Since smurfing isn't allowed anymore...

[Hamsterpeek]

Valve changed their rules and smurfing isn't allowed anymore in their games. Saw some screenshots from dota2 woth people who got banned for smurfing. CS might follow.

There are plenty of reasons to smurf, some are toxic, some necessary. Like if you want to play with a friend who is higher/lower ranked you need to get a 5 stack or a acc higher/lower ranked. Also deranking duo to inactivity can result in beeing in a lower rank than you should. Valve should change these things to minimize smurfing.

Next to that since smurfing isn't allowed it would be cool if we could finally fuse our accs together. I've multiple accs since steam release because I owned 3 half life's because of my lan community where we bought them on mass together and after everyone got theirs two were left. I also created some accs later. One only to play with lower ranked friends in CS (instead of Supreme/Global it was against DMG-LEM) , one to test non prime and for a guide I wrote (no mm matches played in prime) and one for benchmarking PCs and laptops.

I think everyone has different reasons to have multiple accs. I myself always only played on two accs really and haven't even played on one of them for like 2 years now.

Valve could minimize the smurfing even more if we could fuse our accs together. Games we own, playtime, comments etc. all should be added to one acc. I'd fuse all 5-6 accs together, would make my time easier aswell. Of course we can now say "just play on one acc" but as I said I've different games on different accs and I'm kinda a statjunky. I never was a fan of leaving something behind. Same with World of warcraft chars. I would never delete a character but it would be cool if we could fuse chars of the same class together.

I'm quite sure valve won't do this but at least I wanted to share my idea, it would surely minimize smurfing. I honestly don't know which acc I'll use. I used one alt for mm as I said. On my main I only played faceit. It's all kinda confusing, I guess that's my inner monk.

I've posted it here and not in cs hub because dota2 is also part of all this and it's a suggestion/idea.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.

[Pscht]

If you want to play something with people of different ranks, find an unranked game mode, it's that easy.

[HikariLight]

Smurfing was NEVER allowed to begin with.
Valve has just finally said enough is enough and is going scorched earth on the Smurf accounts.

[ุ]

All fine and dandy until people who lose their accounts, lose them permanently because their account got fused/merged with the scammer's/a sales account.

[76561199540158642]

First off i don't think smurfing matters, if someone has a game and they want to start over on it whats the problem?

I play CSGO 2 it doesn't matter if your a smurf or a good player, or a cheater.

cause lots of cheaters get accused of smurfing, and lots of smurfers get accused of cheating, if you want a online multiplayer game that has zero skill level thresholds then just don't play online, play against bots.


also the thing about smurfing and free games is the games are free, how do you intent to stop people from making free accounts? on the other side of it, maybe if the people crying over smurfing players actually played and got better they there wouldn't be so much of a issue.


the biggest problem with dota and csgo, is the scripting it allows for functions to be combined in key configurations to automate actions which results in cheating.

the same goes with CSGO, remove the scripting disable the bots for online play and maybe just maybe smurfing won't be as big of a issue at you pretend it is.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

While I personally have used other accounts to play with friends who just started playing a particular game, I do it without the intent to play to win. I do it to have fun with friends and potentially guide them through learning a game. Once they are comnpetent, Ive switched back to my main account.

The vast majority of smurfs do not do that. They do it for easy wins and the dopamine they get from pubstomping beginners.

I applaud Valve for stomping on smurfs in return.

[ุ]

Originalmente postado por Golden Unicorn:

First off i don't think smurfing matters, if someone has a game and they want to start over on it whats the problem?

I play CSGO 2 it doesn't matter if your a smurf or a good player, or a cheater.

cause lots of cheaters get accused of smurfing, and lots of smurfers get accused of cheating, if you want a online multiplayer game that has zero skill level thresholds then just don't play online, play against bots.


also the thing about smurfing and free games is the games are free, how do you intent to stop people from making free accounts? on the other side of it, maybe if the people crying over smurfing players actually played and got better they there wouldn't be so much of a issue.


the biggest problem with dota and csgo, is the scripting it allows for functions to be combined in key configurations to automate actions which results in cheating.

the same goes with CSGO, remove the scripting disable the bots for online play and maybe just maybe smurfing won't be as big of a issue at you pretend it is.

Smurfs a lot of the time just queue into lower skill groups so they can troll/ruin competitive matches for lower ranked players.

And Steam does ban the main account of users caught smurfing in DOTA2, so there are real consequences for just making accounts willy nilly to bypass skill grouping.

[76561199540158642]

you should try the rush of pubstomping smurfs its much more thrilling


also there is no skill grouping in CSGO 2 unless you play ranked, as for dota 2 i only played if a few times years and i do mean "years" back and within the first few matchs i caught wind of scripting being used to auto trigger macro attacks instantly, turning the game into basic bot driven game where all you do it click to walk around and all the attacks are instant.

pretty stupid an boring i don't recommend dota 2 to anyone, also apprently there are scripts used to auto buy the best items / skills/ and its all automated.

[ุ]

Originalmente postado por Golden Unicorn:

you should try the rush of pubstomping smurfs its much more thrilling

Do that often on Fallout 76 do you?

[76561199540158642]

no csgo 2 maybe we should play sometime together, i am decent, no scripts or hacks here, anytime you wanna get a csgo 2 game lemme know.

[Tsubame ⭐]

I do not see the point of smurfing other than acting all mighty over ranking 1st in a match because you played with a bunch of newbs.

Is like a first tier team professional team being happy because they won against a local small town team.

You want to play with friends, play unranked.

[Hamsterpeek]

Originalmente postado por Leonardo Da Pinchi:

All fine and dandy until people who lose their accounts, lose them permanently because their account got fused/merged with the scammer's/a sales account.

It is easy to prove if someone is the real owner of the account.

Originalmente postado por Golden Unicorn:

First off i don't think smurfing matters, if someone has a game and they want to start over on it whats the problem?

I play CSGO 2 it doesn't matter if your a smurf or a good player, or a cheater.

cause lots of cheaters get accused of smurfing, and lots of smurfers get accused of cheating, if you want a online multiplayer game that has zero skill level thresholds then just don't play online, play against bots.


also the thing about smurfing and free games is the games are free, how do you intent to stop people from making free accounts? on the other side of it, maybe if the people crying over smurfing players actually played and got better they there wouldn't be so much of a issue.


the biggest problem with dota and csgo, is the scripting it allows for functions to be combined in key configurations to automate actions which results in cheating.

the same goes with CSGO, remove the scripting disable the bots for online play and maybe just maybe smurfing won't be as big of a issue at you pretend it is.

In the ESL we've personal ID verification since early 2005. It is a far stretch from ESL to valve but that could prevent smurfing (and cheating). A prime 2.0 mode could be added for that.

Also I'm not pretending that the smurf situation is big. You make this up just because I make a thread directed towards this topic, not more. I'm usually also called out for smurfing - even when I play in the highest ranks. My point is that I've no issue with smurfing and I don't smurf - also having multiple accs isn't automatically smurfing, since smurfing is "playing against people way below your level" and you could do that with your main / only acc aswell. Also ranks are not based on skill but based on round wins and thus there are a lot of MG's and DMG's who are better than supremes and globals. A lot of top tier pros are also only MG's and DMG's because of rank decay and because personal performance doesn't matter.

All I say is that valve should actually make clear the rules specificly. Such rules shouldn't be open for interpretation AND they should prevent false bans. If someone hasn't played for half a year and lost multiple ranks and he didn't lose a lot of skill, will he get banned for smurfing? How is valve looking into these cases? Is it only based on accounts? Based on ranks? Based on the skill difference of player? What if a pro player plays MM in the highest rank but he still reks everyone? There are many factors valve has to consider and they have to tell us their decision making.

My ideas are some solutions to reduce smurfing / clear things up from the players perspective.

Originalmente postado por Tsubame ⭐:

I do not see the point of smurfing other than acting all mighty over ranking 1st in a match because you played with a bunch of newbs.

Is like a first tier team professional team being happy because they won against a local small town team.

You want to play with friends, play unranked.

That's a "killer argument" people use to insult smurfs. People who use that argument makes it too easy for themself. The topic is much much deeper than that and it is quite disrespectful to put everyone into one group.

And that's the issue. As I said there are a lot of reason why people intentionally and unintentionally smurf.

My thread is also not about that. It's about how to prevent smurfing naturally with usefull systems. The first step alone is to remove rank decay. In valves theory they think people who don't play for 28 days should get a rank decay and play against lower skilled enemies when they come back. The reality is that people don't lose skill over time beside that their mechanical skill is rusky - but for that their mindset is reset. Also a lot of people who have a rank decay keep playing, many on faceit etc. and they even get better over that time. So rank decay makes no sense. Beside that as I said the rank difference between people is an issue aswell. It makes no sense at all. Both also are counter intuitive to what the community do since 1999: They play with friends of all sorts of skill groups. At IRC Quakenet times it was normal to play with 2 low skilled friends and 2 high skilled and you just searched mid skilled enemies then as a balance. Valves matchmaking system is actually doing this automatically already. No need to not allow people to play together. Same with rank decay. If you and your friend you play with have the exact same rank but the rank of one of you decays you can't Q together anymore. This has to be a bug they didn't even think about yet.

The account merging, the removal of rank decay and the rank difference Q issue should prevent a lot of unintentional/non explotable smurfing. If valve sets a rule they also have to explain the rules and change their systems so these rules can be applied to their new system.

Also I'll not even talk about the "killer argument" "if you want to play with lower ranked friends play unranked". That's on a whole different low level of conversation I'll not bend down to that level.

Edit: Also I know I write a lot and english isn't my native language thus it's a bit harder to read but people should really take care when reading and not interpret things. I mean. One person thinks I cry about smurfs, other people think I am a smurf. This proves that people don't read properly and interpret things based on their point of view.

I'm neither crying about smurfs nor am I smurfing. I want a mature discussion about the smurfing rule and how valve should/could work together with the community to naturally work something out and thus decrease it. If valve now randomly bans people because they're too good for their rank, had a lucky game or bans people for using alt accs but at the same rank level then that's plain stupid. Valve has to make specific rules and give the community a little push towards the right direction with systems and explanations.

[76561199540158642]

the issue with prime isn't that it stops the cheating, the issue with prime is the prime users simply learned to cheat better to not make it so obvious, the major issue is that scripting isn't part of vac banning, and people can even use it on some mouse settings that create auto fire type of scenario.

i personally would love to see the games have Zero Cheating in any of them, and have strict anti cheat that does not allow any type of outside modification or automated button or trigger type combinations.

a majority of the cheating would simply cease if button combinations where removed from the key bindings builds.

what it really sounds like is someone in steams higher ups keeps losing in dota 2 and is not seeking retaliation for the defeat. "likely blaming smurfing" when its simply just cheating thats being exploited where the cheater is better then the cheating steam higher up.

i see this type of cheater vs cheater every day on CSGO.

[Hamsterpeek]

Originalmente postado por Golden Unicorn:

the issue with prime isn't that it stops the cheating, the issue with prime is the prime users simply learned to cheat better to not make it so obvious, the major issue is that scripting isn't part of vac banning, and people can even use it on some mouse settings that create auto fire type of scenario.

i personally would love to see the games have Zero Cheating in any of them, and have strict anti cheat that does not allow any type of outside modification or automated button or trigger type combinations.

a majority of the cheating would simply cease if button combinations where removed from the key bindings builds.

what it really sounds like is someone in steams higher ups keeps losing in dota 2 and is not seeking retaliation for the defeat. "likely blaming smurfing" when its simply just cheating thats being exploited where the cheater is better then the cheating steam higher up.

i see this type of cheater vs cheater every day on CSGO.

This topic isn't about cheating.

Also I've played non prime as a test and the cheating there is much higher. Not even going deeper into it. If you think otherwise you A. didn't test it and B. your conclusion is counter intuitiv and not logical.

Please stay on topic. This topic is about smurfing, not cheating...

[76561199540158642]

many people consider smurfing a form of cheating so i am not sure there is much of a difference anyway.

you are talking about smurfing which is a skill based player playing a game with people who have no skill. which in itself is the essence of cheating.

where as more over smurfing players tend to cheat anyway so that is the next divide between the skill level ratio, your talking about a experienced player who is cheating, joining the game with unskilled first time players

as you can see the topics all relevant there is no reason to get bent outta shape

as i stated prime has a ton of cheating as well, but you wouldn't know it at first glance because the cheating is done by experienced cheaters who know how to not get caught. that is what prime did, it created a group of individuals who cheated cautiously to not trigger any type of ban so they wouldn't have to rebuy the game.

non prime is of course disposable so they cheat non stop , but even buying accounts that have prime show up on casual non prime matchs and yes i report tons of low level smurf and cheating accounts all the same.


i have seen talk about using the same phone number on different accounts can link them together, not sure something simple like loading alternate accounts on steam should link them together as well

[[N]ebsun]

I thought creating multiple Steam accounts was allowed ?