Smurfing

General Discussion
1

I ran into a Killer today that challenged me with a low level Sadira. A few seconds into the match, he completely destroys me, using tech that somebody who hasn’t played Sadira for a long while would know. Releasing that this individual was using a Smurf account, I immediately quit the match, as I have no respect for those who stat boost or manipulate data. The individual messaged me, and I told them that I didn’t care how skilled they were, they shouldn’t manipulate their game card to make themselves look less skilled in order to score easy wins.

They denied the accusation, however the Gamer score is barely 1000, and their KI playtime on that account was abysmal.

While thankfully this is rare, I do run across people in Bronze and Silver that are actually absurdly good players. In most cases, whether I win or lose, I get hostile messages asking me how I got into Killer if said Bronze or Silver almost beat me. In all cases they have stupidly low Gamer scores.

Here’s the deal, I have absolutely no respect for a person who smurfs because it hurts new players. Like many of my friends, if I encounter a new player that is just getting into KI, I will generally play my second and third string characters (Spinal, Hisako, Glacius, and Jago), so the match will be a little fairer for them. When I see a Level 1 Bronze Jago, there is a 99.9% chance that I will choose Jago as well. When that Level 1 Bronze Jago performs a perfect all manual combo and near perfects me, teabags me and then sends me a nasty message, it makes me gun shy for the next match with a low level character.

Some people believe that you should fight every fight as if facing a pro, and when I do that, I utterly destroy the other player, and I can’t imagine it being very fun for them. There are some players, even on this message board here, that will not complete a match with me, even after I switched characters.

Here’s the deal, this isn’t something that MS can fix. This is something that we as a community have to work on. Be honest with your skill level. That is the whole purpose of Ranked and having Ranks.

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People doing this are only doing it to grief others. If somebody quits a game I’m playing I don’t message them. They are just out there looking to see if they can upset someone. Don’t message them back. This kind of person is only going to do it more if we make a fuss out of it.

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I’ve run into quite a few suspected smurfs myself, and it did have the unfortunate effect of making me go all out no matter what. I’ll probably be more relaxed now, since I’m no longer fighting up to another tier, but I annihilated some poor Silver recently. I put him down and just didn’t give him a chance to get up.

I sent him a message to apologize and explain that I didn’t want to take any risks, but I would’ve rather started out with my lazy st.HP meaties to try to signal blocking on wake up might be a good idea and work up from there

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I agree its super annoying and I always end up not using my main and using one of my weakest characters when I see a low tier profile (this is my own fault).
But… I dont think everytime this happens they are doing it on purpose. I think they uninstalled the game previously and then once they decided to play KI again , they reinstall and their data was deleted so they have a level 1 profile but obviously are highly skilled. Sucks…super annoying…but what else are they going to do?

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I mean, yeah, I started at level 1 again when I moved from Steam to Win10, so not all are malicious. In the most extreme/funny case, I beat a top 32 as a Level-3 Silver, then I matched up with him again a couple matches later and hear “OH! IT’S THIS GUY!” on his mic, then got rekt

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I always check their Gamer Score. If there Xbox Gamer Score is 1000 or below, they’re a smurf.

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Perfectly said, bro. I agree with every word. I also shift to a side character when I’m facing bronze or silver players. If killer players use their mains, it would only discourage newcomers. Unfortunately, we run into a lot of pricks online, including pro players who are always trying to humiliate others. I’ve quitted some matches cause I felt disrespected. So, it’s a general problem that we, as a community, need to address.

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8

Does the Report feature have an option for that kind of thing? I’m too scared to click on it on anyone in case there are no options afterwards and it just reports them.

The only way I can see addressing the community itself addressing it is to have a “confirmed smurf” block list to share, but then you have to be careful with making sure only the right people get on it.

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I believe you can report somebody for unsportsmanlike behavior.

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It wont report unless you send it all the way through… only option is a comment after you choose what you are reporting them for. If you feel the need to report someone…do it. Its not going to hurt anyone…its only going to make Xbox live a better place if you use it correctly and 99 % of the time nothing happens. Its only when they send you PMs that are nasty or voice chat that Xbox security can see with proof that will end up in a ban or something. Just reporting for smurfing is not going odo anything nor is tea bagging or rage quitting.

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@WebNRagnarok What does gamerscore have to do with anything? If they uninstalled the game and came back to it months later why woudl that effect their overall gamerscore?
What if they started a new profile because they changed emails, or lost their other profile, or just quit Xbox all together and then came back to it with a new GT? Not all of them are smurfs… but I get why you hate it because I do do because they get me EVERYTIME!

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There are a few reasons people wind up with new accounts, and not all of them (or even most to be honest) have a primary goal of just screwing with people.

Some people delete and reinstall the game, others have sold their system and gotten a new one. I’ve known people for whom money was tight so they lived off a continual diet of 2-month free XBL coupon codes. At higher level players will sometimes use a smurf account so that they can learn a new character in peace and without having everyone they play go 100% balls to the walls against them. Sometimes when I’m visiting my brother I play on his account. It can be a variety of things.

Unless someone sends a crappy message after, I wouldn’t assume they’re just trying to mess with you -shrug-

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Darn you @STORM179… being the voice of reason and all. :smile:

As an individual who has lost all their data 3 times, I can understand. Two was due to game hampering bugs (after Aria dropped, I could no longer use the Left Trigger button. If active every button becomes a three kick button). At the request of IG, I completely wiped my cloud data.

Second time, my cloud data became corrupt. As soon as it started to sync, it crashed the game. I had to wipe it again.

The third time was my own bad, I was uninstalling stuff from my old Xbox One to give to my best bud and I hit delete from every where. :frowning:

I’ve been through three different Xbox Ones, and thus have uninstalled and reinstalled the game.

Each time I had to start over from scratch, I immediately Ranked into Gold, and within a few hours if less, Ranked into Killer. While my GT, has changed time to time, I’ve always kept the Ragnarok part, so people could identify me.

You’re right life happens, but Smurfing isn’t that. As I said at the beginning, it’s generally rare. These players always masquerade as new low level players, only to destroy you. You’ll generally never see them in Killer, rarely see them in Gold, but mostly see them in Bronze or Silver. You can always tell, because they are strong, they’re gamer tag is usually something offensive or insulting, (UrA$$isMine) something like that, their Xbox Gamer Score is very low, their KI playtime is low, and generally they send a nasty message afterwards.

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I’ll go on record and admit I’ve done this. I was fortunate enough to get a star, so it’s not always that I want to use characters I am well-suited with. Still, most people who see the star will go all out (for good reason). Sometimes I just want to dabble with characters I never get a real chance too; Arbiter, Gargos, Kim, etc.

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The truth is, nobody actually cares about the smirf account. It’s the associated trolling. I have gotten a message “you’re a killer and you lost to a Bronze? Lol :joy:!!!”

And you know what I did? I erased it and went about my day. How many years of internet are we going to take to learn that responding to these dopes is what they want. It’s only a matter of time before one of them is in here posting “git gud scrubs!”

Stop worrying about it. Anything we might imagine to try to prevent this type of obnoxious behavior will have far more negative consequences than the smirking itself. Don’t ever respond to negative messages on Xbox Live. EVER. There’s no reason to do it. It’s a random stranger being an ■■■■■■■. Why waste your life worrying about it?

If they don’t send you a message, just assume it’s someone who lost their password. Because why not?

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My pops said it best, “don’t let external forces disrupt your inner peace.”

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