Solution to Smurfs/Elo ladder manipulation

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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The ladder is a mess. We have each Team with a smurf player who is using a -500 to -1000 elo point account via family sharing and point farming the other teams. We can also see how one player managed to reach 4000 elo with a smurf friend to prove just that.

The solution isnt to “change” how elo is calculated but to FIX the ladder abusers. In most games and other plat forms, each game copy bought (via steam) can be LOCKED via your MAC Address or other various system keys to insure EACH copy of game is played with ONE CERTAIN Account.

For example, if you get a VAC Ban on Call of Duty, not only you lose the privilege to play online, but all family sharing accounts get banned. Same can/should be implemented for DE. Each copy of game bought via steam or MS Store be locked with their account. All other accounts used via family sharing would have multiplayer disabled.

Same way the UDH Option gets disabled in settings for the family shared accounts. If this is done, there wont be a single person out there with a fake elo to help any one or fake the system. The team games will have players with their REAL ELO and ladder will slowly get fixed over time.

I also recommend resetting elo of entire game at the moment cause we have this:

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Even Vivi is using his 2nd account (his real one is 3k3) with an included 2k3 smurf who has 90% win rate. The whole concept of “I come with lower acc to have a good time with my friends” is just wrong.
I have done it too but now it has to stop since it is really destroying the community.

As you can see, the account being smurfed is obviously of a person who has a very different elo in the game but it abusing it. If this type of account is disabled from multiplayer, all the issues will be resolved.

This may be a difficult decision to stop all the 2nd,3rd or all smurf accounts but i believe it is what the game needs at this point. It will bring positive attitude and more balance without feeling cheated out.

14 Likes
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Permanent IP bans for the Smurfs will stop the abuse.

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Smurfing is not that common to really warrant further messing with a game codebase that already crashes all the freaking time. I’d much prefer all the crashes and lag spikes getting fixed…

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I dont really like the solution. If two players in a house wants to play the game, previously you just bought the game once and shared the CD. Family share is this kind of alternative. It is abused, completely true, but there isnt really a reason to let others not play by family share.

I much rather prefer my own solution, which is to adapt the elo code and the matching code a little bit, so you cant use smurfs to lower your average elo in team games.

If premade, then the elo of lower rated players is at least max elo of the premade minus some value, like 500. The above example is 39977 + 884, but this will count and match like it was 3997 + 3497. So it average becomes about 3750. As result they arent really able to abuse the system anymore.

Note, the number 500 is just an example.

Next to this, i would prefer stronger moderation on smurf account.

Most of the pros have smurf accounts. Pretty sure about that statement. Many lower rated players too.

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Exactly what you said just to save $10 but yeah let the entire community suffer. You do know in most games out there the CoD and more have similar restrictions? You can never use one copy of game with 10 different accounts and ruin every ones time. Sorry but i disagree and i think 1 copy = 1 account. If you have 3 people in one house, each should buy their own game. Because if you were 2k6 and your brother is 1700 elo would it make sense to use the same account? NO it would NOT.

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Dont you think you are overreacting a little bit? Yes, this guy is doing this, but it seems to be the only person doing it and just to prove a point - that the system is exploitable. But this doesnt happen in every game as you seem to indicate.

The case cited on OP definitively shouldnt exist and it has to be preventable in some way, shape or form… But I dont think punishing people that properly use the family sharing system is the best way to do it.

From the example posted, they could be doing it from their main account, couldnt they? Its not against the rules to team up with someone low ranked… If “fokin system abuser” continuously resigns / loses a bunch of games with another partner, this can go on forever…

Unfortunately TG Elo and the Winrates are a complete mess due to the inflation over 15 months. The average Elo is closer to 2000 than to 1000… This means that the average player will “smurf” his first 30-50 games until he gets to 2000. The slightly above average player can get to 2300 with a 85% win rate over 75 games and will need another 400 games to get his winrate down to 55%…!! Doesnt mean he is smurfing for 400 games… just that due to the inflation to get past the average Elo he had to play too much, creating a buffer that will last for a long time.

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What causes inflation? Please explain us that. (Hint: Smurfs point farming entire elo.)

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Actually they are manipulating the ranked system and that is forbidden, they should get those accounts banned.

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I’m confused as to why this is family share’s fault

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In the past you just bought one CD and everyone can play at his own turn. It is still the same with family share. So i wont blame family share for this issue. The base game cost 20 euro, the DLC 10 euro and the next DLC probably again 10 euro. So in total it is 40 euro. 3 people means an additional 80 euros, where in the past just 1 CD was fine. So not sure where the $10 in your post is coming from, but it is clearly much higher (or the game is much cheaper in $).

Why punish brothers or other players in the house for some smurfs. Take care of the smurfs, they are the real issue and you can punish smurfing without hitting the people in the same house.

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All the “solutions” you suggested are easy to circumvent. Despite what you seem to believe, smurfing is a hard problem to solve, and still a major issue in many AAA games.

Even if DE devs were able to enforce ranked to only 1 Steam account, people can still manipulate Elo by throwing games, or simply buy multiple accounts. The game costs 8$ right now on instant-gaming.

The only thing I see that could be changed in these screenshots is not to be able to queue with someone ~1000 Elo lower than you or so.

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I can see why you would want something like that but most of the players of this game dont play ranked games. There are a lot of families that do play together. Also the smurf things isnt common. Do you think its worth hurting a good bit of player by locking a game they have been sharing for a while just to stop quick smurfs? Second whats stopping people from just buying the game and using the other game to smurf or just picking up a lel to play team games with. What will have to be done is elo averaged to 3/4 of the combined elo with everyones elo cut by a set number over 1300. This would be a quick fix. It wouldnt be perfect but it could help

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Not really sure what you meant. Can you give an example of how your suggestion will work?

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lot of families play together?
Do you have stat? How do you know that?
and Smurf things not common? how can you get this statement?

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Just have a limit to the elo between teammates. If 2 friends want to play and have vastly different skill/elo level (example in OP) then thats not a ladder situation they should be playing on that’s a standard lobby they should be playing on. Smurfing is smurfing, the main issue is abusing the matchmaking between a team with varying elo.

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I don’t have a number as niether is tracked. I have ran across more family teams then smurfs.

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Basicly you have your 1000 and 2000 player right now they would play against 1500 instead you would play against 1750. Seems like a simple solution.

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I do think this might be a good solution. Matching an unbalanced team is already a challenge. So getting rid of these unbalanced teams is also a solution.

For these kind of teams you still have the lobby for finding matches.

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Family teams need more than one copy though. With family share only one account can be active, as far as I know.

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it’s not just one guy, i’ve seen and “played” (got my ■■■ kicked) against plenty of them.