Cash is king. I encourage this kind of behavior so that developer can have more money to keep the pathfinding
I donât agree with that. The act of having multiple accounts is not the same as the act of purposefully keeping your elo low either by losing a bunch of matches in a row on purpose or starting new accounts again and again. The first one is the clear bannabkle line you can draw, the second one is whatâs bad about smurfing.
As an example: I ones heard or read about a pretty good player who had a second account on which he would play when he was drunk. Thatâs pretty clever. The drunk account has its own fair elo, the elo this player gets when his reaction time is lowered, his judgement is impaired and he is more impulsive in what plays he goes for. Him not having that account would result in a situation much more like what weâre presumably trying to prevent here than him having his account, because every time after a drunken losing streak heâd find himself 300 points below his regular elo and would start with a few fast wins over less competitive players to get back to where he was.
A simple âban everythingâ approach might not be the most fitting here.
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But lots of them just family share to smurf for free.
Yes, agreed. I mean in unranked every time I play a game, I donât care against who I played. I know I can play with people from any skill level (different from elo level, just the âreal skillâ to deal with the game), and I think itâs interesting too because you get to learn different playstyles, player strategies and see how you can learn/do betterâŠ
You can be the steamrolled in a game or be the steamroller in others⊠You will likely catch smurf accounts in unranked (0 or very little games played), but you can get a sense of what you can expect at difficult game levels (I donât know⊠I assume at 1500k elo the games are not supposed to be easy at all)⊠But here, itâs like you getting to know what kind of âdifficultâ players you may get at strong levels⊠Here, I donât care if itâs a smurf/noob, the point is itâs a kind of a meeting point⊠We spend some time, game a bit and take our impressions⊠I usually do this in amazon tunnel⊠Itâs unranked, so no pressure⊠itâs just train, or play whoeverâŠ
Another completely different matter is ranked. Yes, it does not make any sense to use a low eloish profile to display agressive skills of 1500 elo likesâŠ
The non-smurf players at that level donât have the skills to counter or attempt to fight that, they get literally steamrolled at mid-castle by someone in deep imperial with mega armies, they know they canât win because they lack the skills to work 3-times faster and have 2-3 times soldiersâŠ
When a smurf player attacks, the low inexperienced elo player will generally feels psychologically ambushedâŠIf heâs a noob player, he will freeze and instantly surrender or quickly surrender. If the attacked in not a noob but just a low elo player, the technogical disparity, the weaker economy, the fact that such low elo player is directly attacked, will force him one of two choices: 1) chose between spending scarce resources to somehow defend his base a bit before his teammates arrive and stand a minimal chance to survive for 4-5min or 2) improve economy but be streamrolled in a 2-min countdown by enemy army⊠He canât do both because otherwise the defensive plays will fold like paper tiger⊠Generally, even after 1) if no team mate does not come with a sufficient strong army, the low elo player canât do anything⊠his resources are depleted, the enemy sieges⊠walls breached⊠it will be over in 2 min⊠So the player resigns against a smurf whose score is 4 or 5 times his, even before the smurf starts his attack.
This is the kind of thing that should not happen in ranked queues. We want (lower elo) players to feel they have somehow a balanced chance with their elo level opponents, that will depend only on gameplay conditions, team-mate coordination, the so-called âluckâ and not face opponents who are experts on the matter, several game levels above them⊠If you donât mind an unbalanced game and even like to socialize with every kind of play, you can go to unranked⊠Iâm not supposed to get a hyper agressive lightspeed matches at 600 or 700 elos⊠but I know from 800-1200 it will become tougher⊠and even more from that level to 1500 etcâŠ
There are different reasons for a player, who is not smurfing, wanting to keep a lower elo. Slower gameplay, they use the game to spend some extra time, or just a quiet hobby⊠This is not necessarily the âprofessional gamerâ type (you know guys like Viper or Hera, much respect 
)We are not talking about guys who literally earn their living on video-games play or are highly skilled on them⊠This depends on player interest, requires a lot of time and comes with hard work⊠You donât become good at something just because you were born with it. if you get me. You have to want to go through that path, and everyone has his own⊠Becoming good at something requires passion and full commitment⊠It applies for any life trade or learning skill I guess. In my case I never wanted - and donât want - the professional gamer path, itâs simply a side hobby, no better, no worse than many out there.
Iâve had a lot of bad game experiences but, ocassionaly, there are interesting games and players. We canât all meet at the same time, thatâs normal⊠But eventually, in ranked, you should find something worth it in case smurf profiles stay outside. If that is enforced, that is.
If you have an actual example of this, please post the rec, that way people can determine for you if they are actually a smurf, or if they were at your level and you were just giving up early.
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Itâs not as simple as that. Put it this way, smurfs kill noobs and scare some of them off the game. Those noobs then stop playing, they donât buy any future DLC and donât recommend the game to their friends. We are then left with a smaller player base, so Microsoft doesnât invest as much into the game.
If you want a healthy eco-system for the future, encouraging smurfs is not the long term profitable strategy. Itâs just classic short term-ism to make a quick buck but not thinking long term. And itâs a similar wider attitude which is destroying the worldâs economy in general.
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You are completely right. I agree with you.
Other than that I think official should implement some smurf detection like this one
So that their will face opponent with their original elo home
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Oh wow, is that like the equivalent of the s** offender registry? How do you get on the list, and is there a way to get off (no pun intended).
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It one is actually very good for our kid. I really love this idea.
This service is provided by new Chapter Clan and as long as they donât put people name personally and discover the methodology, it would be a great tool. As far as I know they investigate the win steak and not sure what other method do they use
You can stop dramatizing, itâs not worth trying to change it. The money that a new account costs alone is enough of a barrier to prevent smurfs. If you think itâs a problem for Aoe, itâs because youâve never played a multiplayer free to play game. I think smurfs are one of the less relevant issues right now.
A group of people using the same account is not a smurf. The term âsmurfâ is used in gaming to describe a player in an online game that creates a new account to play against lower-ranked players or a player who uses an alternate account or multiple accounts.
And if that were true it would be quite rare, the vast majority of aoe2 players only have one account. Not to mention it would be imposible for microsoft to prove that two players are sharing the same account and punish them for it.
Iâm saying lots of smurfs use family share to smurf for free, not all of them using 1 account. Smurfs, as a collective, often each use family share on their individual computers to crush lower elo players. Iâm well aware of what a smurf is, the grammar in my post was just not super well worded, and you read it in a way I didnât consider or intend.
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I actually agree that there are other more important things to fix which are way more of an issue than smurfing, like not giving us infinite map bans, OP civs and general game related stuff like pathing . But that doesnât mean smurfing is not a problem. And i think smurfing is a huge factor in keeping people offline in single player mode against the AI (apparently the majority of the player base).
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Just make elo and bans have consecuences for all family share acvounts if possible
If not, yeah, there has to be a way to popularize quickplay
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I donât get why people suggest making family share accounts sync elo. Basically, if youâre using it legitimately, for different players, chances are they have very different skill levels. Therefore, if the collective elo is high, one player could easily drop it, and if the elo is low, a skilled player seems like a smurf. And if youâre trying to hit smurfs, they shouldnât even be allowed multiple accounts, at least not for free, so family share accounts should be locked out. Hackers/cheaters using it for ban evasion is another reason for this. Basically, family share doesnât bring anything to the game worth justifying the easy smurf/ban evasion options it provides, and because syncing elo is just a bad/ineffective idea, they need to be banned from ranked.
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I wanted to tell the following somewhere on the board and this topic seems to be roughly the right topic and level of seriousness:
I got called out for alledgedly using cheats today. I donât think my opponent noticed the feudal age medium resources start clearly advertized in the lobby name. 
(To be fair, I had tried the settings out against the AI a few times and had forgotten to list an elo in the lobby name, so it wasnât that weird in itself that an opponent was surprised by how quick the scouts were at their berries.)
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Itâs easy to complain about something in the game, but a difficult thing to propose a viable solution.
To simply ban smurfs is not a viable solution. First you have to define what a smurf is, and then you have to come up with a mechanism to determine that smurfing is the ONLY explanation for a players behavior. Meaning you have to have a way to rule out other factors such as another person using the account.
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