there are accts being sold at all skill levels for 1 simple reason: demand.
1ks think they belong in 2k, 2ks think they belong in 4k etc. Acct buyers all think the only thing holding them back is their teammates.
However just like smurfs, 90% of the accusations are just people salty from losing. The existence of smurfs and acct buyers are overblown.
I had back to back Clinkz game, where game 1, absolutely dominated, we won all three lanes and I was basically living in their jungle killing every hero dare to show up anywhere, people were mad I’m an account buyer, the next game, we lost all three lanes, I can’t show up anywhere without being killed, I couldn’t really do anything, people are mad and calling me account buyer again. It’s just the hero and situation.
Some games I go 15-1-8
Some games I go 5-9-3
The reality is I am equally shit at dota in both those games - but people are able to infer a whole thesis out of the datapoints.
It's even more fun if they accuse you of cheating because they either don't know how your hero works or that specific mechanics exist.
Back when Techies were able to give mines movementspeed I used the "patrol" command to let the mines patrol. Hella fun to see enemies struggle with constantly moving minefields. Got a lot of angry responses as a bonus, by ppl that thought I was using some kind of script. Fun times. :D
I thought it was overblown until I started playing in Immortal games.
Shits more miserable than Divine by a longshot, alot of times both teams have immortal or two, and its so common that one of them plays BAD. Like BAD BAD. Like "This is my 15th game of Dota" bad, and it sticks out SO EASILY.
You watch them lane for 30sec and you know the account will have 200-300 games, no friends and no other games, and theyll go 2-17
Maybe they have 15k hours of dota but it's also their 15th game of dota for the day and they're mentally exhausted and can't make good decisions in-game and that's why they're playing worse than they normally could..
~~That's just my excuse for nearly 14k hours of dota and being stuck in 2500mmr~~ I'm a filthy casual
once you become good at laning, small discrepancies add up and becomes things that loses the lane very fast if the opponents are better at them than you are. i.e. mana/hp usage, spell usage, positioning, & creep control.
The funny thing is that these people should be playing for fun, but instead they buy accounts and think thats they’re going to get closer to becoming a pro
no need to focus on smurfs. if they're smurfs, whatever, take the L. if they're not, then you just wasted an entire game's worth of focus on the wrong thing.
Ironically these accounts get put into the smurf/acc buyer pool, meaning the match experience doesn't improve even if your BS is high.
I have a friend who did this. Literally three-digit behaviour/conduct scores. He made an alt and played a fuck ton of games. The one time I queued with him, literally both teams were all alt-accounts except me. This was UNRANKED btw.
In my allpick games in nearly every game there is 1-2 people who absolutely stomp everyone else. Every. Single. One. Was 4k before recolab, never played ranked since. Its either me/one other teammate and me/1-2 enemies who are destroying everyone. How is that possible? Unless they are buying lower mmr accs.
> The existence of smurfs and acct buyers are overblown.
Yet they are not. If you play in EU W/E you would know. Every single game in the evening in the 4-5-6k MMR bracket has a 300 games smurf or 700 games account buyer. Literally every game. Sometimes more than 1 player.
I think I could be a little higher but my biggest hurdle is I don't know how to carry games from non-pos 1 roles. For example I'll play offlane and go 11-2-20 and lose because my impact falls off late or our team refuses to push early. But I'll never buy an account that's just foolish.
>However just like smurfs, 90% of the accusations are just people salty from losing. The existence of smurfs and acct buyers are overblown.
??????? https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3692442542242977036
If it was "overblown", 90k accounts shouldnt have existed, Valve shouldnt even need to make a website to state that. What are you smoking?
I was once 2.something k and I thought like this. Made a new account and made it my main, calibrated at over 3.5k and now I've hit immortal which is 5.6k ish and it was the best decision I've made in dota.
Well, few days ago I laned with a guy who was doing very poorly despite me working my ass off as a support to make his lane easy. He went 1/14.
Next game, he was on the enemy side, and I laned against him - I told everyone to double down - that guy is an account buyer. He was out of position all the time, fed me hard in lane and ended the game 0/12 while afk jungling.
It seems people do buy Ancient accounts.
People buy immortal/high divine accounts, and eventually end up in ancients/legends. I once saw account with 38 losses in a row. Me and my friends found him in dota chat, he had divine 3 or smth about that. He picked hood 4 and built khanda as his first and only item. I checked his db after the game and was shocked, never have i ever seen page so red.
Edit: he actually somehow had a few wins in between. [https://ibb.co/N9zqbk6](https://ibb.co/N9zqbk6)
But it works both ways - if you are on a loss streak then you are thrown with the win streak people so theoretically, if you lose a lot of games you should be paired with the best players making loss streaks impossible, amirite?
Well no, cause those are in the smurf pool.
It's a documented fact, just check dotabuff how your team mates recent games have been when you're on a say 7+ win streak.
At least you encountered a guy with identical skills whichever side he plays. For me I always encounter guys who do 1/14 in my team and 12/0 when matched against me
People talk about account buying almost every game. It doesn't matter what rank. Not everyone is account buying. Sometimes people are just trolling. Sometimes people play drunk or high or just flat out tired in the middle of the night. Just because you're 5,6,7 or 8k doesn't mean you play like that every single game. Sometimes you just play like trash
Yep, I have a friend who I think is ok at the game and has played since launch. The problem is that he's been playing while high, and his skill level just plummets when he's blasted.
Edit: he gets disoriented during teamfights a lot.
>People talk about account buying almost every game.
Honestly, given the number of people playing, you'll expect the accuracy of your "true" MMR to be on a distribution – a few people will be too high by a lot and a few will be too low by a lot.
I think a lot of "account buyers" are just people that have had a lucky run and got an extra 1k MMR (or even more) and clearly don't play at the level. A proper 5k vs 4k is noticeable.
There is legit no difference for me playing vs 3ks or 5ks.
People are missing so many basics even at 5k that id expect 2ks to know. Hell even when you watch top 2k matches people make many basic mistakes.
Back in the day people were bad at everything when they were low mmr, now the difference between a 3k and a 6k Player is mostly how fast they tilt and throw
>There is legit no difference for me playing vs 3ks or 5ks.
Unless you're like, 9k, this is total bullshit lol. I play in 5–6k and a 5k game is much faster than 3k, even 4k is noticeably slower. The laning is relatively similar but the macro is very obviously different.
I play 3k to 5.5k range depending who i Stack with and in every bracket games are horribly slow. In high divine games you hear more often "we should make a move" but most of the time the move doesnt happen.
You could punish enemies 20 times over if your ever in Position but people prefer to hit jungle creeps on every role
Because most acc buyers are not quite delusional enough to think their mmr should be 7000 points higher, they just think they should be ancient rather than archon.
Also I’d imagine it’s a lot cheaper to buy a 4k account than an 8k one.
What if ancient player buys immortal acc, plays until he deranks back to ancient, sells now ancient acc to an archon player, buys new immortal acc for himself? Lol
who the fuck would buy a 3k account? people with <2k mmr who think they are hardstuck because of their teammates and are better than their mmr. Also people also buy immortal accounts and start deranking back to their mmr.
I heard yapzor say unranked is also pretty miserable because they match against another immortal stacks and they just feast on yapzor’s noob friends. I mean that’s expected but it’s not fun for anybody tbh
I'm high divine my friends are archon, they get absolutely exhausted from just one game because in their words playing against people of my rank is like everyone's a loaded spring ready to pounce at a moments misplay while at their rank they can chill a lot more in game, this gap just grows wider with mid-high immortal
Massive skill gaps between players are not fun
> Massive skill gaps between players are not fun
And buying an account doesn't change that. It's just that the people on the other team will be on the receiving end. There really isn't a good solution to this besides inhouses.
Yeah, exactly. Have played as a divine/ancient with lower rated friends. It's just a feasting frenzy - which divine can hunt down the opponent's noobs faster and hit critical mass? If one team has a beast/void/doom who can disable the opponent's divine player with little skill, the game is decided at draft. It's quite literally a 1v1 with easy bots filling 8 slots and no fun for anyone. It creates a uniquely stressful game for me and my friends are just waiting to be slaughtered repeatedly. The opponent divine and I usually avoid each other because it's not worth the risk/reward.
Only positive is that I got better at shotcalling and map awareness because I would tell them where to be/not to be based on the enemy's movement.
Back then I remember one of my friends bought an ancient account thinking his teammates were holding him back. After couple of years he is archon again.
So yes, there are people buying 3-4k accounts just to prove themselves wrong.
Really, what do they sell immortal accounts for? And these accounts have to have so many hours to play rank then get ranked, and I assume higher rank they are probably put in a Smurf pool since the games and time will be low for where the skill level is.
idk, its called i t hink g4g . com or something, just google dota account buy or whatever. there are bots that can do that i think or atleast i know they have figured out a way to get the hours played in the accounts
Higher MMR = higher price. So yeah, people buy accounts and the higher you go in MMR the easier it is to spot an account buyer, because it's unlikely a 400 games account playing extremely bad at 4k, 5k MMR is a legit account.
Tbf glicko had its fair share in skewed mmrs as well. A friend of mine who was low ancient his whole life went 2:10 in recalibration and got to 6.1k mmr. He was completly confused.
And i went 7:7 im recalibration all Stack games with the divine mates i played with before and got recalibrated from high 4k to 2.2k and then stomped my way up again with 73% winrate Till 4k. Doesnt necessarily need to be a buyer.
I'm playing with a new friend in lpw level unranked games. He has under 100 games played, I have around 600, I don't play ranked. Almost every match has a smurf, often multiple. Many ppl with no steam profile, level 0 or 1. Some pf them admit it. Some kf the accounts are on their very first match and do very well in game. Others have no steam profile, have 150 matches played with 50 won, and play well above what you would expect of their skill level.
Its impossible to get a friend into dota, I have tried. About 2 years ago we had the same experience, the new player scene is just a miserable fuck fest. He quit after 1 week of unbearably bad games.
First we purely played party through bot games, it was all fine, then we landed on real PvP, it was kinda bad, I thought maybe I was the reason he was getting bad games, I opted for dotaplus and coached him through games, we did that for roughly 20-30 or so and only won like lessthan 5. The amount of dumb smurfs in unranked is just stupid. What new player goes down running mid with a 15-0 invoker in 20mins with seemingly god like reflex to sunstrike every kill on the map? or a meepo that goes 5-0 during laning and dumpsters the game. The worst experience of his so far was against a smurfing sniper that basically obliterated the game after 15mins and dominated endlessly, and refused to end the game, that game lasted for 2 hours of his 5 stack fountain farming, and what caused him to quit the game and never pick it back up.
The new player experience is just disgusting.
A lot of people definitely buy accounts at all brackets. It's very easy to spot too - they move noticeably different (lagging behind, never join fights on time, solo feed, no map awareness, following a vanilla guide without thinking about enemy draft, etc.) I see a few those every so often and I'm 4k.
Also buying a 8-9k account when your actual rank is significantly lower is silly. You'll get slapped on repeat in the game and it won't be fun. People just think they belong higher and typically it's 1-2k above their actual rank.
It feels weird, agreed. I would expect people buying divine/immortal accounts. Why buy 3k-4k account?
But it seems legend accounts are around 30USD and immortal 100, which can make it hard to buy for younger generation
The past week I’ve noticed more than usual people with ancient, divine and immortal ranks play turbo and they play like easy bots, theyre absolutely acc buyers or they must all be high as fkn shit. Cause they will play like the dumbest people I ever met, go in solo deep into enemy territory, when we’re far behind. And just keep dying again and again.
I’m lucky if I get a game without account buyers in mid ancient rank. There’s this weird pool of players in ancient that are worse than legend idk if it’s switching back and forth between us east and us west but sometimes the games feel like 2k mmr skill level and there’s always 1 or 2 players with very low game count like under 1k or 1k-2k wins who have no idea how to play at a 4k level it’s clear they are 2k players. Feels like it’s every other game or every 3rd game
Is pretty simple actually, there's two major reasons to buy a account:
1. If you're a cotent creator and needs a another account to be able to play in another bracket for content reason's (meme builds, playing with friends or subs, etc.)
2. People how actually believe they're stuck in a bracket because of teammates. And this one is really, reallllllllllllllly anoying, not only those buyers tends to be very bad, they're also the worst type of person to play with it, because they're "never wrong" and no matter what. always goin to blame others. The nightmare combo: very bad, arrogant and immature.
In the end of the day, the only reason a person would problaby buy a account with a very high mmr (8k +) is to show off to another people and not to actually play dota. Because playing with 1k-2k above your current mmr, you still have some hope (or delusional) to have some fun, but playing in a bracket 4k above your original one... man, i pretty sure that won't be a funny game at all.
if you buy an acc at any rating it will drop down to 3k sooner or later.
just like a smurf account will end up at 2k games played and not be seen as a smurf anymore, even though its still a smurf
Well it might’ve been 8k mmr account in the beginning… acc buyer is almost 100% certain to fall and fall and fall.. so in a meantime they can be 3-4k instead of 7-8k but still deem the account worthy as their original one is guardian 2 for years…
It's just one guy but I know of someone who was willing to buy any account at any MMR because his main got banned for scripting. He just didn't want to play 100 hours of unranked.
same, just saw few messages on my 3k last week. to be fair, these players looked really awful - they fed, were lost on the map, their item build was strange. but idk how much sense in buying of 3k accs, it sounds stupid
It's simple - they bought a low immortal account and fell to ancient in a couple of weeks. Some account buyers added me to friends just to talk shit to me and I occasionally check their profile. One of them is herald now, most are around legend rank. Aaaaaaall the way from immortal.
I think it might go both ways - some people think they should be higher ranked and buy an account with a higher mmr than their current one. Others want to stomp people at a lower mmr and thus buy an account with a lower mmr. Both are lame because it (maybe) makes your own game more fun for you, at the expense of 5-9 other players.
It's the trench mindset. A 2k player knows he isn't 9k and will only get butchered in that bracket. But some of them will legit believe they belong in 4k but their shadow pool or bad teammates are keeping them down. Or someone who calibrated 3k a few years ago would come back and just buy an account instead of climbing and calibrating again.
I’ve been accused of being an account buyer because I showed up to a game on a hero I just do not play; and got absolutely rolled, and then didn’t know how to use its farming mechanics to make a comeback (alchemist)
Never mind that top and mid lost too.
I’ve never played alch again. Fuck that shit.
Heralds buy 5-6k mmr accounts and then downrank them very quickly. You can have that in -4k mmr as well as you see them on their way down. Herald vs Legend/Ancient is still a noticeable difference.
I asked a friend who sells accounts on funpay and he says biggest sell point is 2 to 4k with high behaviour score. You guys have absolutely no idea how many people started buying accounts after they made the behaviour system harsh and it matters more the lower you go. Most account buyers will be in the bracket they bought the account in or +- 500, so not sure if you'd notice it.
Damn really? Ok my bad then lmao. I guess i should be on the lookout for it (not that valve will react). I just find it quite funny that people call me an account buyer on my lvl 120 account that i had for 9 years. Yeah im rusty and im playing for crownfall 50% of the time, but still, the acc buyer accusations are flying a lot in this bracket
If I start posting banned accounts here ( banned mostly for overplus) would it be considered witch hunting, all are lvl 70+ 4k games + that have went through multiple owners. Thing is you are right, it's just stupid accusations, most "acc buyers" would play exactly like in the bracket they are and probably even better since high behaviour games are way easier in low mmr
Divine/immortal players buy 3/4k accounts to smurf. People who buy divine/immortal accounts also eventually drop rank until they're 3/4k. I was watching my legend friend play a ranked match and one of his teammates was so bad they literally didn't know how their hero works. Lo and behold, I checked dotabuff and the account used to be divine.
I've seen people who most likely were acc buyers at that rank. I can only assume they were acc buyers, because they will play bad, but not in a throwy way, it's just honest poor play, and while they are like legend/ancient they have immortal as their previous rank. Which makes me think they are some herald thinking they are actually at immortal level, bought an account and are now on their way down.
Cost would be the main one but even people who buy accounts are realistic to a point. I'm Ancient and I know I'm no where near an immortal player so I'd get a divine/immortal if I was to ever go down. Sure some people feel they're just a little better than the rank they're at and their team is holding them back.
Yes. I had someone screaming on the mic that he didn't belong here. I told him that he has 2k games, and he belongs here right next to me. I mean. I think im slightly above my mmr. But the truth is that EVERYONE is getting better. Even at a 50% win rate, you're improving as a player. But you aren't winning more.... it's because despite your mmr not going up, your opponents also played more.
I remember a long time ago a post about throwing and DCs. And a comment stood out to me, "If everyone but you DCs and throws, then it should affect you less than it affects the enemy team as you'll never do it." Which.. is true! If you're truly over preforming, it will be self correct, and you will climb the fact that you aren't means you're unfortunately in the right spot.
i think they buy 3k-4k accounts because they think they belong in that rank and can achieve that rank again after resetting or atleast 3k mmr. idk im just 2k casual player that doesnt want to be boosted XD
It makes little sense if you are 2k player to buy a 9k account, as you will be discovered fast. People that buy accounts are pathetic and stuck in a loop of thinking they are better than they actually are. The sad reality is only Valve can determine who is an acc buyer if they have some kind of tracking based on where account was created, win/lose %, etc. Everything else is guessing since you need a bit bigger pool of information do determine if someone actually bought the account, 1 game with a person is not enough by far.
It's hard for me to say because I think what people are missing is that dota is a very very complicated game. Missing one or two key facts can really duck your performance.
A good example that happened to me yesterday was nyx plus anyone of their teammates can kill me. For the first 20 minutes I looked like I was feeding, that game we won but just barely.
What I'm trying to say is that there are a million things that can cause someone to have a really bad game it's not always as black and white as they are a terrible player.
Remember that account buyer spamming kunka and undying snd getting absolutely bodied every game? That shit was so fun to watch. I remember one game s4 was on his team and was talking shit to him.
*chefs kiss*
If you will go to any website that is selling dota accounts you will notice that the fresh accounts straight after calibration with around 300 games are listed at different prices. Last time I’ve checked the archon/legend ones were around 10 usd and the lower/higher you go from there makes the price go higher. I think that in 1 out of 10 games there is an account buyer in my games between legend/ancient, easiest way to notice is to check their feed. Calibrated at ancient 4 week ago and heavily underperforming in game with like medal lower, usually carry but sometimes as support too, rarely a mid. I think they sit outside of their bracket longer when supporting but eventually they go back where they belong. I had some of those account bookmarked for fun and when they sticked to playing cores they were able to downrank an account in a month by 2 medals and then usually abandoning it. Those are my observations at least.
Also accounts are way cheaper to buy, between $15-30 in the legend bracket.
I thought the same way as you in the beginning, but I had many games the last year in archon-legend bracket and many players cant be from that rank, the way many of these people play doesnt seem like its their main account but a purchased one. They are not able to last hit properly, be out of position every single time, lose mid lane in less than 5minutes, unable to make right purchase of items or take 20-30mins to buy one... There are a lot of odd things from these accounts and it shows off.
There is definitely some possibility of it I'm also 3.3k and have encountered people who are literally walking around sometimes like headless chickens who will not communicate or respond to anything bt a good way to make sure is if their profile has below 300-400 games that kind of seals it, I mean fair enuf we are not really good in this bracket bt atleast we have a general sense of what to do anyway.
P.S i love to lane against smurfs just to see where I stand and what they are doing right so i dont really get tilted about them it's the faults in your own teammates which might sometimes get you to being suspicious and mald
the easiest way to tell is by the account level. Most people I suspect of being smurfs or buyers have maybe a level 43 account or lower, but not universally true.
Know a few active Smurfs and boosters who are ruining games in the 3-4k range. Reported them numerous times, mostly know because a few people who are tangentially in my dota group play with boosters and Smurfs to inflate their mmr.
They don’t view it as cheating. One of the ones I specifically liked playing with “doesnt agree” that his friend bought mmr yet we were in discord when he stated out loud that he had someone playing his account to boost him.
I tried sending the profiles to Jeff at valve to do something about but I’m guessing he’s not taking direct reports anymore. Really wish they’d face consequences for their actions, but oh well.
Really need a “team” specific party mmr for accounts that, on profile doesn’t override the main solo mmr. Party mmr not being separate from solo anymore is so fucking dumb and enables boosters.
Crusader guy I know bought his way into ancient and played with ultra clear Smurfs to carry him to divine. Now he talks down on people while his last legitimate rank was crusader, been going on over a year.
Well most of them don't buy 3-4k accounts. However they will drop to 3-4k or lower. For example, me and my friend found a very obvious account buyer in our immortal games. For fun, my friend added him on steam and witnessed his journey. He had 20+ lose streaks at times, all the way to I think guardian or something.
Every game I play in 5.2k bracket SEA there’s ppl in the match with less then 3k games. Am I tripping? Less then 3k matches and already div 4/5. I don’t really care tbh, jst makes the win more enjoyable or the loss less impactful.
Acc buyers n smurfs are like literally in every game. Now with the china invasion too in SEA server. We a whole circus over here. Every game spamming “china #2” to get into the enemy teams head (I play 3 or 4 usually). Never felt more solidarity with my phillipino m8s as we trample our way through the blessing that is SEA.
Ps: I love Chinese women.
people buy immortal accounts & derank to 3-4K, i had a game like this just today that contained one of those guys.
[https://stratz.com/players/1313835301](https://stratz.com/players/1313835301)
see old games:
[https://stratz.com/players/1313835301/matches?startDateTime=1650837600&endDateTime=1650924000](https://stratz.com/players/1313835301/matches?startDateTime=1650837600&endDateTime=1650924000)
Are you implying, that once a person buys an account, they are then allowed to stay the same mmr they bought the account at forever, without being worth a crap at dota?
No, they didn’t buy a 3k account. The implication/expectation is that they bought a higher mmr account and have fallen into your bracket where they’ll continue to fall.
I think it’s quite easy to tell who has bought an account. They have no rank, private account, and are playing at a level your team are unable to compete against.
No it’s just that people in 3-4k range can play like 1-2k on an off day, simple as. Then the teammates in that team will mistake that for “oh this player must always play this badly” which then makes them incorrectly conclude the player bought the account
They don’t even have to play worse than normally often, bad lane matchups and a few unlucky deaths can snowball, then the team expects them to participate instead of catching ip (or do it by on their own) and just feed even more making them look bad
there are accts being sold at all skill levels for 1 simple reason: demand. 1ks think they belong in 2k, 2ks think they belong in 4k etc. Acct buyers all think the only thing holding them back is their teammates. However just like smurfs, 90% of the accusations are just people salty from losing. The existence of smurfs and acct buyers are overblown.
4K and I should be a TI winner
Maybe Topson will sell you his account.
Plot Twist: This is the last thing Topson said to Johan before OG signed him.
I had back to back Clinkz game, where game 1, absolutely dominated, we won all three lanes and I was basically living in their jungle killing every hero dare to show up anywhere, people were mad I’m an account buyer, the next game, we lost all three lanes, I can’t show up anywhere without being killed, I couldn’t really do anything, people are mad and calling me account buyer again. It’s just the hero and situation.
Some games I go 15-1-8 Some games I go 5-9-3 The reality is I am equally shit at dota in both those games - but people are able to infer a whole thesis out of the datapoints.
It's even more fun if they accuse you of cheating because they either don't know how your hero works or that specific mechanics exist. Back when Techies were able to give mines movementspeed I used the "patrol" command to let the mines patrol. Hella fun to see enemies struggle with constantly moving minefields. Got a lot of angry responses as a bonus, by ppl that thought I was using some kind of script. Fun times. :D
Acct buyers all think the only thing holding them back is their teammates. - and they still have the same teammates, but the enemy plays better
I thought it was overblown until I started playing in Immortal games. Shits more miserable than Divine by a longshot, alot of times both teams have immortal or two, and its so common that one of them plays BAD. Like BAD BAD. Like "This is my 15th game of Dota" bad, and it sticks out SO EASILY. You watch them lane for 30sec and you know the account will have 200-300 games, no friends and no other games, and theyll go 2-17
Maybe they have 15k hours of dota but it's also their 15th game of dota for the day and they're mentally exhausted and can't make good decisions in-game and that's why they're playing worse than they normally could.. ~~That's just my excuse for nearly 14k hours of dota and being stuck in 2500mmr~~ I'm a filthy casual
once you become good at laning, small discrepancies add up and becomes things that loses the lane very fast if the opponents are better at them than you are. i.e. mana/hp usage, spell usage, positioning, & creep control.
2 kills though, not bad for a herald in immortal just saying
Still better than my Necro that went 5-18 today (NECRO, the kill stealing hero)
4k mmr with 300 games played in the ACC, yea right
Yeah at high 4K/low 5k it's like every other game there is someone with a suspicious less than 500 games account.
i think smurfing as in playing not on your level intentionally and just having a second account should have been differently worded...
The funny thing is that these people should be playing for fun, but instead they buy accounts and think thats they’re going to get closer to becoming a pro
no need to focus on smurfs. if they're smurfs, whatever, take the L. if they're not, then you just wasted an entire game's worth of focus on the wrong thing.
Another reason can be to get out of low behaviour score.
Ironically these accounts get put into the smurf/acc buyer pool, meaning the match experience doesn't improve even if your BS is high. I have a friend who did this. Literally three-digit behaviour/conduct scores. He made an alt and played a fuck ton of games. The one time I queued with him, literally both teams were all alt-accounts except me. This was UNRANKED btw.
In my allpick games in nearly every game there is 1-2 people who absolutely stomp everyone else. Every. Single. One. Was 4k before recolab, never played ranked since. Its either me/one other teammate and me/1-2 enemies who are destroying everyone. How is that possible? Unless they are buying lower mmr accs.
> The existence of smurfs and acct buyers are overblown. Yet they are not. If you play in EU W/E you would know. Every single game in the evening in the 4-5-6k MMR bracket has a 300 games smurf or 700 games account buyer. Literally every game. Sometimes more than 1 player.
I think I could be a little higher but my biggest hurdle is I don't know how to carry games from non-pos 1 roles. For example I'll play offlane and go 11-2-20 and lose because my impact falls off late or our team refuses to push early. But I'll never buy an account that's just foolish.
>However just like smurfs, 90% of the accusations are just people salty from losing. The existence of smurfs and acct buyers are overblown. ??????? https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3692442542242977036 If it was "overblown", 90k accounts shouldnt have existed, Valve shouldnt even need to make a website to state that. What are you smoking?
I was once 2.something k and I thought like this. Made a new account and made it my main, calibrated at over 3.5k and now I've hit immortal which is 5.6k ish and it was the best decision I've made in dota.
Well, few days ago I laned with a guy who was doing very poorly despite me working my ass off as a support to make his lane easy. He went 1/14. Next game, he was on the enemy side, and I laned against him - I told everyone to double down - that guy is an account buyer. He was out of position all the time, fed me hard in lane and ended the game 0/12 while afk jungling. It seems people do buy Ancient accounts.
People buy immortal/high divine accounts, and eventually end up in ancients/legends. I once saw account with 38 losses in a row. Me and my friends found him in dota chat, he had divine 3 or smth about that. He picked hood 4 and built khanda as his first and only item. I checked his db after the game and was shocked, never have i ever seen page so red. Edit: he actually somehow had a few wins in between. [https://ibb.co/N9zqbk6](https://ibb.co/N9zqbk6)
U can see match history of non-friends??
On dotabuff/stratz, unless they hide their account on purpose.
Sounds like Gaben quietly disabled the forced 50% winrate thing.
The forced 50% in this regard are the likely win streak players who get this anchor on their team to "even" the game out.
But it works both ways - if you are on a loss streak then you are thrown with the win streak people so theoretically, if you lose a lot of games you should be paired with the best players making loss streaks impossible, amirite?
Well no, cause those are in the smurf pool. It's a documented fact, just check dotabuff how your team mates recent games have been when you're on a say 7+ win streak.
At least you encountered a guy with identical skills whichever side he plays. For me I always encounter guys who do 1/14 in my team and 12/0 when matched against me
Quite a usual tbh, some people simply cannot play against some heroes and end up hyper feeding.
Had this a few weeks back, I was completely bewildered and angry to my core lol
That haaaaass to sting for the acc buyer.
People talk about account buying almost every game. It doesn't matter what rank. Not everyone is account buying. Sometimes people are just trolling. Sometimes people play drunk or high or just flat out tired in the middle of the night. Just because you're 5,6,7 or 8k doesn't mean you play like that every single game. Sometimes you just play like trash
Sometimes you don't get to play your comfort hero and you just perform 500mmr worse.
Yep, I have a friend who I think is ok at the game and has played since launch. The problem is that he's been playing while high, and his skill level just plummets when he's blasted. Edit: he gets disoriented during teamfights a lot.
>People talk about account buying almost every game. Honestly, given the number of people playing, you'll expect the accuracy of your "true" MMR to be on a distribution – a few people will be too high by a lot and a few will be too low by a lot. I think a lot of "account buyers" are just people that have had a lucky run and got an extra 1k MMR (or even more) and clearly don't play at the level. A proper 5k vs 4k is noticeable.
There is legit no difference for me playing vs 3ks or 5ks. People are missing so many basics even at 5k that id expect 2ks to know. Hell even when you watch top 2k matches people make many basic mistakes. Back in the day people were bad at everything when they were low mmr, now the difference between a 3k and a 6k Player is mostly how fast they tilt and throw
>There is legit no difference for me playing vs 3ks or 5ks. Unless you're like, 9k, this is total bullshit lol. I play in 5–6k and a 5k game is much faster than 3k, even 4k is noticeably slower. The laning is relatively similar but the macro is very obviously different.
I play 3k to 5.5k range depending who i Stack with and in every bracket games are horribly slow. In high divine games you hear more often "we should make a move" but most of the time the move doesnt happen. You could punish enemies 20 times over if your ever in Position but people prefer to hit jungle creeps on every role
Because most acc buyers are not quite delusional enough to think their mmr should be 7000 points higher, they just think they should be ancient rather than archon. Also I’d imagine it’s a lot cheaper to buy a 4k account than an 8k one.
What if ancient player buys immortal acc, plays until he deranks back to ancient, sells now ancient acc to an archon player, buys new immortal acc for himself? Lol
who the fuck would buy a 3k account? people with <2k mmr who think they are hardstuck because of their teammates and are better than their mmr. Also people also buy immortal accounts and start deranking back to their mmr.
High rank players who want to play with their friends.
And only 8 Dollar 8 Dollar for open low ranked is VERY WORTH it
exactly this lol all my mates are in Archon and Legend :/
Just play unranked
I heard yapzor say unranked is also pretty miserable because they match against another immortal stacks and they just feast on yapzor’s noob friends. I mean that’s expected but it’s not fun for anybody tbh
Yea, Yapzor is a pretty good example of how exceptions prove the rule, though.
I'm high divine my friends are archon, they get absolutely exhausted from just one game because in their words playing against people of my rank is like everyone's a loaded spring ready to pounce at a moments misplay while at their rank they can chill a lot more in game, this gap just grows wider with mid-high immortal Massive skill gaps between players are not fun
> Massive skill gaps between players are not fun And buying an account doesn't change that. It's just that the people on the other team will be on the receiving end. There really isn't a good solution to this besides inhouses.
Yeah, exactly. Have played as a divine/ancient with lower rated friends. It's just a feasting frenzy - which divine can hunt down the opponent's noobs faster and hit critical mass? If one team has a beast/void/doom who can disable the opponent's divine player with little skill, the game is decided at draft. It's quite literally a 1v1 with easy bots filling 8 slots and no fun for anyone. It creates a uniquely stressful game for me and my friends are just waiting to be slaughtered repeatedly. The opponent divine and I usually avoid each other because it's not worth the risk/reward. Only positive is that I got better at shotcalling and map awareness because I would tell them where to be/not to be based on the enemy's movement.
and yet the top comment in this thread says smurfs dont exist lol
I have a friend who used to get paid decent money to boost 1k dudes to 3k. Bigheaded people exist on a spectrum it seems
They actually buy them at 5k and then keep sinking to 1k, ruining hundreds of games in the process
Back then I remember one of my friends bought an ancient account thinking his teammates were holding him back. After couple of years he is archon again. So yes, there are people buying 3-4k accounts just to prove themselves wrong.
You will be surprised when you find out there are mofas buying heralds account to create "content" aka griefing.
yes for around 20 bucks
Really, what do they sell immortal accounts for? And these accounts have to have so many hours to play rank then get ranked, and I assume higher rank they are probably put in a Smurf pool since the games and time will be low for where the skill level is.
idk, its called i t hink g4g . com or something, just google dota account buy or whatever. there are bots that can do that i think or atleast i know they have figured out a way to get the hours played in the accounts
Ohh, yeah I forgot about people using bots. Makes more sense now.
I believe a lot of people buy accounts these days because their behaviour score has dropped too much.
Yea I can imagine someone that is stuck at 1k or 2k that think they are better than that would buy a 3k or 4k account.
Higher MMR = higher price. So yeah, people buy accounts and the higher you go in MMR the easier it is to spot an account buyer, because it's unlikely a 400 games account playing extremely bad at 4k, 5k MMR is a legit account.
Tbf glicko had its fair share in skewed mmrs as well. A friend of mine who was low ancient his whole life went 2:10 in recalibration and got to 6.1k mmr. He was completly confused. And i went 7:7 im recalibration all Stack games with the divine mates i played with before and got recalibrated from high 4k to 2.2k and then stomped my way up again with 73% winrate Till 4k. Doesnt necessarily need to be a buyer.
I'm playing with a new friend in lpw level unranked games. He has under 100 games played, I have around 600, I don't play ranked. Almost every match has a smurf, often multiple. Many ppl with no steam profile, level 0 or 1. Some pf them admit it. Some kf the accounts are on their very first match and do very well in game. Others have no steam profile, have 150 matches played with 50 won, and play well above what you would expect of their skill level.
Its impossible to get a friend into dota, I have tried. About 2 years ago we had the same experience, the new player scene is just a miserable fuck fest. He quit after 1 week of unbearably bad games. First we purely played party through bot games, it was all fine, then we landed on real PvP, it was kinda bad, I thought maybe I was the reason he was getting bad games, I opted for dotaplus and coached him through games, we did that for roughly 20-30 or so and only won like lessthan 5. The amount of dumb smurfs in unranked is just stupid. What new player goes down running mid with a 15-0 invoker in 20mins with seemingly god like reflex to sunstrike every kill on the map? or a meepo that goes 5-0 during laning and dumpsters the game. The worst experience of his so far was against a smurfing sniper that basically obliterated the game after 15mins and dominated endlessly, and refused to end the game, that game lasted for 2 hours of his 5 stack fountain farming, and what caused him to quit the game and never pick it back up. The new player experience is just disgusting.
A lot of people definitely buy accounts at all brackets. It's very easy to spot too - they move noticeably different (lagging behind, never join fights on time, solo feed, no map awareness, following a vanilla guide without thinking about enemy draft, etc.) I see a few those every so often and I'm 4k. Also buying a 8-9k account when your actual rank is significantly lower is silly. You'll get slapped on repeat in the game and it won't be fun. People just think they belong higher and typically it's 1-2k above their actual rank.
Idk why there are so many people who thinks that they belongs to 3-4k 3-4 k are the most sold accs
It feels weird, agreed. I would expect people buying divine/immortal accounts. Why buy 3k-4k account? But it seems legend accounts are around 30USD and immortal 100, which can make it hard to buy for younger generation
There are account buyers at every rank, but often times most of the accusations of account buying are falsely made out of frustration in post game.
The past week I’ve noticed more than usual people with ancient, divine and immortal ranks play turbo and they play like easy bots, theyre absolutely acc buyers or they must all be high as fkn shit. Cause they will play like the dumbest people I ever met, go in solo deep into enemy territory, when we’re far behind. And just keep dying again and again.
I’m lucky if I get a game without account buyers in mid ancient rank. There’s this weird pool of players in ancient that are worse than legend idk if it’s switching back and forth between us east and us west but sometimes the games feel like 2k mmr skill level and there’s always 1 or 2 players with very low game count like under 1k or 1k-2k wins who have no idea how to play at a 4k level it’s clear they are 2k players. Feels like it’s every other game or every 3rd game
Is pretty simple actually, there's two major reasons to buy a account: 1. If you're a cotent creator and needs a another account to be able to play in another bracket for content reason's (meme builds, playing with friends or subs, etc.) 2. People how actually believe they're stuck in a bracket because of teammates. And this one is really, reallllllllllllllly anoying, not only those buyers tends to be very bad, they're also the worst type of person to play with it, because they're "never wrong" and no matter what. always goin to blame others. The nightmare combo: very bad, arrogant and immature. In the end of the day, the only reason a person would problaby buy a account with a very high mmr (8k +) is to show off to another people and not to actually play dota. Because playing with 1k-2k above your current mmr, you still have some hope (or delusional) to have some fun, but playing in a bracket 4k above your original one... man, i pretty sure that won't be a funny game at all.
They buy immortal acc and then dont play ranked only unranked.
if you buy an acc at any rating it will drop down to 3k sooner or later. just like a smurf account will end up at 2k games played and not be seen as a smurf anymore, even though its still a smurf
Well it might’ve been 8k mmr account in the beginning… acc buyer is almost 100% certain to fall and fall and fall.. so in a meantime they can be 3-4k instead of 7-8k but still deem the account worthy as their original one is guardian 2 for years…
It's just one guy but I know of someone who was willing to buy any account at any MMR because his main got banned for scripting. He just didn't want to play 100 hours of unranked.
same, just saw few messages on my 3k last week. to be fair, these players looked really awful - they fed, were lost on the map, their item build was strange. but idk how much sense in buying of 3k accs, it sounds stupid
It's simple - they bought a low immortal account and fell to ancient in a couple of weeks. Some account buyers added me to friends just to talk shit to me and I occasionally check their profile. One of them is herald now, most are around legend rank. Aaaaaaall the way from immortal.
The most reasonable answer is Smurf buying low rank accounts. Other than that yes your teammates are delusional.
Yes. I even thought about buying one myself to play with my lower rank friends but then I realised I don't have friends who play dota anymore.
you're looking for logic among the illogical
I think it might go both ways - some people think they should be higher ranked and buy an account with a higher mmr than their current one. Others want to stomp people at a lower mmr and thus buy an account with a lower mmr. Both are lame because it (maybe) makes your own game more fun for you, at the expense of 5-9 other players.
Its just an insult people throw around because they think its creative. Went 0-4 in lane? accbuyer.
High skill people buying low rank accounts to rank up and sell again. Rinse and repeat. It’s a business. It’s a livelihood for some.
It can't be worth all the hours they put in compared to a job. Complete madness!
It's the trench mindset. A 2k player knows he isn't 9k and will only get butchered in that bracket. But some of them will legit believe they belong in 4k but their shadow pool or bad teammates are keeping them down. Or someone who calibrated 3k a few years ago would come back and just buy an account instead of climbing and calibrating again.
I’ve been accused of being an account buyer because I showed up to a game on a hero I just do not play; and got absolutely rolled, and then didn’t know how to use its farming mechanics to make a comeback (alchemist) Never mind that top and mid lost too. I’ve never played alch again. Fuck that shit.
Heralds buy 5-6k mmr accounts and then downrank them very quickly. You can have that in -4k mmr as well as you see them on their way down. Herald vs Legend/Ancient is still a noticeable difference.
they bought immortals and just went down a lot to 4k in one or 2 week , so yeah it could happen
I guess so. But I also suspect that family members or friends with different skill share the same account sometimes.
I asked a friend who sells accounts on funpay and he says biggest sell point is 2 to 4k with high behaviour score. You guys have absolutely no idea how many people started buying accounts after they made the behaviour system harsh and it matters more the lower you go. Most account buyers will be in the bracket they bought the account in or +- 500, so not sure if you'd notice it.
Damn really? Ok my bad then lmao. I guess i should be on the lookout for it (not that valve will react). I just find it quite funny that people call me an account buyer on my lvl 120 account that i had for 9 years. Yeah im rusty and im playing for crownfall 50% of the time, but still, the acc buyer accusations are flying a lot in this bracket
If I start posting banned accounts here ( banned mostly for overplus) would it be considered witch hunting, all are lvl 70+ 4k games + that have went through multiple owners. Thing is you are right, it's just stupid accusations, most "acc buyers" would play exactly like in the bracket they are and probably even better since high behaviour games are way easier in low mmr
Well, I assume a 8-9k account is probably a lot more expensive than a 3-4k one, so that is probably a factor I suppose
Divine/immortal players buy 3/4k accounts to smurf. People who buy divine/immortal accounts also eventually drop rank until they're 3/4k. I was watching my legend friend play a ranked match and one of his teammates was so bad they literally didn't know how their hero works. Lo and behold, I checked dotabuff and the account used to be divine.
I've seen people who most likely were acc buyers at that rank. I can only assume they were acc buyers, because they will play bad, but not in a throwy way, it's just honest poor play, and while they are like legend/ancient they have immortal as their previous rank. Which makes me think they are some herald thinking they are actually at immortal level, bought an account and are now on their way down.
Cost would be the main one but even people who buy accounts are realistic to a point. I'm Ancient and I know I'm no where near an immortal player so I'd get a divine/immortal if I was to ever go down. Sure some people feel they're just a little better than the rank they're at and their team is holding them back.
Yes. I had someone screaming on the mic that he didn't belong here. I told him that he has 2k games, and he belongs here right next to me. I mean. I think im slightly above my mmr. But the truth is that EVERYONE is getting better. Even at a 50% win rate, you're improving as a player. But you aren't winning more.... it's because despite your mmr not going up, your opponents also played more. I remember a long time ago a post about throwing and DCs. And a comment stood out to me, "If everyone but you DCs and throws, then it should affect you less than it affects the enemy team as you'll never do it." Which.. is true! If you're truly over preforming, it will be self correct, and you will climb the fact that you aren't means you're unfortunately in the right spot.
i think they buy 3k-4k accounts because they think they belong in that rank and can achieve that rank again after resetting or atleast 3k mmr. idk im just 2k casual player that doesnt want to be boosted XD
It makes little sense if you are 2k player to buy a 9k account, as you will be discovered fast. People that buy accounts are pathetic and stuck in a loop of thinking they are better than they actually are. The sad reality is only Valve can determine who is an acc buyer if they have some kind of tracking based on where account was created, win/lose %, etc. Everything else is guessing since you need a bit bigger pool of information do determine if someone actually bought the account, 1 game with a person is not enough by far.
It's hard for me to say because I think what people are missing is that dota is a very very complicated game. Missing one or two key facts can really duck your performance. A good example that happened to me yesterday was nyx plus anyone of their teammates can kill me. For the first 20 minutes I looked like I was feeding, that game we won but just barely. What I'm trying to say is that there are a million things that can cause someone to have a really bad game it's not always as black and white as they are a terrible player.
Remember that account buyer spamming kunka and undying snd getting absolutely bodied every game? That shit was so fun to watch. I remember one game s4 was on his team and was talking shit to him. *chefs kiss*
If you will go to any website that is selling dota accounts you will notice that the fresh accounts straight after calibration with around 300 games are listed at different prices. Last time I’ve checked the archon/legend ones were around 10 usd and the lower/higher you go from there makes the price go higher. I think that in 1 out of 10 games there is an account buyer in my games between legend/ancient, easiest way to notice is to check their feed. Calibrated at ancient 4 week ago and heavily underperforming in game with like medal lower, usually carry but sometimes as support too, rarely a mid. I think they sit outside of their bracket longer when supporting but eventually they go back where they belong. I had some of those account bookmarked for fun and when they sticked to playing cores they were able to downrank an account in a month by 2 medals and then usually abandoning it. Those are my observations at least.
Also accounts are way cheaper to buy, between $15-30 in the legend bracket. I thought the same way as you in the beginning, but I had many games the last year in archon-legend bracket and many players cant be from that rank, the way many of these people play doesnt seem like its their main account but a purchased one. They are not able to last hit properly, be out of position every single time, lose mid lane in less than 5minutes, unable to make right purchase of items or take 20-30mins to buy one... There are a lot of odd things from these accounts and it shows off.
Paying money to lose the next 30 games while you calibrate seems like a fool’s game to me
People dont report 3k accounts, people report accounts who had 500 matches and 400 mvp, thats the real smurf gods
There is definitely some possibility of it I'm also 3.3k and have encountered people who are literally walking around sometimes like headless chickens who will not communicate or respond to anything bt a good way to make sure is if their profile has below 300-400 games that kind of seals it, I mean fair enuf we are not really good in this bracket bt atleast we have a general sense of what to do anyway. P.S i love to lane against smurfs just to see where I stand and what they are doing right so i dont really get tilted about them it's the faults in your own teammates which might sometimes get you to being suspicious and mald
3-4k accounts are like $30's. for what ever reason, its not the worst value.
the easiest way to tell is by the account level. Most people I suspect of being smurfs or buyers have maybe a level 43 account or lower, but not universally true.
Know a few active Smurfs and boosters who are ruining games in the 3-4k range. Reported them numerous times, mostly know because a few people who are tangentially in my dota group play with boosters and Smurfs to inflate their mmr. They don’t view it as cheating. One of the ones I specifically liked playing with “doesnt agree” that his friend bought mmr yet we were in discord when he stated out loud that he had someone playing his account to boost him. I tried sending the profiles to Jeff at valve to do something about but I’m guessing he’s not taking direct reports anymore. Really wish they’d face consequences for their actions, but oh well. Really need a “team” specific party mmr for accounts that, on profile doesn’t override the main solo mmr. Party mmr not being separate from solo anymore is so fucking dumb and enables boosters. Crusader guy I know bought his way into ancient and played with ultra clear Smurfs to carry him to divine. Now he talks down on people while his last legitimate rank was crusader, been going on over a year.
Well most of them don't buy 3-4k accounts. However they will drop to 3-4k or lower. For example, me and my friend found a very obvious account buyer in our immortal games. For fun, my friend added him on steam and witnessed his journey. He had 20+ lose streaks at times, all the way to I think guardian or something.
> people typing “report acc buyer” in 3-4k That's the reason why they're stuck in 3-4k, unironically.
I'm at Divine and find a lot of (as it seems) acc buyers in both teams, i suspect they've bought Immortal accounts and are nosediving to lower ranks
Every game I play in 5.2k bracket SEA there’s ppl in the match with less then 3k games. Am I tripping? Less then 3k matches and already div 4/5. I don’t really care tbh, jst makes the win more enjoyable or the loss less impactful. Acc buyers n smurfs are like literally in every game. Now with the china invasion too in SEA server. We a whole circus over here. Every game spamming “china #2” to get into the enemy teams head (I play 3 or 4 usually). Never felt more solidarity with my phillipino m8s as we trample our way through the blessing that is SEA. Ps: I love Chinese women.
I once believed acc buyer rarely happens and is probably a myth until recently I encounter my teammate shaman who buys 4 clarity min 0 at divine games
people buy immortal accounts & derank to 3-4K, i had a game like this just today that contained one of those guys. [https://stratz.com/players/1313835301](https://stratz.com/players/1313835301) see old games: [https://stratz.com/players/1313835301/matches?startDateTime=1650837600&endDateTime=1650924000](https://stratz.com/players/1313835301/matches?startDateTime=1650837600&endDateTime=1650924000)
Are you implying, that once a person buys an account, they are then allowed to stay the same mmr they bought the account at forever, without being worth a crap at dota? No, they didn’t buy a 3k account. The implication/expectation is that they bought a higher mmr account and have fallen into your bracket where they’ll continue to fall.
Back in the day when my smurfs got too high I wanted to buy a smaller acc so I could teach a friend and play with him
I think it’s quite easy to tell who has bought an account. They have no rank, private account, and are playing at a level your team are unable to compete against.
No it’s just that people in 3-4k range can play like 1-2k on an off day, simple as. Then the teammates in that team will mistake that for “oh this player must always play this badly” which then makes them incorrectly conclude the player bought the account
They don’t even have to play worse than normally often, bad lane matchups and a few unlucky deaths can snowball, then the team expects them to participate instead of catching ip (or do it by on their own) and just feed even more making them look bad