games. Its like the carrot equilivant to the "solo standard"'s stick

[@ButzDeufel]

I love this whole conversation. The smrufs cry about tm8s which are "really bad and boosted" just to boost their own m8 two games later in a rank he doesnt deserve. The m8 cries about all the smurfs in his games, while they are just normal ranked players, because he is boosted. Just play fffffff casual when you have those significant differences in rank. Holy Cow!

[@koganboss4874]

I'm pretty sure 9 out of 10 games I play against smurfs. And in fact, it turns out that I am quite often right. Every time I log into the game, I get a notification that someone has been blocked because of my complaint. The only reason I always put in the complaint is Cheating(that's the closest thing you can choose to point out that the person is a smurf). So I can draw one of two conclusions. Either the people I'm complaining about are really smurfs, or these people are using cheats. But something tells me there can't be that many cheaters in the Rocket League.

[@j.blackcat7233]

This is not a factual video. Rocket League DOES have effective smurf protection... The dreaded tutorial💀Every smurfs' nightmare.

[@Infernal07]

You are completely disregarding that smurfs intentionally lose to keep rank. I play Valorant, where smurfing is also the biggest problem by far, and it's accompanied by toxic behavior as a disruption to the team in order to lose the game. Such toxic behavior can be staying afk, ignoring team coordination to force the game in a 4v5 situation, rushing towards the enemy side without any safety or tilting the teammates in voice chat.

[@SakuraCache]

Talk about fumble the ball at the finish line. You did so well with this video and literally pissed away every bit of good you could've done in the last 30 seconds. Shame. The community of legitimate players deserve better from RL and this vid.

[@BingChillinLUDUS]

Easy fix, implement something that tracks accounts per IP Adresses and only allow 1 per IP address.

[@ericevans7741]

There are three main types of fraudulent gamers; hackers, smurfs, and boosters the latter two differ primarily in the amount of games they effect, while a smurf may have a similar effect overall the booster's quantity of games will be much higher as they are doing it for profit. When a smurf brings himself out of a lower MMR into a higher one (for example platinum to diamond) they are far more likely to then stay in the new diamond rank as they continue to rank up this new account, whereas a booster may perpetually be in platinum ranks carrying many many accounts to diamond. Another point where smurfs and boosters differ is in the concealment of their skill where a smurf may find it very fun to double flip reset in gold ranks a booster's ability to conceal their overall skill level and just barely win can result in more intrateam toxicity as players may not even realize the gigantic mismatch they are playing in and be aggressive towards their own teammates. I see the lack of including boosters in topics like these across many games to be a problem because they are not the same and some people may be holding misplaced anger towards all smurfs when in fact it is more likely they are more frequently encountering boosters than smurfs in their games.

[@osmanzubeir9701]

My Smurf account is the same rank though I just use it if I’m banned so I just hop on to my Smurf account to continue playing

[@strix1616]

You didnt mention the fact that sometimes, less skilled players will call more mechanically skilled players smurfs simply because the skilled player excels more in mechanics in contrast to maybe gamesense or basic mechanics. Everyone with that mindset is so narrow minded, surely the option of checking rl tracker to see their ranked grid, is better than making foolish assumptions.

[@mjbrownii]

Hey silver or gold player here. I love when I’m having one of my best games all day like I’m flying through the sky and hitting shots that I didn’t think would go in then seeing the chat on the other team swear I’m cheating and then proceed to get stomped for 4 games straight because if inconsistency was a weapon, id have a nuke

[@twidite6225]

Just played 5 games in one’s gold 1 and 3/5 were diamond-champ reward lvl im a plat and I can’t get out of gold 1 because of smurfs

[@BOB_Version-2RL]

In your chart of rank to hrs ratio diamond 1 have about 600 and I have 200 and in diamond and I suck at rl I main 2v2 usually carry most of the time so like does that count as smurf??? And no I don't have a surf acc 7:02

[@acubedplayer]

I have

[@happypotat7145]

I guess they could limit 1 account per ip and if you account gets banned you can apply for that and they will go in depth for that. So then if you have a main account then if you are on that ip you cant make a new account. I also don't know if that's possible or not...

[@ILLMARILLON]

It’s maddening, also rocket league needs to fix their ranking systems why the frick do I go up one rank after 5 wins but drop one after losing twice, that keeps happening and it makes no sense

[@mrgrogu3473]

i got a month ban once because someone reported me for smurfing and all i did was actually play 1s (im d3 in 2s and like gold in 1s) so i played a bit of 1s and destroyed everyone for like 10 games and a few of them reported me lol

[@ExtremeExcuse]

I’m only Diamond l division lll can you please help me rank up to SSL

[@Davy1288]

To be honest the percentage is way higher. The diamond 3 pool data is including smurfs as legit D3's.

[@koneseralko]

I smurf on regular basis with my second account. When my rank gets too high there I keep losing games on purpose to again make it smaller

[@minotthuuner9970]

i only disagree with one point and that is only bc you have less than 500h and you reachd gc doesnt mean your a smurf?

[@christophernintchi6706]

But they are not always smurfs maybe they are hard stuck or just deranking alot

[@lukeknodel471]

You should have to have a phone number associated with your account then if they don't want smurfs.

[@SpikeStrategies]

bro i'm a plat 2 with 60 hours in am i JSTN?

[@eldon7182]

Yesterday I played as a beginner three times in a row against smurfs in silver. Nearly uninstalled the game.

[@DaRealenvixyy]

People call me a smurf because im silver 3 and i can clip reset lol im silver cuz i have yrash game sense

[@H1tm4n-Edits]

Wanna duo up

[@pinkyrng7104]

I only hate smurfs when they come to lower elo and are also toxic even though they belong to a higher elo

[@blob3106]

Exacly like dont spam what a save when youre scoring on plats

[@pinkyrng7104]

@@blob3106 Jup at least have some decency when clearly the match is unfairly in your favor

[@ihave1braincell395]

I got 14 - 0 in unranked 1v1s and this guy was on another level to me (I was the 0)

[@markwoods7790]

I gave up on compet because of smerfs and don't really play at all now. I don't spend any money on the game at all now

[@0rangeSp1der]

The problem isn't Diamond or above. The problem is bronze/silver/gold. That's where we (actual real new players) are. In Silver 1v1 I am fighting smurfs in 50%-80% of my games depending on the day. During weekends I often get 10 smurfs in a row. Some of them get a 10-0 lead then surrender, others just let me score and get always ahead by 1 goal and lose like that. Some just crush me, others are freestylers. However none of those games are fun. I just want to play against someone of my own skill level and it's not possible. When I get 10 smurfs who actually want to win, I drop down to Silver 3 or even Silver 2 at times, then I just win 10-0 against most people. I go back to Gold until the next wave of smurfs come to take me back. It feels horrible to lose against them and it feels just as horrible when they let me win. I often just surrender the game even if they are letting me win because I am having no fun.

[@0rangeSp1der]

Wrote that comment, went into a game, guess what? Seasin 9 Diamond tournament winner titled opponent in Silver3. This game is stupid, and I am really considering just uninstalling. What's the point?

[@X_zahra702z]

I went down from dimond 2 to platinum 3 because of smurfs😢

[@Gamer_s944]

I had to make a new acc even though I am a platinum it was for safety reason is that called smurfing

[@Foefii]

and here i sit with close to 5k hours still not getting over champ 1😂

[@daylen577]

Guessing a smurf gets harder in the higher ranks, but down in gold and plat it's painfully obvious when someone starts air dribbling or even just hits most of their shots. That's unheard of in those ranks and almost always immediately points to smurfing.

[@paulie_c2020]

did you notice there is a champion logo in in the champions field stadium. is that were it gets its name?

[@ninjalanternshark1508]

Being a potato in real life is the only thing that can explain smurfs. Theres no actual benefit to it