7 ms·

CS:GO just isn't a fun game for me. Maybe there are cheaters, but sometimes its hard to tell. Instead, I prefer framing it in same vein as why Fortnite isn't fu

by 013a 7y ago

CS:GO just isn't a fun game for me. Maybe there are cheaters, but sometimes its hard to tell. Instead, I prefer framing it in same vein as why Fortnite isn't fun anymore: People are just way too good nowadays. I like to think I'm generally good at video games, but the people who play CS:GO regularly have a laser focus on it. They're better than good, and that skill discrepancy ruins the game for other people. It takes one Insane Tier player on the enemy team to ruin the game for me, or one cheater, and the probability of running into that in an average game is just too high in the top-tier competitive games. Skill-based Matchmaking doesn't help, flat out. People smurf. I used to think smurfing was this thing that you'd rarely run into, but then I found out that my roommate smurfs on Apex. At that point, another person in the room said "yeah, I've done that". In these games that are insanely cheap or free; its rampant. I legitimately think that smurfing should be a bannable offense, but I'm not aware of any companies that take it seriously (some have said that its against ToS, but do they apply the same detection heuristics to it they do for actual cheaters?)

hutzlibu 7y ago
I suppose "smurfing" means, you create a new account, to pretend that you are a new player and therefore get into matches with only newbs? So the motivation is to feel good at winning against not experienced players?
- jtms 7y ago
  Yes, that’s exactly right. They just want to feel like gods as they stomp the new players.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > So the motivation is to feel good at winning against not experienced players? Contrast online matchmaking systems that take your assessed skill level into account. These are certainly... widespread. I don't understand why. The design goal of such a system is that, no matter what your skill level is, you win or lose at a rate indistinguishable from chance. Are you getting better at the game? Doesn't matter; your win rate is constant. Are you getting worse under lack of pressure, since nothing you do affects your performance? Doesn't matter. Nothing you do can affect your performance. Your win rate is constant; the system will seamlessly swap in weaker players to play against you. If I'm improving at something, I want to see better results than I was getting before. If I'm getting worse, I want to see worse results.
  - Double_a_92 7y ago
    The problem is that the more skill you have, the more effort you need to put in while playing. So if you get too good you can't have a fun relaxed game anymore (without getting wrecked and losing rank). Smurfing (playing on lower rank) or cheating (playing effortlessly at your real rank) would be a solution for that... but they are obviously bad and unfair for others. The new scrimmage mode seems to be a promising solution for that though.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      You appear to be describing a completely different problem than I am.
  - hoseja 7y ago
    What else would you do in an MMO? The flip side is that with matchmaking, higher level matches are higher quality and more enjoyable too.
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    Do grandmasters play chess against beginners? I think most people want to be challenged, and playing with others of similar skill seems to be the norm in most games.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > Do grandmasters play chess against beginners? All the time. They teach people to play; they do stunts like playing against 5 people at once; they sit in the park and take all comers. If you want to prove you're good, go and fight someone who's known to be good. But that generates information for other people, not for you. If you want to determine how good you are, you need to fight a lot of different people.
      - rebuilder 7y ago
        Very good, I chose a poor example. You can see the point I'm making, though?
saagarjha 7y ago
What is the motivation to smurf other than just destroying a bunch of new players? Surely that must get boring after a while?
- bencoveney 7y ago
  If you play with a friend who has a low rank, it is much easier to create a free now account (that will start in a low skill group) than it is to obtain one for them which is already in a higher skill group. Not saying it is a good thing to do, but it is another reason why you'd find better players in lower skill matches.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  And yet plenty of people will do it constantly. Apparently there are some gaming communities (I've heard this of China) where using cheats in multiplayer games is routine. The goal is to win, it doesn't matter how.
- ggregoire 7y ago
  Can't really tell for CS:GO but in League of Legends, good players create smurfs all the time and the motivation is usually to prove yourself and/or other people (e.g. Twitch viewers, Reddit) that you can keep a very high winrate and reach the top 1% in a few weeks. Sometimes it comes with an extra challenge like playing only the same champion. > just destroying a bunch of new players? Surely that must get boring after a while? Smurfs never play more than 4 or 5 games versus new players. The matchmaking system doesn't match a guy who has 100% winrate over his 20 first games with a guy who has only 30-50%.
- denkmoon 7y ago
  Two options: A) You can play a game at your actual skill level, which requires your team to communicate effectively and play together. This requires someone to take the lead and coordinate the other players. That just doesn't happen in drop in games. It is incredibly not-fun and frustrating to be playing decently yourself, but be anchored by incompetent team members. You get guys who want to play their own way, or just aren't interested in "taking orders". Plenty of arrogant dudes that won't listen to someone that is a lower rank. B) Play at a level where you can essentially carry your entire team to victory because your skill level is so much higher than the enemy. You get to fuck up a bunch of newbs and win the game, while your team mates are drooling at spawn. B is definitely more fun. Especially when the people smurfing can get their fix of A in an organised match with an organised team, outside of match making.
Double_a_92 7y ago
You should try the new scrimmage mode. The matchmaking there surprisingly works much better than on ranked matches. I.e. most of the times there are 2 good guys, 2 mediocre guys, and 1 beginner in each team. I've had a lot of actually fun 15:15 games there.
rebuilder 7y ago
This is pretty tough to solve in multiplayer games. I used to play BF2 and the sequel as well, and I noticed I had the most fun when the games were just released, before people figured out the maps and tactics. After that, the game became much more mechanical and repetitive, unfortunately.
- pingyong 7y ago
  The matchmaking system in CSGO almost makes a conscious effort to increase "smurfing". Back in 2013-2015, smurfing was actually a lot harder, because if you won every game, your rank would increase very quickly. This led to a situation where the rank distribution didn't look anything like a bell curve, because people with higher rank had proportionally many more accounts than people in lower ranks. For some reason, Valve thought that this was a problem. And they modified the matchmaking system in a way that forces the MMR distribution to be a bell curve from the outside. It's not known what exactly they do, but from tracking sites it seems like the distribution starts to "deform" over the course of a week and then gets "squished down" again. As a player, the effect this has is that 1. accounts at the upper ranks (Global Elite/SMFC) decay really hard, like if you have an account that is GE and you don't play on that account for 3-6 months, you'll be like MGE afterwards. My main account got actually re-ranked from GE to MG2 after they shifted the ranked distribution - after which I won, and this is not an exaggeration, 38 games in a row, and still kept like 75% win rate until the account was GE again. The other effect is that it takes way too long to rank up now, it used to be that if you won 6 games in a row you would very likely rank up, now it can take easily double that. Put those two together, and you've got a million smurfs obviously. Because anyone who just bought 10 accs for $70 during a sale (and believe me, many, many people did that) can just rotate around accounts and let them decay again once they're too high to smurf on. Add to that that there is nothing to do once you're GE, there is simply no higher rank, and yeah it's no surprise the game is full of smurfs. To make things worse, now that Trust Factor exists you can't even compare experiences anymore. If a new player comes to me and says oh I only play against cheaters or smurfs, I can't even give him a way for it to get better. We have no idea how Trust Factor works, and if you're a new player with a bad Trust Factor... what are you gonna do? You have nothing to look forward to. Prime barely even means anything anymore (not that it ever did, but at least it was a small hurdle), and there's no given way for you to increase your Trust Factor.

by 013a 7y ago

hutzlibu 7y ago

I suppose "smurfing" means, you create a new account, to pretend that you are a new player and therefore get into matches with only newbs? So the motivation is to feel good at winning against not experienced players?

jtms 7y ago
Yes, that’s exactly right. They just want to feel like gods as they stomp the new players.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> So the motivation is to feel good at winning against not experienced players? Contrast online matchmaking systems that take your assessed skill level into account. These are certainly... widespread. I don't understand why. The design goal of such a system is that, no matter what your skill level is, you win or lose at a rate indistinguishable from chance. Are you getting better at the game? Doesn't matter; your win rate is constant. Are you getting worse under lack of pressure, since nothing you do affects your performance? Doesn't matter. Nothing you do can affect your performance. Your win rate is constant; the system will seamlessly swap in weaker players to play against you. If I'm improving at something, I want to see better results than I was getting before. If I'm getting worse, I want to see worse results.
- Double_a_92 7y ago
  The problem is that the more skill you have, the more effort you need to put in while playing. So if you get too good you can't have a fun relaxed game anymore (without getting wrecked and losing rank). Smurfing (playing on lower rank) or cheating (playing effortlessly at your real rank) would be a solution for that... but they are obviously bad and unfair for others. The new scrimmage mode seems to be a promising solution for that though.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    You appear to be describing a completely different problem than I am.
- hoseja 7y ago
  What else would you do in an MMO? The flip side is that with matchmaking, higher level matches are higher quality and more enjoyable too.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  Do grandmasters play chess against beginners? I think most people want to be challenged, and playing with others of similar skill seems to be the norm in most games.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > Do grandmasters play chess against beginners? All the time. They teach people to play; they do stunts like playing against 5 people at once; they sit in the park and take all comers. If you want to prove you're good, go and fight someone who's known to be good. But that generates information for other people, not for you. If you want to determine how good you are, you need to fight a lot of different people.
    - rebuilder 7y ago
      Very good, I chose a poor example. You can see the point I'm making, though?

saagarjha 7y ago

What is the motivation to smurf other than just destroying a bunch of new players? Surely that must get boring after a while?

bencoveney 7y ago
If you play with a friend who has a low rank, it is much easier to create a free now account (that will start in a low skill group) than it is to obtain one for them which is already in a higher skill group. Not saying it is a good thing to do, but it is another reason why you'd find better players in lower skill matches.
CydeWeys 7y ago
And yet plenty of people will do it constantly. Apparently there are some gaming communities (I've heard this of China) where using cheats in multiplayer games is routine. The goal is to win, it doesn't matter how.
ggregoire 7y ago
Can't really tell for CS:GO but in League of Legends, good players create smurfs all the time and the motivation is usually to prove yourself and/or other people (e.g. Twitch viewers, Reddit) that you can keep a very high winrate and reach the top 1% in a few weeks. Sometimes it comes with an extra challenge like playing only the same champion. > just destroying a bunch of new players? Surely that must get boring after a while? Smurfs never play more than 4 or 5 games versus new players. The matchmaking system doesn't match a guy who has 100% winrate over his 20 first games with a guy who has only 30-50%.
denkmoon 7y ago
Two options: A) You can play a game at your actual skill level, which requires your team to communicate effectively and play together. This requires someone to take the lead and coordinate the other players. That just doesn't happen in drop in games. It is incredibly not-fun and frustrating to be playing decently yourself, but be anchored by incompetent team members. You get guys who want to play their own way, or just aren't interested in "taking orders". Plenty of arrogant dudes that won't listen to someone that is a lower rank. B) Play at a level where you can essentially carry your entire team to victory because your skill level is so much higher than the enemy. You get to fuck up a bunch of newbs and win the game, while your team mates are drooling at spawn. B is definitely more fun. Especially when the people smurfing can get their fix of A in an organised match with an organised team, outside of match making.

Double_a_92 7y ago

You should try the new scrimmage mode. The matchmaking there surprisingly works much better than on ranked matches. I.e. most of the times there are 2 good guys, 2 mediocre guys, and 1 beginner in each team. I've had a lot of actually fun 15:15 games there.

rebuilder 7y ago

This is pretty tough to solve in multiplayer games. I used to play BF2 and the sequel as well, and I noticed I had the most fun when the games were just released, before people figured out the maps and tactics. After that, the game became much more mechanical and repetitive, unfortunately.

pingyong 7y ago
The matchmaking system in CSGO almost makes a conscious effort to increase "smurfing". Back in 2013-2015, smurfing was actually a lot harder, because if you won every game, your rank would increase very quickly. This led to a situation where the rank distribution didn't look anything like a bell curve, because people with higher rank had proportionally many more accounts than people in lower ranks. For some reason, Valve thought that this was a problem. And they modified the matchmaking system in a way that forces the MMR distribution to be a bell curve from the outside. It's not known what exactly they do, but from tracking sites it seems like the distribution starts to "deform" over the course of a week and then gets "squished down" again. As a player, the effect this has is that 1. accounts at the upper ranks (Global Elite/SMFC) decay really hard, like if you have an account that is GE and you don't play on that account for 3-6 months, you'll be like MGE afterwards. My main account got actually re-ranked from GE to MG2 after they shifted the ranked distribution - after which I won, and this is not an exaggeration, 38 games in a row, and still kept like 75% win rate until the account was GE again. The other effect is that it takes way too long to rank up now, it used to be that if you won 6 games in a row you would very likely rank up, now it can take easily double that. Put those two together, and you've got a million smurfs obviously. Because anyone who just bought 10 accs for $70 during a sale (and believe me, many, many people did that) can just rotate around accounts and let them decay again once they're too high to smurf on. Add to that that there is nothing to do once you're GE, there is simply no higher rank, and yeah it's no surprise the game is full of smurfs. To make things worse, now that Trust Factor exists you can't even compare experiences anymore. If a new player comes to me and says oh I only play against cheaters or smurfs, I can't even give him a way for it to get better. We have no idea how Trust Factor works, and if you're a new player with a bad Trust Factor... what are you gonna do? You have nothing to look forward to. Prime barely even means anything anymore (not that it ever did, but at least it was a small hurdle), and there's no given way for you to increase your Trust Factor.