Smurfing on RM team games must be addressed

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Since the last change on the ranked scoring system, the amount of smurf accounts that we (as a group of friends) have encountered on the RM TG lobby its just outrageous.

We mostly play ranked RM team games and we are on the 1750-1850 ELO bracket, not much but is honest work.

Before that update, when it came to play against smurf-based teams, if the other team had, let’s say, an 2400 ELO player and a 1200 ELO and we lost, we would only loose arround 4 to 5 points, which was acceptable. Now, we get matched against 3 smurfs, but somehow, the game thinks its going to be an even match to play against a 2400+, a 1890 and a 1200 and end up loosing the full 15-16 points.

I understand that there was a comunity scoring thing that they tried to solve with that update, but now, of the 10 latest matches, at least 8 of them were with some kind of smurf account on it.

I’ll try to upload a screenshot of the one of the three members of the enemy team, of course they obliterated us, and this thing is becoming everyday more common.

Smurf
Smurf748×54 4.02 KB

At least, the older system, prevented this to happend because high elo players wouldn’t risk to loose 28 points just for a 4 point victory…

If they are going to stick to this scoring system, they should at least, fix the matchmaking settings.

Sorry for bad english, this is my first post and im hoping that sooner or later these issue will be addressed properly.

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Very often, when you raise ELO points, 1/4 of the games are Smurf opposing players. Smurf accounts should be reported to avoid these bad times.

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Threads like this are made multiple time each week. Maybe even multiple time each day. That shows hoe big this problem is.

The old calculation was pretty bad. Ratings were completely terrible and I am glad they have fixed this. The new calculation is much better. But there is major drawback and that is that the system is easily exploitable for smurf and you can easily see this. Many premades have adopted to using smurfs. I feel like you can report them, but the devs aren’t really looking to these reports in my experience.

Instead of posting a new reply to these kind of threads I start quoting my own posts:

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I disagree. The new system encourages smurfing because the whole party gets the same amount of points, thus rewarding the player for playing with a “smurf” on the party. The old system wasnt perfect but in it the “smurf” account would level the elo much faster and the player playing with the smurf acc on it’s party would barely get any points and would lose a lot if he eventually lose.

I would totally accept right now going back to the old system.

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The new system (without smurfing) is much better. The old system was inflated. Team ratings said only something about the number of games you have played and not much about your skills. This is fixed in the new calculation. But now smurfs exploit this new system. That is a new issue that really needs to be fixed. I really hope that the devs will look into this quickly and fix the smurfing in some way.

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I fully agree now. XD
But since the mods have locked my thread exposing the exploiters I highly doubt that they will ever do anything about it for real.
Now it’s mandatory to have a couple of smurfs on your party to avoid getting people way better than you. :sob:

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The previous system had flaws and was poorly designed. This current system doesnt have the same flaws, but humans are flawed and therefore a good system gets abused. Really sad.

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I tottally get your point. The thing is that the new system encurages (or not prevents) the smurf exploit, so it doesnt exist without the smurfing.

I liked your ideas, i’ve seen systems as the one you mention in other games, such as limited elo differences, maybe thats a way to adress the issue.

I guess that for the time being, creating threads like this or even ones discussing possible solutions also reporting smurfing players is the only thing to do… and hope that the devs will fix this soon.

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You know that the moderators are a completely different team then the devs? The moderators have almost no impact on what the devs will do. So i cant draw the same conclusion as you. So i will have hope that the devs are looking into this issue.

Your thread is not close because the moderators dont like your idea. Your thread is being closed, because the moderators see your thread as calling people out and calling people out is forbidden by the rules. Personally i disagree with that opinion (I see your player naming as examples to illustrate the issue), but i can see why you can see it as calling players out. If i look at this thread, the user shares no names of players or whatever, so i can think about a reason why this thread will be closed.

The best thing to do is just to report all the smurfs and pray the staff will have a look at all the reports and ban these smurfs until there is a solution to this issue.

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Ever since more and more people are abusing the current system, I noticed quitters increased as well. People joining your team and leaving after 5 minutes. Forcing a defeat.
Do you think this is related to smurfing? I don’t want to sound crazy but it’s suspicious. The amount of points gained/lost can be exploited, it’s easier to manipulate the matchmaking to play against a smurf team in cahoots.

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Hard to say… there are occasions where the game straight up freezes and is completely unresponsive. Although this seems to occur without any pattern, so can happen in point of the game.

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