Smurfing impact on AO2

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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It’s sickening and disgusting to have to face players who pretend they’re 800 elo when they clearly display 1600 elo skills or even double. Sometimes they even team up on ranked to early stomp on noob teams in less than 40-50 min. In one of such cases, they went all imp at the same time. Yes, at the exact same time.

They don’t hide they are smurfs. They just ruin the game and pretend they’re plaing good game. What’s the point of allowing this kind of abbusive behaviour? It definitely is harassment mode. You sign up for a game to be steamrolled… Tell me what is the point of playing a game where you are constantly facing cheaters? Good game? Obivously not. Trash games by cheaters.

Smurfs issue is not an occasional complaint. It’s not here and there games. It’s constant and most games I face, there is noob team vs smurf teams… Score differences so huge… Early steamrolls with massive imp armies while noob players are still late castle age… I don’t get it. Maybe the point is to game harass, to stomp on noobs, and to trash on noob players. Then blame the noobs for “not playing well enough”.

Rule number one. There is no chance to win a game against smurfs. These players are dishonest, they can’t play with their real elo so they cowardly hide under lower elo to steamroll on smaller players. I just have to say that this kind of behaviour should be platform banned in every online game. It’s obviously harassment and I don’t know why AO2 still allows it.

I keep saying, no AO2 amateur hobby player likes to play against smurfs. They trash the game, artificially manipulate ELO scores and make people leave. A smurf satisfaction lies in race-steamrolling noob players early on before they can’t even make armies… This is against game ethics, not enforcing a fair game.

Players who have 20 profiles or even more with fake IDs? What is the point of allowing this trashy dishonesty? It’s just revolting and disgusting. Scumbaggery level.

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Post your rec, last time is was you crying wolf, if you want to claim this, you need to prove it.

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Im just gonna leave it at this. Youre not losing to smurfs. Weve seen the replay. You want to prove smurfing? Provide legit records with someone smurfing

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1600 players don’t smurf in 800 elo range. If they smurf, they smurf 1000-1200 cause they still win every game and don’t even care about anything else.

I only see sometimes like 800 players intentionally lose more elo to get a better ######## ### the low elos don’t really care about this.

As an 800 elo player you are most likely to never face any weird stuff. You lose because the opponent was better. Just accept it.

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That’s the thing, he’s not 800 elo. He’s 600 elo. So the chances of high end smurfs like that are even lower. He could actually do something about improving, like taking the advice I posted about his last rec, but apparently that means nothing, and everyone who beats him is still a smurf. :man_facepalming:
@PrimusCives, pretty sure a casual player doesn’t have 600 games played, and complain about smurfs like you do. If you’re going to complain about smurfs, you need to post a rec, or your complaints are meaningless.

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Are there elo boosters in the game?
How is it possible a 600 elo plays 600 games and has still 800 elo?

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Not sure why it doesn’t go all the way back to 1000 elo, but I’m pretty sure you could guess the graph. Anyway, this is how a 600 elo player plays 600 games, and ends up with 600 elo.

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ah a 600 elo player played vs a 800 elo player…
well understandable he lost 11
in reality the difference between 800 elo and 600 is way higher than the elo difference. Yeah may look like a 400 elo difference more than a 200 elo difference. No wonder he stood no chance.

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I highly doubt they were an 800 player, because I haven’t been shown the rec yet. Chances are, like the last time he complained about a smurf, they are a 600 player like him, he just didn’t know how to handle something, and lost the game, accusing them of smurfing in the process.

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He is 800 elo for TGs, and has a 2 hour old rec, so I might watch that, because everyone else is about 700-800 elo.

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Well some people just can’t lose. But it’s kinda uncommon they expose themselves in a forum like this where they usually get then even more trashed.
Normally peopls stay away from being directly confronted with their own failures.

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All right, I’ve looked at your most recent game, and run some analysis of it. I don’t think Teal is a smurf. They only have 1 account by the looks of it, and yes, they played fairly well, but I think the biggest problem was that your team played badly. None of you really picked good unit comps, and you didn’t know how to handle your eco, with the main exception of purple, who boomed fairly well. You started going War Elephants with 42 villagers, horrible mistake. Your eco could never support that, you want at least 130 vils if you’re going War Elephants, probably more like 150 even. And then you only made 6 of them in your entire game, which was not good. Paladins should have been your go-to choice for Persians. If I was Purple, I would have gone Sicilian Cavaliers, the Serjeants was not a good play. Teal though, was definitely responsible for winning the game on behalf of the enemy. And I’m pretty sure they did it because they have picked up a 1-trick play with Khmer, where they boom into Ballista Elephants, they have done it in a few games, so it’s probably a bit of practice that went into it. Also, you actually played with them on your team about 4 hours ago. Just stop being toxic because you aren’t good enough at the game, and devote your energy to becoming better, rather than complaining. In that game, it honestly felt like either you were several hundred elo too high, or everyone was a “smurf”, because skill wise, you definitely felt like the weakest player to me, your eco was slower to get running, and you made a grand total of 22 military. You also ended with a lot of floating res, which you could have used to make actual military. Also, streaming in onagers 1 or 2 at a time is a sure fire way to have them die, you really needed to have a barrage of 10 + show up and kill as many ballista elephants as possible.

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If one player has 31k gold while everyone else has 11k, do you mean he’s not a smurf?

It’s in my last game stats. You can’t fool such a difference. And yet the player ELO is similar?? Since when can ELO’s not be tricked by smurfs? Haha.

It’s easy to spot a smurf based on eco unequalities. It appears on score. If they are so unequal, it’s a tell tell sign you are playing against a high experience player…

If you lose all team games in a row, something does not add up. And I tell you it’s not “you play bad”, because I played a lot of games with victories too.

So many excuses. Why are we not hunting down cheaters? Smurfs ruin the game and will make normal not cheating people leave the game.

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What are you talking about? The game I analyzed today was your most recent team game. Look familiar?

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On your last post, I analyzed the recorded game you uploaded. I’ve looked at both. Last time you complained about 1v1s, so I looked at 1v1s. This time you complained about TGs, so I did that instead. You don’t need the ad hominem attacks, I’m using the same game type you’re complaining about.

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You don’t know what I am talking about?

[The info was corrected later.]

I keep saying. You use multiple accounts to smurf on lower elos, you are automatically cheating and ruining games for the rest of honest player community. I don’t have smurf profiles and don’t have fake account ids unlike many ones. You see, I complain of my experience with cheaters. That includes early quitters. But the worst ######## are smurfs. They circumvent rules on elo to harass noobs or amateur players why? Because they’re given a free pass. And this is the uggly truth.

I will be posting games where I think there’s smurfing around. Do you expect for a smurf to say? “Hey I’m a smurf”. No obviously. But you can see through very great differences (eco especially) at the end of game stats. You will also see that a smurf will use hotkeys and race, a noob will take more time. Easy to spot differences, from who has more than 50+ games played.

There are cheaters on AO2 and yes they smurf and nothing happens to them. It’s completely unethical to allow smurfing - when it is clear sure - to go unpassed. When someone does something illegal, if there is no punishment you just create incentives for others to do the same or worse. Perverse but the true.

I’ve heard of players who stopped playing ranked because of smurfs constantly ruining their game experience. Unlike me they just did not voice the issue on the forums. So here you have your feedback that players are being trashed by game bullies or harassers. To the point that some people stop playing the game.

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Here is the gold count for your TG you played. If we sum up their team gold count, you get 15081 + 1024 + 20237 + 7040 = 43382. If you sum up your teams gold collection, you get 12261 + 11080 + 6067 + 12464 = 41872. They collected marginally more, and the reason Teal was able to collect so much is because they have actually practiced with their eco management, and know how to keep their TC running. More significantly, Green resigned, leaving Teal free to take their gold. So effectively they were collecting for both themselves and Green. So if you take your team generally collecting about 11k gold (I’m discounting you, because as an outlier, you only collected 6k), double that gives you about the 20k that Teal got. Nothing out of the ordinary here, they just made the most out of their team-mate resigning.

Actually, until they started pushing, their score was quite similar to your team-mates scores. Once again, your score was lower than average, so I once again suggest working to improve at the game.

Here’s how the scores are added up:

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So more than just eco will influence what you see. Besides, you handling your eco badly doesn’t make someone else a smurf.

Are you talking for you, or Teal here? From most recent to least recent, Teals TG results for the last 10 games are:

  1. Win
  2. Loss
  3. Loss
  4. Win
  5. Loss
  6. Win
  7. Loss
  8. Loss
  9. Win
  10. Loss

This gives them an elo graph like this

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Which isn’t the graph of a smurf, which would have longer win/loss streaks. It’s not too dissimilar to yours in fact, just over less time:
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This is indeed something we should be doing, just not in the way you think. We need to be fighting the actual cheating issues, because there has recently been a cheating software influx, rather than chasing down fall cries of wolf.

Then why haven’t you left if you fight so many smurfs?

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I apologize for the misunderstanding, that was before I realized you were talking about TGs. At no point in your original post did you clearly communicate this, and because your last complaint was about 1v1s, I assumed this might be the same. It wasn’t until I checked your match history, and found that you haven’t played any 1v1s in about 2 weeks that I realized.

That’s not something I care about or have control over, I didn’t make the site, I’m merely using the services they provide. If you feel that to be problematic, you can take it up with the developers.

You have no right to make these various personal attacks on the grounds of a misunderstanding. I’m somewhat trying to help you, yes, I am admittedly going about it in a way that doesn’t always make you look great, that’s because I’m annoyed with you complaining about smurfs when you’re unwilling to improve, but that doesn’t merit attacks like this against me.

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Just to tell you. It’s not @TheConqueror753 that is humiliating you here.

BTW If you accuse others of something (like smurfing) it’s YOU that has to bring evidence for that accusation. Otherwise it can be interpreted as slander.
And I think you are totally aware of this fact - that’s why you don’t even name the subject of your accusation.

@TheConqueror753 you are not here to guess whom he could mean with his accusations. He has to tell against whom his accusation is.

And if he can’t name at least one subject to his accusations he has no case and this thread can be closed because of hollowness.

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I’m very much against smurfing and cheating in any form, I just know that you aren’t encountering it, so it’s very much within my rights to shoot you down and disprove your wild accusations.

I’ll be honest, you really don’t, because you don’t have the skill required to recover in your games, or play at the level others might be, most people who beat you come off as smurfs. Sure, maybe they should be a few hundred elo higher than you, but they are definitely not 1600s. If they were, you would be dead by 20 mins, instead of taking an hour.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here, but you have actually played both with an against this player you are accusing of smurfing. Let me show you:
Against:

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And with:
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Notice how they don’t win both matches?

If you actually read my feedback, you would see this isn’t the case, and I actually know what I’m talking about.

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Thank you. I corrected the rest.