So yeah, I guess I just need to vent. But is anyone else tired if smurfs? Does 343 even care? I’m super tired of running FFA, and other playlists but mainly FFA, And working my butt of only for some unranked Smurf to end up placing above me and essentially making me waste my time and energy even playing the match. Why is this allowed to go on? It messes up the game for lower ranked players.
Rant over.
I’d say Josh Menke cares as he’s working on things to help deter smurfs, but I don’t think we’re ever gonna get rid of them.
> 2727626560040591;2:
> I’d say Josh Menke cares as he’s working on things to help deter smurfs, but I don’t think we’re ever gonna get rid of them.
Maybe I should already know this, but who is Josh Menke?
And is there anywhere I can read about what he’s doing for the game?
He makes the MM Feedback threads at the top of the forum page. The link below contains all of those threads.
Why is it a waste? The point is to play a match, and you got a match… losing doesn’t make that a waste, the point is to play. You can’t win them all.
You win some, you lose some – but overall you’re already in the winners category to begin with.
With a slightly higher-than-expected win rate (1/5 instead of 1/6), the game has to give you some harder opponents in order to make it fair for the players who are less skilled than you, smurfs or otherwise.
If the game never gave you those guys, your record would be way skewed and not at all fair for those lower skilled than you.
There’s only so many people playing, FFA specifically had to have the MMR gap widened just to get matches already.
You’re going to have to face guys higher skilled than you anyway, that’s just the cost of an unpopulated game.
But as an overall, you are honestly doing incredibly well & getting a good mix despite how difficult that is with such a low population. I mean, you’re nearly exactly at a 1.0 K/D in it… Honestly, you won’t find that kind of precision in any other game.
With a population this low, any other xbox game would have player stats all over the place and wayyy way more unfair.
I just don’t see why it matters what the people’s gamertags say, when the game is clearly smart enough to figure out where their skill is regardless. Your nearly-perfectly-fair record shows that it knows exactly where their skill is, and is matching you appropriately. No other auto-matching FPS even comes close to this. The only thing skewed is perception.
Being that your service record shows your all-time highest rank as ONYX, achieved in FFA I might add, I’m more than a little puzzled about how a smurf, or even an army of them, could be holding you back?
> 2727626560040591;5:
> He makes the MM Feedback threads at the top of the forum page. The link below contains all of those threads.
>
> Link
Thanks man, I’ll check that out.
> 2533274873843883;7:
> Being that your service record shows your all-time highest rank as ONYX, achieved in FFA I might add, I’m more than a little puzzled about how a smurf, or even an army of them, could be holding you back?
Yeah I was onyx in FFA before, probably around this time a year ago actually. I had to work my butt off to get that. And shortly after that I took a lot of time off from the game. I started back towards the end of last season. Fast forward until now, it feels like FFA is harder than it was before. I’m bouncing back and forth between plat 6 and diamond 1. And I play a lot of high ranked players, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve even played against champions which was surprising because I NEVER played against champs before, but that’s fine. It’s cool seeing how I stack up again high ranks, and if I lose CSR because of it so be it. But when high rank players come in masquerading as smurfs it undermines the whole system. Say you beat them, you hardly gain any CSR, if any. And God forbid you lose, you lose so much CSR because as far as the game is concerned you just lost to some unranked dude. Now when this is happening like every other match it makes increasing your CSR incredibly slow going.
> 2533274885511041;9:
> > 2533274873843883;7:
> > Being that your service record shows your all-time highest rank as ONYX, achieved in FFA I might add, I’m more than a little puzzled about how a smurf, or even an army of them, could be holding you back?
>
> Yeah I was onyx in FFA before, probably around this time a year ago actually. I had to work my butt off to get that. And shortly after that I took a lot of time off from the game. I started back towards the end of last season. Fast forward until now, it feels like FFA is harder than it was before. I’m bouncing back and forth between plat 6 and diamond 1. And I play a lot of high ranked players, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve even played against champions which was surprising because I NEVER played against champs before, but that’s fine. It’s cool seeing how I stack up again high ranks, and if I lose CSR because of it so be it. But when high rank players come in masquerading as smurfs it undermines the whole system. Say you beat them, you hardly gain any CSR, if any. And God forbid you lose, you lose so much CSR because as far as the game is concerned you just lost to some unranked dude. Now when this is happening like every other match it makes increasing your CSR incredibly slow going.
That’s because it is harder than before, they changed the entire ranking system.
That’s a bug fix though, not anything to do with smurfs.
FFA ranking was broken for the entire first year, as you could just eventually grind to Champ rank even if you weren’t actually getting any better.
The ranks were skewed to be based more on how much you played, not how well you did.
They changed it so that you actually need to consistently place top 3 now, which stopped the rank inflation.
If you want to get back to Onyx, you need to actually earn it through skill & winning now, not just grinding out total games…
and you’re going to have a very difficult time doing that if you keep using the same old tactics of “Spartan” tool of destruction.
Onyx level is supposed to be the best, and the best don’t go for trades unless they have to.
If you really care that much, search for some tips videos from Champion level players like Vetoed. Just a little bit of time can make a huge difference, as these guys have played thousands of hours and know every little trick there is.
But just remember, it’s just a little symbol in a video game… what matters is if you’re having fun.
> 2533274834881503;10:
> > 2533274885511041;9:
> > > 2533274873843883;7:
> > > Being that your service record shows your all-time highest rank as ONYX, achieved in FFA I might add, I’m more than a little puzzled about how a smurf, or even an army of them, could be holding you back?
> >
> > Yeah I was onyx in FFA before, probably around this time a year ago actually. I had to work my butt off to get that. And shortly after that I took a lot of time off from the game. I started back towards the end of last season. Fast forward until now, it feels like FFA is harder than it was before. I’m bouncing back and forth between plat 6 and diamond 1. And I play a lot of high ranked players, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve even played against champions which was surprising because I NEVER played against champs before, but that’s fine. It’s cool seeing how I stack up again high ranks, and if I lose CSR because of it so be it. But when high rank players come in masquerading as smurfs it undermines the whole system. Say you beat them, you hardly gain any CSR, if any. And God forbid you lose, you lose so much CSR because as far as the game is concerned you just lost to some unranked dude. Now when this is happening like every other match it makes increasing your CSR incredibly slow going.
>
> That’s because it is harder than before, they changed the entire ranking system.
> That’s a bug fix though, not anything to do with smurfs.
>
> FFA ranking was broken for the entire first year, as you could just eventually grind to Champ rank even if you weren’t actually getting any better.
> The ranks were skewed to be based more on how much you played, not how well you did.
> They changed it so that you actually need to consistently place top 3 now, which stopped the rank inflation.
>
> If you want to get back to Onyx, you need to actually earn it through skill & winning now, not just grinding out total games…
> and you’re going to have a very difficult time doing that if you keep using the same old tactics of “Spartan” tool of destruction.
> Onyx level is supposed to be the best, and the best don’t go for trades unless they have to.
>
> If you really care that much, search for some tips videos from Champion level players like Vetoed. Just a little bit of time can make a huge difference, as these guys have played thousands of hours and know every little trick there is.
> But just remember, it’s just a little symbol in a video game… what matters is if you’re having fun.
I got onxy in the January-February 2017 season, which is well after the first year, so wouldn’t that mean i got it through, “skill & winning” in the first place? I’ve never heard of Vetoed, i’ll check him out though. I’ve watched stuff from a lot of other youtubers and it’s helped a lot. I’m not trying to be closed minded or anything. I’m just pointing out the things I’ve noticed.
<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not post spam.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.
Yes
> 2533274885511041;11:
> > 2533274834881503;10:
> > > 2533274885511041;9:
> > > > 2533274873843883;7:
> > > > Being that your service record shows your all-time highest rank as ONYX, achieved in FFA I might add, I’m more than a little puzzled about how a smurf, or even an army of them, could be holding you back?
> > >
> > > Yeah I was onyx in FFA before, probably around this time a year ago actually. I had to work my butt off to get that. And shortly after that I took a lot of time off from the game. I started back towards the end of last season. Fast forward until now, it feels like FFA is harder than it was before. I’m bouncing back and forth between plat 6 and diamond 1. And I play a lot of high ranked players, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve even played against champions which was surprising because I NEVER played against champs before, but that’s fine. It’s cool seeing how I stack up again high ranks, and if I lose CSR because of it so be it. But when high rank players come in masquerading as smurfs it undermines the whole system. Say you beat them, you hardly gain any CSR, if any. And God forbid you lose, you lose so much CSR because as far as the game is concerned you just lost to some unranked dude. Now when this is happening like every other match it makes increasing your CSR incredibly slow going.
> >
> > That’s because it is harder than before, they changed the entire ranking system.
> > That’s a bug fix though, not anything to do with smurfs.
> >
> > FFA ranking was broken for the entire first year, as you could just eventually grind to Champ rank even if you weren’t actually getting any better.
> > The ranks were skewed to be based more on how much you played, not how well you did.
> > They changed it so that you actually need to consistently place top 3 now, which stopped the rank inflation.
> >
> > If you want to get back to Onyx, you need to actually earn it through skill & winning now, not just grinding out total games…
> > and you’re going to have a very difficult time doing that if you keep using the same old tactics of “Spartan” tool of destruction.
> > Onyx level is supposed to be the best, and the best don’t go for trades unless they have to.
> >
> > If you really care that much, search for some tips videos from Champion level players like Vetoed. Just a little bit of time can make a huge difference, as these guys have played thousands of hours and know every little trick there is.
> > But just remember, it’s just a little symbol in a video game… what matters is if you’re having fun.
>
> I got onxy in the January-February 2017 season, which is well after the first year, so wouldn’t that mean i got it through, “skill & winning” in the first place? I’ve never heard of Vetoed, i’ll check him out though. I’ve watched stuff from a lot of other youtubers and it’s helped a lot. I’m not trying to be closed minded or anything. I’m just pointing out the things I’ve noticed.
I wasn’t saying 1 year as an absolute number but rather an approximation.
If you check the high scores list, you can see exactly when it happened:
Everything prior to the May-June 2017 season had a full list of champion players, with top CSR scores in the 3000’s.
But for the entire May-June season, only 7 people reached champion, and nobody passed 1850 CSR.
As you can see, that’s an enormous difference.
Everyone was scaled down tremendously, the ranks before & after simply can’t be compared.
And if you compare the stats of the current season, you can see exactly what I mean by “skill and winning.”
In previous seasons, the top of the leader-board was mostly 1.1-1.3 K/D and 20-50% win rate.
Compare that to the current season where the top ranked players are in the 1.4-2.0 K/d and 40-80% win rate. It makes wayyy more sense.
Ranks in the old system, as I already mentioned, were mainly about playing a lot & grinding out CSR.
Now, playing isn’t enough – you need to both grind & actually win your matches to increase your rank.
> 2533274834881503;13:
> > 2533274885511041;11:
> > > 2533274834881503;10:
> > > > 2533274885511041;9:
> > > > > 2533274873843883;7:
> > > > > Being that your service record shows your all-time highest rank as ONYX, achieved in FFA I might add, I’m more than a little puzzled about how a smurf, or even an army of them, could be holding you back?
> > > >
> > > > Yeah I was onyx in FFA before, probably around this time a year ago actually. I had to work my butt off to get that. And shortly after that I took a lot of time off from the game. I started back towards the end of last season. Fast forward until now, it feels like FFA is harder than it was before. I’m bouncing back and forth between plat 6 and diamond 1. And I play a lot of high ranked players, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve even played against champions which was surprising because I NEVER played against champs before, but that’s fine. It’s cool seeing how I stack up again high ranks, and if I lose CSR because of it so be it. But when high rank players come in masquerading as smurfs it undermines the whole system. Say you beat them, you hardly gain any CSR, if any. And God forbid you lose, you lose so much CSR because as far as the game is concerned you just lost to some unranked dude. Now when this is happening like every other match it makes increasing your CSR incredibly slow going.
> > >
> > > That’s because it is harder than before, they changed the entire ranking system.
> > > That’s a bug fix though, not anything to do with smurfs.
> > >
> > > FFA ranking was broken for the entire first year, as you could just eventually grind to Champ rank even if you weren’t actually getting any better.
> > > The ranks were skewed to be based more on how much you played, not how well you did.
> > > They changed it so that you actually need to consistently place top 3 now, which stopped the rank inflation.
> > >
> > > If you want to get back to Onyx, you need to actually earn it through skill & winning now, not just grinding out total games…
> > > and you’re going to have a very difficult time doing that if you keep using the same old tactics of “Spartan” tool of destruction.
> > > Onyx level is supposed to be the best, and the best don’t go for trades unless they have to.
> > >
> > > If you really care that much, search for some tips videos from Champion level players like Vetoed. Just a little bit of time can make a huge difference, as these guys have played thousands of hours and know every little trick there is.
> > > But just remember, it’s just a little symbol in a video game… what matters is if you’re having fun.
> >
> > I got onxy in the January-February 2017 season, which is well after the first year, so wouldn’t that mean i got it through, “skill & winning” in the first place? I’ve never heard of Vetoed, i’ll check him out though. I’ve watched stuff from a lot of other youtubers and it’s helped a lot. I’m not trying to be closed minded or anything. I’m just pointing out the things I’ve noticed.
>
> I wasn’t saying 1 year as an absolute number but rather an approximation.
>
> If you check the high scores list, you can see exactly when it happened:
> Everything prior to the May-June 2017 season had a full list of champion players, with top CSR scores in the 3000’s.
> But for the entire May-June season, only 7 people reached champion, and nobody passed 1850 CSR.
>
> As you can see, that’s an enormous difference.
> Everyone was scaled down tremendously, the ranks before & after simply can’t be compared.
>
> And if you compare the stats of the current season, you can see exactly what I mean by “skill and winning.”
>
> In previous seasons, the top of the leader-board was mostly 1.1-1.3 K/D and 20-50% win rate.
> Compare that to the current season where the top ranked players are in the 1.4-2.0 K/d and 40-80% win rate. It makes wayyy more sense.
>
> Ranks in the old system, as I already mentioned, were mainly about playing a lot & grinding out CSR.
> Now, playing isn’t enough – you need to both grind & actually win your matches to increase your rank.
I feel you man. Thanks for taking the time to type this up and explain it.
<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.
True that
Smurfs are certainly annoying and I’ve run into my fair share them so I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t really think there’s any logical way to go about getting rid of them. I mean, think about what it would actually take to root out Smurfs successfully and efficiently. It would be very complicated, definitely way too time consuming for 343 to be up to.
I think the number of smurfs is overblown and misdiagnosed. I played with a group yesterday that accused the other team of being smurfs because they weren’t highly ranked and destroyed us. Looking at their stats for the game in question, these players weren’t amazing.
It’s a consistent issue of mismatched connection quality. One player feels like they have host advantage while the other has super high latency and ping spikes. That 1 out of 15 to 20 games where I have a good connection, I’ll end up with 20+ headshots and people will message that I’m cheating. The rest of the time I’m getting 5 to 8 kills and my teammates are messaging me that I suck and should quit Halo.
Ping spikes and latency is 100x’s a bigger problem than Smurf’s. Not the end of the world to play someone better than you if it’s a fair match. Fact that it’s so hard to tell whether the other team was better or you were screwed by connection due to 343’s poor netcode is a real problem.
> 2727626560040591;2:
> I’d say Josh Menke cares as he’s working on things to help deter smurfs, but I don’t think we’re ever gonna get rid of them.
False, you are forced to make smurf accounts in SWAT (and obliterate bad/casual players) if you want to play the game on a consistent basis. The current system promotes Chamipion/Onyx players to make a new smurf account every 1-3 days and destroy bad players. Then those bad players come on the forums and complain about getting destroyed by smurf accounts. SWAT should be social. The population is not high enough to run effectively for everyone to get games throughout the day.
> 2728296738546254;17:
> I think the number of smurfs is overblown and misdiagnosed.
There is a lot of smurf accounts. The one thing 343/most people are overlooking is, 1 player is creating anywhere from 1 to 32 smurf accounts.
> 2728296738546254;17:
> I think the number of smurfs is overblown and misdiagnosed. I played with a group yesterday that accused the other team of being smurfs because they weren’t highly ranked and destroyed us. Looking at their stats for the game in question, these players weren’t amazing.
>
> It’s a consistent issue of mismatched connection quality. One player feels like they have host advantage while the other has super high latency and ping spikes. That 1 out of 15 to 20 games where I have a good connection, I’ll end up with 20+ headshots and people will message that I’m cheating. The rest of the time I’m getting 5 to 8 kills and my teammates are messaging me that I suck and should quit Halo.
>
> Ping spikes and latency is 100x’s a bigger problem than Smurf’s. Not the end of the world to play someone better than you if it’s a fair match. Fact that it’s so hard to tell whether the other team was better or you were screwed by connection due to 343’s poor netcode is a real problem.
Hey dude,
It sounds like you’re having the problem Josh Menke identified where ISP’s throttle or route connections badly during off-peak times. If that’s true your best bet is to blast your ISP, threaten to churn. Ask for a direct route to the Microsoft Datacentres.
That said I have a suggestion that worked for me, I know how frustrating H5 is with high latency (I’m in Australia - it really sucks).
Switching DNS - When I switched to google DNS (Network settings > Advanced > DNS Settings > 8.8.8.8 primary 8.8.4.4 seconadry), my jitter dropped significantly, probably a bad route from my ISP’s default DNS. You can try other DNS’s as well - google for more info.
On topic - latency and smurfs are both problems.