I refuse to play a game where cheating is just normal and accepted, and the cheaters not sanctioned.
I already warned about these issues many times ago, but I’m still not being listened. It’s useless to reason with bullies and AO2 has become a platform of bullying and where it’s totally fine and normal to be a bully.
And the ELO system? Please. Same players with “several” multiaccounts, dozens… maybe hundreds. Players who aggressiveness is the kind you can experience in 2.5k ELO’s, yet their fresh profiles has only 800 elo.
Smurfs of 2.5k who resort to playing with accounts with lower ELO profiles to intentionally match with 800 elo honest players who don’t have several accounts … So here you go, a player with 800 ELO is now matched with another 800 elo player… who in fact is a smurf. He believes the game will be balanced until…
- he sees the player advancing to feudal age in 8 min.
- gets to castle in 15min
- gets to imp in 20 min
- steamrolls the 800 ELO player in 30min.
I had many red flags warning me of situations like this like two months ago, here and there but so far I was just playing it down… Then, since like a month ago, the game stopped being fun and out of 10games, on average 7-8 became steamrolling harassment shows. Now with this game (
MP Replay v101.101.59165.0 @2022.04.22 012151 (8).aoe2record (5.0 MB)
I had enough, I’m 100% sure AO2 does not meet my criteria of fun, respect, honesty and fairness among players.
So only now, he knows he never had a chance against the smurf… He was cheated all along, wasting his time to be steamrolled in a game whose result was… already known before start by the smuf. A totally rigged game.
What’s the point of an 800 honest ELO player playing against an 2.5K smurf disguised as a 800 ELO opponent? That you eventually learn something in being steamrolled by a dishonest player playing 10 leagues (at least) below his real tier? When has online game bullying become a learning experience? Tell me.
Well Fashnews. There is nothing to learn in getting steamrolled by a player 10 leagues above you. Not here, not anywhere. It’s obviously done to frustrate players from which the cheating bully gets the joy, he obviously doesn’t want balanced games otherwise he would not smurf. Smurfing is only a means to harass players online, through rigged gameplay where lower skilled players or amateurs can’t have a chance against matched hyper professional players. It’s not just dirty, it completely destroys the fairness, honesty and fun of the game. The game instead of becoming a good experience, becomes a plaftorm for harassment.
Smurfs are a danger to healthy game environments, they ruin balanced games, steamroll opponents 10 leagues lower, frustrate lower tier players and create an environment of permanent/constant frustration of “you can’t do it”, on the part of the cheated lower ELO players, and artificially completely destroy the balance of a ranked system . “You were not lucky, keep playing card” does not work either as smurfing is the rule, not the exception.
It’s not a surprise that smurfing happens online. Cheating was not invented yesterday, so for naivety sake let’s cut the surprise part. What is a surprise is that other games are attacking the smurfing issue as a priority issue and see smurfers as cheaters who need to face and who face consequences, permanent bans and so on. Smurfing is no feature on games who take cheating seriously. Becaue there are those games who take cheating seriously and those that promote cheating, like AO2 currently does, to a… not even exponential but hyperbollic level. 
Ao2 in its early launch years did not use to be this kind of platform where cheating, bullying, dishonest and scumbaggery was promoted everytime on a daily basis. I regret that it has become such a platform, no better than a platform for pirates, unlawful, bullying scumbags or the worst trash of society. Trash exists in society and online but it’s in the responsibility of every online platform, gaming in this case, to promote an environment of respect, fairness, rule enforcement, dignity and honesty among players. If there isn’t anything or any serious effort on the platform to work around these basic issues, then the platform becomes the problem.
I’m tired of speaking to death ears, but I’m not tired of pointing out that the game has allowed itself to decay miserably. There are already better games with better rules, better game team devs, better enforcement and where honesty and fairness are not an April fool’s joke.
Most ranked games in lower elo’s have at least one smurf, not to say a team of smurfs vs a team of real lower elo’s. You don’t address the problem by doing the same thing that fuels the problem: gaming in platforms where smurfing is not punished. So, considering all the problems smurfing creates in the player community by ruining any purpose of fairness, honesty and respect and promoting an environment of constant harrassment, the only solution become the H-Bomb:
Quit playing any online platform where smurf cheating is openly allowed, even promoted, and where smurfs are not permanently banned.
