3 ms·

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 release

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.
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  Hang on, that's a lot of lingo to decode there. Are you saying that people spend a lot of money to buy multiple Steam accounts (that have CS:GO on them), so that they can slowly rotate which account they use for playing, so that they avoid gaining ranks and being matched with players that are as good as them, so that they can keep dominating lesser skilled players every time they play?
  - pingyong 7y ago
    Yes, that's exactly what people do. Although the spending money part is kind of optional now, since the game is free to play. And it's not really "a lot", it's like 1 AAA game, for most likely way more hours of entertainment. This is also something that happens in pretty much every multiplayer game with skill based matchmaking that exists. However, other games are much better at mitigating this. In LoL for example, your MMR doesn't decay at all. It does get soft-reset once a year when the new season starts, but that reset is quite soft and you can't "stack" multiple years of resets on top of each other. If you had top 1% MMR in 2015, you still have top 1-2% MMR. All games could do more to prevent this, simply by changing how their matchmaking works, but CSGO really takes the cake in terms of requiring an absolute minimum amount of effort, plus actually "forcing" people to smurf unintentionally, just because they took a long break from the game. It's comical at this point.
  - antihero 7y ago
    Wow, how unbelievably insecure do you have to be to do that? In CS1.6, I was always appreciative of the chance to play against higher skilled players, becuase that's how you get better and better.
- Double_a_92 7y ago
  The alternative to that decay system was having smurfs that lost on purpose when their rank got too high. Maybe something like a hidden quick ranking would help. I.e. something trivial like average kill/death ratio, numbers of headshots, ...things that make smurfs annoying. And then match you still according to the real rank, but put people with the same hidden rank in the enemy team.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
there are games that solve the issue by adding physical limitation to movement so that there's a cap to the coordination skill ceiling, nothing can fix esp (enemy highlights trough wall and scenery) of course but there are ways to constrain players so that the field is level, so for example both in war thunder and arma 2 your turn rate and aiming speed is controlled by the type and equipment you're using. even an aimbot or godlike reflexes won't save an enemy if you manage to get the drop on them and using terrain cleverly can negate most of the skilled/cheater advantages.

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.

henrikschroder 7y ago
Hang on, that's a lot of lingo to decode there. Are you saying that people spend a lot of money to buy multiple Steam accounts (that have CS:GO on them), so that they can slowly rotate which account they use for playing, so that they avoid gaining ranks and being matched with players that are as good as them, so that they can keep dominating lesser skilled players every time they play?
- pingyong 7y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what people do. Although the spending money part is kind of optional now, since the game is free to play. And it's not really "a lot", it's like 1 AAA game, for most likely way more hours of entertainment. This is also something that happens in pretty much every multiplayer game with skill based matchmaking that exists. However, other games are much better at mitigating this. In LoL for example, your MMR doesn't decay at all. It does get soft-reset once a year when the new season starts, but that reset is quite soft and you can't "stack" multiple years of resets on top of each other. If you had top 1% MMR in 2015, you still have top 1-2% MMR. All games could do more to prevent this, simply by changing how their matchmaking works, but CSGO really takes the cake in terms of requiring an absolute minimum amount of effort, plus actually "forcing" people to smurf unintentionally, just because they took a long break from the game. It's comical at this point.
- antihero 7y ago
  Wow, how unbelievably insecure do you have to be to do that? In CS1.6, I was always appreciative of the chance to play against higher skilled players, becuase that's how you get better and better.
Double_a_92 7y ago
The alternative to that decay system was having smurfs that lost on purpose when their rank got too high. Maybe something like a hidden quick ranking would help. I.e. something trivial like average kill/death ratio, numbers of headshots, ...things that make smurfs annoying. And then match you still according to the real rank, but put people with the same hidden rank in the enemy team.

LoSboccacc 7y ago

there are games that solve the issue by adding physical limitation to movement so that there's a cap to the coordination skill ceiling, nothing can fix esp (enemy highlights trough wall and scenery) of course but there are ways to constrain players so that the field is level, so for example both in war thunder and arma 2 your turn rate and aiming speed is controlled by the type and equipment you're using. even an aimbot or godlike reflexes won't save an enemy if you manage to get the drop on them and using terrain cleverly can negate most of the skilled/cheater advantages.