40% of ranked matches contain smurfs in Herald bracket

[shitzpickle]

Given that a 55% winrate is epic, these players should've left Herald a long time ago but they haven't...

I mostly play turbo and have complained about obvious (brand new, high skill) smurf accounts in there before. So, I figured I'd go back to ranked, where everything is supposed to be balanced, so that I didn't have to deal with the smurfs. Apparently, it's just as bad. So far, my sample size is small but I'll keep updating this list to see how the numbers change.

Ranked Matches Played: 13

Ranked Matches Containing Smurf Accounts: 5

Percent of Ranked Matches in the Herald bracket that contain obvious smurfs: 38.5%

Ranked MatchID: 6821708531

The 23/2/3 SF has only lifetime 888 games and a 22-streak and 79% winrate with Huskar, an 8-streak and 78% winrate with spectre, a 3-streak and 70% winrate with Troll Warlord, a rampage as Lifestealer, and a rampage with Ember Spirit.

Ranked MatchID: 6823234130

The same player as above went 33/4/10 with Void Spirit.

Ranked MatchID: 6822515390

The 23/1/7 Skywrath has only 335 lifetime games and a 100% winrate on all their best heroes, as well as a VAC ban and a game ban on file.

Ranked MatchID: 6823029374

The 21/7/20 Riki has only 305 lifetime games and a 100% winrate on all their top heroes.

Ranked MatchID: 6823111093

The 11/1/12 Doom has only 363 lifetime games and a 5-streak and a 75% winrate on BS, a 5-streak and a 85% winrate on shaman, and a 3-streak with a 100% winrate on doom.

[ixthid the desolate]

?

How are you so sure these are smurfs? Not everyone who beats you cause you are too bad to look at the minimap is a smurf.

You can keep blaming valve, stay low skill low mmr your whole life, never try to improve and just come up with excuses. Idk who you think you're fooling, but it's yourself.

Stay low mmr if you really want to. It's weird to complain that you're low mmr but do everything to stay there.

[Ragnoraok]

Originally posted by ixthid:

?

How are you so sure these are smurfs? Not everyone who beats you cause you are too bad to look at the minimap is a smurf.

You can keep blaming valve, stay low skill low mmr your whole life, never try to improve and just come up with excuses. Idk who you think you're fooling, but it's yourself.

Stay low mmr if you really want to. It's weird to complain that you're low mmr but do everything to stay there.

Your logic makes no sense. Expecting a Herald player to consistently beat smurfs whose real elo are Archon+ is absurd.

[Bonnie]

People so worried about "im a higher rank, i should have won" and not "i was outplayed by a lower rank"

Just because an imaginary number says ur the better player doesnt mean you actually are, not everyone is a smurf, and you probably arent as good as you think u are

[Absche]

And the solution for this finding is? In particular bearing in mind that the situation wasn‘t getting better after „the show of force“ update that made smurfing a banneable offense. In contrast, the situation seems to be worse than before. Because nothing really changed, the game design focused on total balance and „eternal climbing the ranks“ disfavoring higher ranked players is still the same.

[Ragnoraok]

Originally posted by Absche:

And the solution for this finding is? In particular bearing in mind that the situation wasn‘t getting better after „the show of force“ update that made smurfing a banneable offense. In contrast, the situation seems to be worse than before. Because nothing really changed, the game design focused on total balance and „eternal climbing the ranks“ disfavoring higher ranked players is still the same.

I agree. Even though Valve made smurfing a bannable offense, there are more smurfs now than ever. It seems like most of the remaining fanbase actively play on multiple accounts, and Valve is either unwilling or incapable to investigate individual accounts.

[George The Zookeeper]

Doom and riki are definetly not smurfs oither could be and could also have a good game

[Vahs]

yeah, full of scripting smurfs and boosters with new accounts often with multiple vac bans

[Absche]

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

Originally posted by Absche:

And the solution for this finding is? In particular bearing in mind that the situation wasn‘t getting better after „the show of force“ update that made smurfing a banneable offense. In contrast, the situation seems to be worse than before. Because nothing really changed, the game design focused on total balance and „eternal climbing the ranks“ disfavoring higher ranked players is still the same.

I agree. Even though Valve made smurfing a bannable offense, there are more smurfs now than ever. It seems like most of the remaining fanbase actively play on multiple accounts, and Valve is either unwilling or incapable to investigate individual accounts.

In my opinion it‘s not about banning more players at a low player count situation anyway but work on the reasons for smurfing. Why is playing at your main unattractive for higher ranked players?

[Pr3diction]

herald is the new archon. Deal with it.

[:)]

Weird how everyone loves to say 'bro not everyone better than you is a smurf.' Never, 'bro maybe you're actually right and they're smurfing.' Statistically, the latter is pretty common.

No one wants to accept that others can be correct anymore.

[:D]

Originally posted by Absche:

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

I agree. Even though Valve made smurfing a bannable offense, there are more smurfs now than ever. It seems like most of the remaining fanbase actively play on multiple accounts, and Valve is either unwilling or incapable to investigate individual accounts.

In my opinion it‘s not about banning more players at a low player count situation anyway but work on the reasons for smurfing. Why is playing at your main unattractive for higher ranked players?

That's easy
At their main Rank: everyone plays good, and getting your ass whooped by another player who is better than you feels bad ???

so they create a smurf and beat the heralds. to feel better about themselves and the heralds feel bad booohooo.

guess what heralds ? you will feel even worse at a higher rank :) cus you are herald

[Wygar]

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

I agree. Even though Valve made smurfing a bannable offense, there are more smurfs now than ever. It seems like most of the remaining fanbase actively play on multiple accounts, and Valve is either unwilling or incapable to investigate individual accounts.

Valve only informs that it tries to eliminate smurfing but in fact does nothing to fix the situation. I get smurfs every 2nd or 3rd match in 1,0-1,4k bracket. There is no ranked system anynore. In 1k bracket matches there are a bunch of 4k-5k players, guys that can block your movement with their movement and hit you almost at the same time or show some other insane skills that normally should not happen in 1k bracket (orb walking, high map awereness, cuting creep waves in a lost battle situation and lots of other stuff from high brackets). Valve does not want to solve or does not care about smurfing problem. It will not be fixed and the reason for that is pro scene. If you fix the mmr system then the pro scene would definitely not like that. I mean all those cosmic ego players would not like theiir 8k or some other absurdly inflated ranks to get decimented, would they ? Of course not.

Vary simple solution is to introduce seasonal ranking with actual rank resets or ranking system where a player with 100 matches would not be matched with a player with 1000 matches. There is a numer of solutions but Valve does not want that and will not do that. It will only now or then inform that a given patch "introduces fixes to eliminate smurfing".

[ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ]

Originally posted by ixthid:

?

How are you so sure these are smurfs? Not everyone who beats you cause you are too bad to look at the minimap is a smurf.

You can keep blaming valve, stay low skill low mmr your whole life, never try to improve and just come up with excuses. Idk who you think you're fooling, but it's yourself.

Stay low mmr if you really want to. It's weird to complain that you're low mmr but do everything to stay there.

Lol. are you arguing they are noob God gamers.
It's weird if the smurfs aren't on your teams at the same rate

[JedEyESunder]

you can't do that because valve is a real 3rd world REAL terrorist association who wants you to REALLY quit dota 2 so they can use an ai to REALLY steal your voice, your account, and even try to steal your identity with an ai that they developed to talk like you and to try to take loans out in your name and to blackmail you on a regular basis through dota 2 user statistics and whatever means of hacking they REALLY can commit, and then blame it on hackers and the community, and REally laugh at you while ur forced to commit to the
REAL garbage they REALLY create on an everyday 3rd world terrorist association and if you start to win agains their rigged bs garbage UNREAL stuff then they ban you for 30 days for no reason because they think its funny. and this entire scenario has allresady been recorded by many fellow valve members and is recordibly real to the point where people should worry about valve as a real third world terrorist association

[Absche]

Originally posted by :D:

Originally posted by Absche:

In my opinion it‘s not about banning more players at a low player count situation anyway but work on the reasons for smurfing. Why is playing at your main unattractive for higher ranked players?

That's easy
At their main Rank: everyone plays good, and getting your ass whooped by another player who is better than you feels bad ???

so they create a smurf and beat the heralds. to feel better about themselves and the heralds feel bad booohooo.

guess what heralds ? you will feel even worse at a higher rank :) cus you are herald

You may consider this:

• high ranked players have longer queue times only to meet ever the same guys in their matches
  
• Over thousands of matches their mmr gets cemented by the 50% algorithm; the longer you play, the more you are stuck and that in every mmr based mm (unranked and ranked)
  
• No regrinding chances to avoid stagnation because there are no real seasons in Dota2
  
• For a 60 min close match in Immortal you get the same reward in Dota2 than for a 20 min stomp in Herald. Your skills don‘t matter anymore once you have reached your skill ceiling. It doesn‘t matter at which rank you level out. A complete noob at 100 mmr gets the same reward than a 11.000 mmr Immortal. But with much less skill and effort.

Thus, as a good player it is nonsense to stick with your main once you are leveled out. The game literally leaves you only the choice to turn pro at tournaments, do boosting and/or smurfing, if you want that your skills matter or just leave the game. The game is build upon the idea of eternal climbing which looks like that from the perspective of low ranked players. But for players that could climb through all brackets three times a season this is not motivating. The game fails to provide motivation for good players to play on at their level.