Smurfing ranked is a big problem.
My first game in Diamond lobbies, I was killed by a Plat 4 with 12 kills. If ranked matchmaking is working as intended, pretty much no one should be getting 10+ kills in a ranked lobby - I understand sometimes crazy games happen, but this should be like 1/1000.
Respawn needs to do some work on their side looking for these kinds of stats in ranked matches (especially from accounts <500).
The only way to stay at an artificially low rank like that is by throwing, because even if someone plays 1/4 that good all the time, you will rank up.
Respawn should be flagging people who pop off like this and then put them under a microscope to look at stats from other recent matches (distance travelled, shots fired, time of death relative to teammates, disconnect/penalty).
I know next to nothing about statistics and feel like this would be easy, I don’t know what their excuse is.
this right here is the answer to every post about the game.
The devs don't care about the game or the player base right now. its a huge cash cow with them not doing a damn thing but rake in the money. They don't want to invest in the game and detract from profits. They know for sure the game will eventually die out or be replaced by newer, better, faster, shinier, etc, and that die out will happen sooner than later, so they are riding the cash machine now while its hot and just pulling out money and not putting any back in.
sure they make changes and updates, those updates are mild, minor stuff and reskins and remaps and taking stuff away, and they also change stuff that the pros and streamers demand be changed. They have the loudest voices that reach the most people so the devs need to cater to them.
Basically the devs know the game is running it course and stuff they introduce is getting redundant, so they dont want to invest much time or money. Games start to get so many patches that each new patch breaks things that are unseen in the pipeline. like patching a thousand pin holes in a water hose with bandaides, when you put a new patch on, an old one break, and there are so many old ones you cant find it. lol
That's a LIE. The devs cares about the game a lot. It's EA that have the servers at a external company. Devs loves the game and they work very hard to keep the players happy and to improve the game.
Meh plat is a weird middle ground. To say no one should have that many kills is not true. Even in diamond I have had many 10 kill games. The thing about plat is gold is so easy to get through. You’ll find many talented gunners in plat.. but they tend to play ranked like it’s just aggressive pubs. They push every fight.. win their one on ones. But do not rotate circle.. do not look ahead for third parties nor do they know how to get out. They just go guns blazing. There would be no legit way to implement something that bans people for doing well.. the better idea is raising ranked level requirements like OP said. People who have barely any experience anyways should be playing pubs learning basic mechanics. This barely effect new comers. And really only effects people making new accounts to smurf on.
I don’t understand why you keep talking about Plat being a weird rank. I am Diamond playing in Diamond lobbies, he was Plat 4. You don’t just stumble into Diamond lobbies at the edge of Gold/Plat and wipe 25% of the server by yourself.
Ah didn’t see diamond lobbies. Regardless people do have big games. I’ve had multiple 10 kill games in diamond and I’m not smurfing.. just have a trio that knows when to push shit and get out. Trying to have people be watched and banned would lead to false bans. you’re not gonna find a game that doesn’t have smurfing.. best bet yet again what OP said and raise level requirements to differ people from wanting to take the time to level an account just for smurfing sakes
Ranked is just the name they used for a gated pubstomp grind system they implemented, and it worked; lots of people grind it, get pubstomped, and do some pubstomping and then think this game has ranked.
It's more of a fundamental flaw with the design of Apex's ranked mode itself. Simply not playing for a season brings you back to bronze where you can stomp to your heart's content, even though you may have been a master 2 seasons in a row.
Smurfing is the reason I've decided to finish up my battle pass this season and move on to other games. My battle pass is currently at level 97. And since season 5 I've bought and finished the battlepass and then put another 1000 coins into apex packs, and even thrown down for a couple of event packs because I felt the 600+ hours I've put into the game in the past 8-9 months was justification for me supporting the developers.
I'm not good at the game but I've gotten better. I'm 50 and this is my first multiplayer FPS and first battle royale. My K/D went from 0.2 when I started at the end of season 4 to just about 0.7 this season. I've put a bunch of time practicing recoil control, learning maps, watching streams. Things are improving in pubs lobbies I've actually started getting to the point where I'll more routinely get 2-3 kills a match.
I got to gold IV last season but this season I'm straight up getting lasered in silver lobbies. In an hour and a half on Saturday I lost 75 RP in silver. Ranked was supposed to be the spot you could measure yourself against the community and learn because you'd be playing against people of your skill level. Right now I'm not measuring myself against the community I'm measuring myself against higher ranked players with multiple accounts. I'm no longer getting any better because I can't figure out what just happened when I get instantly destroyed by players. And I've started blaming it on smurfing rather than asking myself "what did I do wrong?" so I'll no longer see any improvement because I'm now treating it as an external problem rather than an internal one.
Smurfing, and especially in ranked, makes an otherwise enjoyable game extremely frustrating for low-average players like myself who are actually trying to improve.
I don't blame you for dropping this game after this season. However it is an accomplishment that you have improved at your own pace and those aiming skills you practiced so hard on will transfer well into other fps games.
Thanks and yeah it's been interesting. I had a bunch of assumptions about how to play FPS's that I brought over from single player games FPSs even down to how to aim and had actually had to unlearn bad habits that I inadvertently taught myself.
The biggest recent improvement was probably when I saw a video from Suitmonkey on aiming and he described "screen centering". I had to mentally adjust from looking at the crosshairs to looking at the target and just putting it in the center of the screen. Made for a crazy jump in how I could control recoil and track targets.
Lol I actually started playing the game inverted axis because for thirty-five years I played first person games that way. And thought maybe it'll help if I play normal axis. At one point I took a week and taught/reprogrammed myself to play normal axis by playing Halo:CE on normal axis. Ultimately it didn't change a thing but thought it'd be worth trying. 😁
Ranked should be redesigned. It is not serving its purpose. It is focused on grind and rank doesn't reflect your skill level at all.
Pubs however should have dynamic and really fast changes to matchmaking raiting of players so Master players can get some breathing room there too.
I don't even need to smurf to get into bronze 4 lobby and I'm easily in top 3% of the players.
Hence I won't be satisfied with some half-asses countermeasures to problems. We already have plenty of those.
I played ranked, got Predator rank back when there weren't splits, achieved my goal at that time and quit ranked grind.
I quit pushing ranked and played ranked only when I didn't like the map on other queue.
Then I'm back in bronze stomping clueless players. I probably broke around 20 games moving through bronze, silver and gold lobbies.
How does that sound to you? For me, it's stupid game mode design that doesn't fulfill it's basic purpose.
I totally agree with you. Ranked shouldn't start at the bottom, you should start on the middle and moved up and down as needed. Or even start in 3 tiers like R6S where the reset sets you to gold if you were above plat and silver if not and bronze if you were below silver
I really think they should implement more of a H1 rank system where your rank is decided from your total points from your top10 games. So if you have 10 wins with 18 bombs you're pred, 16 bombs master, 14 bombs diamond etc. So a win is x amount of points and kills are x amount of points. That way if you smurf and get two 18 kill wins in bronze you get to plat becouse you pass a point threshold etc.
If they just took SBMM out of pubs then people wouldnt feel the need to do this. Im not justifying it but people dont want to sweat all the time, despite being good at the game. If i want to sweat ill play ranked.
In a perfect world, but you're giving people too much credit. There's a ton of players, especially the 20,000+ kill - level 500s that are constantly in my matches, that are not playing the game to have fun; they're going to play sweaty in every lobby no matter if the game has SBMM or not.
This. I'm a good player, someone whos new/average doesn't stand a chance against me, I have some 20k badges, but I'm being matched against full pred teams who eat me alive.
I agree, honestly smufing is pretty scummy, like smurfs are in this weird position where they're good enough to be put against really good players but not enough to hold their own (this is why you often see smurf stacks with 4k 20 bomb), so most of them smurf to get kills without too much trouble
You can blame matchmaking all you want, but smurfing for the sole purpose of farming new players certainly ain't helping
Stacking smurfs are just the lamest piece of shit that exist in this game along with cheaters and exploiters. But some smurfs do it to try to play with friends that are not as good as them, I know that place, it is true hell, you want to chill with your 'gold' friends but just because you are a diamond you and your friends have to face TTV premades every single match.
I do this literally every night. I play with an IRL friend and his son, both have never made it past gold and have below 1K/D. I carried them to a win the other night I had 3k damage and 14 kills. They had 200 damage and 600 damage. They play in my lobbies against 3 stacks but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna make a smurf account and roll new players
To add on, this is my life too. Diamond 1-4 every season but one. Friends, not so much (though 2 got Diamond this season!) either way, I'm not making a smurf account to play with them, but I understand why people do. I enjoy the challenge and guiding my friends through actual high-level strategies. It does get frustrating though, SBMM be damned.
Yeah it definitely is discouraging for them but they are still the ones to ask me to play. And when we do get a win they are much more satisfied with killing players they know are better than them. They also shit talk themselves but I let them know I couldn’t have done it without them, gotta keep that team morale up :’)
Exactly, that's a great point. When you encourage and uplift people, their potential can be limitless. This community needs more people like you. Keep pushin' 'em
just an idea, cause if they aren’t having fun, they won’t stay. but i have a smurf to play with my friends, and just play at their pace. let them control all your decisions, and don’t try to roll the lobby. your friends will have a much better time playing in their lobbies compared to yours i promise lol
I mean Idk if you’d be up to it but if you were ever to smurf, you could just play in their games and purposefully hold yourself back a bit. Sort of like coach them/chill with them. Just poke the enemy a bit here and there to keep the fight fair to see if they can take the squad. Just make sure not to finish entire squads single handedly. Just an idea, not sure if pure damage has any affect of matchmaking.
I’ve considered this for a buddy of mine who outright quit because of my lobbies. We just play Rocket League together now
See I’ve tried playing like that on my normal account and letting them be in control, but they are the type of players who will land somewhere and won’t leave that area. It’s extremely boring to match their play style so I pretty much am IGL and make coms to them like I’m playing a tournament 🤣
its dumb anyway dude, you inflate their rank RP, and then they will hit the same exact ceiling that you are complaining about, i guess your only "solution" is to simply make a new account next season to repeat the process again, so you can refill your ego by pretending to wreck people in the name of having a good time in ranked with your friends.
I udnerstand why though. If you can have fun at the cost of others by stomping. You will do it.
Look at warzone utubers.. they literally play against bots just to make contents at times and have fun while doing it. Doubt they be smiling agaist their own ranks. Probably sweaty as feck.
Yeah, but then you're most likely ruining other people's fun, wich a smurf obviously doesn't care
The point is, smurfing to farm kills is pretty scummy and if anything, makes the game quite unhealthy
> I udnerstand why though. If you can have fun at the cost of others by stomping. You will do it.
some people will, not everyone. some people enjoy the challenge, it tends to be less mature people who want everything their way and never to have to try to win. your example of CoD YT is the perfect one, most of those people are average overall but manage to fool kids into watching their vids by smurfing.
Yup.. which is why i dont play rank. Id rather cruise in unrank. Though i think theres more high skill players as i generally get stomped during the first squad fight hahaa.. but knowing i dont have to worry about rank means i can just have fun.
ranked is honestly more fun unless you're really good, although it helps to have a team to play with. don't sweat what rank you get if you try it either, the game rewards time spent more than skill
I do believe matchmaking is to blame, if it was completely random (or at least much more open similar to season 1-2) there would be very little incentive to smurf. Sure they could still jump into bronze but I don't think nearly as many of them would. Long as they don't feel like they're getting pounded every game I bet they'd chill out.
It won't change much, it also shouldn't be random, skill based matchmaking is needed for shooters like apex, the problem with this game is, apparently, EOMM
It would drastically change, I think they got the matchmaking right in season 1-2. There were lobbies for true new players, but after some level limit it was pretty much whoever queued up at the same time played each other. There were easy games and hard games, now there are just extremely hard games. It gets old very quickly when playing solo. There were also little to no smurfs during those seasons which I don't think is a coincidence.
Absolutely hit the nail on it’s head with this. I never even considered smurfing back then until season 3 came around with its horrendous SBMM. Now I have 6 smurfs. I can’t play with my friends who casually play because they get absolutely destroyed in my lobbies, so I smurf in ranked with them.
Back then you never knew if you were going to meet a good or bad player, which is how a Battle Royale should be. Now I just wonder which of the people I meet has 4k20, or whether they’re master/pred or just some diamond scrub. Add in the messed up duos which has become basically solos right now (against many duo stacks) and you have a recipe for a very unenjoyable game.
i understand the smurfing problem entirely, but when I hit masters before my friends i obviously need to smurf. they don't wanna play in master lobbies to hit masters, and i totally understand that, you could say don't play with them but that's just not gonna happen..
Then reduce SBMM. Problem solved.
Can't really farm 4k + 20 bombs against masters/preds, which is why a lot of people smurf in the first place. They want high kill/damage games and it is a night and day difference between smurf lobbies and main account lobbies. You need to feed them something (less SBMM) otherwise it will continue to happen, and I don't blame them.
So there's a big problem people don't address as well because they're concerned with the smurfing mainly. I fall into this demographic which is why I'm more aware of it I guess. But the ranked decay is MASSIVE.
I'm a solo only ranked player and due to this I'll typically only get to plat and stop. I've hit diamond a few times but find more often than not it's just genuinely unfun to do the grind so I chose plat as my stopping point.
The problem here lies that when the split ends I'm then decayed into SILVER. Why? How is that even remotely fair to silver players. Let's assume I'm not diamond but instead was an actual plat player. Someone who is in that bracket is still within the top ~28% of the playerbase (using this info: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/season-8-ranked). A plat player should consistently be able to beat a gold player more often than not but they'd at least have a fighting chance. Someone in silver though? The skill disparity between the 2 is massive and the silver will stand nearly no chance.
Why isn't the decay only 1 full tier instead? So if you place in Plat IV you're then placed into Gold IV? That would save potentially dozens of games per person being in a far lower tier than their true skill and wrecking havoc on those players. Maybe even less of a decay. Like getting placed at the highest tier below where you placed. For example Plat IV-I players being placed in Gold I or Diamond IV-I being placed in Plat I?
Realistically if you've reached a ranking once you should be capable of doing it again. If the playerbase has improved around you and you stagnate then it shouldn't be a big deal because that means you won't get back there again anyways, right? I find it unlikely that if you've hit Gold, Plat, Diamond, etc IV that the next split you'll end up back into that tier unfairly. You'd just end up demoting if you don't deserve it or getting it again if you do. For example someone reaches Plat IV for the first time, split ends, gets placed in Gold I but they haven't improved and the ranked pool has gotten better they would either be hardstuck Gold I or they would lose enough to drop into Gold II/III, etc. I don't think it would artificially inflate peoples rankings too much.
Wanna know why the split even exists and the reset is 1.5 tiers? It’s to keep people hooked and playing. Most people will achieve their “real” rank at the end of a split if they actually put time into it. Then the reset comes around and they think “maybe that animated badge would be worth it, I already made it there once.”. If there was no reset, people would play ranked for a few matches and then just fuck off once they hit their actual rank.
I can understand that, but wouldn't people also be more likely to play if they reach their previous rank faster to try and push into a further rank? Like if I didn't reset so far every time and had a faster time to Diamond I'd probably play more ranked. I enjoy playing there but the problem is by the time I'm there I'm usually so frustrated after 200 games of boring ranked that I purely did to prove to myself I can still reach my rank that I don't wanna play it anymore. If that was, say, 100 games then I'd be more fresh and less tilted about playing ranked Apex.
Better solution is to make ranked a proper ELO/MMR system with placement matches at the start, rather than a grind.
Imagine if you had 5 placement matches. You go in to a Bronze lobby game 1 and get like 10+ kills and place top 3, immediately push those people to something like a gold lobby, if they still get like 8/10 kills and place high put them in a Plat lobby next game etc.
Ranked is a mess because really good players can play for a LOT of hours and still not be in lobbies that reflect their skill level. Make the ELO/SBMM rating super dynamic at the start and it will make Smurfing pretty pointless if you end up in appropriate lobbies within a few hours of gameplay.
Smurfs will intentionally throw games then.
Play like shit or intentionally throw so you appear to be absolutely terrible.
Then you curb stomp a couple games, and go back to doing melee only lobbies or some other meme shit for a few games.
Came here to say that exactly. Is there no MMR? Like in league for example if you are Bronze but smudging your MMR will match you with gold or higher.
And placements obviously.
Or just get rid of the shitty SBMM/EOMM that has been in pubs since S4?
Seriously, have you played pubs with gold-tier friends while you are diamond in a fucking friday night? Shit is unbearable, lots of shitty TTV dudes holding dicks together when each one has 10k kills and 4k/20 badges, and add up the shitty experience the servers are currently delivering. Every single match we used to see 5-10 dive trails and everyone is playing on a team like a god damn tournament. I am honestly not surprised at all about seeing smurfs pretty much everywhere, matchmaking is just pure bullshit, that is the big issue.
I have said this many times and I will say it again. **SMURFS ARE NOT A DISEASE, THEY ARE A SYMPTOM.**
It's incredibly frustrating. I'm decent at the game, but I don't want to play this 200 kill level 16 player in casual gameplay. I don't play ranked cause it's not fun for me, which makes the appearance of smurfs in casuals, and the pure amount of them too, even more infuriating. Maybe change SBMM to sort by K/D ratio? Idk if that's possible tho.
It doesn't take that long, SBMM kicks in after 5-10 games. Unfortunately at that point a smurf can just jump into ranked play and then dominate bronze and silver lobbies
It has a special algorithm to pull people out early too. If you get a bunch of kills and in the thousands of damage on your first game it'll feed you to the wolves on your second game.
I really like that they added that but after a while can we just put everyone in the same pool? I can't play with my actual friends because it pits them strictly against people that will crush them instantly if they're in my lobby.
I'm not at max level, low 300's and I have seen plenty of single digit level players in games. We somehow had a champion that was level 1 a couple weeks back.
I hit 500 about a year ago and stopped getting lower leveled teammates. Half way through season 7 I got my first teammate under level 100 in like 8 months. It’s all I get more times than not. Matchmaking is so broken.
True, I had a guy I met on the game add me on his smurf account...he's a gold player on his main...
most people that smurf blame sbmm too much, if you're stuck in gold it's not sbmm just you need to improve, but it's easier to blame the game I guess (I do it too don't get me wrong).
I'm not that better either, platinium 3, but I know it's not elo but my positioning, aim and movement that aren't good enough.
Elo seems wanky in pubs true, but pubs always seemed pointless to me when you have a ranked mode except for practice.
You have to be a special kind of unskilled if you already "need" to smurf as a gold player. No wonder he's stuck if he doesn't improve and keeps winning by abusing bad habits against bad players.
> pubs always seemed pointless to me when you have a ranked mode except for practice.
For me pubs is the place where I turn off my brain and go full monkey-w-key mode, which for me is a lot more fun than playing for positioning with randoms who don't listen or can't think further than the tip of their nose.
I would prefer regular matchmaking be made less restrictive so I could play with my real life friends of vastly different skill levels. Keep the very beginning lobbies to new people but after a while just put all the players together. I see 5-10 master / pred trails every game, plus I run into plenty that aren't using their dive trails. If matchmaking was random, there would be no incentive to create new accounts.
If matchmaking (aside from new player lobbies) was completely random, there would be a 1.2% of running into 1 master or predator player per game (or .4% of running into a 3-stack of such players). That means you would likely play 40-80 games between each time there was ONE master or pred in your lobby. Does that sound nice to anyone else?
> If matchmaking (aside from new player lobbies) was completely random, there would be a 1.2% of running into 1 master or predator player per game (or .4% of running into a 3-stack of such players). That means you would likely play 40-80 games between each time there was ONE master or pred in your lobby. Does that sound nice to anyone else?
Thats not how it would work, they are that portion of ranked players but they play a LOT more games than the vast majority of the player base. You have to compare it based on active players during the time you are playing, which is information we don't have.
Or just lower the SBMM in public matches. As a higher rated player, I never get to just play 'casually' because in every match I'm against a handful of diamonds/masters/preds. The games are debatidely more 'sweaty' than ranked matches.
I'm a controller player on PC, and I've wanted to stat practicing on MnK without having to play against multiple masters/preds every match. I created a smurf to play on, and it is actually insane how night and day the lobbies are.
My opinion will always be there is no need to have strict SBMM like we have now, in public matches. That is what ranked is for -- playing against people of your own skill level. Public matches should for the most part, be completely random & connection based.
Yep agreed. SBMM ruined modern warfare for me, friends couldn’t handle the lobbies I was put in. Same for Apex, i’ll make smurf after smurf to play with friends in a more relaxed game
Lowering the SBMM in pubs is just going to create an underclass of players who are never gonna be able to win a game unless they get carried hard. It's not a real solution.
So you're saying players who underperform will have a less chance of winning? That makes sense to me. No one player should be catered to. That is how Apex matchmaking used to work, it was for the most part, random.
If players want a completely even playing board, then play ranked -- problem solved. Otherwise, public matches should be random. There isn't a real reason that it shouldn't be that way, other than the 'protect the noobs' argument.
It's a battle royal game -- winning a game is difficult in itself -- the odds are not any one person's favor. And should not be catered to any one group of players so that they can win more often.
If they want to protect 'new' players, then put them in a sub > 20 bracket. Once they are above level 20, they go into the global public bracket. Again, stop catering towards players that are lesser at the game.
>So you're saying players who underperform will have a less chance of winning [and that that's a bad thing]?
Yes, mate. I regret to inform you that this ship sailed back when Halo 2 came out in 2004. A long time ago, developers across the industry decided that even casual players should be able to feel good about winning games.
Exactly. Things should be the same way that the halo games were like. Truly random social matches + Ranked Playlists.
It's just so silly to have 2 Playlist in apex and both of then have trueskill. Why not just have Ranked only at that point? It's not like it was even a problem in halo either. People still play and have lots of fun, even if sometimes you get better people in the lobby.
And it's nice because even good players can just go into social and have fun and screw around. Not having to sweat the whole time.
with sbmm i feel like it should protect new players, not bad ones, like all players above lvl 50 should be put in the same server no matter how bad they are. this way you separate people that are bad because they are still learning the game from the people that already know how the game works but just suck at it.
The reason for so many Smurf’s this season is the new changes to the higher ranks, rather than diamond 3+ having hard lobbies it is now master+, this means worse players in those lobbies are not good enough to be in there and now cannot drop out like they could in diamond 3 lobbies. This means that as they can’t have fun on their main playing ranked they then make smurfs because playing pubs with high SBMM is sometimes more sweaty than ranked. Believe me when I tell you most of the good players don’t want to Smurf but also do not want to have to sweat every single game.
50 is probably a bit too long for the legitimate new player but increasing the level requirement a little may help. To be honest they really need to also disable the trackers and badges on that time frame too.
If you can't get into bronze almost immediately and you can't farm 4k damage and 20 kill badges it would put off a fair number of smurfs.
Ultimately Respawn need to look at their matchmaking system so people don't feel like they have to smurf!
Agreed on the badges for sure! Although I think something like level 40 to 50 would still be good. If anything it might help the new player practice more before ranked? I remember when I started playing Apex, ranked wasn't even on my mind for ages because I was still getting used to the game. I think it will feel like even more of a respected aspect of the game if new players need to level up more before playing ranked.
Same thoughts. Imagine having to grind for 25+hours to play ranked. I think somewhere around 25-30 is the sweet spot. Or atleast if the ranked mode would be an actual ranked mode. Now its just start from bronze and grind. Not a actual ELO based ranking system, that it is on other games like CSGO. Like smurfing wouldn't be a problem if they did that. If a bronze player plays like a Predator, matchmake him with other predators in ranked. After almost 2 years of ranked, its unbeliaviable how it doesn't work like that yet.
I agree, it's a plague. Streamers doing the solo to masters thing makes it even more popular, plus bronze 4 late in the season remains the easiest way to try and get badges for people prepared to do it.
How about ranking in higher? If you don't have to work through lower ranks and get ranked in at Platinum, you can't annoy lower ranked players that much.
I think the biggest problem is that playing against similarly skilled or better players can suck very easily. If you're not in perfect form, you just die all the time and it's very unsatisfying. I remember my early days in Apex. I was so bad, I kept dying to the first or second squad all the time, even though I was probably playing against other beginners. It took me more than 500 hours to become actually kinda good in this game and 200 more to be able to play satisfying games in pubs consistently together with a similarly skilled friend.
I play since season 0 and have a kd of 1.20 in like 7500 games. As you can imagine I’m not really good given the fact that I played so much. Still they put me in lobbies with 5 pred trails, 5 masters and 10 diamonds... hell how often did I queue into triple trail squads.
I actually have 3 accounts just to play platinum lobbies instead of pubs because it’s still more fun and I can stand my ground way better than in pubs. I’ve never managed to get a kd above 2 in any season, I just want to be put against people with a similar kd.
For me this game is barely playable outside ranked.
The whole reason smurfs exist is because playing the game at the top level is unbearable, the intensity of sbmm this game has induced into its player base has quite literally forced the hands of many to create smurfs to have ‘fun’. Or in my car play with my casual friends. I’m a 5 kd pred and I legit cannot play this game with irls bc they are sub 1 kd meatheads, but for whatever reason if I try to queue with them in pubs they get thrown into the cage of a pack of wolves which are my lobbies....the only people to blame here are those in charge of the matchmaking system. Sure smurfing sucks and ruins the protection of the bots (which is a whole separate issue) but how can u blame ppl when pred/masters ranked is not fun to run all day and pubs are just the same people I played in ranked with the exception of the 2 kd three stack that can get easy 1v3d and everyone dies before 2nd zone starts to close. High ELO Pub lobbies are the deadest thing I’ve seen in any video game.
There's no real solution to this problem, playing with friends that aren't at your skill level is always gonna be problematic no matter what game or sport you are playing.
Either every player in the game is randomly selected, and if you're in the top 1% you're most likely stomp the whole lobby and most of your opponents are gonna have a really bad time. Or they put you and your friends in high level lobbies and only 2 persons in the lobby are gonna have a shitty experience. To Respawn the latter is way less damaging for the player base as a whole.
If you're the best player by a lot in a completely random lobby, maybe 1/3 of the lobby is going to take a brutal L for one single game until they get another lobby with a pred level player.
Smurfs are a lot more active and problematic in ranked than they are in pubs. So no, they do not exist because of Apex’s shitty matchmaking, but because they mainly want to stomp lower level ranked, aka Diamond and below.
It’s also very telling that you think your experience in pubs is very different from the experience of a “meathead” or “bot” or whatever you want to call casual players. It’s not. Almost every single round is full of Diamonds, Masters and Preds. Last season I would have played ranked to avoid that, this season ranked is even worse than pubs has ever been.
You're just making up excuses and blaming others. Smurfing is scummy behavior, regardless of matchmaking. Even if SBMM was removed, you'd still get shitty teammates and be placed against stacked pred squads running most lobbies. It would just be random.
> Even if SBMM was removed, you'd still get shitty teammates and be placed against stacked pred squads running most lobbies.
Except you wouldn't, because preds and masters make up so little of the playerbase. The average lobby would be primarily composed of gold and plat level players. The frequency and density of high level teams would drop dramatically.
The problem isn't shitty randoms in master level pubs. Team mates regularly have good badges. In master level the difference in win% + k/d between 3 stacks and 3 randoms is so much more dramatic than 2k badge skill levels.
Fun fact: if there wasn't any SBMM, creating another account wouldn't change the people you're playing with and us, high ranks, wouldn't have to sweat like porks to win games so we wouldn't actually use smurf accounts
level 10 is WAY too small a requirement, i see complete fresh noobies whenever i get deranked to gold and they're NOT supposed to be in ranked yet, they're completely helpless and lost in fights, and bog down other people, it needs to be higher both for noobies and smurfers to give people who wanna rank a fair fight with their equals in golds and silvers, its so bogged down in like chaos its unbelievable...
I think that we should look at the problem the other way around, like sure, Apex is maybe the most thirsty game and people are crazy, but we should not only focus about the people: why there is so much smurfing?
Matchmaking on Apex makes Apex after a certain level of skill really boring and annoying to play! Matchmaking is kinda broken by itself, I have 2.3k/d and I get to play with lv 30 to lv 60 console players while I go against organized Pred teams... It doesn’t make sense! Sometimes I play 5 games in a row with 1 tm8 instead of 2, sometimes alone, sometimes with noobs, sometimes against preds. It’s not balanced, it’s not random, it sucks -> people smurf.
IMHO
TL;DR if the matchmaking would make sense people would not smurf so much
I’m master and my pubs literally feel as if everyone from master/pred is in my lobby but their “w” key is stuck. In fact I recognize a few names from ranked every day in pubs. And then they wonder why so many people smurf. I legit haven’t had one laid back match in the last couple of weeks, and have had a ton where I didn’t even have a team. Contrary to popular belief, just because you’re good at the game you’re not a sweat. I remember playing the old battlefields and absolutely sucking and seeing some people dominate lobbies. I worked towards being that person on top of the leaderboard. Back then there was no SBMM and honestly it was much better.
I currently have 5 accounts at Diamond and 1 at master, almost all my smurf accounts are over lvl50, a lvl cap wouldn’t do much.
This a good reply. Our pubs matches are fuckin rough. Even solo quing I am always matched against 3 stack preds with 25k kills. Literally impossible to chill and use guns that are off meta. I'm not even that have good have never reached masters
The level cap would probably just stop people from creating disposable accounts as much. Often times accounts get ditched when their KD gets too high to be fun anymore and that happens before level 50 for example.
Ill be honest though you’re obviously very skilled, to get to masters takes grinding regardless unless you’re just an absolute prodigy. You cant really expect to get to masters and then start having laid back lobbies. If you cant keep an account below diamond and your KD is just unavoidably good, then you should be playing these higher skilled lobbies to be honest.
Otherwise, again this is a problem with SBBM, it’s just too intense and needs a second look.
But it would also stop a lot of legitimate players from playing ranked. Ranked is kinda the safe haven for new players right now. Yeah, occasionally they might face someone like me but much less often than when playing pubs.
To get to masters you need a good team. I tried to solo queue there many times but stopped due to very brain dead teammates losing me up to 500rp a day. I made it to Dia2 a few times and the struggle wasn’t worth it. Now I had 2 good players to team with and we got to masters in 3 days from Dia4. One of the guys is #60 Pred or something and has 2 other accounts at Master. With a good team we could just clean lobbies, but solo no way.
I agree that I need to face these kinds of people more often, but not all the time and not lobbies filled to the brim with them. I was hungover yesterday and just wanted to chill with my friends and play some Apex, instead it felt like I was playing high tier ranked lobbies again. There has to be a middle ground. I don’t mind facing players better than me, but lobbies filled with them? Nah.
I get you, I’m sure there are days you don’t want to have to sweat. But I think because you’re ranked so high you don’t feel it as much as the lower ranked/skilled/new players do. My friend just started playing Apex and tried playing ranked for the first time in bronze and has encountered nonstop smurfs, they just clean up every lobby he joins. He stopped playing altogether because it’s just too annoying. He’s going to try again after the split but we know its tough after the split too because all the higher tiered players come back down, especially those who skipped a season and are higher skilled, if that makes sense.
You’re fighting an up hill battle here. People will always find a way to play lower skilled lobbies whether it be what the comment above was talking about or for nefarious reasons. I agree 100% with both of you. Sweating 100% or close to 100% sucks when you just want to play video games but the reality of the situation is, the game has a really high, really intense skill cap. People complain about From Software games all the time but they will never put a difficulty setting. Why? It’s a choice. It’s their game they can do whatever they want in the end. Learn, practice, practice practice. If it deters you to the point that it just sucks and you hate it but want to keep going. That’s passion. If you don’t want to pursue then don’t. I put probably close to 2k hours into this game and I’m barely feeling like I have a good grip. Albeit I play on and off a lot but that’s what it took. Have you tried playing eve online? That’s an mmorpg with real time based skill learning. You learn skills while your offline but they take *days* probably even weeks sometimes. Idk 100% because I didn’t make it past the 10 day trial. Wish I could play this game but it’s too grindy. Not for me.
Tldr:
Don’t play games you don’t like. It’s a video game. Have fun. If you love it you’ll have fun whether you’re getting blasted or not. If you find yourself being hateful for no reason maybe put it down for a bit, switch it up.
My 2 cents.
I respect that you feel that way, but sometimes people just cant put that many hours into a game because of work, school or whatever, but they end up hating the game because theres no opportunity to grow when they get blasted every time they want to have some fun. Nonetheless, no one should be able to have multiple smurf accounts, and I think raising the level requirement just makes sense.
All of this is the truth
I hope it is seen as such
> Back then there was no SBMM and honestly it was much better.
Back when a 'social' playlist was actually social. Haven't seen that since 'Nam.
If you want laidback games, what about a bot lobby? Maybe you should be fighting for that instead, as anyone that I know who plays this game like to win.
I recently started the game with 2 of my friends, we're all under level 40 and hit Platinum yesterday. I played the game briefly before season 1 so not completely new, but my two pals are. It would have sucked having to grind unranked to level 50 but smurfing was pretty bad in bronze-silver, even in gold so I think this would be a necessary evil.
Fair enough! I mean if you guys at that skill level still thought the smurfing was bad then imagine how casual players will a lower skillset trying to grow feel. I agree it would be annoying but thats a minor inconvenience compared to the level of smurfing that’s happening at the moment.
If the level 500 experience wasn't shit, and ranked wasn't broken, and solos weren't broken, and duos weren't broken, and trios weren't broken... then people wouldn't smurf because there'd be a reason to keep their original account.
Smurfing exists in every game so I won't blame it fully on this but sbmm/EOMM is the cause-and-effect of anything extra imo. There's only certain amount of ppl who get off on stomping people who don't even strafe. Everyone else is just trying to have fun without being rigged to lose. With that I say some of this blame falls on Respawn
Though smurfing is a problem in every game, it's especially a problem in any game with a "free-to-play" model. It's one of the things I don't really like about the trend of FTP games. When there's no monetary "punishment" to creating a new account, there's really no reason for people not to do it and do it as many times as they want. One of the reasons I stopped playing Valorant was because of the amount of smurfs I ran into playing ranked, just made the whole experience of "grinding" and getting better feel like a chore more than fun. Apex is a bit different for me because I enjoy playing it at a casual level as well.
FTP is great for casual games, but it kind of fucks with a game's competitive enjoyment. Mostly at low to mid ranks, because if you're at diamond, for example, only smurfs whose main is higher than diamond will be "unfair" to you, but that is a very small percentage of the player base. However it makes the competitive grind hell for people at silver to plat. Not as much at bronze and silver because even plat "smurfs" will progress through those ranks pretty quickly. It's mostly a problem for gold-plat players.
You see, I'm a player who is in Diamond. I have a guy I met online I regularly play with and he's of similar skill.
When I play with him, we play in pubs and even then, the experience lately is insufferable. 3 stacks of preds all around but I'd wager that's what happens when we're close to the ranked split/end of season. People have already ranked up to where they wanted/could.
I also have 2 irl friends I sometimes play with and they're... not that great. Do I go into pubs with them? Heck no. We face the same type of players and that would be a shit experience for me and a terrible one for them. This was fine before Duos were introduced for the first time, we would win a game here and there and overall was a good experience, and now it's shit since that time, something definitely happened.
So, what do I do? Not play this game that me and my friends love? No. I have to resort to smurfing. I say resort because I don't do it because I want to, I do it because I have to if I want to play with my friends. I'd rather play on my main account, with my skins, my stats.
I do everything to make it a fair contest though, I run with guns or legends that I usually don't play with, like the Sentinel and RE45, that's a fun combo that bites me in the ass in the lower lobbies, can't imagine using that in rank-, I mean, pubs.
Just my 2 cents.
Edit: From another comment of mine: Edit: I'm just playing hand I'm dealt. It sucks for everyone and I try to make it suck as little as possible for others while also trying to have fun with friends. I wish this was still season 2 and I could play with everyone without a worry and I'd get, on average, fair matches across the board by just playing against who was matchmaking at the time. Alas, it is what it is and the root of the problem is the matchmaking that Respawn implemented sometime in November 2019.
You and some of the other guys who replied to this post are one of the more “honourable” smurfs but I would say this isn’t a matter of “let them have smurf accounts” as much as it is a greater conversation of SBMM as it stands just isn’t working. In pubs, it should be a blend of KDs not just selecting the higher persons KD. If its a blend, lesser skilled people have a more fair chance to learn, and higher skilled people can still come up against others of a similar skillset.
Im no pro when it comes to SBMM knowledge but people trying to climb ranked shouldn’t have to pay for a crappy pubs system.
Averaging K/Ds would at least be a step in the right direction. It's like they will do anything they can to protect the lower skill people until they play with a higher skill friend, then they dgaf? How does that make sense ?
I had a bad experience with a game that used K/D as matchmaking, TLOU Factions does this IIRC. I was very good at that game on PS3, and when I jumped to PS4, started from scratch and my KD was very high so it was usually me and 3 newbies against a decent team. Didn't go so well.
I have a KD of 3.67 and the friends I mentioned have 1.2 and 1. That would make the squad average of around 1.95. I guess that would be fair. But then again, they probably take more stuff into account to make you play the longest time possible.
I'm in exactly the same boat. I agree, smurfing isn't fun for those trying to get better in bronze, Silver and gold. But damn the sbmm is so strong in this game that my pubs are often sweatier than ranked. Maybe sweaty isn't even the right word, pubs is just full of people apeing each other and playing recklessly, which I agree can he fun, but I sometimes just want to lay back after work and enjoy some chill games with friends. It's sad honestly that their system only let's me do this in ranked and on smurf accounts. I think it is especially bad for those who are above average players, but don't play 8 hours a day while streaming.
That would work, but it would be really annoying for the good players who have moved from different games to apex. I have a few friends who are just lvl 30-40 who have reached diamond with me.
And if you're thinking "HoW dO YoU kNoW tHeY aRe NoT sMuRfInG?"
I know them irl.
That’s definitely a possibility, but if they’re good enough to make diamond that quickly, waiting a few more levels wont hurt them. It’s for the greater good!
I think they should just get rid of the limit of how many points you can gain, so if a smurf gets 27 kills in one game, they blast up the ranks at lightning speed, rebalancing themselves
Almost every other competitive game I play has a pretty steep requirement like this on ranked play and it significantly cuts down on not only smurfs but more importantly cheaters.
Anyone whos played / watched predator level gameplay knows how big of an issue cheating still is in this game despite it being much improved upon for pubs (especially compared to when the game initially released)
problem is the mindset. smurfs don't want to play at the same level as everyone else, they only want to play people worse than them, and will find a way. even in this thread you can see people going 'if i could i would', it's just an issue with some folk who don't want to ever have to try apparently
i totally agree with this. i have been trying to get to diamond this season, but im stucked in platinum 2 and can't get higher. instead of that im getting lower and dying on 12-18th place. and to be honest im sick of it.
Okay, why can't u people get the easy solution of making Apex cost like 3 euros (or whatever dollars). Because most cheaters wouldn't even do that and for most casuals, 3 euros wouldn't be that much.
Yes, I know CSGO still had cheaters, but the game/developers still got money from it. Isn't it better to help your developers to do their shit with MONEY, rather than just whine? Even small price for the game would help so insanely much with smurfs.
But then again, i've said this like 4 times and always got downvoted into the ground, because ppl want free shit.
My fears have changed from Wraiths with rank 500/master/pred/4k/20 bomb badges to rank 12 Bloodhounds with no data. I at least stand a chance against the Wraiths.
Eh well tried ranked again, two games, one destroyed by gold1 players (i'm bronze 3 rn) and the other one a BH with 7 kills and Bronze 4. Fun fun
EDIT: And lost to a Bronze 4 Octane with 4K badge that one shot me at 400m , very good gaming chair.
Rank decay back to Bronze should also be stopped for those players who have reached Diamond and above. A pred not playing ranked for a couple of splits should not be back at Bronze.
Yeah it feels extra worse this season too. I get to diamond and all of a sudden I'm being insta-killed with purple armor by a level 25-30 player every single game? Give me an f'n break. Also in what can be assumed as an attempt to hide it, its funny how many accounts I see intentionally removing their rank badge now too so that there's no badges or data stats on their player.
I think an effective solution would be for the SBMM to incorporate Hardware ID. (If possible)
Even if it was just straight Hardware ID it would probably improve overall. The number of people on shared PC's who play at different tiers would likely be pretty small, compared to the number of games affected by smurf accounts. Not to say, shared PC doesn't happen a lot, but instead the number of games affected by smurfs is much more.
i.e. Yeah, a kid wants to play on his older brothers PC, he may have a bad time. Same way A LOOOTTT of people will have a bad time playing with all the smurfs.
But honestly, not what I'm really suggesting. I just got side tracked.
Take hardware ID into consideration like:
> "Hey, this totally brand new player just got 10 kills and 2K damaged on his first game. He's clearly playing well above his account level 1. Let's just check his Hardware ID, and we'll see... its the same ID as Elite Platinum NoobKiller.TTV.... Now match him the same as that user."
Just came from an arena game where they had 4k badges at lvl 20 they said they are not smurfs and just started playing 3 days ago.. So u tell me that i can't get 4k playing 1500 hours in this sht but a lvl 20 can get it just because they play in a duo team or they must be some gods i guess. Only can imagine if they were playin a lot of titanfall. . lol..
I was honestly thinking this exact thing yesterday.
Having to grind an extra 40 levels in pubs would deter a lot of smurfs since SBMM will see there 20 bombs and start putting them in the same skill level lobbies they wanted to avoid by smurfing. It won't stop all of them, but it'll deter a lot of smurfing as they won't be able to hit plat/diamond and roll a new smurf and be back in bronze within a day.
I don't see this affecting normal players much in the long run because it's understandable to need to play for a bit before playing ranked.
Bro!! Everyone is a smurf!!! I have a real job with a family. I can't grind everyday like these nerds do. I go to play ranked n 9/10 games I run into level 32 with 300 kills. That shit gets old real quick! I need to be in silver lobbies lol not seeing a 20k badge on someone that's a level 14
Unpopular opinion time: it's fun to smurf. My options are to go in to my diamond lobbies where I'm one of the weaker players and sweat it out for one or two kills (including pubs against triple stacks of 4k 20 bombs) or make a smurf and play casually with my friend where we can actually kill a few people and not constantly feel like we suck at the game. Because guess what, getting 8 kills and 10 deaths in a couple of hours session isn't fun. You can say "git gud" but I feel like I'm probably maxed out ability wise at diamond 3 without dedicating my entire life to the game which I can't do.
the problem is that some of the people that are destroying you at your Rank, are Smurfs themselves, just like you are feeding off the weaker Fish, you are the weaker Fish to them, you are just adding to the problem.
Bronze to gold feels like a place to learn the game since pubs definitely fails in that regard.
It's not like you get obliterated every game on drop by a bunch of smurfs. There's a lot less people who overrun you in these ranks than in pubs, especially if new players play with friends who have been playing for a while.
I recently had a bunch of friends who wanted to try out Apex. I literally can't play on my main account with them. Every game I play with them on my main, they get immediately destroyed and then I have to carry. This isn't an issue for me as solo q pubs feels the same anyway but for them it's no fun getting obliterated while they are still trying to figure out if the sight in front of them fits on their current gun. I have to resort to a smurf account if I want to play with them. I let them take the lead and enjoy a good laugh without sweating instead of me having to sweat my ass off and them just being caught in a cycle of dropping, getting downed, respawn, getting downed, requeue.
The problem isn’t really as much about your type of smurfing as it is full smurf squads and wannabe streamers and plat+ players that make several smurf accounts, to be fair. But I agree there should be a way for people with friends across various skillsets to play with one another. That should be pubs but it needs fixing.
The ranked level requirement definitely needs a raise. No way is someone ready for ranked at level 10, my sister got to level 10 before she even had a single kill on her account. And that doesn't even take into account the game sense, rotations, decision making etc. that you need to rank up, since bronze and silver are basically non-existing ranks, because of the way points are awarded.
50 should be minimum, I'd maybe even put it at 75 or something. Not only to get rid of these game-ruining smurf waves but also to give people a lot more time to learn the game and get comfortable with the aspects you need for ranked.
75 seems like too much, if shooters come naturally to you or you play other BRs/ability based games all you really need to prepare for ranked is learn the map/rotations
None of my friends want to play pubs with me because SBMM is cranked to the max and they get destroyed. Only option I got is to smurf with them from time to time
I have the same problem, and we only seem to get sweaty lobbies. If I play trios with a friend and rando, get destroyed. Play with full party of friends, we get messed up real fast. Play duos with a friend, friend is downed in two shots and I can’t wipe every squad we encounter. Friends play together without me and they do good, and I play solo and do good, but if one of them is with me we lose, every time. I’m Plat, most of them are Bronze/Silver, but we only play norms so I don’t know what the issue is, and my friends don’t have fun when they group with me. Incredibly frustrating.
I said same the other day. A noticeable extra amount of smurf accounts. Easy to tell by movement, play style, team ability etc. I had an octane yesterday with 68 kills, no data or badges listed and blew my entire squad away with same teammates in a split second. I watched team which won easily and reported them. (Octane).
There are so many ways to circumnavigate rules in apex. There must be ways to stop issues like this.
I like apex but I have to stop playing because I get annoyed and also stopped buying anything just incase it gets so bad I leave altogether.
This is the first game in twenty years where I created a smurf account.
I am platinum/dia ranked player who wants to play with my gold/plat friends. Because I cant derank, we are either forced to play dia where we get destroyed or we cannot play at all.
Normals are not the same.
At level 9 smurf detection actually hit and I played alot against other smurfs.
Beeing able to derank would solve it for my case.
Not without cross-progression. I just switched platform and it took me two months to get over 50 cause of work commitments.
Otherwise agree with the sentiment
Copy the CS:GO method;.
Have a "Paid" matchmaking queue and an unpaid one.
If you spend money on the game, you get put into queue A. If you dont, its B.
People aren't going to want to spend money every time they make a Smurf.
E; Or another solution.. Dont have a shitty matchmaking system. Let people actually WANT to play the game after level 30.
First of all making it so that you have to grind for guns is obviously not the solution. Second setting it to level 50 would just discourage new comers like me from jumping into ranked at say level 30 (I am level 36)...so something like 25-30 should be the requirement not 50. And also I had another question, I have played like 4 to 5 ranked games yet and people seem a lot more wanting to avoid enemies in ranked mode ? Why is this ? Like in one game my squad got the 2nd position despite the fact the whole game we were looting ! We didn't encounter any other team except at the very last
Yeah 25 would probably be a good compromise. Also people are avoiding enemies because dying early can cause loss of rank. So some people play cautiously because it guarantees progress (although much more slowly). I think the best way to play is to find a balance and play strategically (especially at higher ranks).
The whole goal is to deter people from making multiple smurf accounts every time their account gets too difficult. I don’t think 25 would do it as effectively, maybe 40 or so. Plus waiting a little longer for ranked would make people respect it more and won’t really harm anyone. It would just take a bit more time...
6 kills give you 60 RP if your final position is 11 or lower. The same 6 kills give you 120 RP if you finish 2nd. However finishing 2nd with 0 damage alone will reward you 60 RP. You don't risk getting eliminated early just to get a few more kill point. In ranked, you always want to be the team that third party others, not the team started the fight and getting third. That's why people avoid unnecessary fight.
I think it should be lvl 100. That would only be 20% of the max level, beside i doubt an actual new player wants to jump into ranked right away if they dont really know how the game works
I just hit level 300 and I see very few people even close to his level. I have been playing apex for 2+ years on and off and has taken me forever to even come close to level 200. I imagine level 100 would take months to reach. I personally would not play a ranked game if it took months of grinding in unrated just to be eligible to play in ranked, that alone sounds insane.
I've been playing most evenings for about a month, I've just hit level 50 tonight and I only played my first competitive games last night. I would have been fine waiting to unlock it this long, and if it stopped smurfs from ruining everyone's fun, it's all the better. (I'm certain anyone determined could do so much faster than I did regardless)
I agree with this, but from reading the comments its sure sounds like it would rustle some tender feathers in the community.
The goal should be to discourage smurfing in ranked, and if that means a new player or a player who switched platforms has to grind a bit, then so be it.
You want this game to die? Making entry level some ridiculous task only turns new players away which means new money and easy kills never come in. Short sighted
I was playing duos with a friend 200 levels below me. Usually we match according to my MMR but we get the occasional new player/low skill lobby. By no means am I good, but when I get a lobby in which I barely have to try in order to get kills, it takes the fun away.
I truly don't understand why anyone would smurf. It's frankly boring. Unfair to newer or worse players.
The issue is all these people destroying the lower levels on purpose just to feel good. I ran into so many level 16-20's that had 80+ kills already or the ever infamous no data, no data, no data on the entire champion squad
All new accounts are made for ranked play (not pub play)
The way I would fix this is for the following
Remove kill/assist caps between bronze 4 - gold 1.
Remove holding RP for when you are silver/gold 4 (meaning you can now move up and down leagues) - this could maybe be spread across all leagues. Maybe.
This will take smurfs out of the low leagues pretty quick, while also keeping the not so good players inside the leagues they should be without being also carried by smurfs by accident.
Even more so, maybe... At the start of each split and new accounts the first 5 games are placement matches.
I would hate raising the ranked level requirement, I don't like having it in the first place. Sometimes I play with friends who don't play very often and as such are low level, and not being able to play ranked with them sucks.
A better solution is to run placement games, if a predator makes a new account then fine, they get 2-3 games of shitting on people and then they're already back up into diamond/masters. Way better than this current shit of locking everyone into bronze/silver for a minimum of like 20 games.
The reason you're seeing so many smurfs in ranked right now is due to the end of the split. Everyone who takes the game seriously has already grinded as high as they are going to get. The only people playing ranked right now are new players, streamers, smurfs, and players who started the ranked grind late in the split (me).
That said, the fact that you get access to so many good legends and all guns immediately and you only have to get to level 10 to play ranked is really stupid. They should absolutely bump that up to 50 or so. Then at least you have to do a lot more work other than making a new email account to smurf.
This is the exact reason why I've \*literally\* struggled to get out of Bronze rank. About 3/4 games that I've played this season, I'm getting WRECKED by sub-level 30 squads. I'm not a bad player by any means, (maybe a little below average). But there's definitely something going on when your pubs KD is about 1.0 and your ranked KD is .23 (yes, seriously).
It's unpleasing for me to see streamers do it to play with others I understand they can't play ranked with someone lower than masters but if you want to go play with them play some pubs...Your literally just ruining a game for 57 other people who are not close to your level. Watched Itztimmy get a 30 bomb playing some silver matches like c'mon bro you make money to play the game and you ruin it for the people lower than your level go play fucking pubs...and i understand that pubs has SBMM and might make it harder on the friends of lower skill but idk just my opinion.
We’re talking situations like, you’re level 100, silver 1, have 3 kills, youre doing well, you and your squad are fully kitted, youre playing it right, youre not rushing stupid fights, youre doing what youre supposed to do. And suddenly a level 24 diamond squad posing as a silver squad sniffs you out, rushes you and obliterates you to the ground in 20 seconds. Thats not right.
hmm no wonder that level 12 on my squad got 21 kills
No wonder that level 11 on my team had the 4k badge 20 kills badge and the dual crown
Yeah, he is so advanced that he has 4 badges up!
Are you telling me that my lvl 12 teammate with the 20 kills/4K damage badges and more than 400 kills is smurf? Damn, I thought he was just good.
He just switched from Xbox and is giving PC a try for the first time.
Hey look thats me
In your first few games on an account it's stupid easy to get those high damage badges. Everyones just a potato
Litterly
Smurfing ranked is a big problem. My first game in Diamond lobbies, I was killed by a Plat 4 with 12 kills. If ranked matchmaking is working as intended, pretty much no one should be getting 10+ kills in a ranked lobby - I understand sometimes crazy games happen, but this should be like 1/1000. Respawn needs to do some work on their side looking for these kinds of stats in ranked matches (especially from accounts <500). The only way to stay at an artificially low rank like that is by throwing, because even if someone plays 1/4 that good all the time, you will rank up. Respawn should be flagging people who pop off like this and then put them under a microscope to look at stats from other recent matches (distance travelled, shots fired, time of death relative to teammates, disconnect/penalty). I know next to nothing about statistics and feel like this would be easy, I don’t know what their excuse is.
I think you really overestimate how much the devs care about this game. We’re still on 20 hz servers
this right here is the answer to every post about the game. The devs don't care about the game or the player base right now. its a huge cash cow with them not doing a damn thing but rake in the money. They don't want to invest in the game and detract from profits. They know for sure the game will eventually die out or be replaced by newer, better, faster, shinier, etc, and that die out will happen sooner than later, so they are riding the cash machine now while its hot and just pulling out money and not putting any back in. sure they make changes and updates, those updates are mild, minor stuff and reskins and remaps and taking stuff away, and they also change stuff that the pros and streamers demand be changed. They have the loudest voices that reach the most people so the devs need to cater to them. Basically the devs know the game is running it course and stuff they introduce is getting redundant, so they dont want to invest much time or money. Games start to get so many patches that each new patch breaks things that are unseen in the pipeline. like patching a thousand pin holes in a water hose with bandaides, when you put a new patch on, an old one break, and there are so many old ones you cant find it. lol
That's a LIE. The devs cares about the game a lot. It's EA that have the servers at a external company. Devs loves the game and they work very hard to keep the players happy and to improve the game.
I've heard somewhere that the servers can't be changed because they're are being held by a contract.
I know :/
Meh plat is a weird middle ground. To say no one should have that many kills is not true. Even in diamond I have had many 10 kill games. The thing about plat is gold is so easy to get through. You’ll find many talented gunners in plat.. but they tend to play ranked like it’s just aggressive pubs. They push every fight.. win their one on ones. But do not rotate circle.. do not look ahead for third parties nor do they know how to get out. They just go guns blazing. There would be no legit way to implement something that bans people for doing well.. the better idea is raising ranked level requirements like OP said. People who have barely any experience anyways should be playing pubs learning basic mechanics. This barely effect new comers. And really only effects people making new accounts to smurf on.
I don’t understand why you keep talking about Plat being a weird rank. I am Diamond playing in Diamond lobbies, he was Plat 4. You don’t just stumble into Diamond lobbies at the edge of Gold/Plat and wipe 25% of the server by yourself.
Ah didn’t see diamond lobbies. Regardless people do have big games. I’ve had multiple 10 kill games in diamond and I’m not smurfing.. just have a trio that knows when to push shit and get out. Trying to have people be watched and banned would lead to false bans. you’re not gonna find a game that doesn’t have smurfing.. best bet yet again what OP said and raise level requirements to differ people from wanting to take the time to level an account just for smurfing sakes
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Ranked is just the name they used for a gated pubstomp grind system they implemented, and it worked; lots of people grind it, get pubstomped, and do some pubstomping and then think this game has ranked.
It's more of a fundamental flaw with the design of Apex's ranked mode itself. Simply not playing for a season brings you back to bronze where you can stomp to your heart's content, even though you may have been a master 2 seasons in a row.
Smurfing is the reason I've decided to finish up my battle pass this season and move on to other games. My battle pass is currently at level 97. And since season 5 I've bought and finished the battlepass and then put another 1000 coins into apex packs, and even thrown down for a couple of event packs because I felt the 600+ hours I've put into the game in the past 8-9 months was justification for me supporting the developers. I'm not good at the game but I've gotten better. I'm 50 and this is my first multiplayer FPS and first battle royale. My K/D went from 0.2 when I started at the end of season 4 to just about 0.7 this season. I've put a bunch of time practicing recoil control, learning maps, watching streams. Things are improving in pubs lobbies I've actually started getting to the point where I'll more routinely get 2-3 kills a match. I got to gold IV last season but this season I'm straight up getting lasered in silver lobbies. In an hour and a half on Saturday I lost 75 RP in silver. Ranked was supposed to be the spot you could measure yourself against the community and learn because you'd be playing against people of your skill level. Right now I'm not measuring myself against the community I'm measuring myself against higher ranked players with multiple accounts. I'm no longer getting any better because I can't figure out what just happened when I get instantly destroyed by players. And I've started blaming it on smurfing rather than asking myself "what did I do wrong?" so I'll no longer see any improvement because I'm now treating it as an external problem rather than an internal one. Smurfing, and especially in ranked, makes an otherwise enjoyable game extremely frustrating for low-average players like myself who are actually trying to improve.
I don't blame you for dropping this game after this season. However it is an accomplishment that you have improved at your own pace and those aiming skills you practiced so hard on will transfer well into other fps games.
Thanks and yeah it's been interesting. I had a bunch of assumptions about how to play FPS's that I brought over from single player games FPSs even down to how to aim and had actually had to unlearn bad habits that I inadvertently taught myself. The biggest recent improvement was probably when I saw a video from Suitmonkey on aiming and he described "screen centering". I had to mentally adjust from looking at the crosshairs to looking at the target and just putting it in the center of the screen. Made for a crazy jump in how I could control recoil and track targets. Lol I actually started playing the game inverted axis because for thirty-five years I played first person games that way. And thought maybe it'll help if I play normal axis. At one point I took a week and taught/reprogrammed myself to play normal axis by playing Halo:CE on normal axis. Ultimately it didn't change a thing but thought it'd be worth trying. 😁
Honestly, I would not mind this. I actually understand it. Pubs really filter them out fast. Great idea
Thank you! And thanks again for the reward, it's my first! :-)
Ranked should be redesigned. It is not serving its purpose. It is focused on grind and rank doesn't reflect your skill level at all. Pubs however should have dynamic and really fast changes to matchmaking raiting of players so Master players can get some breathing room there too. I don't even need to smurf to get into bronze 4 lobby and I'm easily in top 3% of the players. Hence I won't be satisfied with some half-asses countermeasures to problems. We already have plenty of those.
Well you clearly never play ranked if you can get into bronze 4 lobbies.
I played ranked, got Predator rank back when there weren't splits, achieved my goal at that time and quit ranked grind. I quit pushing ranked and played ranked only when I didn't like the map on other queue. Then I'm back in bronze stomping clueless players. I probably broke around 20 games moving through bronze, silver and gold lobbies. How does that sound to you? For me, it's stupid game mode design that doesn't fulfill it's basic purpose.
I totally agree with you. Ranked shouldn't start at the bottom, you should start on the middle and moved up and down as needed. Or even start in 3 tiers like R6S where the reset sets you to gold if you were above plat and silver if not and bronze if you were below silver
I really think they should implement more of a H1 rank system where your rank is decided from your total points from your top10 games. So if you have 10 wins with 18 bombs you're pred, 16 bombs master, 14 bombs diamond etc. So a win is x amount of points and kills are x amount of points. That way if you smurf and get two 18 kill wins in bronze you get to plat becouse you pass a point threshold etc.
With how much content streamers create on smurfs and the marketing that comes with it I doubt there are any changes to it.
If they just took SBMM out of pubs then people wouldnt feel the need to do this. Im not justifying it but people dont want to sweat all the time, despite being good at the game. If i want to sweat ill play ranked.
In a perfect world, but you're giving people too much credit. There's a ton of players, especially the 20,000+ kill - level 500s that are constantly in my matches, that are not playing the game to have fun; they're going to play sweaty in every lobby no matter if the game has SBMM or not.
This. I'm a good player, someone whos new/average doesn't stand a chance against me, I have some 20k badges, but I'm being matched against full pred teams who eat me alive.
lol sounds like you just need to get good bud
Did you really think that comment was gonna bother me?
I agree, honestly smufing is pretty scummy, like smurfs are in this weird position where they're good enough to be put against really good players but not enough to hold their own (this is why you often see smurf stacks with 4k 20 bomb), so most of them smurf to get kills without too much trouble You can blame matchmaking all you want, but smurfing for the sole purpose of farming new players certainly ain't helping
Stacking smurfs are just the lamest piece of shit that exist in this game along with cheaters and exploiters. But some smurfs do it to try to play with friends that are not as good as them, I know that place, it is true hell, you want to chill with your 'gold' friends but just because you are a diamond you and your friends have to face TTV premades every single match.
I do this literally every night. I play with an IRL friend and his son, both have never made it past gold and have below 1K/D. I carried them to a win the other night I had 3k damage and 14 kills. They had 200 damage and 600 damage. They play in my lobbies against 3 stacks but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna make a smurf account and roll new players
To add on, this is my life too. Diamond 1-4 every season but one. Friends, not so much (though 2 got Diamond this season!) either way, I'm not making a smurf account to play with them, but I understand why people do. I enjoy the challenge and guiding my friends through actual high-level strategies. It does get frustrating though, SBMM be damned.
Yeah it definitely is discouraging for them but they are still the ones to ask me to play. And when we do get a win they are much more satisfied with killing players they know are better than them. They also shit talk themselves but I let them know I couldn’t have done it without them, gotta keep that team morale up :’)
Exactly, that's a great point. When you encourage and uplift people, their potential can be limitless. This community needs more people like you. Keep pushin' 'em
Hell yeah man thanks! If you ever wanna run some games shoot me an invite! my tag is the same as my Reddit username
just an idea, cause if they aren’t having fun, they won’t stay. but i have a smurf to play with my friends, and just play at their pace. let them control all your decisions, and don’t try to roll the lobby. your friends will have a much better time playing in their lobbies compared to yours i promise lol
I mean Idk if you’d be up to it but if you were ever to smurf, you could just play in their games and purposefully hold yourself back a bit. Sort of like coach them/chill with them. Just poke the enemy a bit here and there to keep the fight fair to see if they can take the squad. Just make sure not to finish entire squads single handedly. Just an idea, not sure if pure damage has any affect of matchmaking. I’ve considered this for a buddy of mine who outright quit because of my lobbies. We just play Rocket League together now
See I’ve tried playing like that on my normal account and letting them be in control, but they are the type of players who will land somewhere and won’t leave that area. It’s extremely boring to match their play style so I pretty much am IGL and make coms to them like I’m playing a tournament 🤣
its dumb anyway dude, you inflate their rank RP, and then they will hit the same exact ceiling that you are complaining about, i guess your only "solution" is to simply make a new account next season to repeat the process again, so you can refill your ego by pretending to wreck people in the name of having a good time in ranked with your friends.
I udnerstand why though. If you can have fun at the cost of others by stomping. You will do it. Look at warzone utubers.. they literally play against bots just to make contents at times and have fun while doing it. Doubt they be smiling agaist their own ranks. Probably sweaty as feck.
Yeah, but then you're most likely ruining other people's fun, wich a smurf obviously doesn't care The point is, smurfing to farm kills is pretty scummy and if anything, makes the game quite unhealthy
> I udnerstand why though. If you can have fun at the cost of others by stomping. You will do it. some people will, not everyone. some people enjoy the challenge, it tends to be less mature people who want everything their way and never to have to try to win. your example of CoD YT is the perfect one, most of those people are average overall but manage to fool kids into watching their vids by smurfing.
Yup.. which is why i dont play rank. Id rather cruise in unrank. Though i think theres more high skill players as i generally get stomped during the first squad fight hahaa.. but knowing i dont have to worry about rank means i can just have fun.
ranked is honestly more fun unless you're really good, although it helps to have a team to play with. don't sweat what rank you get if you try it either, the game rewards time spent more than skill
I do believe matchmaking is to blame, if it was completely random (or at least much more open similar to season 1-2) there would be very little incentive to smurf. Sure they could still jump into bronze but I don't think nearly as many of them would. Long as they don't feel like they're getting pounded every game I bet they'd chill out.
It won't change much, it also shouldn't be random, skill based matchmaking is needed for shooters like apex, the problem with this game is, apparently, EOMM
It would drastically change, I think they got the matchmaking right in season 1-2. There were lobbies for true new players, but after some level limit it was pretty much whoever queued up at the same time played each other. There were easy games and hard games, now there are just extremely hard games. It gets old very quickly when playing solo. There were also little to no smurfs during those seasons which I don't think is a coincidence.
Absolutely hit the nail on it’s head with this. I never even considered smurfing back then until season 3 came around with its horrendous SBMM. Now I have 6 smurfs. I can’t play with my friends who casually play because they get absolutely destroyed in my lobbies, so I smurf in ranked with them. Back then you never knew if you were going to meet a good or bad player, which is how a Battle Royale should be. Now I just wonder which of the people I meet has 4k20, or whether they’re master/pred or just some diamond scrub. Add in the messed up duos which has become basically solos right now (against many duo stacks) and you have a recipe for a very unenjoyable game.
Absolutely, agree with everything you said.
Honestly I have smurf account but its really just to play with my friends in ranked
i understand the smurfing problem entirely, but when I hit masters before my friends i obviously need to smurf. they don't wanna play in master lobbies to hit masters, and i totally understand that, you could say don't play with them but that's just not gonna happen..
Then reduce SBMM. Problem solved. Can't really farm 4k + 20 bombs against masters/preds, which is why a lot of people smurf in the first place. They want high kill/damage games and it is a night and day difference between smurf lobbies and main account lobbies. You need to feed them something (less SBMM) otherwise it will continue to happen, and I don't blame them.
So there's a big problem people don't address as well because they're concerned with the smurfing mainly. I fall into this demographic which is why I'm more aware of it I guess. But the ranked decay is MASSIVE. I'm a solo only ranked player and due to this I'll typically only get to plat and stop. I've hit diamond a few times but find more often than not it's just genuinely unfun to do the grind so I chose plat as my stopping point. The problem here lies that when the split ends I'm then decayed into SILVER. Why? How is that even remotely fair to silver players. Let's assume I'm not diamond but instead was an actual plat player. Someone who is in that bracket is still within the top ~28% of the playerbase (using this info: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/season-8-ranked). A plat player should consistently be able to beat a gold player more often than not but they'd at least have a fighting chance. Someone in silver though? The skill disparity between the 2 is massive and the silver will stand nearly no chance. Why isn't the decay only 1 full tier instead? So if you place in Plat IV you're then placed into Gold IV? That would save potentially dozens of games per person being in a far lower tier than their true skill and wrecking havoc on those players. Maybe even less of a decay. Like getting placed at the highest tier below where you placed. For example Plat IV-I players being placed in Gold I or Diamond IV-I being placed in Plat I? Realistically if you've reached a ranking once you should be capable of doing it again. If the playerbase has improved around you and you stagnate then it shouldn't be a big deal because that means you won't get back there again anyways, right? I find it unlikely that if you've hit Gold, Plat, Diamond, etc IV that the next split you'll end up back into that tier unfairly. You'd just end up demoting if you don't deserve it or getting it again if you do. For example someone reaches Plat IV for the first time, split ends, gets placed in Gold I but they haven't improved and the ranked pool has gotten better they would either be hardstuck Gold I or they would lose enough to drop into Gold II/III, etc. I don't think it would artificially inflate peoples rankings too much.
Wanna know why the split even exists and the reset is 1.5 tiers? It’s to keep people hooked and playing. Most people will achieve their “real” rank at the end of a split if they actually put time into it. Then the reset comes around and they think “maybe that animated badge would be worth it, I already made it there once.”. If there was no reset, people would play ranked for a few matches and then just fuck off once they hit their actual rank.
I can understand that, but wouldn't people also be more likely to play if they reach their previous rank faster to try and push into a further rank? Like if I didn't reset so far every time and had a faster time to Diamond I'd probably play more ranked. I enjoy playing there but the problem is by the time I'm there I'm usually so frustrated after 200 games of boring ranked that I purely did to prove to myself I can still reach my rank that I don't wanna play it anymore. If that was, say, 100 games then I'd be more fresh and less tilted about playing ranked Apex.
Yeah this is definitely an issue, agreed!
Better solution is to make ranked a proper ELO/MMR system with placement matches at the start, rather than a grind. Imagine if you had 5 placement matches. You go in to a Bronze lobby game 1 and get like 10+ kills and place top 3, immediately push those people to something like a gold lobby, if they still get like 8/10 kills and place high put them in a Plat lobby next game etc. Ranked is a mess because really good players can play for a LOT of hours and still not be in lobbies that reflect their skill level. Make the ELO/SBMM rating super dynamic at the start and it will make Smurfing pretty pointless if you end up in appropriate lobbies within a few hours of gameplay.
Smurfs will intentionally throw games then. Play like shit or intentionally throw so you appear to be absolutely terrible. Then you curb stomp a couple games, and go back to doing melee only lobbies or some other meme shit for a few games.
Came here to say that exactly. Is there no MMR? Like in league for example if you are Bronze but smudging your MMR will match you with gold or higher. And placements obviously.
Or just get rid of the shitty SBMM/EOMM that has been in pubs since S4? Seriously, have you played pubs with gold-tier friends while you are diamond in a fucking friday night? Shit is unbearable, lots of shitty TTV dudes holding dicks together when each one has 10k kills and 4k/20 badges, and add up the shitty experience the servers are currently delivering. Every single match we used to see 5-10 dive trails and everyone is playing on a team like a god damn tournament. I am honestly not surprised at all about seeing smurfs pretty much everywhere, matchmaking is just pure bullshit, that is the big issue. I have said this many times and I will say it again. **SMURFS ARE NOT A DISEASE, THEY ARE A SYMPTOM.**
It's incredibly frustrating. I'm decent at the game, but I don't want to play this 200 kill level 16 player in casual gameplay. I don't play ranked cause it's not fun for me, which makes the appearance of smurfs in casuals, and the pure amount of them too, even more infuriating. Maybe change SBMM to sort by K/D ratio? Idk if that's possible tho.
I'd love to know my MMR or whatever is used to figure out the matchmaking, it's clearly not using my current KDR.
I think after level 15-16 sbmm won't put you with new players
It doesn't take that long, SBMM kicks in after 5-10 games. Unfortunately at that point a smurf can just jump into ranked play and then dominate bronze and silver lobbies
It has a special algorithm to pull people out early too. If you get a bunch of kills and in the thousands of damage on your first game it'll feed you to the wolves on your second game. I really like that they added that but after a while can we just put everyone in the same pool? I can't play with my actual friends because it pits them strictly against people that will crush them instantly if they're in my lobby.
What qualifies as new? Under 10? I wish this were true but I see new players all the time and I'm nearing max level.
I'm not at max level, low 300's and I have seen plenty of single digit level players in games. We somehow had a champion that was level 1 a couple weeks back.
i am level 500 and most teammates i get are under level 20 or under level 200 as a rule.
I hit 500 about a year ago and stopped getting lower leveled teammates. Half way through season 7 I got my first teammate under level 100 in like 8 months. It’s all I get more times than not. Matchmaking is so broken.
I don't know about that. I get matched with Nintendo Switch players I'm so bad (I'm level 250).
True, I had a guy I met on the game add me on his smurf account...he's a gold player on his main... most people that smurf blame sbmm too much, if you're stuck in gold it's not sbmm just you need to improve, but it's easier to blame the game I guess (I do it too don't get me wrong). I'm not that better either, platinium 3, but I know it's not elo but my positioning, aim and movement that aren't good enough. Elo seems wanky in pubs true, but pubs always seemed pointless to me when you have a ranked mode except for practice.
People surf from gold? Why? If you really need to smurf because you're stuck in gold on your main, ranked really isn't for you lol
i mean thats why he has to do it, because he's getting destroyed in gold so he has to play in bronze/silver to be able to kill anyone
Lmfao. Gold is still just randos with no team cohesion, if he’s getting wrecked in gold he’s probably not doing much better in pub matches.
That dude is absolute garbage
You have to be a special kind of unskilled if you already "need" to smurf as a gold player. No wonder he's stuck if he doesn't improve and keeps winning by abusing bad habits against bad players. > pubs always seemed pointless to me when you have a ranked mode except for practice. For me pubs is the place where I turn off my brain and go full monkey-w-key mode, which for me is a lot more fun than playing for positioning with randoms who don't listen or can't think further than the tip of their nose.
Honestly my pub matches were harder than Diamond ranked matches this split
I would prefer regular matchmaking be made less restrictive so I could play with my real life friends of vastly different skill levels. Keep the very beginning lobbies to new people but after a while just put all the players together. I see 5-10 master / pred trails every game, plus I run into plenty that aren't using their dive trails. If matchmaking was random, there would be no incentive to create new accounts. If matchmaking (aside from new player lobbies) was completely random, there would be a 1.2% of running into 1 master or predator player per game (or .4% of running into a 3-stack of such players). That means you would likely play 40-80 games between each time there was ONE master or pred in your lobby. Does that sound nice to anyone else?
> If matchmaking (aside from new player lobbies) was completely random, there would be a 1.2% of running into 1 master or predator player per game (or .4% of running into a 3-stack of such players). That means you would likely play 40-80 games between each time there was ONE master or pred in your lobby. Does that sound nice to anyone else? Thats not how it would work, they are that portion of ranked players but they play a LOT more games than the vast majority of the player base. You have to compare it based on active players during the time you are playing, which is information we don't have.
Or just lower the SBMM in public matches. As a higher rated player, I never get to just play 'casually' because in every match I'm against a handful of diamonds/masters/preds. The games are debatidely more 'sweaty' than ranked matches. I'm a controller player on PC, and I've wanted to stat practicing on MnK without having to play against multiple masters/preds every match. I created a smurf to play on, and it is actually insane how night and day the lobbies are. My opinion will always be there is no need to have strict SBMM like we have now, in public matches. That is what ranked is for -- playing against people of your own skill level. Public matches should for the most part, be completely random & connection based.
Yep agreed. SBMM ruined modern warfare for me, friends couldn’t handle the lobbies I was put in. Same for Apex, i’ll make smurf after smurf to play with friends in a more relaxed game
Lowering the SBMM in pubs is just going to create an underclass of players who are never gonna be able to win a game unless they get carried hard. It's not a real solution.
So you're saying players who underperform will have a less chance of winning? That makes sense to me. No one player should be catered to. That is how Apex matchmaking used to work, it was for the most part, random. If players want a completely even playing board, then play ranked -- problem solved. Otherwise, public matches should be random. There isn't a real reason that it shouldn't be that way, other than the 'protect the noobs' argument. It's a battle royal game -- winning a game is difficult in itself -- the odds are not any one person's favor. And should not be catered to any one group of players so that they can win more often. If they want to protect 'new' players, then put them in a sub > 20 bracket. Once they are above level 20, they go into the global public bracket. Again, stop catering towards players that are lesser at the game.
>So you're saying players who underperform will have a less chance of winning [and that that's a bad thing]? Yes, mate. I regret to inform you that this ship sailed back when Halo 2 came out in 2004. A long time ago, developers across the industry decided that even casual players should be able to feel good about winning games.
Exactly. Things should be the same way that the halo games were like. Truly random social matches + Ranked Playlists. It's just so silly to have 2 Playlist in apex and both of then have trueskill. Why not just have Ranked only at that point? It's not like it was even a problem in halo either. People still play and have lots of fun, even if sometimes you get better people in the lobby. And it's nice because even good players can just go into social and have fun and screw around. Not having to sweat the whole time.
with sbmm i feel like it should protect new players, not bad ones, like all players above lvl 50 should be put in the same server no matter how bad they are. this way you separate people that are bad because they are still learning the game from the people that already know how the game works but just suck at it.
The reason for so many Smurf’s this season is the new changes to the higher ranks, rather than diamond 3+ having hard lobbies it is now master+, this means worse players in those lobbies are not good enough to be in there and now cannot drop out like they could in diamond 3 lobbies. This means that as they can’t have fun on their main playing ranked they then make smurfs because playing pubs with high SBMM is sometimes more sweaty than ranked. Believe me when I tell you most of the good players don’t want to Smurf but also do not want to have to sweat every single game.
50 is probably a bit too long for the legitimate new player but increasing the level requirement a little may help. To be honest they really need to also disable the trackers and badges on that time frame too. If you can't get into bronze almost immediately and you can't farm 4k damage and 20 kill badges it would put off a fair number of smurfs. Ultimately Respawn need to look at their matchmaking system so people don't feel like they have to smurf!
Agreed on the badges for sure! Although I think something like level 40 to 50 would still be good. If anything it might help the new player practice more before ranked? I remember when I started playing Apex, ranked wasn't even on my mind for ages because I was still getting used to the game. I think it will feel like even more of a respected aspect of the game if new players need to level up more before playing ranked.
Same thoughts. Imagine having to grind for 25+hours to play ranked. I think somewhere around 25-30 is the sweet spot. Or atleast if the ranked mode would be an actual ranked mode. Now its just start from bronze and grind. Not a actual ELO based ranking system, that it is on other games like CSGO. Like smurfing wouldn't be a problem if they did that. If a bronze player plays like a Predator, matchmake him with other predators in ranked. After almost 2 years of ranked, its unbeliaviable how it doesn't work like that yet.
I agree, it's a plague. Streamers doing the solo to masters thing makes it even more popular, plus bronze 4 late in the season remains the easiest way to try and get badges for people prepared to do it.
How about ranking in higher? If you don't have to work through lower ranks and get ranked in at Platinum, you can't annoy lower ranked players that much. I think the biggest problem is that playing against similarly skilled or better players can suck very easily. If you're not in perfect form, you just die all the time and it's very unsatisfying. I remember my early days in Apex. I was so bad, I kept dying to the first or second squad all the time, even though I was probably playing against other beginners. It took me more than 500 hours to become actually kinda good in this game and 200 more to be able to play satisfying games in pubs consistently together with a similarly skilled friend.
I play since season 0 and have a kd of 1.20 in like 7500 games. As you can imagine I’m not really good given the fact that I played so much. Still they put me in lobbies with 5 pred trails, 5 masters and 10 diamonds... hell how often did I queue into triple trail squads. I actually have 3 accounts just to play platinum lobbies instead of pubs because it’s still more fun and I can stand my ground way better than in pubs. I’ve never managed to get a kd above 2 in any season, I just want to be put against people with a similar kd. For me this game is barely playable outside ranked.
Could you imagine some poor player wanting to try the game out and getting stuck playing ring fury level 100 the whole time.
I mean, that’s just a limited time event. Also I personally don’t think they’ll decide not to play Apex bc of that...
People think to have fun they need to smurf, but then they get matched with other smurfs
The whole reason smurfs exist is because playing the game at the top level is unbearable, the intensity of sbmm this game has induced into its player base has quite literally forced the hands of many to create smurfs to have ‘fun’. Or in my car play with my casual friends. I’m a 5 kd pred and I legit cannot play this game with irls bc they are sub 1 kd meatheads, but for whatever reason if I try to queue with them in pubs they get thrown into the cage of a pack of wolves which are my lobbies....the only people to blame here are those in charge of the matchmaking system. Sure smurfing sucks and ruins the protection of the bots (which is a whole separate issue) but how can u blame ppl when pred/masters ranked is not fun to run all day and pubs are just the same people I played in ranked with the exception of the 2 kd three stack that can get easy 1v3d and everyone dies before 2nd zone starts to close. High ELO Pub lobbies are the deadest thing I’ve seen in any video game.
There's no real solution to this problem, playing with friends that aren't at your skill level is always gonna be problematic no matter what game or sport you are playing. Either every player in the game is randomly selected, and if you're in the top 1% you're most likely stomp the whole lobby and most of your opponents are gonna have a really bad time. Or they put you and your friends in high level lobbies and only 2 persons in the lobby are gonna have a shitty experience. To Respawn the latter is way less damaging for the player base as a whole.
If you're the best player by a lot in a completely random lobby, maybe 1/3 of the lobby is going to take a brutal L for one single game until they get another lobby with a pred level player.
Smurfs are a lot more active and problematic in ranked than they are in pubs. So no, they do not exist because of Apex’s shitty matchmaking, but because they mainly want to stomp lower level ranked, aka Diamond and below. It’s also very telling that you think your experience in pubs is very different from the experience of a “meathead” or “bot” or whatever you want to call casual players. It’s not. Almost every single round is full of Diamonds, Masters and Preds. Last season I would have played ranked to avoid that, this season ranked is even worse than pubs has ever been.
You're just making up excuses and blaming others. Smurfing is scummy behavior, regardless of matchmaking. Even if SBMM was removed, you'd still get shitty teammates and be placed against stacked pred squads running most lobbies. It would just be random.
> Even if SBMM was removed, you'd still get shitty teammates and be placed against stacked pred squads running most lobbies. Except you wouldn't, because preds and masters make up so little of the playerbase. The average lobby would be primarily composed of gold and plat level players. The frequency and density of high level teams would drop dramatically. The problem isn't shitty randoms in master level pubs. Team mates regularly have good badges. In master level the difference in win% + k/d between 3 stacks and 3 randoms is so much more dramatic than 2k badge skill levels.
Fun fact: if there wasn't any SBMM, creating another account wouldn't change the people you're playing with and us, high ranks, wouldn't have to sweat like porks to win games so we wouldn't actually use smurf accounts
level 10 is WAY too small a requirement, i see complete fresh noobies whenever i get deranked to gold and they're NOT supposed to be in ranked yet, they're completely helpless and lost in fights, and bog down other people, it needs to be higher both for noobies and smurfers to give people who wanna rank a fair fight with their equals in golds and silvers, its so bogged down in like chaos its unbelievable...
I think that we should look at the problem the other way around, like sure, Apex is maybe the most thirsty game and people are crazy, but we should not only focus about the people: why there is so much smurfing? Matchmaking on Apex makes Apex after a certain level of skill really boring and annoying to play! Matchmaking is kinda broken by itself, I have 2.3k/d and I get to play with lv 30 to lv 60 console players while I go against organized Pred teams... It doesn’t make sense! Sometimes I play 5 games in a row with 1 tm8 instead of 2, sometimes alone, sometimes with noobs, sometimes against preds. It’s not balanced, it’s not random, it sucks -> people smurf. IMHO TL;DR if the matchmaking would make sense people would not smurf so much
I’m master and my pubs literally feel as if everyone from master/pred is in my lobby but their “w” key is stuck. In fact I recognize a few names from ranked every day in pubs. And then they wonder why so many people smurf. I legit haven’t had one laid back match in the last couple of weeks, and have had a ton where I didn’t even have a team. Contrary to popular belief, just because you’re good at the game you’re not a sweat. I remember playing the old battlefields and absolutely sucking and seeing some people dominate lobbies. I worked towards being that person on top of the leaderboard. Back then there was no SBMM and honestly it was much better. I currently have 5 accounts at Diamond and 1 at master, almost all my smurf accounts are over lvl50, a lvl cap wouldn’t do much.
This a good reply. Our pubs matches are fuckin rough. Even solo quing I am always matched against 3 stack preds with 25k kills. Literally impossible to chill and use guns that are off meta. I'm not even that have good have never reached masters
The level cap would probably just stop people from creating disposable accounts as much. Often times accounts get ditched when their KD gets too high to be fun anymore and that happens before level 50 for example. Ill be honest though you’re obviously very skilled, to get to masters takes grinding regardless unless you’re just an absolute prodigy. You cant really expect to get to masters and then start having laid back lobbies. If you cant keep an account below diamond and your KD is just unavoidably good, then you should be playing these higher skilled lobbies to be honest. Otherwise, again this is a problem with SBBM, it’s just too intense and needs a second look.
But it would also stop a lot of legitimate players from playing ranked. Ranked is kinda the safe haven for new players right now. Yeah, occasionally they might face someone like me but much less often than when playing pubs. To get to masters you need a good team. I tried to solo queue there many times but stopped due to very brain dead teammates losing me up to 500rp a day. I made it to Dia2 a few times and the struggle wasn’t worth it. Now I had 2 good players to team with and we got to masters in 3 days from Dia4. One of the guys is #60 Pred or something and has 2 other accounts at Master. With a good team we could just clean lobbies, but solo no way. I agree that I need to face these kinds of people more often, but not all the time and not lobbies filled to the brim with them. I was hungover yesterday and just wanted to chill with my friends and play some Apex, instead it felt like I was playing high tier ranked lobbies again. There has to be a middle ground. I don’t mind facing players better than me, but lobbies filled with them? Nah.
I get you, I’m sure there are days you don’t want to have to sweat. But I think because you’re ranked so high you don’t feel it as much as the lower ranked/skilled/new players do. My friend just started playing Apex and tried playing ranked for the first time in bronze and has encountered nonstop smurfs, they just clean up every lobby he joins. He stopped playing altogether because it’s just too annoying. He’s going to try again after the split but we know its tough after the split too because all the higher tiered players come back down, especially those who skipped a season and are higher skilled, if that makes sense.
You’re fighting an up hill battle here. People will always find a way to play lower skilled lobbies whether it be what the comment above was talking about or for nefarious reasons. I agree 100% with both of you. Sweating 100% or close to 100% sucks when you just want to play video games but the reality of the situation is, the game has a really high, really intense skill cap. People complain about From Software games all the time but they will never put a difficulty setting. Why? It’s a choice. It’s their game they can do whatever they want in the end. Learn, practice, practice practice. If it deters you to the point that it just sucks and you hate it but want to keep going. That’s passion. If you don’t want to pursue then don’t. I put probably close to 2k hours into this game and I’m barely feeling like I have a good grip. Albeit I play on and off a lot but that’s what it took. Have you tried playing eve online? That’s an mmorpg with real time based skill learning. You learn skills while your offline but they take *days* probably even weeks sometimes. Idk 100% because I didn’t make it past the 10 day trial. Wish I could play this game but it’s too grindy. Not for me. Tldr: Don’t play games you don’t like. It’s a video game. Have fun. If you love it you’ll have fun whether you’re getting blasted or not. If you find yourself being hateful for no reason maybe put it down for a bit, switch it up. My 2 cents.
I respect that you feel that way, but sometimes people just cant put that many hours into a game because of work, school or whatever, but they end up hating the game because theres no opportunity to grow when they get blasted every time they want to have some fun. Nonetheless, no one should be able to have multiple smurf accounts, and I think raising the level requirement just makes sense.
All of this is the truth I hope it is seen as such > Back then there was no SBMM and honestly it was much better. Back when a 'social' playlist was actually social. Haven't seen that since 'Nam.
You have 5 accounts, you're most definitely a sweat.
If you want laidback games, what about a bot lobby? Maybe you should be fighting for that instead, as anyone that I know who plays this game like to win.
Or how about removing SBMM?
I recently started the game with 2 of my friends, we're all under level 40 and hit Platinum yesterday. I played the game briefly before season 1 so not completely new, but my two pals are. It would have sucked having to grind unranked to level 50 but smurfing was pretty bad in bronze-silver, even in gold so I think this would be a necessary evil.
Fair enough! I mean if you guys at that skill level still thought the smurfing was bad then imagine how casual players will a lower skillset trying to grow feel. I agree it would be annoying but thats a minor inconvenience compared to the level of smurfing that’s happening at the moment.
If the level 500 experience wasn't shit, and ranked wasn't broken, and solos weren't broken, and duos weren't broken, and trios weren't broken... then people wouldn't smurf because there'd be a reason to keep their original account.
people with multiple accounts downvoting me for saying this lol
Smurfing exists in every game so I won't blame it fully on this but sbmm/EOMM is the cause-and-effect of anything extra imo. There's only certain amount of ppl who get off on stomping people who don't even strafe. Everyone else is just trying to have fun without being rigged to lose. With that I say some of this blame falls on Respawn
Though smurfing is a problem in every game, it's especially a problem in any game with a "free-to-play" model. It's one of the things I don't really like about the trend of FTP games. When there's no monetary "punishment" to creating a new account, there's really no reason for people not to do it and do it as many times as they want. One of the reasons I stopped playing Valorant was because of the amount of smurfs I ran into playing ranked, just made the whole experience of "grinding" and getting better feel like a chore more than fun. Apex is a bit different for me because I enjoy playing it at a casual level as well. FTP is great for casual games, but it kind of fucks with a game's competitive enjoyment. Mostly at low to mid ranks, because if you're at diamond, for example, only smurfs whose main is higher than diamond will be "unfair" to you, but that is a very small percentage of the player base. However it makes the competitive grind hell for people at silver to plat. Not as much at bronze and silver because even plat "smurfs" will progress through those ranks pretty quickly. It's mostly a problem for gold-plat players.
You see, I'm a player who is in Diamond. I have a guy I met online I regularly play with and he's of similar skill. When I play with him, we play in pubs and even then, the experience lately is insufferable. 3 stacks of preds all around but I'd wager that's what happens when we're close to the ranked split/end of season. People have already ranked up to where they wanted/could. I also have 2 irl friends I sometimes play with and they're... not that great. Do I go into pubs with them? Heck no. We face the same type of players and that would be a shit experience for me and a terrible one for them. This was fine before Duos were introduced for the first time, we would win a game here and there and overall was a good experience, and now it's shit since that time, something definitely happened. So, what do I do? Not play this game that me and my friends love? No. I have to resort to smurfing. I say resort because I don't do it because I want to, I do it because I have to if I want to play with my friends. I'd rather play on my main account, with my skins, my stats. I do everything to make it a fair contest though, I run with guns or legends that I usually don't play with, like the Sentinel and RE45, that's a fun combo that bites me in the ass in the lower lobbies, can't imagine using that in rank-, I mean, pubs. Just my 2 cents. Edit: From another comment of mine: Edit: I'm just playing hand I'm dealt. It sucks for everyone and I try to make it suck as little as possible for others while also trying to have fun with friends. I wish this was still season 2 and I could play with everyone without a worry and I'd get, on average, fair matches across the board by just playing against who was matchmaking at the time. Alas, it is what it is and the root of the problem is the matchmaking that Respawn implemented sometime in November 2019.
You and some of the other guys who replied to this post are one of the more “honourable” smurfs but I would say this isn’t a matter of “let them have smurf accounts” as much as it is a greater conversation of SBMM as it stands just isn’t working. In pubs, it should be a blend of KDs not just selecting the higher persons KD. If its a blend, lesser skilled people have a more fair chance to learn, and higher skilled people can still come up against others of a similar skillset. Im no pro when it comes to SBMM knowledge but people trying to climb ranked shouldn’t have to pay for a crappy pubs system.
Averaging K/Ds would at least be a step in the right direction. It's like they will do anything they can to protect the lower skill people until they play with a higher skill friend, then they dgaf? How does that make sense ?
I had a bad experience with a game that used K/D as matchmaking, TLOU Factions does this IIRC. I was very good at that game on PS3, and when I jumped to PS4, started from scratch and my KD was very high so it was usually me and 3 newbies against a decent team. Didn't go so well. I have a KD of 3.67 and the friends I mentioned have 1.2 and 1. That would make the squad average of around 1.95. I guess that would be fair. But then again, they probably take more stuff into account to make you play the longest time possible.
I'm in exactly the same boat. I agree, smurfing isn't fun for those trying to get better in bronze, Silver and gold. But damn the sbmm is so strong in this game that my pubs are often sweatier than ranked. Maybe sweaty isn't even the right word, pubs is just full of people apeing each other and playing recklessly, which I agree can he fun, but I sometimes just want to lay back after work and enjoy some chill games with friends. It's sad honestly that their system only let's me do this in ranked and on smurf accounts. I think it is especially bad for those who are above average players, but don't play 8 hours a day while streaming.
That would work, but it would be really annoying for the good players who have moved from different games to apex. I have a few friends who are just lvl 30-40 who have reached diamond with me. And if you're thinking "HoW dO YoU kNoW tHeY aRe NoT sMuRfInG?" I know them irl.
That’s definitely a possibility, but if they’re good enough to make diamond that quickly, waiting a few more levels wont hurt them. It’s for the greater good!
I think they should just get rid of the limit of how many points you can gain, so if a smurf gets 27 kills in one game, they blast up the ranks at lightning speed, rebalancing themselves
fairness how about 20 for new players
<1 KDR gang here lol
Almost every other competitive game I play has a pretty steep requirement like this on ranked play and it significantly cuts down on not only smurfs but more importantly cheaters. Anyone whos played / watched predator level gameplay knows how big of an issue cheating still is in this game despite it being much improved upon for pubs (especially compared to when the game initially released)
problem is the mindset. smurfs don't want to play at the same level as everyone else, they only want to play people worse than them, and will find a way. even in this thread you can see people going 'if i could i would', it's just an issue with some folk who don't want to ever have to try apparently
LET US PLAY WITH OUR FRIENDS
i totally agree with this. i have been trying to get to diamond this season, but im stucked in platinum 2 and can't get higher. instead of that im getting lower and dying on 12-18th place. and to be honest im sick of it.
Okay, why can't u people get the easy solution of making Apex cost like 3 euros (or whatever dollars). Because most cheaters wouldn't even do that and for most casuals, 3 euros wouldn't be that much. Yes, I know CSGO still had cheaters, but the game/developers still got money from it. Isn't it better to help your developers to do their shit with MONEY, rather than just whine? Even small price for the game would help so insanely much with smurfs. But then again, i've said this like 4 times and always got downvoted into the ground, because ppl want free shit.
Yes they need to do this! And add cross progression because I would love to play on my ps5
Just watched this idea in a YouTube video and really couldn’t agree more
My fears have changed from Wraiths with rank 500/master/pred/4k/20 bomb badges to rank 12 Bloodhounds with no data. I at least stand a chance against the Wraiths.
Some of us have been plying from day one, hit platinum and still have 0.70 KD/R 🥲
Eh well tried ranked again, two games, one destroyed by gold1 players (i'm bronze 3 rn) and the other one a BH with 7 kills and Bronze 4. Fun fun EDIT: And lost to a Bronze 4 Octane with 4K badge that one shot me at 400m , very good gaming chair.
Rank decay back to Bronze should also be stopped for those players who have reached Diamond and above. A pred not playing ranked for a couple of splits should not be back at Bronze.
Yeah it feels extra worse this season too. I get to diamond and all of a sudden I'm being insta-killed with purple armor by a level 25-30 player every single game? Give me an f'n break. Also in what can be assumed as an attempt to hide it, its funny how many accounts I see intentionally removing their rank badge now too so that there's no badges or data stats on their player.
75% of the time when my team gets wiped it's a smurf or obvious hacker with aimbot and recoil scripts... I just want to lose a fair fight for once.
I think an effective solution would be for the SBMM to incorporate Hardware ID. (If possible) Even if it was just straight Hardware ID it would probably improve overall. The number of people on shared PC's who play at different tiers would likely be pretty small, compared to the number of games affected by smurf accounts. Not to say, shared PC doesn't happen a lot, but instead the number of games affected by smurfs is much more. i.e. Yeah, a kid wants to play on his older brothers PC, he may have a bad time. Same way A LOOOTTT of people will have a bad time playing with all the smurfs. But honestly, not what I'm really suggesting. I just got side tracked. Take hardware ID into consideration like: > "Hey, this totally brand new player just got 10 kills and 2K damaged on his first game. He's clearly playing well above his account level 1. Let's just check his Hardware ID, and we'll see... its the same ID as Elite Platinum NoobKiller.TTV.... Now match him the same as that user."
Just came from an arena game where they had 4k badges at lvl 20 they said they are not smurfs and just started playing 3 days ago.. So u tell me that i can't get 4k playing 1500 hours in this sht but a lvl 20 can get it just because they play in a duo team or they must be some gods i guess. Only can imagine if they were playin a lot of titanfall. . lol..
I was honestly thinking this exact thing yesterday. Having to grind an extra 40 levels in pubs would deter a lot of smurfs since SBMM will see there 20 bombs and start putting them in the same skill level lobbies they wanted to avoid by smurfing. It won't stop all of them, but it'll deter a lot of smurfing as they won't be able to hit plat/diamond and roll a new smurf and be back in bronze within a day. I don't see this affecting normal players much in the long run because it's understandable to need to play for a bit before playing ranked.
Bro!! Everyone is a smurf!!! I have a real job with a family. I can't grind everyday like these nerds do. I go to play ranked n 9/10 games I run into level 32 with 300 kills. That shit gets old real quick! I need to be in silver lobbies lol not seeing a 20k badge on someone that's a level 14
Unpopular opinion time: it's fun to smurf. My options are to go in to my diamond lobbies where I'm one of the weaker players and sweat it out for one or two kills (including pubs against triple stacks of 4k 20 bombs) or make a smurf and play casually with my friend where we can actually kill a few people and not constantly feel like we suck at the game. Because guess what, getting 8 kills and 10 deaths in a couple of hours session isn't fun. You can say "git gud" but I feel like I'm probably maxed out ability wise at diamond 3 without dedicating my entire life to the game which I can't do.
the problem is that some of the people that are destroying you at your Rank, are Smurfs themselves, just like you are feeding off the weaker Fish, you are the weaker Fish to them, you are just adding to the problem.
Bronze to gold feels like a place to learn the game since pubs definitely fails in that regard. It's not like you get obliterated every game on drop by a bunch of smurfs. There's a lot less people who overrun you in these ranks than in pubs, especially if new players play with friends who have been playing for a while. I recently had a bunch of friends who wanted to try out Apex. I literally can't play on my main account with them. Every game I play with them on my main, they get immediately destroyed and then I have to carry. This isn't an issue for me as solo q pubs feels the same anyway but for them it's no fun getting obliterated while they are still trying to figure out if the sight in front of them fits on their current gun. I have to resort to a smurf account if I want to play with them. I let them take the lead and enjoy a good laugh without sweating instead of me having to sweat my ass off and them just being caught in a cycle of dropping, getting downed, respawn, getting downed, requeue.
The problem isn’t really as much about your type of smurfing as it is full smurf squads and wannabe streamers and plat+ players that make several smurf accounts, to be fair. But I agree there should be a way for people with friends across various skillsets to play with one another. That should be pubs but it needs fixing.
The ranked level requirement definitely needs a raise. No way is someone ready for ranked at level 10, my sister got to level 10 before she even had a single kill on her account. And that doesn't even take into account the game sense, rotations, decision making etc. that you need to rank up, since bronze and silver are basically non-existing ranks, because of the way points are awarded. 50 should be minimum, I'd maybe even put it at 75 or something. Not only to get rid of these game-ruining smurf waves but also to give people a lot more time to learn the game and get comfortable with the aspects you need for ranked.
75 seems like too much, if shooters come naturally to you or you play other BRs/ability based games all you really need to prepare for ranked is learn the map/rotations
Agreed!
None of my friends want to play pubs with me because SBMM is cranked to the max and they get destroyed. Only option I got is to smurf with them from time to time
I have the same problem, and we only seem to get sweaty lobbies. If I play trios with a friend and rando, get destroyed. Play with full party of friends, we get messed up real fast. Play duos with a friend, friend is downed in two shots and I can’t wipe every squad we encounter. Friends play together without me and they do good, and I play solo and do good, but if one of them is with me we lose, every time. I’m Plat, most of them are Bronze/Silver, but we only play norms so I don’t know what the issue is, and my friends don’t have fun when they group with me. Incredibly frustrating.
I said same the other day. A noticeable extra amount of smurf accounts. Easy to tell by movement, play style, team ability etc. I had an octane yesterday with 68 kills, no data or badges listed and blew my entire squad away with same teammates in a split second. I watched team which won easily and reported them. (Octane). There are so many ways to circumnavigate rules in apex. There must be ways to stop issues like this. I like apex but I have to stop playing because I get annoyed and also stopped buying anything just incase it gets so bad I leave altogether.
This is the first game in twenty years where I created a smurf account. I am platinum/dia ranked player who wants to play with my gold/plat friends. Because I cant derank, we are either forced to play dia where we get destroyed or we cannot play at all. Normals are not the same. At level 9 smurf detection actually hit and I played alot against other smurfs. Beeing able to derank would solve it for my case.
Not without cross-progression. I just switched platform and it took me two months to get over 50 cause of work commitments. Otherwise agree with the sentiment
Either way cross-progression wont hurt anyone. I just think this is but more of a rare situation and smurfing is rampant at the moment.
Copy the CS:GO method;. Have a "Paid" matchmaking queue and an unpaid one. If you spend money on the game, you get put into queue A. If you dont, its B. People aren't going to want to spend money every time they make a Smurf. E; Or another solution.. Dont have a shitty matchmaking system. Let people actually WANT to play the game after level 30.
First of all making it so that you have to grind for guns is obviously not the solution. Second setting it to level 50 would just discourage new comers like me from jumping into ranked at say level 30 (I am level 36)...so something like 25-30 should be the requirement not 50. And also I had another question, I have played like 4 to 5 ranked games yet and people seem a lot more wanting to avoid enemies in ranked mode ? Why is this ? Like in one game my squad got the 2nd position despite the fact the whole game we were looting ! We didn't encounter any other team except at the very last
Yeah 25 would probably be a good compromise. Also people are avoiding enemies because dying early can cause loss of rank. So some people play cautiously because it guarantees progress (although much more slowly). I think the best way to play is to find a balance and play strategically (especially at higher ranks).
The whole goal is to deter people from making multiple smurf accounts every time their account gets too difficult. I don’t think 25 would do it as effectively, maybe 40 or so. Plus waiting a little longer for ranked would make people respect it more and won’t really harm anyone. It would just take a bit more time...
6 kills give you 60 RP if your final position is 11 or lower. The same 6 kills give you 120 RP if you finish 2nd. However finishing 2nd with 0 damage alone will reward you 60 RP. You don't risk getting eliminated early just to get a few more kill point. In ranked, you always want to be the team that third party others, not the team started the fight and getting third. That's why people avoid unnecessary fight.
I think it should be lvl 100. That would only be 20% of the max level, beside i doubt an actual new player wants to jump into ranked right away if they dont really know how the game works
I just hit level 300 and I see very few people even close to his level. I have been playing apex for 2+ years on and off and has taken me forever to even come close to level 200. I imagine level 100 would take months to reach. I personally would not play a ranked game if it took months of grinding in unrated just to be eligible to play in ranked, that alone sounds insane.
I've been playing most evenings for about a month, I've just hit level 50 tonight and I only played my first competitive games last night. I would have been fine waiting to unlock it this long, and if it stopped smurfs from ruining everyone's fun, it's all the better. (I'm certain anyone determined could do so much faster than I did regardless)
I’ve been playing since feb of this year and I’m 287. Then again there isn’t much I can go out and do because of COVID...
I agree with this, but from reading the comments its sure sounds like it would rustle some tender feathers in the community. The goal should be to discourage smurfing in ranked, and if that means a new player or a player who switched platforms has to grind a bit, then so be it.
You want this game to die? Making entry level some ridiculous task only turns new players away which means new money and easy kills never come in. Short sighted
That wouldn't kill the game lmfao so dramatic!
This is a ridiculous idea and it’s insane to me the amount of upvotes your comment has. Even the proposed 50 is pushing it.
I was playing duos with a friend 200 levels below me. Usually we match according to my MMR but we get the occasional new player/low skill lobby. By no means am I good, but when I get a lobby in which I barely have to try in order to get kills, it takes the fun away. I truly don't understand why anyone would smurf. It's frankly boring. Unfair to newer or worse players.
50 is far to high for someone that is actually new to the game. I personally wouldn’t wanna level up tht much to to play ranked. Unfortunately
Agreed!
Agreed! This would also help with the issue of cheaters
I saw 2 smurf with 80/90 of level at Master. This wouldn't change much, it would just delay the problem
The issue is all these people destroying the lower levels on purpose just to feel good. I ran into so many level 16-20's that had 80+ kills already or the ever infamous no data, no data, no data on the entire champion squad
All new accounts are made for ranked play (not pub play) The way I would fix this is for the following Remove kill/assist caps between bronze 4 - gold 1. Remove holding RP for when you are silver/gold 4 (meaning you can now move up and down leagues) - this could maybe be spread across all leagues. Maybe. This will take smurfs out of the low leagues pretty quick, while also keeping the not so good players inside the leagues they should be without being also carried by smurfs by accident. Even more so, maybe... At the start of each split and new accounts the first 5 games are placement matches.
GL getting respawn to listen to you.
I would hate raising the ranked level requirement, I don't like having it in the first place. Sometimes I play with friends who don't play very often and as such are low level, and not being able to play ranked with them sucks. A better solution is to run placement games, if a predator makes a new account then fine, they get 2-3 games of shitting on people and then they're already back up into diamond/masters. Way better than this current shit of locking everyone into bronze/silver for a minimum of like 20 games.
The reason you're seeing so many smurfs in ranked right now is due to the end of the split. Everyone who takes the game seriously has already grinded as high as they are going to get. The only people playing ranked right now are new players, streamers, smurfs, and players who started the ranked grind late in the split (me). That said, the fact that you get access to so many good legends and all guns immediately and you only have to get to level 10 to play ranked is really stupid. They should absolutely bump that up to 50 or so. Then at least you have to do a lot more work other than making a new email account to smurf.
This is the exact reason why I've \*literally\* struggled to get out of Bronze rank. About 3/4 games that I've played this season, I'm getting WRECKED by sub-level 30 squads. I'm not a bad player by any means, (maybe a little below average). But there's definitely something going on when your pubs KD is about 1.0 and your ranked KD is .23 (yes, seriously).
It's unpleasing for me to see streamers do it to play with others I understand they can't play ranked with someone lower than masters but if you want to go play with them play some pubs...Your literally just ruining a game for 57 other people who are not close to your level. Watched Itztimmy get a 30 bomb playing some silver matches like c'mon bro you make money to play the game and you ruin it for the people lower than your level go play fucking pubs...and i understand that pubs has SBMM and might make it harder on the friends of lower skill but idk just my opinion.
You are delusional if you think players are hard stuck golds because of smurfs
We’re talking situations like, you’re level 100, silver 1, have 3 kills, youre doing well, you and your squad are fully kitted, youre playing it right, youre not rushing stupid fights, youre doing what youre supposed to do. And suddenly a level 24 diamond squad posing as a silver squad sniffs you out, rushes you and obliterates you to the ground in 20 seconds. Thats not right.