'Smurfing' on the ladder... very un sporting!

I'm not good enough for 1v1's so thank based uber I dont have to read any of this...YAY!

Yupp. It's why they create "smurf" accounts.

This is getting a little out of hand.

Please keep it civil people.

@elodea I didn't intend this as a witch hunt, I only used our set of games to illustrate the effect it has on rankings as your the only smurf on pa stats. The only uber level players I have encountered recently are (confirmed) smurfs (4 unique players so far as I can tell). I mean these players have made up a good chunk of my games, so the chances of (me at least) being matched against one of these accounts is quite high, maybe 50% of my games if I'm on at the 'wrong' time of day (22:00 utc and later). I think quite a few players are going this way which saddens me tbh.

Edit: also to point out in the same time frame I've not had a single match against any of these players main accounts.

Yeah there are a lot of posts in this thread which are flying in the face of the forum rules. Please remember to attack the argument, not the person making it.

In the interest of keeping the discussion going - because it is an interesting one - I want to keep this thread open, but please do not descend back into ad-hominems.

So people with multiple accounts?

Do they have like multiple separate keys, or just like different log ins?

And should things like the ladder be account wide?

Because I don't feel like it fair, at all, to have more then one ranked account so you can play and lose on one, and always win on another.

That's slim shady.

They have multiple game keys and as a result multiple ranked accounts. Out of interest I believe #1 and #2 on the Uber ladder are the same player.

This isn't a problem limited to PA either. I remember smurfing causing issues in Spring after the team auto balancing was added: the system looked at all players ranks then balanced the teams to create a fair game. However many 'top' players liked the horribly unbalanced stomp games they were used to so created new rank 1 accounts to get balanced with high ranking players.

In the end the practice became so common they added an ip lookup into the balance system and automatically tied accounts together.

See, I just feel that's wrong, even if it's not skewing the results very much, it's an abuse of the system's purpose.

What are the things uber can do to stop or discourage smurfing its clear that only smurfers like smurfing.

I don't think the intention of this thread is to encourage Uber to take any action against this. It's not something they can or should do anything about, really, short of being really draconian about it.

It's something that happens in probably all games where any ranking or matchmaking is involved.

Actually, I was about to say many games have a policy against multiple accounts by 1 person being active on ranked areas of a game; I'm thinking the lack of such a rule was more oversight by Uber. There's obviously no way to 100% certain in all cases, but in most cases there are ways to tell with a fair degree of accuracy.

Edit: Got to be very careful about applying such a rule in retrospect though, for obvious reasons.

Regardless of right or wrong though, it's not a good look for a game to have (especially the top spots of) the ladder filled with accounts from the same person.

They need to make it higher maintenance to keep your rank. This has not much to do with smurfs. x number of bonus points that accumulate over time and apply to each game you play will be fine enough to favour active players.

There is only one player with 2 accounts in top 10 uber.

I would even be ok with a system that penalizes inactivity more the higher you get in the ladder. Gold league maybe shouldn't be forced into playing every day, but the uber league definitely needs to penalize inactivity.

<- Gargamel

This is why i said i didn't specifically envisioned you i do understand the reason, and your proposal here is a good one. Force top tier players to be more active, so you can have your games on a regualr basis, and then a need for smurfing disappears.

Also @brianpurkiss made a point: it's fairly common to "ragequit" once they see a name they know is in the top regions of play. Thats why we had the flood of barcodes in SC2. Every topplayer would rename his character to "||||||||III|||||||" or something in the likes to stay anonymous to others. I think even this is a better solution as people won't know they are playing you.

And to the mods/community: if my posts got out of hand, excuses are hereby offered

This is how SC handles smurfing. To stay in Grand master league you have to keep your bonus pool under a certain amount or else you get kicked out of GM. However, bonus pool also accumulates faster at master league and GM league. This means it takes a lot of play time to keep two accounts in GM.

I am honestly surprised and saddened that my accounts are still rank 1 and rank 2. I think it is bad that the highest ranked player hasn't played for two weeks or three weeks. New people might have the idea that the community is dead or very inactive when they login and see on the homepage that rank 1 and rank 2 havent played in 3 weeks. In SC, this is nearly impossible.

I also don't see much of a problem with smurfing in general because uber makes more money and some people like to try new things without having the outcome matter or like to ladder while not sober (me). I don't like taking up two spots in the top 3 but there is no way in the current system that I can fix this without dropping a bunch of games on purpose. To other people's point, it took me like 34 games to get to rank 2 on my smurf which is not many at all, and now that I am rank 2 you will definitely get the points you deserve for beating me.

I like the idea of having a way to play unranked games.

A player can not play on two teams and in two different games at once. Though a player could be traded after this game to another team which would mean in one season they played on two different teams.

If you're going to use a sports analogy go all the way with it.

Hum. Reading this thread all I can think of is ELO Hell lmao. Where there is ranked play there are smurf accounts for whatever reason. Accept it or if you want change the players' aren't who you should be going after. They are just using the systems as intended.

You getting to #2 in 34 games highlights the issue though- that is easy *if* you win all your games. I was put into Uber at #20 by winning my first 15 or so game consecutively. One loss however causes much more 'damage' to a rank than a win promotes it, especially when your near the top. After a streak of 6 wins now including the win against Elodea's smurf and the penalties of being beaten by someone lower (even if his smurf is in platinum) mean I haven't been able to *recover* my initial position. To be honest I don't feel like I can be bothered recovering that ground either- it's becomes a grind really quickly.

You haven't played for 2 weeks yet you still hold #1 and #2... I wonder why? Well I'd guess other players in Uber are coming up against top players on low account. One loss to one of these guys on a low account will mean you need an additional what, 12 wins (maybe more) to *regain* the position you fell from. The reduction in points would be much less if they were on their main account- this is why I think it's bad. At least in your case both accounts are high enough to prevent the penalty. I mean even if a good player is on a smurf account and deliberately trying 'cheese' tactics- well that just means your doing what is currently considered a poor starting build. That categorically *doesn't* remove a players skill, in the case of the top 10 we're talking things like reaction times and micro ability (not really stuff you can learn like a build order). A players with top 10 abilities even playing a silly starting strategy is still a top 10 player- and can (and has been proven so) to beat other higher ranked players irrespective (for example @KillerKiwiJuice). The guys in the top 50 are the ones that *should* be challenging for the top 10 spots, however if they have to grid 10x more games to achieve that position, well they probably wont bother and no one in the top 10 is going to change.

I guess the only way to break this is get some of the top guys from TA and SupCom back into this as they are of a level where they would jump in and get a 30+ game winning streak to steal that #2 spot off you. As it stands once you achieve a top rank the safest option is to stop playing on the account and get another one. I guess if you had to play to maintain your rank it would naturally create some turnover where people aren't playing and prevent people getting a high spot then sitting there with it.

Possibly, I'm just concerned that having to change the system could result in things being very heavy handed and make things worse. The whole idea behind the thread was to highlight this issue to everyone concerned- I'd like to find an amicable solution between the players if possible however if that isn't possible / correct then maybe not.

It does appear that the fact you don't need to play to maintain your rank is a part of the issue, and adding a *modest* penalty for inactivity may actually be the simplest solution as it would promote top players to use their main accounts more.

As the game's popularity rises so will smurf accounts for ranked play. Heck there may even be some for non-ranked trolling.

While you can sort of set up gentlemens rules for this forum community it's just never going to work/fix the overall issue.