Smurfing in Fighting Games
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- streamed July 30, 2024
We don't really do that here.
Activision article about the effectiveness of skill-based matchmaking: www.activision...
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Comic book fans have the MCU. Fighting game fans have Sajam talking about SBMM on UA-cam.
I first found Sajam's channel 4 years ago talking about SBMM on COD. It's really full circle at this point
MCU is way less enjoyable than this, all those movies are the same and there's a lot of painfully inaccurate things
@@mikaela5938 If MCU movies stayed the same, we would get bangers every years. Too bad they went stale after quality already dropped too low.
I can't wait for Phase 3 of the SBMM Saga
@@mikaela5938 It was good at some time tho.
smurfing in any game is Jobless Behavior
Streamers too. They want easy games so they can dunk on low level players for content. I imagine a lot of the toxicity surrounding SBMM starts with them.
I've never understood how anyone can respect someone who's smurfing in any game. I want to see people playing at their best. I don't want to watch some NBA player play a fucking high school team ESPECIALLY if they have the gall to think they're hot shit for winning, and that's what these idiots are doing.
They could be doing it after work. Scummy shit
Sbmm should only be ranked not casual matches. @AlexMax2742
@@Eji1700i think part of the appeal is seeing someone who has mastered the game compete and win consistently on the same level as the viewer may help them appreciate how much impact they get to have on the game. This is especially relevant in team games where players are very willing to blame their teammates for their rank, instead of reflecting on their own play.
That's the generous view, the smurfing for education and encouragement argument.
Sadly, most viewers actually probably do just want to see some toxic douche dunking on noobz, and get some vicarious thrill from it.
It's telling how much people in the FGC value actually going up against skilled opponents that all the replay vultures feel like they have to put "[HIGH LEVEL GAMEPLAY]" in all their titles in order to get anyone to watch them
i wonder if other sports/esports have a "the Ghost of Marvel" type entity in their communities
Great point. Ive competed at a decent level in many avenues over my life such as athletics, fighting games, pokemon, yugioh tcg, state academic pentathlon, chess, OG Destiny , etc and I can honestly say:
Pro Sports are the pinnacle of competition but the next closest thing to the pro Athlete mindset are Pokemon VGC Players (NOT Smogoners) and of course the FGC
A 43-7 blowout is fun when its your team but spectators and even the competitors prefer a great battle. Just like in fighting games, we only watch the legendary blowouts like Sonicfox v Perfect legend
I've been enjoying the "Fraud Gameplay" channel that does replay reviews of smurfs lol.
If the FGC does embrace the F2P model, this practice will be common in the genre aswell. It's just that FPS and MOBA have free entry prices nowadays. It has nothing to do with honor or valueing the growth. People will do whatever is the easiest path to feeling that dopamine hit.
@@bbreimm You have no warrior spirit. Lay down your blade and step away from the FGC
Despite how scrubby fighting game players can be, I appreciate that we haven't normalized smurfing. I'd rather hear shit like "this character is cheap" and "that mechanic is stupid" and "I'm master rank mentally" than see people beat up newborn children for an ego boost.
We also have almost zero cultural value in your online rank unlike other games where this issue comes up because in person events are the only thing that matters in that regard. Nobody cares if your pocket Blanka is only Silver, victories earned at events are worth a lot more regardless of what your Fake Internet Points say your value say you're worth.
Temporarily embarrassed Challengers.
I miss D4C ❤
I play Bison, right? You know what the fun parts of Bison are? Doing my LP Backfist > DR 4HK > 4HK > 5MP~6HP Bomb detonation sequence that kills you. Doing Psycho Crusher into a fireball hard read for damage and a knockdown. Doing long drive strip blockstrings. Making big plays in neutral with Devil's Reverse. The excitement of being put in the corner and escaping with a big play. I love that stuff.
Know what isn't fun? Constantly baiting DPs and killing people in two touches. Anti-airing everything. Jab checking fake pressure into DR 5LP > 5MP > 2MP > LP Crusher > SA3 constantly. Throw looping someone until they die. Needing to press DI in my blockstrings to discourage people from mashing out using it.
Do I still lose to players using these tactics? Oh yeah, sometimes. But winning or losing isn't the point. I am good enough fundamentally that your average bronze or silver player does not stand a chance most of the time. Instead, I am being actively denied the ability to do things I enjoy as the character. I like reacting to and interacting with my opponent. I don't like doing my layer one meaties until the round is over. What do I gain from this? What do I learn? How do I improve?
Fighting games are most fun on layer 2 gameplay. When I know you, and you know me. If one side is just effortlessly steamrolling the other we will never reach layer 2, so I can't find that fun.
Couldn't agree more. And it doubles for spectators. The vs bronze gameplay you mentioned is complete snoresville for viewers too
Preach, pretty hard to enjoy rock paper scissors when someone only knows how to throw rock.
Vs randoms I can’t take it, I really want that layer 2 or 3. Vs friends or in a discord call? It’s different. I find joy in teaching them how to get to that layer 2, and hyping them up (even if I just did the counterplay or guessed right every time) for attempting to mix it up.
This is an amazing comment
Yeeep. We've all done the 2-touch kill sequences in training mode, they're not impressive. They're only cool if they work against someone who you respect, and even then they're secondary to the actual hard stuff
Me myself I prefer the reverse smurf, where I grind a game until I'm decent, then I don't play for 5 months, and then I come back not knowing my character's specials, but I'm still the same rank
There should be a name for that. I say call it dwarfing.
I've heard about a bronze, or maybe it was iron, league player who got tired of smurfs ruining their ranked games, so they bought a challenger account to ruin their games on stream
This is a Rust Rank
@@chillmadude it's that one old guy buying high ranked accs and, not really inting, but playing in those games and losing.
although he beats em up occasionally.
How about playing Nagoriyuki until you're in 10f and then switching to the character you actually want to main that you can only reach 7 with 😅
I just straight up don't have a good time in Street Fighter if I'm way better than my opponent. I don't learn much, and I feel it discourages my opponent.
I get that way too but if they keep readying up I'll play as long as they like
i don’t care about discouraging my opponent. if they suck they suck. what pisses me off is how much of a waste of time it is.
I like to handicap myself if there's a skill gap, such as limiting myself to one button, or using strategies I normally wouldn't try
I actually think it's good to have a once-in-a-while match with a wide skill gap. It allows me (usually the weaker side lol) to see what much better players do against me and gain some perspectives. Sometimes if you only play against fellow bad players it's a little hard to break through the skill ceiling since your opponent just doesn't punish you for all the random jumps / DI / wakeup DPs and you just start to build those habits. But I really mean once in a while though. I don't want most matches to be a wash. But then some people also have weak egos and can't handle being stomped I guess, and I can admit in a match like this there isn't much to be learned from the stronger side.
@@BrotherChengThat's why I've liked the GG Tower tbh
Being able to get stomped productively gives me good motivation
Personally I always thought Smurfing was cringe in every genre.
Like what, did you just really need that ego boost?
I mean yeah they do, I don't find that part weird. I find it weird that beating people much worse than you makes you feel good, like do you feel better about yourself when you destroy your little nephew at basketball?
the main reason for smurfing is having friends who simply arent as good as you, or learning a new thing that you dont want to tank your rank for doing, that's been every reason i've smurfed
Part of the problem league has right now is that there are 5 distinct roles, but you don't have a separate MMR for each role... but because the game *needs* one of each role they'll shove people into a game in their offrole... Imagine in a fighting game you were a Ryu main, but Capcom decided that the grappler quota wasn't being met today so you have to play as Zangief this time in your Master Rank game.
The only way you can seriously practice a new role in League of Legends without sandbagging your entire team is to make a smurf account. Not saying that EVERY smurf account has this excuse (Hell, I'd wager *most* don't) but I consider that an acceptable reason to smurf.
because it is cringe
@@kevingriffith6011 Yeah but I would say the skill required to play a different character in a fighting game is way beyond playing another role or a different character in league
When you match against a New Challenger with a "let's do this" plate
And they destroy you lol.
I did a fighting game focus group once and the subject came to skill based matchmaking. Generally, everyone was in agreement that it's good for the community. One dude, though, said that you should be able to dodge matches in ranked because "some match ups aren't fun." Literally everyone in the focus group clowned on him for dodging matches and told him to play unranked if he didn't want to fight strong characters. It made me feel like I was really part of a community
How’d you find out about this focus group? I feel like the most common way this comes up for me is targeted ads lmao
@@quandary23Check out Good Gamer Group. As far as I know, though, you kind of need to be close to LA to qualify for any in-person tests or groups.
Some folks just need a little smurfing to feel some control in their lives.
Unfortunate.
It's really bad in LoL. I've seen so many people say stuff like "yeah I went on a pretty big loss streak on my main so I got on my smurf to fix my mental" without a hint of self reflection on what they just said. A lot of people in the league community need genuine help.
@@jojak0512 Yeah its kinda sad looking at how the league community actually is. Like how can you be so down bad in your life that ruining a bunch of pretty casual players games because blaming your team for your mistakes doesn't quite make them feel good enough about themselves. Like its the main reason I stopped playing as much as I did, it's just so depressing.
@@jakejana196none of what you said has anything to do with the game. just because some players are unable to have fun doesn’t mean that you can’t. the game is good if you make it good.
This is framed as pathetic, but I can't help but feel really sad about the ordeal.
0:52
There's a UA-cam channel called GGST: Fraud Gameplay that calls out these people, displaying why they can't hang with the Celestial folk, but abuse the system to inflate their (invisible, meaningless) rating
They also analyze viewer matches too, genuinely interesting game dissection
Pretty sure that's what sparked this video.
That is such an inspired idea
Can't forget the other fun part of smurfs: throwing games so their rank can drop back down after
Sajam's gotta be pretty experienced in the SBMM matchup by now
Sbmm: Sajam burrito making mmmmm
Smurfing is absolutely maidenless
This is only tangentially related to the video, but for the same reason people don't enjoy smurfing in fighting games we also need good placement systems in ranked modes. When I started playing rivals of aether, I learned the game basically never touching ranked because the lack of placement matches meant bronze rank had a huge range of skill levels, and combined with the fact quitting mid-FT2-set counts as a loss it wasn't a good environment to learn the game at all. 600 hours later, I decided I wanted to be able to have skill-based matchmaking instead of being stuck playing without it on casual, but the requirement to do that was a 2 week long grind where I had to spend way too long curbstomping players who were way worse than me just to reach diamond rank where the people my level were at, and it really wasn't a fun experience
Smurfing is common (or rather, it used to be common) in Brood War by both pros and streamers, the purpose of which could vary from people just wanting their privacy to play the game without being recognized, to more strategic stuff like trying to keep a sick build order on down low before a tournament.
These days, with hotkey analysis and replay scrapers, its impossible to effectively smurf, because you can't fake your hotkeys. Case in point, everyone knew immediately that Flash had returned to playing ladder recently despite him making a new barcode account. He didn't announce it or anything, and he still hasn't returned to streaming either, we just looked at his replays and his hotkeys.
Of course, there were the occasional smurfs who were there just to style on noobs. I played against both styles of smurfs in Starcraft 2. The former style of smurf was just there so rank up as quickly as possible, and as such, they'd just cheese you out as quickly as they possibly could so they get onto the next game, these smurfs were usually on a quest of "How deep into the ladder will this basic-ass cheese that's easy to stop if scouted continue to work?"
The latter smurf would, instead of just trying to get the game over with as quickly as possible, spend time insulting and taunting players worse than them. As you can imagine, they make up some of the worst people on the planet.
I wouldn't really call the anonymized accounts smurfs, they're just alts. Stomping on new players is just an unfortunate consequence of them making a new account, but they're not actively tanking their mmr by throwing games to get low again. In the broader ecosystem they're basically just like returning pros having to climb back up. In sc2 you can rename your account regularly anyway so it's not like they need to make a new barcode account every time.
Another funny example of an alt that's technically not really a smurf I've seen is how Harstem has a separate account that he specifically only uses with stupid nonsense strategies, which is a consistent enough play-style that it just slots into a regular mmr range.
Another thing is in most fighting games, smurfing gameplay is boring. There's next to nothing you do against bad players that looks cool. You're basically using the same combos as you'd use against top level players. Only difference is they're getting hit more often and whiffing. Or you're just anti-airing, throw looping and counter DI-ing. Part of the hype stuff that people love to see is top players outplaying each other in really tight neutral and games coming down to the wire, knowing one screw up can decide the game.
In games like COD, Halo and CS, you can do skillshots and massacre a low level team solo, which looks cool. Not something you can do against a team of equal skill. And in Smash, you can throw out super risky setups for flashy combos that you can't afford to do against good players. Or do wacky edgeguards. Hell, in Smash, there's an entire ocean of sick combos and strings that you can do that will pretty much never work against top players.
So with no real entertainment factor in fighting game smurfing, all you have is some dude beating up some helpless dude and it just comes across as sad. I think smurfing in general is sad. But in other games, there's at least some level of entertainment factor going on.
Yeah that's the main reason. Stomping just isn't fun in fighting games.
True and we have training mode. If I'm watching you do that vs another player then they should have made a combo video
One way to cut down on smurfing would be to switch to a pure Elo-based system for rating. You converge on your real rating so fast that it makes smurfing pretty painful. The ridiculous LP system that SF6 uses prior to Master serves very little purpose other than making smurfing easier.
This. But also games should be completely transparent with the elo you're playing in. League of Legends suffered from this problem ever since they hid their elo system and made it unviewable in favour of "ranks."
You could be gold and have a good winstreak but because of the invisible elo system tracking your wins and adding to them accordingly, you could be put in games where you're reasonably not ready yet, all because of those winstreaks. One could argue "but that's how the game gauges your new skill level" but that implies your skill level increased substantially. What if your improvement is slow? You're gold 3 and winstreaking and you fight a plat 4 or plat 3 just because your csing got better and solely your csing.
Make the elo system visible and if the game has a ranking system, view what rank they're playing in.
As a dumb barely related anecdote that counts as engagement for you:
Rising thunder, 2xko’s predecessor, is the only game I ever got good enough at to actually run into pros. One of which was in fact Sonic Fox. Who promptly put me in a block infinite that hadn’t been patched yet and beat my ass.
So uh, make sure you lift with your legs if you’re carrying in 2xko
Ah, the classic Tekken experience of finding a Mishima player who never misses an electric, but doesn’t know how to punish a hopkick.
One of the biggest things about smurfing in MOBAs or other games is that it has become essentially a content grift. Players who smurf in League will make clickbait content telling their subs who don't know better that this build they're using on a bunch of Gold players is viable. Imagine if Justin Wong or Punk smurfed in Street Fighter with some B.S. like that making videos of how shoryuken-spam Ryu is secretly OP. It's weird that it's accepted in other genres but we know if someone was doing that in fighting games it would be lame.
Smurfing is literally Jobless Reincarnation.
Except there's no truck to run you over.
smurfing in Euro Truck Simulator
The SF6 hubs lock people out prematurely of their skill level in its effort to combat smurfs, which actually messed over alot of new players trying to learn. Most people don't know there governed by a 3 win streak for rookie and 5 win streak for intermediate. Reach those and your kicked out of the newbie rooms, but at the same time if your 100% aware of it, you can stay in those hubs at any rank.
I played around 200 hours of Strive when it was new, before kinda falling out of it. The one set I remember most fondly was the VIP Gio who came down and fought me in floor 10, because they were juuuust enough better than me that I could still win if I played to my absolute limit, rather than being so good that it just felt hopeless OR being easy enough that I didn't have to think too hard about it. Flow state gaming!
To this day I regret not friending that person afterwards.
Floor 10 gaming can be pretty fun - there's a wide variety of skill levels there, including folks who might qualify for celestial but just don't want to sweat that hard.
Sorry you missed that connection tho! I've made some really good friends just based off good vibes in the set
I like playing against stronger opponents in long sets for the learning opportunity. That's where some of my quickest improvements have happened. And I don't really care about the occasional smurf accounts in ranked.
Where it annoys me is the heavy, extreme smurfing in the league-separated tournaments in the BH. In those people are trying to win prizes or grind that 10 wins achievement and the difficulty of the opponents, even in bronze, is pretty crazy for less experienced players.
The reason why there aren't more smurfs in fighting games is they typically aren't free to play with large communities, which raises the bar to make a new account.
I expect 2XKO will have its fair share of smurfs. This attitude is (unfortunately) incredibly common.
I used to be mid-orange in Tekken 7 playing with my friends who all barely played a 3d fighter before
is that smurfing? I go easy on the first time fighting game players but if I'm fighting my 2d fighting game friends I lean forward. don't want to go easy on em now.
@@Geheimnis-c2e Nah smurfing is more malicious. It's like you're pretending to be a new player but you're actually a killer. Kind of like a pool shark. Just bad form.
I think smurfing is more common in team games because people tend to smurf to play with friends, or smurf because if your rank is high enough, queue time becomes a real issue, especially if you're a streamer.
In a perfect world, we'll all get to play people our skill level with minimal down time. A lot of 1v1 games thankfully IS in that perfect world already. But it's hard problem to fix, even if the tech in place is perfect.
queue times are partially that high BECAUSE people smurf though. If no one smurfed everyone that is that high rank would be playing up in high rank, thus lowering the queue times.
@@ErebusFOG Yea, but I doubt it's that simple of a fix. Even for a game with a massive player base like League or Valorant, the top of the rankings has such a small percentage of the players that getting 10 people together can be rough, unless everyone there just agrees to play together around the same time.
Smurfing isn't innocent in that though, since a lot of really good players would have multiple accounts at the highest ranks, thus reducing the effective player base at the top.
I hope I'm not coming off like I'm defending smurfing, cuz I'm not. I just think it's a more complex issue than just players having ego or wanting to beat up on lower rank players.
Smurfs bringing up the “I just want to play with friends” is so cap. One of the most laughable excuses imo.
What is it with fps player not wanting to play with people there skill?
In the last cod game I played the matchmaking sure never matched me up against people "my skill".In sf6 terms:
Felt like I won a single set In gold ranks and suddenly im playing against 2000 MR players.
I assume it comes from a lot of fps players having grown up on games with open lobbies where the whole point was to try and get the most kills and get sick trickshots and go on crazy killstreaks. This gameplay heavily encourages pub stomping which is the literal opposite of playing against people of equal skill.
scared to lose their rank or go on a losing streak or they are playing with friends of a lower skill level.
legitimately ego
With games like CoD, people have positivity bias from old games- when they pubstomp they feel good and have fun because they get false affirmation from good stats made from farming scrubs. But when the enemy aren't chimpanzees on the controller and are actually competent, they face the reality that they weren't as good as they thought. They farm scrubs happily but cry when they're the scrub being farmed.
Kind of a "get good" moment more than anything.
I play Valorant alot and Smurfing is a huge problem in that game and is usually blantantly obvious. Smurfing culture is literally ppl saying to the world "I don't feel confident in playing in my skill level, ima go fight lower ranked players so I don't have to think when I play." Really speaks to their mental attitude.
i mean, when people are praising XDefiant over COD for not having sbmm instead of its free, im starting to think maybe shooter players have self esteem problems
Smurfing in fighting games feels like booting up Dynasty Warriors and rolling through Easy Mode. Eventually you’d get bored at the lack of challenge right? No? 🤷🏻♀️
Some dudes don't care and do it to feel superior. A few days ago I played a Heihachi in T7 that I SWEAR was a smurf. Dude did that one laugh taunt sidestep move at the end of a match after beating me 3 rounds consecutively. I doubt it was for anything other than superiority.
Honestly just live the dw reference. 4 was my nostalgia childhood favorite.
I feel like difference in format (1v1 as opposed to team vs team) also plays a big part on why smurfing isn't as common in fighting games
Most of the time when I hear about people smurfing in League it's because "they don't want to deal with bad teammates and want to carry the game alone" or stuff like that, it's hard to find a game where 5 people are equally matched to other 5 so even if you play great you might lose, but on a 1v1 game it is entirely on you if you win or lose so people are more predisposed to fight someone their level
Sajam actually touched on one of the main reasons why smurfing is not that common in fighting games in this video without realizing (or at least, it didn't looked like it was explicitly said). One of the main reasons smurfing is much more common in those "other games" is because those games are team based.
Fighting games are 1v1 and most people that play ranked want to play against similarly skilled players. If a Master player wants to olay with a Bronze friend, they can always play casual matches. But those "other games" where smurfing is an everyday thing are team based. If a high ranking player want to play with a low ranking friend, they'll make another account to be able to play with them.
Funny thing about fighting higher skilled players in fighting games is that if it's outside of ranked like in battle hub or casual matches it can be really fun to go like 10+ matches against that higher level player, even if you only win 1 of them ir even 0 cause it shows where you're messing up. Saying this as someone trying to get out of plat.
Playing against Smurfs can really kill someone's motivation to play the game more. I hate when people try to justify it with stuff like "oh if they quit because they lost, they were just weak willed." No, they hit standing 1 cause they're still learning the game and just hit a button, then you punished with wave dash launcher into wall break 50% combo or something, and then did it again and won. They didnt GET to play. Why would they keep playing when it looks like you'll just die to people 100x better than you.
Its actually a problem with online games in general where people dont want to play Multiplayer online cause they assume everyone else is better; having that confirmed cause Dickhat64 wants a sick youtube compilation isnt good
I've quit a number of games due to smurfs. It really kills my will to improve.
When I left Brawlhalla, 90% of the UA-cam content was haha I'm smurfing
I genuinely feel bad when I hop to a brand new character in SF6 and have to go thru rank. I'll bulldoze through the early ranks just based off fundamentals and then feel like a smurf till I get to the rank I'm actually at 😅
the only thing worse than smurfing is people who smurf and claim that it’s for educational content
How appropriate this video gets posted moments after I get done playing T8 and against a Smurf, and before that in Halo where I got Smurfs twice.
EDIT: There are some fighting games where players do Smurf all the time - the biggest one I remember is DBFZ. Literally Smurfs for like 50% of matches after Season 1.
Nobody is smurfing on halo lmao 😂
@@Splozy It's best you don't discuss things you don't understand, especially since Smurfing has been a significant issue in Ranked Halo since Halo 3.
@@ParagonFury Nobody is smurfing on MCC, it's full of gamepass noobs and a small amount of vets. There's nothing to smurf on.
The population is so poor that everyone plays social. It's got tonnes of casuals that call everyone a smurf in social if that's what you mean😂
Sajam nailed it with tekken 8
Hmm, since every character has unique lp, that means a master could be playing his alt and be considered smurfing. Even if he’s high diamond, he’s playing against some people desperate to get to master.
I block all the obvious smurfs. You can tell when you’re in Gold 3 in SF6 and your opponent has perfect DPs, DRC optimal combos, and perfect parries multiple times with amazing pokes at the perfect distances. You then look at their profile and see only a few hours of ranked and nothing else, not even Practice mode.
I just block them.
There is a ton of this in diamond too. People just make new accounts which I think shouldn't be allowed
@@MikeLiteraus like block in match or block their accounts?
@@Geheimnis-c2e block the account, after the match I'll view their profile and confirm my suspicion first, then block right there. I never rage quit matches for any reason ever either. So, I just play it out normal and then confirm/block.
Tekken has the right idea with the auto promote but still leaves too big a gap between mains and alts, which is exacerbated by how large the skill gap becomes between just a few ranks thanks to not being able to be demoted before Warrior and there not being enough ranks to accurately express a range of skill around Fujin - Bushin IMO. Also prowess effecting matchmaking has only had a negative impact for the most part.
Smurfing in FGs is really only ever in the top-ranked players, and it's more about them having more opponents to play with and accessability for them, rather than to troll FG babies. It's also literally impossible in Music Games, too; since they're raw execution/score attacks. The closest thing we have is people picking characters they're objectively less/not good with and that's not necessarily a complete smurf to begin with.
back when i only cared about winning games, i hated people who smurfed.
now i don't mind because i can just watch what they did afterwards and think about it
Sajam streams: 🔉🦻🔉
Sajam YT videos: 🔊🙉🔊
In this episode Sajam discovers yet another reason why 2XKO will ultimately be a single player game for FGC sweats. Smurfing.
it definitely will be interesting to see how the values from the league of legend community gets transfered to 2XKO. Especially with it being a free to play game, you'll definitely be getting a few people who make a lot of new accounts.
One thing I'm most interested in is the mentality behind surrendering. Of course, LOL snowballs so having the option to FF makes sense, but I always found it super weird in valorant where people call a surrender when the score is like 1-3... I hope we don't get this kind of attitude in 2XKO
Probably the reason you don't see that much smurfing in fighting games is that the 1v1 nature means just isn't very rewarding. Like what's the best result you can get, beat one player very easily, then beat another player easily etc. That's not fun or particularly impressive. But if you're a pro CoD player in a lobby full of casuals you get to rack up huge killstreaks, wipe the whole team a few times, stuff that feels powerful and looks impressive in a twitter clip.
the only good argument for smurf accounts that i can think of is to practice shit you aren't good at in an environment that more suits your skill level in those less played characters/strats/roles. in the old days of league your rank didnt change between roles (ranked league might still be like that tbf, i haven't kept up to date with the changes to league) so it was kinda warranted, but idk how many games this argument fits
I think Fighting Games have the right idea with ranks and it often is done well so most people don't feel like smurfing. Tekken doing both rank based AND prowess based match making can be a little rough cause once you get high enough on a main character it can take a long time to find someone playing on a secondary and you kinda just REALLY have to know this secondary character to play them in ranked or quick match
In overwatch higher ranked players smurf all the time. It's become normalized to the point where many of the people in the top 500 are actually alt accounts of streamers/pro players and really good players. The worst is when smurfs complain about their teammates like just go back to your rank?????
It's pathetic. Blizzard initially countered smurfing in 2 by requiring you to link a phone number to your account. So unless you used mum's phone number or bought a cheap burner phone, it was pretty pointless. But then for some stupid reason, they reversed it.
thats the other part of why they smurf, so they can be the best player on the team and blame everyone else
That's the craziest part and it happens in league, too. Like yes they're overextending and not warding, they're bronze lol if you wanted high level decision making you'd be in your alleged rank
because they realized smurfs need to exist to keep their game alive.
Barring people who just smurfs for fun, be a se those people aren't part of the conversation, they need their streamers to be able to smurfs. Streamers are some Off the best advertisers, but it's not a good ad to watch them sit in q for an hour. Th s is the same as league, where getting 10 Chally players at one time while still trying to put people into their preferred role can take forever.
T his unfortunately creates the trickle effect of others smurfing for other reasons, but the truth is these games need their streamers playing the game.
That and of course, they just want to have people able to play their game in general to boost numbers.
Used to know someone in a discord I frequent who would regularly de rank down to silver in sfv on purpose. Insane behaviour. They eventually got banned for other stuff.
only time i ever smurfed was 20 years ago, before matchmaking, in arena shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament, because i was a high ranked TDM player. people could name search from the server browser and follow you around between servers and it got annoying, so i'd play on public servers under other names to prevent the name-searchers. making new down-ranked accounts just to stomp noobs is ultra scummy and a sign of a fragile ego
I'd say smurfing is a lot more common in fps games. I don't know the reason why, but based on my experience in dabbling in Valorant after dreading it for years I've seen more people smurf in Val than League, atleast this act. I swear my competitive games right now involve our team completely comprised of silvers while the enemy has a plethorah of silver, bronze and that one plat player who plays Clove because fuck actually dying in a round in Valorant.
Then again I am not exactly low elo in League but I am absolutely shit in Valorant (I'm silver 3)
In SF6, I typically don't even go to the Battle Hub bc I feel like I'm wasting my time - either I run into some Bronze player and feel like I'm ruining their day, or into someone who's MR is like 300 pts higher than mine and they wipe the floor with me 😒
???
I play Killer Instinct and I constantly run into Smurfs despite the game being dead, its more common than we think.
Level 12 account with 5 hours played, he's playing a top tier character, instantly starts doing whacky cross-ups, and t-bags after every round? Happens a lot.
I remember the only "smurf" I've seen in SFV, where I faced a Balrog in Bronze. He was obviously good, so I looked at his stats and he had 10,000+ games played with like 99% winrate. I don't remember if he mostly played Unranked or in lobbies, but I couldn't believe it allowed me to be matched with someone like that, which makes me think of your Skill-based Matchmaking videos. This is the exact reason why it should be in all modes, not just ranked.
In Heroes of the Storm I had at one point near a dozen Smurfs. Most accounts I would one trick specific characters in ranked to force myself to learn everything about them and focus on improving at them.
Wound up giving me a huge character pool I had mastery of in regard to mechanics, knowledge, situational awareness, timings, match up knowledge, ETC. Made a huge difference for tournament play. Also lowered queue times was nice.
I do think character
/ role specific smurfing (in a game that does not have individual character or role ranks) is super helpful for grinding something new.
Generally against smurfing, although I don't really think there's a good way to control it. When I used to grind Siege, it was incredibly depressing fighting against someone who was definitely a smurf. It feels like that in every game, honestly. That said, watching someone do a speed run from new to top rank in something like Apex is really cool to watch from a spectacle perspective. That's one of the few instances I can think of where I'm not frustrated thinking about smurfing, although I'm sure it was incredibly frustrating being on the receiving end of that grind
i think fundamental different thing about cod is that lot of the reward systems tied to fun are based on killstreaks which is based on you stomping the enemy team... fault of a bad game design i guess
Sf V loved smurfing when character comes out
Smurfing has really pushed me away from one of my favorite games being Rocket League, as soon as the game went free to play it just got bombarded by smurfs and the skill ceiling in that game is so high that a smurf and easily take over a lobby. Just bad all around for the ecosystem of the game.
I feel like resetting ranks with shorter seasons plays a role too. I swear everytime my friends and I get back into we're in placement matches.
Going back to Strive, I know the Celestial players go onto Floor 10 to basically gatekeep the Celestial Garden, like when Majin Obama did during the betas targeting influencers. It’s kinda tradition at this point as a rite of passage
@@DrAnimePhD the question is whether they bother to run sets with better/comparable players at all to keep them honest and stay improving. seen some v high lvl ppl gatekeeping f10 with layer 1 offense that only work when u dont know what blocking is, and no layer 2 at all (except MAYBE desperation run-up throw/5[D]). and ofc, the moment u frametrap them its over
In chess, some content creators do “speedruns” where they start at like 100 instead of starting from placements
That's basically how I play all of my Street Fighter 6 characters, except I can not speedrun.
Whenever i come up against lower level players in battle hub i play way softer and let them try their stuff and dont punish or pressure them as hard after wrecking them once, just to try see how they adapt and if i can teach them a bit, i never join cabinets if the player doesn’t have a diamond 3 character at least, beating lower skill players is completely meaningless and not fun for me, i just do not understand cheaters and smurfs
Team play on Ranked/Casual is def going to be interesting with 2XKO
A lot of carrying and a lot of folding
There's definitely smurfs in SF6 too, not just Strive. It's easy to write people saying that off as just salty, but it's really obvious if you're in lower pop regions like Australia because you're *going* to run into them again. 50% of the time they'll just let you kill them to drop their rank. It's more common than you'd think in Gold and Platinum and whatnot. Pretty sad.
The worst I find about smurf is the one that use taunt button to you constantly.
My experience from SF6 while I still in mid gold and face with a smurf Manon who counter react everything I thorw at him. Tech my DR throw, DR jab check, anti all my jump in, jump over my fireball, punish my whiff. Etc.
The worst thing is he not trying to win just one poke after all thing said above. Then constantly press taunt button.
And yeah after check his account, Manon is like the last 5-6 of his characters that is not master rank yet.
Sykunno impression on point
Kinda hope co-op has its own MMR rating, like how each tekken character has its own mmr rating, and maybe a seperate account rating like what sf4 had to balance it. Because i imagine a lot of intermediate-experts are gonna wanna try to get friends into the game. I go to 2 different monthls every month for tekken, but when 2XKO drops i wanna do duos with my brother who i played league with and just button mashes in fighting games with the odd intentional combo into super and antiair dp here and there
Fragile Egos
Smurfing started in Halo 2 a loooonng time ago… also known as booster accounts
I played Tekken 7 at locals for like 2-3 years before moving to a place that had internet (I'm a country boy). And even when I did play ranked, it was like maybe 1-2 times a week.
I can't say I enjoyed beating up new players, but being called a smurf was kinda funny. As was being that dude that enters a lobby of blue ranks with a yellow character, 3-0ing three of of them, and then leaving because it was bed time.
Okay, so maybe it is fun to beat on people sometimes. But I didn't do on purpose, I just worked a lot.
brian_f almost got me with that sykkuno impression
Saw some videos of people justifying smurfing to help with their rank anxiety. Some people are just scared of competition.
One thing I'll say is that streamers smurfing for educational purposes is usually fine IMO. Though it wasn't technically smurfing, it was a new account, when Brian F played Sett in SFV and managed to show off to the viewers very basic strategies in order to win in bromze or gold or etc, I think can really help veiwers in thier own improvement.
I'm a long time league player, i have a bunch of experience in examining smurf accs. In game sure you cant be 100 sure, but analyzing their profile makes it obvious. Def ran into alt accounts of pros/semi-pros
If only capcom allows us to connect our capcom account to multiple platforms. I mainly play on playstation but I don't want to look like I'm smurfing when I play on laptop while travelling.
I thought this video would be about that one rank-boosting "service" that takes like 20 euros to get you to Iron in SF6, and honestly I'm not sure which behavior is more jobless.
I've made a """smurf""" on Strive once because I didnt want to seal-club innocent floor 8 players with my main after dropping two floors for experimenting with other characters and I gotta say smurfing isnt even effective in that game. I was on the floor that was appropriate for my skillevel within 30 minutes or less.
I expect we'll definitely see a lot more smurfing in 2XKO for several reasons, but mostly because it's free.
You typically play fighting games with the hope that you'll IMPROVE as a player...
In some other genres, the goal is simply to "win", and that's it. (shrugs)
Smurfing is cancerous behavior. It's super common in games like CoD, CS, valorant, league etc because they are all team based games. And what is more fun than ruining 1 person's time? ruining 5 people's time! All those games also last a while, a game of cs, valorant, cod etc all go on for an extended period of time that the smurfs get to hold the lobby hostage. In fighting games, it's 1v1, you run into a smurf you're out of that game in 30 secs to a minute as they clean your clock and you don't hit rematch. Smurfs don't get that same lvl of excitement or satisfaction from ruining 30 secs of someone's day as opposed to longer periods of time.
Also, in sf6 especially you can't lost rank until what, plat? So it becomes almost impossible to smurf, cause even if you throw games for every game you stomp, you'll still end up climbing into diamond where people at least have some idea of what they're doing. It's incredibly hard to dunk on scrubs in ranked over and over.
I'm still essentially wood league at fighting games, I still get excited when I land a combo I've been practicing in training mode in a match, even if I still lose lol. But they're my favourite game genre to play, when we're both at the same level it's fantastic!
It feels weird when I get matched up against somebody who knows long combo strings and 50/50s me to death, often even perfecting me sometimes. I don't resent the game for that, I love watching competitive, I totally get it. But is it fun just slapping around a toddler? I feel like I enjoy winning more if it's super close, when I utterly destroy somebody, its less exciting I find.
I can not do simple combos very well, but I think I am capable of reaching Master.
You gotta respect that they didn’t just go easy on you and play baby mode. You have to be put into situations that you don’t want to be in to get better at fighting games. Focus on the things you did right, and figure out where you went wrong. You may have lost, but did they have to work to open you up? No? Then you left yourself open. Yes? Maybe they only opened you up because you didn’t know it was your turn or what to start your offense with when it was time. There’s a lot to learn. Those are the things you gotta think about. I used to get mopped when I played Blazblue, but I loved it so much that even a round felt like a win when I was first starting out. Lol Which game are you talking about out of curiosity?
Ive seen someone in the battlehub say they smurf "To help newer players because they wont learn unless they get bodied" 😅
I knew alot of them were dumb but they really believe the whole DBZ "If You get beat hard enough you'll gets stronger"
Smurfs genuinely have gotten me to quit multiple competitive games that I otherwise liked, notably League of Legends. I'm glad it's not common in fighting games. And for what it's worth, if people commonly make new accounts to play with less skilled friends in 2XKO, I think it legit could kill the game for unskilled players like me that don't have skilled friends.
People do this in league and flex like theyre popping off and its so weird to me. Like yea, you have a better grasp of this mechanic intensive game than someone in iron who just started waow
I got valorant recently and my friend will join me to play and in order to not match me against really good players, he uses a Smurf and plays with bad weapons so that I can still keep up.
But I know most people don’t Smurf for that
Iron sharpens iron? Arent they called sharpening STONES?
Sajam dropping hints that he's gonna be a killer in 2xKO.
The most Smurf i get is playing on my ps5 account when im high asf. Only Master on PC with 2 characters
In sf6 It’s not just people who tank their rank to bully weaker players. It’s also people with thousands of matches under their belt who claim to be “new challengers.”
That is the cost of rank being character based. This is different as they will be at their appropriate rank pretty fast. This is my first fighting game I play seriously and I play with the whole cast. These people aren’t constantly making a new account to beat up weaker players.
@@roncrudup2110all true. I’d just add however that as a master player if you’re going neck and neck with my main with some alt “new challenger” character you should have the courtesy to do the placement matches so people know who they’re playing. It takes less than an hour.
@@anthonydimaggio5465 I agree.
I don't Smurf but I'm going to in 2xko just to bully league players more efficiently
Sajam made a whole video just for you lmao
So based
most of the people that are gonna be playing that game are probably not gonna be league players. A lot of the league streamers i watch are also just not interested in it either. I play league and all my friends dont even touch the other riot games just league and none of them are interested in 2xko. you'll most likely just be smurfing on noob mvc enjoyers.
@@Kerps123🤓
Same
I bet there's a super niche market for making new accounts, barely trying in order to get like, 100 games at super low rank and still struggling, and then selling that account to someone who wants to smurf but doesn't want to immediately be rushed to high rank again
it's far from super niche lmao, iron accounts in league are actually really expensive for what they are because it's difficult these days to be so bad that you get placed in iron
There was this sf5 rashid smurf with 60k games and a 97% winrate hanging out in silver. I saw him a day ago in sf5 under the same name.
Joined his room, said hi. Then said "u the filthy smurf from sf5?" Kicked so fast. They do exist
Smurfs, the ultimate boogie man under kiddies beds at night.
I mean, kinda. On the one hand, it's a mean way to subvert SBMM. On the other hand, a lot of the complaints come off as "this person just needs an excuse for why they lost, so they're pretending the opponent was a smurf."
I hate this prowess thing in tekken. They stick a random ass number on you, never properly explain what any of the stats mean and now use it for matchmaking... like why do we need ranks at all then?
That's why fighting games are still goated and our community never gets tarnished by any cause we don't do unfair bullshittss...
If you smurf, that's more like a skill issue in my opinion.
Border line tasteless attitude 🤢
Godbless you Sajam
Smuring is basically like those fool using cheats in Sf6. if you are a master playing against rookie, gold etc.
How the hell can that be enjoyable when you know this low rank player can't touch you?