This is starting to become a huge problem to the point where a few individuals (will not name to not break the rules) go on the KI discord and brag about it. Even showing off their stats as like some kind of trophy. Qualifer matches are filled with lvl 50s with obvious huge amount of experience in the game. Something has to be done or what remains of the casual population will be gone forever. Please KI community you must do something at the very least properly mod the discord chat to keep smurfs from bragging about their evil deeds.
1 Like
Sadly I’ve seen a number of smurfs who are stat boosting. It IS an issue and creates frustration for both new players and vets.
Nothing like getting schooled by a level 1 S. Jago who then teabags you into oblivion.
Ultimately this is an issue that would be difficult to fix as all they have to do is create a new account. MS can’t stop them.
Sadly the only option you have is to play each fight as if you were battling the best of the best. This is how I roll, and if the player actually is a noob, and I get rematched with them, then I’ll change characters.
Any real “solutions” would be worse than the problem itself. There’s no way to force people to not be ■■■■■■■■. The game lets you requalify, on purpose, to prevent people being stuck above their competitive level. Getting rid of that would be worse than dealing with a few morons smurfing.
3 Likes
Thats odd becasue Ive noticed this over the last week. I didnt realize it was such a big deal that others would notice. But I have come across 2 players that I thought were beginners so I “took it easy” by playing my weakest character. Trying to be polite to a new player… only to find out they are not and then they are very rude and super douchey about it. Tbags non stop and them sent me a PM how my level doesnt matter to them, ect… whatever.
I know it’s mostly something noobs wouldn’t have much experience dealing with, but over time I just got to where I never assume that a L1 player isn’t as low skilled as his/her stats say. I wait to see how they handle in a match and adjust accordingly.
But then again I’m weird. I used to enjoy getting the snot beat out of me when I first started playing KI. They were all learning experiences and goals to aspire to, you know?
Then what’s the point of a MM system if you can’t assume the person is as good as their rank states? Might as well as go back to the days before matchmaking when finding a match was based on server lists with that kind of mindset.
*shrug *
I don’t know what to tell you. My own experiences are that guys like this are few and far between.
Then again I never did use matchmaking for exhibition much. I’ve mostly ever only played ranked. 
When I have played exhibition it has typically been with friends or for tournaments.
Everyone’s mileage tends to vary in matchmaking. I know of one guy that has never stopped claiming that KI’s online is dead because HE was never able to find anyone to play with online.
And yes I’m making broad generalizations here. But I try not to let stuff like smurfing or teabagging get to me. I personally feel like in any game if someone wants to play the game, they’ll work through the muck to get to whatever skill level they are satisfied with, and if they don’t there are literally thousands of other games they could play.
IMO Only allowing players to to go down one rank tier per monthly reset, instead of outright requalifying, would help mitigate these issues.
1 Like
Possibly but that would require some programming. I suspect the rank reset just involves deleting any record of your rank matches.
Here is some advice. If you haven’t, do the 10 qualifying matches to get out of qualifier. Then you can go to exhibition and do bronze-bronze, silver-silver, or gold-gold. Just filter out qualifier. Bronze, silver, gold, and killer are indicative of skill. Qualifier is “unknown”. Qualifier does not mean you are new. It means your skill level is unknown.
2 Likes
This is good advice, I used to do this only the other way in exhibition, I’d filter to only play people up to my rank, I’m gold now (Killer requirements = rank got reset even though I played in the month that it did do go figure) and don’t bother filtering since there’s little difference between fighting in Killer and Gold.
I would definitely recommend doing this to begin with, only thing is it doesn’t stop you fighting those god like qualifiers in ranked and then you losing ranked points if you lose (Which does suck, cause in this instance it’ll be a lot of points) this isn’t what the topic was about, but I do find it more annoying than coming across these people in exhibition.
I’m currently in qualifier, but I still have my star. Believe me, since I’ve gotten my star - finding a casual match is nearly impossible. Sometimes, I just want to test out other characters or play for fun with my competitive edge turned off. It’s hard to do with both a rank and a star.
I do tend to run across some people who either don’t acknowledge it or don’t know what it means, but for the most part - I just keep myself occupied with Gold or higher. I agree with Andy that implementing any form of system would only do more harm than good. If I was locked in my rank, I’d jump on an alt account just so people don’t stumble across me expecting the best then win because I’m not serious and call me out or just act superior.
Welcome to fighting games my friend. I played my Q matches won 7 out of 10. Four of the matches were killers I won one of them and lost the rest of them but they were close matches. I was told by someone a while ago to not even go into ranked until your 50 and even when you are 50 doesn’t mean your even that good just means you,ve played for a long time. As we all know there is so much more to ki then just playing it for a long time. I personally think that facing hard people is good if you get rekt try to understand why you get rekt. Play every match like its top 8 during the match think why is this guy beating me and odds are in ki you will probably meet again. Them being lvl50 doesn’t have much to do with their skill iv faced lvl50s who never block or have any tech just mash ■■■■and hope to win. Also if someone rekts you maybe ask them send them a message to help you understand why. Iv been helped many times.
Word.
That’s what Ranked is for, though. Casual matches are meant to be in exhibition and lobbies.
I agree that players having some flexibility in their rank is good, but letting people just re-qualify on a whim undermines the purpose of ranks as much as alt accounts do.