In Valorant, “Smurfing” is a common issue every rank grinder faces. This situation is faced by most players in other FPS titles as well. This game was released back in 2020 and is currently one of the top FPS titles.
Smurfing is a situation when strong players create secondary accounts with lower ranks in order to compete against less experienced opponents, resulting in biased matches and a less enjoyable gaming experience for others. This unfair method is practiced by players who want to flaunt their skills to lower-skilled players because they sometimes face strong competition in their lobby.
Valorant, an FPS shooter title from Riot (Image via Riot Games )
To address this problem, Riot Games defined the issue as “ a symptom of multiple motivations”. This means Smurfing is recognized by the dev team as having multiple motivations rather than being motivated by a single reason. These can include incentives such as wishing to play with friends at lesser skill levels, but they can also lead to unfair advantages.
Why do people Smurf in Valorant?
Will Riot ever combat smurfing? byu/Sweaty_Bit_4022 inVALORANT
Smurfing is usually done on an alternate account by a high-rank player, generally, an Ascendant or Immortal, to hide their identity. Smurfing can be a fun way to play or to test new strategies for some, but most others usually see it as a negative action that tends to exploit the integrity of competitive play.
Different ranks in Valorant (Image via Riot Games)
This is typically done by high-ranked players to test new methods on lower-ranked players that they will not be able to implement smoothly in their lobbies. This allows them to test the strengths and weaknesses of their strategy and can further tune it according to their need without risking the match RR of their rank lobbies. Playing with an alternate account allows a safe environment for experimentation, which further promotes this among the high-lobby players but eventually makes it unbearable for the low-skilled fans.
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Another reason why Smurf accounts are made is to stream-snipe some content creators. Stream-snipe is a method in which a person watches a live stream of a specific content creator and tries to sabotage them in their game, by gaining an unfair advantage. This not only destroys the competitive integrity of the title but also ruins the fun for the streamer and their viewers. By Smurfing, these players avoid mass reporting which further helps them to evade any potential consequences.
What is the Impact of Smurfing?
In an attempt to discourage boosting, Valorant limits rank differences, which unintentionally encourage Smurfing and have many negative effects on the community and the fairness of competitive play.
Graph representing the 5-stack games with adjustments every patch (Image via Riot Games)
This issue will eventually lead the low-skilled players to frustration. Playing on a low-skilled account can create an uneven field where a highly skilled player using a low-rank account can dominate most of the gunfights against less experienced players. Non-Smurfing players become frustrated as a result, and the ranking system’s accurate representation of skill levels is distorted. The player’s true skill level is misrepresented by the Smurf account’s exaggerated rank, which results in erroneous matchmaking and a less competitive atmosphere.
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Due to such a drastic extent of Smurfing those who are attempting to progress and ascend the ranks may regularly encounter Smurfs, impeding their ability to advance and demonstrate their genuine skills.
Solutions to Reduce Smurfs in Valorant
One of the most common complaints from the fans is the abundance of Smurf accounts in Valorant, and to counter it Riot has implemented various strategies to tackle the issue.
To combat this issue, Riot Games recently tracked the number of “stomp matches,” which are games in which one team wins by eight or more rounds. Before the adjustments were implemented, the Smurf stomp rate in all Valorant games was an exceptional 32%, which meant that almost one out of every three Smurf matches resulted in a stomp. Riot Games adjusted the Matchmaking Rating (MMR) of half of the found Smurfs while leaving the other half alone as a control group to assess the efficiency of their systems. This allowed them to determine if the improvements had a significant impact or not.
Graph, representing the application of Smurf detection (Image via Riot Games)
The rectified Smurfs were within 1% of the intended stomp rate, showing a considerable drop. In addition to lowering the stomp rate, Riot wanted to see how quickly Smurfs returned to their proper Matchmaking Rating (MMR). The results revealed that adjusted Smurfs were back in their correct MMR in as little as 4 matches, whereas those in the control group were still about 3 rank divisions away.
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Riot officially deployed Smurf detection in all areas following the strong favorable outcomes. Moving forward, the team is working on improving Smurf detection technologies to ensure that no Smurfs go unnoticed. This includes investigating changes to the amount of MMR assigned to discovered Smurfs, which could help them reach their original account’s MMR even faster.
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