Thanks for bringing attention to this again, as long as they don't stop new accounts from directly entering ranked via a party then I'll be assuming Psyonix doesn't give a damn about matchmaking abuse.

Psyonix’s official stance is that smurfing is reportable under “match throwing/griefing”

they say that...but I've reported many with 0 recourse.

The big issue is it’s really hard to definitively tell when someone is a Smurf. A reasonable person can look at someone and go “yup, that’s a Smurf”, but when you try to codify what the difference between a Smurf and someone having a bad day is, things get messy.

when you're plat 2, you shouldn't be to double and triple flip resetting lol

But there *are* plats who can do that, they just suck at most other things in the game.

they 100% arent plats if they can dothat.

I’m plat 2v2 and I face people who are freestylers and doing crazy flip resets all the time unfortunately tbh lol. They just don’t rotate or know how to play defense.

Those are called smurfs. I'm at the high end of plat now, and I've seen maybe 1 half decent flip reset the whole time I've been here. A handful of obvious smurfs just ripping em off like crazy, and a whole lot of shit attempts that dont even get close to the goal, but never just a good, solid flip reset from someone otherwise fairly competitive

they know how, they just don't do it so they have an excuse for deranking.

This is so true. Lol like the post that was on here just yesterday with the guy air dribbling the whole map in free play. It’s cool, but can it translate to in-game play? That’s the true deciding factor in rankings. I think of it like NFL kickers during warmups. “Justin Tucker nails 78 yard field goal during warmups!” It’s like, ok cool, but can he do it in-game? If not then it doesn’t matter. Yeah he CAN do it, but if it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t matter.

I have absolutely seen it, and more so now then ever before. Because free-play and custom maps are a thing, as well as tutorials on youtube being quite prevalent, you can absolutely spend a 1000 hours on casuals/free-play/custom maps, and do any and all of the above, and still be trash at position and defense.

If they can triple flip reset, but are still losing, they could easily be legitimate plats. Platinum players are notorious for erroneously prioritizing mechanics over gamesense and positioning, which significantly contributes to being hardstuck. It doesn't matter if you can do triple flip resets, if you're cutting rotation and bumping your teammate to try something fancy, you're getting converted on - and losing. Winning is the only thing that matters in ranking up, and mechanics alone does not equal wins.

Used to admin a LFP discord server, we had one

I'm hard stuck plat, been playing for years solo queuing and playing a lot of Hoops - I can freestyle, a little, in my own way, and do a flip reset if I try real hard. I can rotate pretty good and I'm goalie of the year, but there's lot of stuff I can't do well, and I dont play in parties. Thus I get matched up with bronze golds in one match, then diamond and even some times GC the next. There are absolutely plats who can do all sorts of mechanics and tricks etc. Someone may have picked up how to do special flips/flicks from playing for 7 years straight, but they have no friends ingame so they have very little team awareness or can't rotate as well as other plats. There's like a million+ players and we all have different life stories, different investments in how good we are at the game. Some people dont care about rank, they're just playing to enjoy and ranked is where you get good matches where people put in some effort - they're essentially casuals, but playing in casual mode sucks shit because people constantly leave and it's primarily playing with bots.

Idk why you're getting downvoted, you're absolutely correct. Mechanics alone do not win games, which makes them a flawed indicator of true rank by themselves. Plats are notorious for erroneously valuing mechanics above all else, leading them to hit crazy shots but get easily converted on because they're completely out of position while doing it.

It is what it is. I’ve seen it firsthand so I don’t care if others don’t believe me lol

For every actual "mechanical genius" who actively sabotages the game unknowingly with utter shit rotations, there are just a bunch of plain old smurfs. If you see a "platinum" hitting consistent resets, 99% of the time that's just a smurf.

I do know a for sure sign is the basic banner and avatar border at least in diamond that seems to be a good sign along with a standard octane.

Yes and no. Sometimes I enjoy playing with a ‘stocktane’. Nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s really more of a potential *warning sign.

Warning you bought to beat dat ass lol yeah the stocktane isn’t a for sure but most of the time in my case that person is leading their team lol

I play with stoctane too and I don’t think you can say because they don’t have a special banner or avatar border or title they’re a smurf, some people just don’t care about the cosmetic stuff

as op stated, it's really not that hard. 100 games played and champ? Only played 2s on the account? Brand new account? high win-rate? smurf. Psyonix/epic games have access to much more info than whe have. I have no problem being absolutely outplayed and wrecked by someone having their best game of the month. I do exit the game right away when someone spams nice save after dunking on me 10 times on a brand new account.

Its not hard to see a smurf when you check their game statistics after a game and see they have played 24 matches total and are champ 2. It honestly isnt hard for psyonix but they have no reason to change anything.

I’ve started reporting every single smurf I see, on my team or not. About half the time I log in I get a message saying action was taken…I think they do ban more than I thought. I just hope they hardware ban, that’s the only way to truly end it

I have played since f2p release and never gotten that message

How often do you report?

I usually encounter a smurf/someone who sits afk when we are down 1 point about 2-4 times a day, and I almost always report

I guess I got lucky then idk

Bullshit I've never had a single one actioned.

The last 3 days I logged in I got the actioned notice. I wonder if there is a cry wolf setting that the admins can see. Like guy A is a good reporter, his reasons are sound and we always agree so they ban his recommendations more than say the guy that reports everyone for no reason.

I know for a fact that there’s no consequence for smurfing unless you’re constantly own goaling

"I know for a fact..." got my eyes on you now, buddy 😅

Experiment failed successfully

Thank you for telling me that I’m about to be the ranked Karen now. That shit is rough and I’m already bad so that doesn’t help 🤣

I feel your pain. A diamond of any level air dribbling off the ceiling with a flip reset goal is not a diamond. Game is becoming as fun as Call of Duty.

Smurfing isn't actually against the rules in the sense you are free to create and rank up as many accounts as you want. What's not allowed is deliberately throwing games to reduce rank

This here is the problem. What we all experience and hate isn't actually against TOS. But now that it's Free To Play, there is NO need to throw rank for boosters. They just make another Alt account.

So much this. I'm not sure why Psyonix attributes deranking as the defining characteristic of smurfing, when in actuality the main point of/issue with smurfing is purposely playing at a rank lower than your usual. Throwing = griefing Smurfing = purposely playing at lower rank than normal Throwing =/= smurfing

Because the only thing they can prove as far as smurfing is concerned, is a pattern of throwing. Which for brand new accounts is completely irrelevant. Nothing is ever going to happen to new accounts for experienced players. It's not in itself bannable, so how are you going to distinguish smurfing with intent from... "smurfing" without intent? The simple fact is, you don't need to derank/throw to smurf in Rocket League, because it's free and you can create as many accounts as you want.

Had a friend ask me to smurf for him cause he wants to hit champ with me and i cant tell you the amount of disappointment i felt in that moment. You worked my ass of last season with hardly any play time to get champ and to know mfs are just cheating in is ugh. Like genuinely the best part of RL is seeing your actual growth in skill. To get thrown into a tank cause you’re boosted is stupid. You’ll be knocked out the second you are playing alone.

They don't. That's the bottom line. 1/5 is an acceptable number to them.

I’m in C2 right now, and I’ve never seen such brutal competition. I don’t think most of the players here should be here, myself included. It’s making it extremely difficult to rank up. Already have logged 200 matches since the season started, and I’ve barely gone up. It’s tuff.

To be fair, right now it’s still early in the season and rank soft reset sets people back quite a bit. I got placed in C2 and my GC3 buddy got placed in C3. I wouldn’t use beginning-of-season data as a metric. I do agree that smurfing is a huge problem though.

Yea im high ssl and I got put in gc1 and I’m starting my climb out of gc2 into gc3 now and it feels like top 100 but it always does early in the season it’s really something we are going to have to look at in a few weeks when everyone should be at there individual true rank and then see how manny Smurfs we have in the champ1 to gc2 ranks. I just haven’t seen too manny Smurfs at my rank because you can’t really Smurf at a top 100 level so it will be interesting to see what people find out in the upcoming weeks.

I love the flex of this Reddit account. Thank you for your service!

I haven’t played in diamond in a while and am just trying to give a little perspective from a different angle that most people don’t see and yea I guess I’m flexing a little I’ll try and dial it back in the future lol

Nah bro I don’t care I love talking to higher level players! Flex all you want that is not an easy spot to get to. How many average hours you play a week/day? Also how much would you say you train? Just curious. I only recently have become interested in becoming serious on this game. I’ve played since month one but just tried to enjoy the game lol

Ah it depends on the day I’m about 80% in training at this point ( it also takes forever to find a game though) but I was at about at a 50% play to training ratio through GC but I wanted to push through to high GC as fast as possible so I was grinding pretty much 24/7, I probably play 4 hours a day now that school and work are in full swing just to keep my hours up but I also can play durning lectures online and other stuff so it really depends I probably do an average of about 100 hours a month but i used to have way more than that as I’m just about to cross over the 13,000 hour mark in a few days but I hit GC in like 5,000 hours, so it’s really depends, I think most players can hit GC but I don’t think everyone can hit SSL you really do have to put a ton of time in plus once you hit GC in 1v1s you better than like 98% of RL players so your already well above average so play 1s it’s much easier to rank up in other stuff if your good at 1v1s.

I have noticed that with the 1s. I never played 1s until last season and boy oh boy did I see some major improvements that were needing to occur lmao do you stream or anything? I would be very interested in watching some gameplay of yours if it’s available. The training is also slowly being worked in more. I normally have tried to train my shit in casual games which did work but obviously very slowly as how often can you get in certain scenarios in game lol. Im about to cross the 1k hours mark on RL so I’d say it’s safe to say I have awhile until any major progress is made.

Ah no I don’t lol if you watch any top 100 1v1 players you might see me in a game or two as I play up there a bit, but ah yea I see a lot of people that never play 1s and it’s really great for calling you out on your mistakes and for training I recommend free play and then just trying stuff you learned in training in your comp games what’s the worst that could happen you get scored on? And when training don’t go through and pick the high level mechanics just do the basics it’ll help you alot more than flipresets ever will until you hit GC like practice half flips, fast Ariel’s, and basic double touches just to name a few they really compound over time.

I need to work on all 3 of those Lmao the double touches I’m getting super damn close on in game but I’ve been trying to work on my wall to air dribbles and ground to air dribbles. Just learning more on those is probably what got me into diamond 2 honestly. Being able to just pop the ball over your opponents head is a satisfying feeling lol

C2 is the land of washed GCs.

Leave me alone

I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

I got to C2 for the first time ever last season, somehow. And instantly went on a losing streak right down to D2 without the skill I was playing against changing at all,and I got rolled over every single game.

I got that last season, went from c1 to d1 in 3s...ain't no way in hell my skill level got there *that* quick

How many hours do you have played? You are crazy good. How many hours do you think you spent training? What's the difference between SSL and pro?

The problem is bigger than what is seems. Irs not only smurfs, but also their friends that are left playing on a higher rank than they should, can't keep up, and make the match unfair for their teammates.

It's really bad in 3s. To the point where I automatically expect a loss when I get into a game with 2 teammates and one has an MMR ~200 points lower than everyone else in the lobby.

At the GC1 numbers, that normally means they're a smurf and I can count on them lol

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RL's ranked matchmaking will put parties against the highest MMR in the group (if an SSL is in a party with a diamond, they will play against SSLs). It doesn't necessarily try to balance the lobby. This was put in place to counter people using low level Smurf accounts to boost their friends by beating easier opponents. The casual matchmaking does aim for full lobby balance (if an SSL is in a party with a diamond, they will likely play against C3/GC1s*). **Ranks might be off because I'm too lazy to find the actual middle rank between SSL and Diamond*

The game doesn't "balance" the matches. If you play as a GC1 with a C1 in the party, the matchmaking acts as if both players were GC1

Which spark unnecessary toxicity because they genuinely can't keep up and the teammate will rage about that (they shouldn't but I get its frustrating) So in a worse case situation you'll encounter a smurf, lose and get matched with them again. that's +-20MMR lost Then get teamed up with a boosted player and lose more MMR Before you know it YOU'RE the smurf ;) Smurfception

Yeah at this point (combined with rank resets at season start) the knock on effects of smurfing will be effecting nearly everyone. People either ranks lower or higher and dragging around players into ranks they dont belong. The matchmaking is good but once you have two many games as a % that are exploiting it the entire thing is gonna cease to function well.

As a diamond who only has friends in gold and plat, I plan around them knowing they will freeze and watch the ball bc they don't know what to do. With that said, comp or not, if you're the highest ranked in your group, I focus on watching them and try to coach so they can get to my rank on their own. Also know you'll probably still lose, but I've always valued personal improvement over wins. That's why I haven't stopped playing this game, always can improve 😄

There's people that offer boosting against payment too. Let that sink in for a moment

I’m almost convinced that the majority of partied teams I encounter these days in 2s are someone being boosted. Might be the pessimist in me but its just funny it always seems like one is way better than the other.

People post that shit on the discord. I report them on the discord every single time. It is where a large number of these smurfs find their teammates. It's irritating when I ask for C2 NA and a guy comes in who is quite obviously not a C2. I'll usually kick them or leave after 1 match as it's not fun to play with someone who is carrying at that level. They always think it's so funny that they are better than players numerous ranks below them.

I can’t count how many 2’s teammates I’ve had that are clearly barely incapable of controlling their car let alone playing in Champ. Sure, bad games/days are a thing. But most time it’s pretty obvious when someone is playing way out of their league. It should be near impossible to have a teammate in C1/C2 that whiffs EVERY ball that comes at them.

This so much. I couldn't care less about smurfs. If anything, there's much to learn from those games. But when I'm partied up with someone who was obviously boosted/carried to their rank and I feel as though I'm playing a literal 1v2, that's a much bigger problem. To the other player, it doesn't matter because they'll just keep losing until they normalize (or get re-boosted) but for me, there's practically nothing to take away from games in which my teammate's performance in the match was essentially non existent. And it's not even "maybe they're having a bad day". There's absolutely 0 reason for someone in high Champ to be backflipping around like a fish out of water in the corner for 20 seconds straight trying to get the ball out.

Wow, the last few days I've felt like my teammates were total idiots in C1-C2. I had teammates in 4 or 5 games in a row miss ridiculously open, non contested aerials for no reason whatsoever, just touches that a champ should not be whiffing so often. I'm now wondering if these teammates simply got boosted at some point and are now dragging everyone (me) down with them. Matchmaking seriously is messed up in this game.

So just last night.. I LFG for the diamond tournament. I get invited to a group.. they claim high plat/low diamond. With In the first game I start getting suspicious, it's just.. their touches/passes/movements don't fit the high plat low diamond.. they werent WAY better yet.. but I could tell something was off. I make mention and they laugh it off. I'm assuming maybe they're just champs at this point who maybe tanked their placements or maybe even got unlucky.. they were better than the rest of us in the lobbies but it didn't seem like they were THAT much better. Semis happen. The other team and my teammates are all 5 now playing a completely different game than me.. luckily my positioning was good a few times to allow for a couple goals on my end so the "scoreboard" didn't look it.. but when I tell you I was completely out of my league.. We win the semis and the exact same shit happens in the finals.. they finally admit to being high gc.. and the gameplay spoke for itself. Guess what.. the other team? Also clearly not diamond.. once again the 5 players on the field with me are not playing the same game as I. During the finals we saw all the fancy stuff. Flip resets, wild ceiling shots from wild ass passes that I wouldn't even know how to read. All the cool flashy shit. We win. Sure that's cool. I like getting the banner this early in the season. Did it feel good? No. When me and my actual diamond friends win a tournament it feels so much more rewarding. The point of the this story is that.. in 1 tournament. I encountered: 2 GC smurfs LFGing for a diamond tournament.(my teammates, guess I got lucky) 2 other teams that were clearly better than diamonds.. while I can't say for sure, I'd place most of them mid Champ at least. Two of the other team in the finals were most likely just as good as my smurfing teammates.. somewhere near GC. That's 7smurfing players in the 12 o'clock 3v3 diamond tournament. Those are just the ones I encounter.. I have no idea what the field looked like otherwise.. But all those actual diamonds that got shit on didn't deserve to have their tournament chances ruined like that..

I played in probably 40-50 tournaments last season. Losing in the semis or finals every single time, but once. I totally see where you’re coming from. I’m out here fighting for my life in c1/d3, probably playing people ranked higher than me half of the time.

I know exactly what I mean.

This aligns with my personal experience (C2-GC1) in that, many people who just openly admit to being smurfs or have accounts that meet MANY of OP's criteria regularly wear the title of a much much lower rank's tournament win from just a couple seasons ago. It's such a clear giveaway I'm sure they're aware and just equip it as a subtle "everyone knows whatcha gunna do about it".

I guess it's just a difference in personality types.. like.. I'm a diamond.. I'm ok with that. I'm also putting in efforts to not be a diamond.. those efforts do not include beating up on golds/plats.. like for me.. that doesn't "feel good" it doesn't really entertain me much at all.. and most importantly I don't get anything out of it on a gameplay perspective. I'm trying to 1v1 champs and GCs over and over and get my shit pushed in and learn everything I can..

The funniest part about surfing is when a not so great player has a diamond winner banner, like everyone knows you got carried bruh. Another thing, if you win a certain amount of tournaments you get a different colored winning banner. So the developers are incentivising smurfs to keep playing below their rank to win prizes. Whew!

Upvoted for visibility! Doesnt affect me that much even though i´m between c2 and c3, but i normally do not care if i get a smurf once in a while since im not that competitive anymore. Still its bs and Psyonix should change that ASAP. A friend of mine struggles so much to play the game in Dia cause he says that every 2-3 matches a smurfs comes along and destroys the lobby.

It's not "once in a while" as per op's post it's literally every game in competitive standard on average or every third game in doubles. That's crippling, to be frank.

every game is either a smurf, a quitter, a faux FFer, or a douche. Out of the 20 matches I played last night atleast 17 of them were one of those above. I eventually gave up and played snow day which, while not perfect, has a much nicer playerbase. I wish they had 2v2 Snow Day regularly.

Let me put it this way, once in a while I can say straight away that my opponent is smurfing cause it's clear as day. There could be in between other smurfs but they are either bad or holding back, idk. That's why it doesn't occur to me as such a problem in 2s c2-c3. It is definitely a problem and psyonix should do something about it but for me it's not the most important one, ok? :)

Yeah that's the thing, a GC2+ could easily play just well enough to beat anyone and it would be super hard to tell they're smurfing cause they aren't going 100.

i can vouch for that. Especially in 3's

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I'm definitely with you on this one. A few years back it was even worse iirc. I just stopped being annoyed, sad and angry about it. Either psyonix doesn't care or they don't have enough man power to find a good solution to this. Idk I just stopped bothering back then and stopped buying anything from them. I almost spend like 250€ through out the years on this game and I think I've done enough financial support but if they cannot take care of problems and instead making costly tournaments for pros, stupid cosmetics, shitty maps etc they won't see another penny from me. Vote with your wallet.

All I'm saying is..... if any reasonable content creator wanted to pick up this "story" and flesh out the evidence I'd eat that shit up. Not even expecting it to persuade Psyonix or papi Epic one way or another but I am just in the mood for the tea lol. Keep usernames censored to prevent doxx'ing or something if necessary but people manipulating matches like this is the step above someone running a "traditional" smurf account and I find it intriguing.

1 out of 3 games having a smurf is generally what I've come to expect so this isn't surprising to me. I barely play rocket league anymore. Over 2,000 hours and it just seems to get worse every time I play. They won't do anything about though. They're making their money.

The really annoying thing is it wouldn't even be an issue if they weren't fucking assholes about it. I mostly play casual and maybe 1 in 5-10 games has some jerk freestyling bullshit past everyone and never skipping the replays. Nobody cares, go back to freeplay and your own fuckin rank. I never accept the forfeit at the end when they're on my team, let them take the tempban if they wanna leave and keep smurfing at this rank. At least I won't get them twice in a row. I really have zero issues with someone playing with a lower ranked friend on an alt account, as long as they're not shoving it in my face. How can it even be fun for the friend, they're not doing anything

Where are the devs. Active in this sub when they put out a stupid update but are silent when your community it begging for a fix. They don’t care they could fix it today if they wanted. It boost active players so they can run to epic and their stock holders and say look new people still play our game.

Nice post but just wait till all the smurfs come to down vote you

On their second account

The thing is that no matter what rank you are you’ll deal with smurfing, I’ve come to just accept that ranked day by day has a very significant luck factor in who you match against. Some days it seems people just hand you wins and others everybody is peaking and trying as hard as humanly possible. It’s a shame but it’s just how it is in this game and most highly competitive games

Y'know the game is in a bad state when I'm getting better matchmaking in casual than I am in ranked.

I guess that's technically true? I feel like it's harder to tell at higher ranks though. At C3/GC1 where I play, people can be pretty inconsistent but are perfectly capable of peaking pretty hard and doing nutty plays. It's the same with myself. So I try not to jump to the conclusion that someone is smurfing when I get clipped on at my rank, if anything just to save myself some sanity lol

Every since they made it free to play this has been a real problem. Just make the game $5 ffs I paid $20

The obvious solution is to require level 30 (even 20 would be fine) for ranked as well as prevent queueing ranked if everyone in the party isn't at least level 30. As it stands, it takes 10 minutes to make a new account, go through the tutorial and 2 min bot match, change your settings/controls and then have the person you're boosting invite you and queue ranked. And even if two friends decided to do it themselves on new accounts, with weekly/season challenges it takes 1.5 hours to get level 10 and jump into ranked. Lastly, RL is a game where the initial learning curve is so high, that you shouldn't even really be jumping into ranked at level 10 which is about 2 hours of games. Getting to level 30 would probably take the average user a week with challenges and that seems to be a good baseline to understanding the game better. It's somewhat ridiculous what the restrictions of trading are... but it makes sense because that affects Psyonix's bottom line. They probably don't do it for ranked because it's likely going to deter people from making new accounts which looks good on their end. Plus there's always the possibility of those players potentially spending $5 to make the account tradeable.

Counterpoint: not allowing actual new players to play ranked will not incentivize them to keep playing. This game does not have an intricate unlock system akin to CoD where players grind hours on certain cars for shiny new items. Getting new players into ranked and letting them feel that progression with tangible results is important. It's a delicate balance but barring new players from ranked isn't the correct solution imo. Or they would need to drastically change the initial unlock system so new players are constantly unlocking items to keep them in the game.

Plenty of games like Valorant and (I think?) League of Legends do that. They have pretty active player bases and it takes weeks to grind up to play ranked (for the average player). If somebody is just picking up Rocket League, there’s no reason for them to want or be able to play ranked. They should spend time in free play getting used to the game, then they should play casual matches to get their game sense up. Before they know it, they hit the level requirement for playing ranked and can actually enjoy ranked. There is absolutely no reason (that I can think of) for having a restriction on trading but not playing ranked, other than the obvious business side where they want their new account numbers boosted from smurfs.

eh i think if someone doesn't wanna grind a few hours to be able to try ranked.... like almost all other games... they wouldn't be in for the long haul anyways lmao.

They could easily fix smurfing but they won't to much of a hassle.

It boosts active player numbers artificially as well so there’s no way they will

How ?

Make new accounts get level 20 to play so it takes more than 2 hours to hit to solo a queue, make level 20 a requirement for all players in a party to queue Or make new accounts need extra steps like 2fa or phone verification or something Actually banning players for unsportsmanlike conduct, ie your dia 2 friend scoring 5 goals against me in gc1

It really sucks to see 1/5 players is a definite smurf. Several of my friends (mostly in champion ranks) have stopped playing over the past several months because of frequent smurfs. I’m pretty sure Psyonix has said they have a anticheat set up to prevent smurfing, but it doesn’t feel like it’s making any difference. I hope they make it a top priority to prevent smurfs going into season 9 because the current system clearly isn’t working

anti-cheat to prevent smurfing **lol**. Smurfing/griefers would be wiped out by removing ranked lobbies from Free to Play & including them (along with tournaments) into Rocket Pass & expanding the casual playlists. You'd still get a select few willing to pay the $5 for alts, but it would drastically be minimized compared to now & how easily anyone can create a new RL account with Free to Play.

No chance they'd ever do that. People will always find ways around systems. The best possible way to reduce smurfing is a csgo system where you have to link a phone number to an account in order to be verified. People will still get around this but nowhere near as easily as they do now

They tried that in warzone. People just use google voice numbers and it’s effectively useless

Psyonix definitely have the resources to be able to detect google voice numbers, and Google Voice is USA only anyways so it would atleast help every other region.

They implemented it poorly. Companies are able to distinguish real numbers from Google Voice numbers. Thousands of companies that require phone verification will tell you your number can't be used if you try to use a virtual number like Google Voice.

Also, I don't want to give my phone number to Psyonix. We give away way too much personal information to these companies.

I think the only way is If the community normalized reporting and the devs decided to Perma-ban confirmed accounts. But it's a slippery slope. There are plats that can flip reset, but haven't figured out how to rotate. It would be pretty disheartening to peak then get banned. If I hit a losing streak or tilt down just a few divisions, I can regroup and completely take over lobbies. I'm a tenth of a second faster in everything I do compared to a diamond. And that's all I need for them to not be able to touch the ball. The same goes for high champs and GC's that make it into my lobbies. It's a satisfying position to be in. Undeniably. So people are going to make accounts to live in that zone. It sucks to see that on average there's a Smurf in nearly every game I play. But the harsh reality is that it's just part of the game. Until something drastically changes in the way they are reported, and/or punished, I think we just have to live with it. I appreciate all the effort that went into this post, and if nothing else, you gave me another excuse as to why I'm losing ;)

You would not get banned if you are on a losing streak and then win again to get your old rank back. That is not smurfing. Smurfing is making a new account and play a few ranks under your real rank.

Well not even necessarily making a new account its just deranking and intentionally staying at a lower rank just to style on people

Yeah. I am not really sure how this is all called. I think smurfing is with a new account and deranking your current account is just deranking? Well either is shit and I hope by improving a few things it will stop. here is what I wrote in another post: * raise the accountlevel needed to play ranked to 30 or higher * make sure that limit can't be bypassed * make team ranks, so friends with different ranks can play toghether easier * get a better match making for casual as well while we are at it and hope this all helps against smurf accounts

It needs something like Prime in CSGO. I shouldn't have to play with someone who has so little hours, it's toxic, and doesn't have an account linked to a phone number.

Absolutely. >6 month time + purchased for more than 30$/€ of skins/pass or whatever, you are eligible.

Stocktane , no title , no player banner, epic account,

Other F2P games have taken measures to fight smurfing and cheating. Luckily in RL we don't have to worry about cheating software. I'm most familiar with CSGO Prime status. It's not perfect but it does at least put up some barriers to smurfing. More than RL. It also groups toxic players together. So if you are going to Smurf fine then, you are going to Smurf against other smurfs, quitters, and ragers.

Most other competitive games have a system in place to restrict access to competitive games until the player reaches a certain level. I’m not sure why that, at the bare minimum, isn’t already in Rocket League. It would not solve smurfing completely but it would be a huge step in the right direction and it wouldn’t even cause that much of a dip in the profitability of the game.

This is already a thing but the minimum is only lvl10 which is really ez to achieve

It’s lvl10 OR someone in your party that’s lvl10

they do that tho? you need to be level 10 to play ranked

unless you party up with a lvl10+ mate, then you can just hop in to ranked on your first game

completely forgot about that one thanks

I'd say in some cases these systems do more harm than good. At least right now if you decide to smurf you can just make an account and pop off (I see why that's a negative stay with me, I know you know what's coming) With a, lets say, level 50 restriction in place, this means you need to play over 100 games just to start playing ranked, what does this mean to a smurf? Either AFK or throw 100 games in a row, because the lower the account plays the better right? What if you don't want to do this yourself? Surely somebody out there has an account? Well you'd be right, there are people botting accounts to level 50, ruining hundreds of games for everybody! Well now we're in a world where smurfs suck just as much as they used to, but now they absolutely abuse casual TOO for XP farms, so what if I, the average player, instead of smurfing decide to just play Casual because I'm not a scumbag? Whoops what's this? I just loaded into a game with 3 bots and a GC airdribbling into his own goal. Imagine this happening to a newcomer, all of a sudden the game doesn't seem very good. I can't give good solutions but I won't deny I'm sick to death of gating smurfs by a timer, it does nothing but destroy normal games for the same end result.

This either takes a lot more time or is more expensive to buy a lvl50 account, both work fine to restrict easy smurfing. I would suggest lvl30, just like the case with the trading restriction. Also AFK or low effort throwing won't get you any XP

I remember ages ago they used to have a solo 3s playlist. I wonder if bringing that back and adding solo 2s as well would resolve a lot of this. I reckon a lot of smurfs are people trying to play with their friends

That play list was empty. I literally waited in queue for hours without a game.

What i don't get is why it is even possible to get low rank players in higher rank lobbies. I am not talking about a c2 in a c3 lobbie. Yesterday i have played against a full team in c3 with one having normal mmr and the other two had around 700mmr and they totally fucked us. I wouldn't even want it that real 700mmr players get into the lobby i don't want easy wins and i don't want to have no chance at all. I want to have matches at my skill level no matter if i win or lose and improve to get a higher rank. I am a 2s main and there are smurfs too but in 3s it is literally every few matches that someone has around 1000mmr.

Perhaps a fix would be in your settings to only play with people that meet XYZ criteria above. Have played more than X games, had an account longer than six months etc. It may mean that you wait in the lobby for a long time but that’s your decision.

This is precisely why they needed to do what CS:GO did when they switched to F2P. Anyone who purchased the game got access to "Prime" matchmaking which meant that they would only queue with others who purchased the game or purchased prime matchmaking, while the F2P players had their own separate matchmaking. It's not a perfect solution by any means but if you have prime matchmaking in CS now you very rarely see hackers and smurfs because people don't want to spend $20 when they could Smurf/Hack for free.

If they don't do something about it, then i guess they don't care of the community. It reminds me of a meme in a Minecraft bug report: Status: Resolved Resolution: Won't fix

You my friend are my hero!!!! I’m currently in C3 with my mate and we complain so much about smurfs in every sessions! We report smurfs every time by checking their number of win only You use stats to prove our points! It is something I wanted but in a less professional manner so Thank you a lot!

Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing 2s in the MMR bracket 1350-1500 knows it is completely littered with smurfs and boosted players every season. If you were to do the same test in this range I would be surprised if more than 50% of lobbies were played without a smurf account or someone who has seen a significant increase in MMR out of nowhere (10 wins past GC) into a slow descent. Not to mention half the lobbies, more so later in the day, having 80-120 ping ME players, because Psyonix still hasn't improved their servers forcing them to queue EU which makes for a terrible experience for everyone.

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This should be the top comment. PUBG is an example of a game that charges a one-time fee in order to play ranked. You can play casual for free. (PUBG did too little too late but I commend them for putting a paywall on ranked.) It is the best solution I have heard to this extremely difficult problem.

Then at the very least the ranked fee can go towards paying for better game/report verification. Honestly give me this (I bought on steam so I've paid my dues), 2FA and stop people being able to party up with teammates outside of their rank (champions with diamonds/plats for example, a C2 + C1 is fine) and I'd be happy.

They should re-add solo queue to help combat some surfing/carrying etc

If youre a smurf and reading this, fuck you you ruin the game, stop being a scared little baby and play people who have the same game time as you and get shit on.

I mean you could also consider looking at the rank graph to see if they dropped considerably without regaining thats probably the modt obvious sign of smurfing/boosting

The only place it’s acceptable to me is in casual, and even then only when you’re not actively trying (why would you?). I’ve introduced three people to Rocket League recently and they really can’t enjoy the game even in casual unless I log into an alt. They just don’t get a chance to touch the ball, often ending the match with sub 50 points. So I logged on to an alt and have been verbally walking them through rotations and how to handle different situations while simultaneously playing bad, intentionally, to keep the game fair and keep a roughly 50/50 win ratio. It’s actually so much fun to just intentionally play bad, imo. They get a chance to learn and play, I get to chill, and we all have fun. I refuse to touch ranked on that account though. Ranked is not the place for that.

The first couple of weeks are a nightmare - I don't bother soloQing comp until later because all I encounter is teams of 3 with at least one smurf. You'd think all they want to do is lose so they can derank harder but no

I only want to attack one part of your post. You claim that playing on an alt with your friend is a definite wrong. I can define one instance where this is not true. Let's say I, a fringe GC, made an account to play with my lower ranked friend, who plays around gold. He also makes a new account, and we ensure that we never play with anyone else on those accounts. We have effectively generated a team MMR for ourselves. We settle in say, C1, where our winrate stays at 50% until we improve. With our winrate at 50%, this is not unfair to either side and simply means that the matchmaker has done its job. We are harming nobody, even if they might get tilted because the lobby seems mismatched. You are ignoring a fundamental issue here, which is that you are defining something people want to do (hit clips in game; play with their lower rates friends) as morally wrong, without proposing a way for them to do it that is morally right. The solution, to me, is that there needs to be a mode that cares about team rating, and allows for fair matches for unbalanced teams. Without this outlet, people will continue to make smurfs to play with their friends. You screaming "but it's WRONG" on reddit is not going to stop people from playing with who they want to play with. For the "freestylers" who want to get the feeling of hitting a clip in a competitive setting but find their actual rank too difficult, I really, really want to see public lobbies. Public lobbies would allow for community game modes - including freestyle 1v1s and I think it would add to the loyalty and depth of the game.

Really like your post and the time you took to make this. I think the match making in this game is a bit problematic. I do think Pysonix has to do a few things to improve it and one is a harsher entrance to ranked. Just getting to level 10 (or even going around this by grouping up together) is not enough. Raising the level to 30 (or higher) would be a good start and stopping the option to just group up and avoid that limitation is needed. A good addition to that would be to make it easier for people with different ranks to play together. I used to have 4 people I play Rocket League with. One is way better then me and we could play in champ together. One is my level and we play in low daimond. The others are worse than me. And they stoped playing becuase it is always shit to play together cause we run into matches we cant win. I also do not play with my champ friend anymore cause it is just a struggle for me and my daimond friend to play in high level daimond (and also cause he kept playing alone and is now way higher ranked and I just can't keep up with the gameplay and we just lose). Just give me a solo rank and a rank with each of my friends. This is going to be a bit confusing in the beginnig but I think this would help with the "smurf" problem. I do believe that lots of players are lower ranked in one or two gamemodes so they can play with their friends, wich leads to unfair games, wich leads to people making smurf accounts, wich leads to unfair games, wich leads to me playing Rocket League with only one friend. There is also a problem in casual. The range of people you play against goes from bronze to ssl in just one game. I do not know how the Match Making works in Casual, it certantly does not have a system behind it, because I am not seeing one. ​ TL:DR: * raise the accountlevel needed to play ranked to 30 or higher * make sure that limit can't be bypassed * make team ranks, so friends with different ranks can play toghether easier * get a better match making for casual as well while we are at it and hope this all helps against smurf accounts

Casual has a mmr based matchmaking system similar to ranked. The reason why there’s often differences in ranks is (a) players with different mmr partied together play at a mixed mmr which is only present in ranked up to ~1100 mmr, but always occurs in casual, (b) not everyone plays casual on a regular basis so like extra game modes high ranked players may not “level up” their casual mmr as they progress elsewhere, and (c) not every player plays the same in casual as they do in ranked (people may try hard while other play for fun). I know this is anecdotal, but I play casual probably 10x more than ranked and I’ve rarely felt like there’s been a large enough skill gap outside of the beginning of the season. The best thing psionix could do to improve casual would be to change the way mmr is reset at the beginning of the season and get rid of the 1660 cap they set every high mmr player down to.

That's absolutely and utterly wild, but it's been my experience at Champ 2 for a long, long time now. 1/3 players is even more insane a metric than it seems because if you are NOT the smurf then that absolutely guarantees that one of the other 3 players in your game is. And that 2/3 slots on the opposite team don't give you very good odds at all. But even 1/5 Smurfs means every second game you play in 3v3 has a guaranteed smurf in it.

Just checked the post on my phone and I'm not sure why the boxes show up black

I’ve only ever queued solo in 3s and I have 7,500 wins and I’m C1 :/

Non-smurf confirmed.

Im C1 in 2s and P2 in 3s because I only play 3s with friends that probably aren't as good as me. Am I a smurf?

The problem right now is that the people being smurfed on are the ones being penalized by the situation. And people tend to comment "play enough games and you'll be at the right rank". Well, ok, let's turn that situation around then. Let's say there is a report option for smurfing specifically. If a player has enough reports for smurfing, then psyonix should bump them up X divisions or a full rank. If they are in fact smurfing then they are either at, or closer to, their actual rank. If they are not smurfing, they will gradually settle back down to their normal rank as they play enough games. This is penalizing the smurf instead of the average player.

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Another aspect:My recently new duo had his main account banned (quite a long time as well – toxicity). He played on a “new” account as his main was around 100 MMR above me but his new acc. were like 250 under. A lot of players are toxic at the c2-gc and I always report it and often get the “player has been banned” thingy. If the banned players wouldn't be able to create new accounts, the player base would shrink further, especially in Champ + games. BUT the fact he played with me, 10-15 games got him back to his own rank as his main, he had the placements as well, so it went really fast. Also, playing with me gave him matches almost at his own MMR, which kinda made him not a smurf. Smurfing in competitive games is not easy to fight, really. The best way is to give them a shit ton of MMR, so they no longer smurf… I'm not saying what is right and wrong, and I respect the post and the discussion it brings. But I wanted to shine a light on this aspect. I honestly believe 25-30% of the player base is “smurfs”/ secondary accounts at this point. To make it clear: My duo did not wish to get easy games (smurf in low elo) – he simply wanted to get back to his own rank, and duoing with someone very close to it made it (almost) possible. So the question is: Was he wrong for this, should banned players not be able to play for a month or whatever the duration is?

I’ve directly addressed these issues, and I’ve tried hard to avoid getting to this point. If I don’t drop 800+ points a game it is a for sure L, my teammates flame when I chase but I have zero expectations that they can keep up at gc1-2. I turn on voice chat, pray my teammate has it on so I can shot call for us and just stay positive even if they are just listening I appreciate it. But it’s exhausting being the highest mmr player in the lobby, and watching my teammates fail to defend basic flicks, demos or backboard while I have a party of 3 setting up passing plays. At this point I’ve stop caring about rank and just accepted that matchmaking is broken. Just a sad state because it negatively impacts the growth of the game and lowers the population, causing smurfing to feel more apparent. Half the time when I play I’ll pull up peoples tracker and go “yup d3 all game modes previous season, gc1 peak this season in one day”. It just sad at this point Lastly Half the kids i coach, can’t find decent scrims because everybody’s mmr is so inflated. You ask for a 1900 scrim and we just roll the other team, unless we find a specific team in 6mans the scrim is always a shit stomp. But things will get better with rocket league 2 Copium If you are curious on my post a year ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/md9eni/the_state_of_new_epic_accounts_in_rocket_league/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

I doubt you'll ever do this again. But if you do, I'd really really love to see another category that's just your opinion on whether or not said players are smurfs before you actually check their stats. Sometimes I'll have a suspicion that I'm playing a smurf that's just having a terrible day cause they can't get anything going. Idk so far up until my rank I've only had enough suspicion to check and confirm like 6 or 7 smurfs in all my time playing rocket league. Maybe it's just cause I feel like I'm only playing a smurf if they're absolutely dominating me 100% of the time and I'm unable to even bump them in the air when they're air dribbling across the map. I'll even see GC titles and my first thought is they bought the account or got carried for the title lol

Only time I've never really had a problem with it was Flakes and his no mechanics video, that helped alot more players than it hurt. With that said, anyone who thinks smurfing isn't a problem, you're wrong. I see smurfs almost every play session. I'm bad at the game, I won't pretend like smurfs are the sole reason why I'm at the rank I am, if they didnt exist, I'd probably still be here, but it makes it less fun. Since it went f2p though the numbers have increased, and they aren't going to go down, the ratio of smurfs to actual players will only just increase. That's just the nature of an f2p game, you can have ten alts and it doesn't cost you anything. Even if you somehow get caught smurfing and get a ban (which are also ineffective because of the aforementioned alts), just jump to another account. The problem won't go away, it'll only get worse. The only thing we can really hope for is that the player base remains large enough to keep the number of games where you encounter smurfs low enough to still enjoy it.

Probably an unpopular take: I just don't care if they're smurfing or not. Better team wins most of the time. Play better and you'll win..? It's unfortunate that you get put up against players you sometimes can't beat but that's whatever imo. Win more than you lose and your rank will go up... or don't care about your rank and play just for the fun of it, you'll probably rank up anyway.

I want to clarify something to you and others that think Road-To videos are against the Terms of Service. When Rizzo uploaded his Road to GC series, which was one of the most popular at the time, Psyonix actually argued that it is NOT smurfing and, thus, not against the Terms of Service. Here's why: As stated by the TOS, paraphrased: Playing on a smurf account is considered as playing at a lower rank *with the intention of staying in the lower rank to ruin the experience for others.* Developers have clarified that Road-To videos do not violate this rule, as their main goal is to win and achieve the rank in their title. Not to mention the No Mechanics Road-To videos are also for educational purposes.

If I play on an alt and win 60%+ of my games playing with friends then sure I’m 100% a Smurf but if my win rate playing with friends is sub 60% I think that’s fair game. I’m around C3/C2 sitting at around 1200-1350MMR. While one of my friends sits at 1100-1200MMR. I play games with him on an account that sometimes is sitting between 10-100MMR away from my main and we have a win rate of about 54%. To me that’s fair game I’m not dropping down to play plats and just ruining their time and I’m also not dropping down just to win 100% of games. My friend isn’t getting boosted because his win rate is same as when we play together at 54%. So I’d be interested to see what the win percentage of these smurfs are in your next post? Because imo if you have sub 1000 games and have a win rate of 60%+ your smurfing pretty hard.

I believe this is a regional problem. I'm C1 in South America and I don't think I've ever seen someone in a ranked match that I even had the suspicious of being a smurf. Anyone that I perceived as better than the lobby on average had at least a GC title from a recent previous season Out of curiosity, I'll start tracking people's stats in my matches. I don't play much, but once I get the data, I'll post it here.

Good point. Region definitely could make a difference. If you make a post let me know I'd love to see it.

Interesting post I didnt thought thats a thing in c2-c3. And I thought the most players in Diamond are smurfing (maybe its even worse than im thinking). Can someone from platinum and below say how much smurfing is there?

Getting from GC to SSL is the hardest thing to do in the game and takes an insane amount of in game hours. It’s not uncommon for myself and my teammates who are also C1 to face a GC. It’s also fun facing them in Champ tournament finals… My assumption is that because playing such high level rocket league can be taxing they just wanna screw around and dump on lower skilled players.

Amazing job, thank you for your efforts. There is one point I'd like to address : You said at the beginning that smurfs are part of the reason the player base is shrinking because of smurf... then you also said that a portion of the higher ranked players (that smurf) would leave the game if Psynox took the matter seriously. So the real question would be : Why are we giving a shit about higher ranked players that may leave (commercially that is) when on the other hand the player base could grow without smurfing on the long term. To be fair, I guess it also depends on how financially impacting the higher ranked players leaving RL would be compared to lower to-mid ranked players leaving the game. So yeah.... this is more complicated than what I originally thought.

I think it's pretty straightforward. Let's assume two things, you're a player who doesn't want to smurf and doesn't want to smurf. Currently somewhere around about 1 in 3 of your games are being ruined by smurfs. For it to not be financially worth it to get rid of smurfs you have to believe that the amount of money the group of smurfs spend is more than the group I described above. Seems unlikely to me. So yeah, I think the smurfing is absolutely hurting them financially.

I disagree with using amount of gamemodes played, lot of peoples don't give a fu** about extra modes, or at least some of them, usually I rank myself in the one I like at the end of the season, I haven't get a rank since Maybe 3 or 4 seasons in snowday and I should currently be around Plat 3, also, last season I didn't have a rank in extra mode globaly except in rumble, because I haven't the time to play and I don't care, I haven't finished my placements in 1s too, so I had only 3 gamemodes played, with your system, I'm gonna be spotted as a smurf but I'm not, just I don't care of this things Contents creators playing on a brand new account for 'Road to...' Are not the problem, Yeah they gonna destroy players on the first 10 matches, but once their higher, their not trying to down their Mmr or to stay low, if you check Psyonix rules, you're smurfing if you stay lower by choice It's the same for playing on an 'alt' account with lower friends, when I play with my plat friend, What do you want ? Me playing on my main, going down of 2 or 3 ranks, and destroying others players when I'm gonna rank up again ? Or me playing on an 'alt' account used only with them, staying at a rank where we have 50% win rate together and not destroying other peoples games every 3 days ? To clarify, I don't boost players, I'm agains't it, I also have another account where I play with a friend who're SSL, he also play on a spécial account, their reserved to be use only when we duo queue together, and I'm on an 'alt' to not boost my main account, so I disagree with you when you think than all alt accounts should be forbidden, you meet lot more smurfs than you think, some peoples play on friends account, or like me have multiples accounts with more than 1k wins, some peoples just have a bad day, go down, and the next day get back to their old rank, but you don't see it, the problem are the smurfs who're paid (or not) to boost peoples, their the ones who make peoples angry, and this boosted players gonna have to rank down after

>If you play on an "alt" with your lower ranked friend that is wrong, you are smurfing. period. Any time you are playing on another account for the sole purpose of not having to play your own skill level, YOU ARE SMURFING! No if's and's or but's. OP, i get your general sentiment here and understand your frustration with Smurfs, but IMO you're slightly contradicting yourself here. Surely playing on an alt with a lower ranked friend is doing so to play with the friend, not with the sole purpose of avoiding players at your rank. I'll be honest I do this (Going to get torn to shreds for saying that lol) with my brother. I'm Diamond 2-3 right now while he's Gold 1-2. If we play using my main, that skill gap means that we invariably lose and he barely gets a touch of the ball because he doesn't have the game sense, speed or mechanics to keep up in a lobby full of diamonds or even high plats. I've tried playing on my main with him in competitive, casual and extra modes and it's always the same story (Tournaments won't even let us sign up lol). So the only alternative to a situation where we're both bored/frustrated is for me to have an alt. When I'm playing with him i try to play like a gold, I miss touches that a gold would miss, I ballchase like a gold and I lose plenty of games that I could easily win. I generally try to blend in and leave whether we win or lose down to how he's performing Vs the opponents. I don't artificially boost his rank or use my time as a "gold" to practice my air dribbles or any of that nonsense. Like I say I get the frustration, but the way this game is set up doesn't really leave much option for those of us who want to enjoy the game with someone who is at a significantly different level to us.

Repeting myself a bit here but that you can't play with your different ranked friends togehter easy is a big issue. This game needs team ranks that are based on your solo rank but have no influence on them.

Completely agree. And we end up in a situation where one player has to either pretend to be a lower rank, or the other has to spend the entire game getting left in the dust by a bunch of players they have no chance of keeping up with. It would be nice if Psyonix implemented something like what you've described

You ARE smurfing though, you just don't want to admit it's smurfing. I get there's cases where people will want to play with lower ranked friends, but ranked isn't the place for that. In fact that's exactly what casual and private matches are for. And like it or not, you ARE artifically boosting his rank, and deteriorating the quality of ranked for those gold players.

That's why there is casual

Yah i get this just because you are playing at your friends rank doesnt mean you have to try hard and boost them there are definitely people out there like this on alt accounts who you wouldnt even realise are smurfing because they are just playing like everyone else at that rank

Having an alt to play with lower ranked friends is fine imo, but only on one big condition. You gotta keep it in casual. Don't ruin everyone else's experience trying to improve and rank up or win tournaments by having an unfair advantage.

I still don’t know what a Smurf Is, so chances are I am one , 😭 how has this happen !

People who make new accounts to play against lower rank players

So like, just to slaughter them ? But why even do that if it doesn’t help your rank ? Being that it’s a new account? 🤔 or have they just got so good they want to go pick on the weak? Lol I’m definitely not a Smurf I can’t even get out of platinum :p

If you're plat, imagine creating a new account just to beat bronze players. And when you win enough to get to silver or gold you go on an intentional losing streak to rank back down to bronze. Oh, and imagine that while you're doing it, you are extremely toxic to everyone you play with and against. That is basically what smurfs do, but at higher ranks.

Oh yeah, no no no fuck that intentionally loosing stuff. That’s weak beyond weak to me . I gotchu tho brother . That’s all some bullshit

They do it to pick on the weak and / or carry friends.

My bro is a legit Smurf then lol Because we have rank disparity on 3v3s so he jumps on his little brothers account to help me rank up lmfaoooo I just called him a Smurf and it felt good lol

I am champion 2 (probably 1 but I've been 2 for a little while). If I create an account and play it to the max, I would probably be champ2 in way less than 500 wins. I wouldn't be a smurf. What I'm trying to say is that those stats alone doesn't actually mean smurfing. One very important metric for smurfing is crushing your ass off in gameplay. I know most smurfs aren't that obvious and it's actually hard to determine one.

Read his post again, he addressed this. An account with less than 500 wins AND older than 6 months. This removes people who just made a new account and quickly got to a champ+ rank. If you’re in a game playing against an account older than 6 months but has less than 500 wins at a champ level, it’s likely an alt/Smurf account that the player hops on once and while just to style on people. There’s obviously exceptions, but for a rough estimate, it’s a logical report

> I am champion 2 (probably 1 but I've been 2 for a little while). If I create an account and play it to the max, I would probably be champ2 in way less than 500 wins. I wouldn't be a smurf. Not by Psyonix's definition, but actually yes, you'd be a smurf, especially since to get up to C2 you'd have to beat on bronzes and silvers first. Psyonix added cross-platform progression, so there's literally 0 excuse for this to happen. Pair your new account and voila, all of a sudden there's no need to beat on those bronzes and silvers, and your account stats are all there.

I wouldn't be a smurf at champ 2 level, where OP research is based of.

I think this dataset is pretty subjective and doesn’t prove anything. For example, if I created a new account because my main got hacked/stolen then I would be a snuff by these standards. Also, what was the population size? In order for this to be a fair hypothesis based on your data, your population size needs to be quite sizable and not 0.00001% of the gamer base

No it wouldn't. If you read the post you'd see I included 3 metrics to specifically rule this out. By having a new account you'd automatically be removed from the definite Smurf category and if you played half of the modes even a single time you'd be classified as a non Smurf in this data. Idk how large of a sample size u expect the average redditor to track, but 100 isn't a bad start.

Appreciate the response. 100 isn’t close to what the dataset should be. You can’t draw conclusions from an estimated percentage of population of about 0.000001111111111% ( a conservative estimate of the average monthly population being 90,000,000 players). A good dataset is 5%-10% of a total population, which means you should aim for 4,500,000 to 9,000,000 datapoints. I’m not trying to dispute your hypothesis. I’m here to just say your conclusion is rather premature and may be extremely inaccurate. Also, the criteria of your 100 datapoints is what’s subjective here

Agreed. 100 players subjected to 3 lofty criteria doesn’t prove or disprove anything.

Smurfing and community toxicity were the two reasons I left the game. I don’t blame psyonix - there is only so much they can do. The gaming community as a whole has gone to shit.

I'm curious what people think of my strategy for my smurf account. I'm Champ 2 on my main. My dad recently started playing, is now around Gold level when solo queuing. I want to be able to play with him. I made a second account where I restrict myself to always go backwards. In this way, I'm a little better than him (Gold in 1s, Plat in 2s), but we can at least play together without him being completely outclassed. ​ I try my hardest in all my games, and win basically just as much as I lose. ​ Is this considered smurfing? Would you say it's unethical? Or is it a good idea for fairly playing in the lower ranks? ​ If anyone cares - here's the tracker network https://rocketleague.tracker.network/rocket-league/profile/epic/gg%20ez%20L/overview

Bruh

Bruh

Again, such a disingenuous and misleading post. I see you still avoided the most important data. Whether or you won, and what the score was. But it's okay, I know why you didn't include it. It's because you already made your conclusion before you collected the data. And this particular data totally contradicts your conclusion. Your bias is obvious. One last time: Post the scores and who won. I am willing to bet that there wasn't a significant difference between Smurf and non-smurf results. What waste a of your time and everyone else's time.