Smurfing is out of control!!!!

[Ragnoraok]

Over the last month, I have noticed an explosion of players who have fewer then 300 games and high winrates. These players are clearly smurfs, and I report them everytime yet valve never takes action. I estimate that on average there are at least 2 smurfs in my lobby, which ruins the quality of matches.

I have run into a duo (both of whom are smurfs), and I always report them, yet the game has put me against them 3 times.

Is Valve going to do anything to rectify this, because the game is imbalanced enough without smurfs exploiting the matchmaking to play pubstomp.

[Terente22CmRecords]

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

Over the last month, I have noticed an explosion of players who have fewer then 300 games and high winrates. These players are clearly smurfs, and I report them everytime yet valve never takes action. I estimate that on average there are at least 2 smurfs in my lobby, which ruins the quality of matches.

I have run into a duo (both of whom are smurfs), and I always report them, yet the game has put me against them 3 times.

Is Valve going to do anything to rectify this, because the game is imbalanced enough without smurfs exploiting the matchmaking to play pubstomp.

Nope, valve dont care get used to it, have fun.

[Ragnoraok]

Originally posted by Teemo B-DeFender:

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

Over the last month, I have noticed an explosion of players who have fewer then 300 games and high winrates. These players are clearly smurfs, and I report them everytime yet valve never takes action. I estimate that on average there are at least 2 smurfs in my lobby, which ruins the quality of matches.

I have run into a duo (both of whom are smurfs), and I always report them, yet the game has put me against them 3 times.

Is Valve going to do anything to rectify this, because the game is imbalanced enough without smurfs exploiting the matchmaking to play pubstomp.

Nope, valve dont care get used to it, have fun.

Getting used to it implies that the problem is fixed an unchanging. However, smurfing is steadily getting worse. I am getting games where there are 6 smurfs in my lobby. At that point matchmaking is meaningless since the smurfs could be anywhere in the MMR spectrum.

I also notice that Valve's matchmaking creates lobbies almost exclusively based on average match history, so the game will try to match 2 teams that have 1 player with 1000 matches, and 2 players with 12 matches. This systems ensures that you are guaranteed to have smurfs since if you get 1 obvious smurf with low match history, then the game will put another smurf as the opponent.

Valve really has no idea what they have done to this game. All of the changes introduced in 7.33 onward has set DOTA down a very bad path. Literally none of the preexisting issues have been fixed, rather they made those issues worse and introduced several other issues.

[RetentionBasedManipulation🤮]

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

At that point matchmaking is meaningless since the smurfs could be anywhere in the MMR spectrum.

Isn't ranked system always ridiculous for the past 10 years? Following the recent ban of 1/4 of player base who use overplus, boosters are getting busy because more accounts need to be be sold on website like Taobao. Usually they sell Ancient accounts.

The picture is, boosters plus account buyers plus smurfs plus overwolf/ overplus plus Valve's so-called "balanced" matchmaking system. And tbh this picture is as ugly as Shrik. That is why our match quality has been dog sht since 2014. You know, sometimes when I click that green button I cringe, but other games like WOW or LOL are inferior in term of fun. I guess the answer is play as few games as possible and pay the least money.

[Absche]

At some point they may start to reward playing on high skill level better than playing on low skill level.

[Sonnenbank]

Its indeed fact that in dota2 most matches will be absolute garbage most of the time.
thats unfortunately just the nature of human beings in 5v5 environments.

There is nothing you can do :(

out of 5 matches at least 3 will be garbage due to griefers , smurfs or cheaters on average.

[Scarrz]

Valve has no serious interest in preventing upper ranks from smurfing.
The minimal punishments for smurfing are seen as encouragement for players to smurf even more.
10 times more players smurfing now since valve expressed their lack of interest in preventing lower ranks form being swarmed.

So many new players are detoured away from Dota and many long time players have quit dota.

I honestly think this is Valves way of killing off dota so it dies out.
Dota dev's only continue to encourage players to smurf, Sad time for Dota 2.

[AIR]

Double Down MMR Tokens for Sale is the only proof you need about Valve not caring for a balanced matchmaking. This is a tool for Boosters and people that pay for Boosting.

What most people don't realise is that "Smurfing" is a vague term to keep people ignorant about the issue: the problem is not "a bad actor using an alternative account way lower or playing on a lower account to win": the worst boosting happens on Party, where some people of very high skill (using accounts they intentionally keep in the middle of the pack) groups up with people of lower skill, so they inflate the MMR of low skill people, which lead those people to perform like garbage when they play solo and drop.

It's a recurring business, and it's a circle: person A groups with a booster, gets higher mmr than the skill reflects, play with people of higher mmr and ruin games by just being bad, and then get boosted again.

Disallowing people to group for ranked with people that are way higher than they are - combined with mass ban waves to anyone that own more than one account - is one way to help solve the matchmaking.

Then the boosters come with the propaganda "But I want to be able to play with my friends, even if they are a bit high or a bit low", and people swallow the fallacy, when in truth high mmr people only group with lower mmr people when there is some benefit involved. Fair games, competitive games, you get on Immortal 1000 and even so, you get people so ahead the curve it makes in imbalanced.

What people don't get about Dota is that it is not about the balance of a single game, but consistency over a lot of games. Stop blamming the cards: Valve already said they are "Okay" with people boosting their mmr - they are even selling Double MMR tokens now. Either play the game for fun, join the people abusing the system or learn the game instead of complaining about things - not even the company - care about.

[..,_O]

RUBE

Originally posted by Ragnoraok:

Over the last month, I have noticed an explosion of players who have fewer then 300 games and high winrates. These players are clearly smurfs, and I report them everytime yet valve never takes action. I estimate that on average there are at least 2 smurfs in my lobby, which ruins the quality of matches.

I have run into a duo (both of whom are smurfs), and I always report them, yet the game has put me against them 3 times.

Is Valve going to do anything to rectify this, because the game is imbalanced enough without smurfs exploiting the matchmaking to play pubstomp.

RUBBEL RUBBEL RUBBEL ! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$