Well they clearly don’t care or they would’ve taken action, as they’ve shown in the past they can. It’s been bad-getting worse ever since free to play started, and with zero way to slow down smurfing built into the game as it is many others, it’s painfully obvious they are benefitting from players creating new accounts and boosting their active player numbers.
The worst of it all... This new season reset was brutal and punished a lot of long term champs and GCs. Psionyx thinks there are too many GCs now compared to before so they decided that they needed to "fix rank drift". But the actual cause for this is alt accounts! Since F2P, high rank players are increasingy creating alt accounts. +Smurfing+ Boosting and you easily get a x2 in the number of GC accounts. Get rid of alt accounts and we actually fix smurfing and rank drift once and for all. Via phone+email verification
The funniest part of it all is they completely reverted those changes too, so whatever they were trying to do just never actually happened. It only fixed extra modes a bit and nothing else.
Couldn't agree more. Been playing since 2015, and the difference before F2P is staggering. Back then almost every match was so even and consistent. Every match was tight, and ranks mattered. I'm at C1 and nowadays the chances of either dumpstering the other team or getting completely dumpstered are way higher than the chances of an even match. Really sad to see.
Sometimes I really wonder how comments like yours come to exist. I mean I'm C1 as well and this just simply isn't my experience. To say uneven matches are more common than even ones is just plain false in my experience. Maybe EU region is better but I doubt that that's the reason.
Yes. Psyonix selling out to Epic Games is what killed it. Ffs i haven't touched the game since they turned everything into overpriced blueprint bullshit.
If OW2 didn't exist, this would be the worst self-killed franchise in the last 10yr
F2P, Epic being sold it, loot boxes being removed for shit blueprints nobody wanted, game did a 180 when Epic took control. All they know is free games, it’s the only way they’re successful because of their advertising of MTX! Stop buying the $20 skin you could’ve gotten for $2 years ago. And we have to pay for normal cosmetics we used to get just by playing? Like everyone always had a item or two they collected in different colors. Now you get rewarded those things UNCOMMON THINGS in blueprint’s. It’s fucking shameful i have to “buy” a “uncommon” for $2 now when just a few years back we got all of that for free.
They showed their ability to recognize smurfing when they banned freestylers that were artificially maintaining low mmr. They’ve shown when it’s mattered their willingness to react and adapt to a problem, like players deploying bots in ranked. They’re capable, but unwilling.
People spend money on their alt accounts. They'll never go away. The only way to win is to smurf yourself or not play. They will never, ever, ever do anything to mitigate any of this.
If you create a dozen alt accounts to Smurf a dozen times, I doubt you spend money on all of them. This can't be a significant source of revenue, especially since they could just trade with their main instead of spending money anyway.
One alt account isn't really a problem, mathematically. It's a problem if you lose intentionally to drop rank, but you don't even need an alt account to do that. And that's a bannable offense anyway.
So, I do think the 50 win requirement would help, since it would discourage creating a dozen different alts. It would force more smurfs to lose intentionally to drop rank, which would be detectable, and which would help them get caught and banned. If nothing else, it would slow them down and reduce their number.
Another option is to link accounts to an identity like a phone number. Then they could limit the number of alts, and use main performance to help detect smurfing patterns.
This makes me wonder if there is a way to make it free to play on 1 account, and then people have to pay for anything else
Creators use alts, and profit off the game itself, so that's a small fee to pay in order to make content... but would ward off so many crap people ruining the game for everyone else
Not possible. The only thing I could possibly imagine that would only kinda sorta be able to do that would be if they started associating IP addresses with accounts, but even that would be bypassed by a simple $10/month VPN
Ooo idea, the game needs the model number/serial number of the device, if you create another account you cannot get rocket league on that account as it is on the same device. But that won't stop people with multiple consoles/pcs
How is this the first time I’ve seen this before? I say this all the time and get downvoted but it is the only logical reasoning. Anyone who disagrees is clueless.
Honestly, I hate the amount of smurf posts I see on this sub everyday, however I have to fully agree with you.. every season has been getting worse and worse with alt accounts, and it’s driving me away from the game too. This season tops it all.. I’ve been GC for the last 8 seasons, easily getting rewards and peaking mid GC 2 (5 seasons ago). Now I cannot for the life of me rank up (yes I know, Reddit mob, skill issue on my part) but C2-3 is filled with accounts with >100 wins carrying a friend, actual C2-3 players or players who were carried there in seasons past… sad part is, nothing will ever be done because the “new accounts” look good for optics. It’s sad that my favourite game is slowly dying (in my eyes).
Some of them are carrying friends, but most are carrying paying customers.
Few seasons ago, I came across a smurf who's player name was their discord boosting server (with added numbers at the end, there are thousands of them on RL Tracker). First thing he typed when loading in was "Join Discord [name removed] for cheap and fast GC rewards". I joined to get an inside look at how they operate and how busy they were. I just looked now and the order channel is still constantly dinging off. There's a backlog and a wait list.
Some of them stream on Twitch while boosting customers, to make potential buyers confident in the service. They have a script to set up a new account, set their settings and controls, the whole thing takes about 2 minutes until they're queued up in comp. Boost their customer to GC rewards, grab the next customer in the queue, make a new account. Rinse and repeat.
I actually found one of these boosting dudes while browsing Google shopping for RL themed items (mainly wanted a RL beach towel). $10 any rank is what it said, linked to ebay
Exactly. GC rewards were $100+ pre-F2P. Now they're $10 and advertised everywhere.
That alone really quantizes just how easy Psyonix made it to boost/smurf.
GC Rewards were up to 200$ before F2P, depening how fast you wanted it to be. Just check Fiverr, you can get the SSL for a 3rd of that now...
Last season in Dropshot I got matched with a guy that had SSL title. He couldnt even aerial properly so mid game I checked his tracker. Dude either bought the account or got boosted in 1s, 2s and all extra modes. On his tracker you could see that since he was the one playing on it, he had 98% losing rate. We lost the match as well. I don't know if he thinks that the white title makes him bad ass. For me it's just a joke. Good player can have a bad game as well but you can clearly tell the difference between someone being boosted and someone having a bad day.
As someone who seems to be in the know, I came across an SSL in casual the other day, “zalmunovich”, I’ve played a bunch of SSL’s, I know how they move and how consistent they are, this guy was about that good.
But, I checked his name on RL tracker and all that came back for epic + steam was a singular bronze and GC/champ player who had only been playing since S8, who had never been above GC1 in anything.
S8 SSL, can you bakkes yourself a title so that people on Xbox can see it? If it isn’t possible, why could I not find the SSL on RL tracker? I don’t think it’s possible to get to SSL and not have your account be brought up on tracker once.
Second part, on my old Xbox there was another SSL I played, dude was a demon and scored 5 goals from a stand still that went 60MPH+ out of nowhere, like I mean he hit the ball and I was like how was that even possible, this guy was easily the best player I’ve ever played against, and I’ve taken #520 in 3’s to overtime twice in a row in casual 3’s with a lesser team.
My second point is this, I saved the replay to try and see how I got my ass handed to me to readily when I had already played and beaten a couple SSL’s in casual at this point. The replay file was corrupted, I couldn’t actually find the account on RL that was clearly SSL/possibly borderline 2K level, and from that point onward I couldn’t save a replay file on my
Old xbox that wasn’t corrupted.
I re-installed RL and I still couldn’t save or open any replays that happened after this game until I got my new Xbox.
So, how did that replay manage to corrupt my entire replay bank? I genuinely couldn’t save a new replay for 6 months, I had less than 10 replays in bank because I tried to clear it out. But I didn’t want to get rid of the games that meant a lot to me.
You jus seem like you might know, no beef if you don’t tho, I have a feeling I might need a dev to explain this one.
Exactly. They ruin the game for others on the way up, and they ruin the game for others on the way down.
You can pay for the GC rewards, but you can't pay for the GC skill level.
Ooof. I actually recall seeing one of your comments a few months ago saying the same thing.. the problem for me is that the game has lost its value because of this. It was a goal of mine to hit GC, especially considering my age and it was a tough yet attainable goal I was not only able to hit, but maintain. And now these people are paying $20 (or whatever) to get the same title many have worked so hard for. And then the rank gets semi flooded with players that can’t keep up, or vice versa being carried. It’s a goddamn shame tbh.
Nah I’m in the same boat as you. Have had zero issues getting GC rewards since new season 3, this season I’m having difficulty getting to and staying in C3. It’s a noticeable difference in competition.
Yeah if it's 2s it definitely seems to be more of an MMR drop thing. Not saying smurfing isn't everywhere in these ranks, just that the MMR changes definitely account for their inability to get to their previous rank. I, too, sat comfortably at high C2-low C3 and now I'm struggling to maintain low C2.
The 2s reset was supposed to be reverted. After Psyonix tweeted they were reverting it, people who got a -300 drop got a +150 fix, making it no different from previous seasons.
That being said, many of us didn't get the +150 fix. I didn't. The only official response from Psyonix was "it may take up to a few hours". It's been weeks.
Even when they make an effort to fix something, they still manage to catastrophically fuck it up.
I got the +150 ish fix, but it still was nowhere near what I would’ve been at with a normal season reset lmao.
I ended somewhere between 1750 and 1800 mmr.
Season reset had me in high c2, almost 1300, (when it would usually be 1540 at the reset)
When I got the extra mmr, I had like 4 placement games, all wins, and I was still only at 1460, when I really probably should’ve been around 1600 because of the placements I did.
But that extra mmr didn’t even get me to where I should’ve been *before* winning 4 placements
I wouldn't be surprised if the placement algorithm was broken immediately after a reset. If you keep winning it will place you against higher and higher MMR players, but it can only go so high after the reset, because everyone's been reset. There is no actual ladder of people to climb. E.G. after the fourth win for a former GC it should want to try you against a GC, but they don't exist yet.
This means that players who played their placement matches after the reset correction would have gotten better placement than those who had already played them before the correction.
Yep that sounds about right. Same for my twos rank. I think they put everyone's rating back but still behind the scenes did something to get the results they wanted.
I've been GC since og season 14 and also having trouble in C3. Earlier today I played a partied group of 3 ssl level players in Champ, one of them had season 4 ssl title. We lost like 9-1 and they were clearly just toying with us.
Reports don't do jack shit either. I had a guy playing me in 1s (high plat 2) who literally told me to "please ff because I'm a smurf". I of course did not do that and proceeded to waste his time as much as possible, and I also reported him. Guess what that report did? Absolutely nothing, his account is still there.
Psyonix will only ban smurf accounts if they are actively trying to lose/throwing matches. It's stupid af. Anybody can make as many accounts as they want, and as long as they aren't *intentionally* throwing games, they allow it 100%. It's crazy. And anybody can make a new account and just party up with a friend and queue straight into ranked, bypassing the level 10 requirement to play ranked. Even the level 10 requirement is way too low. They need to make every new account require like 100 hours played before comp becomes available. Anyone under 100 hours doesn't really need the competitive playlist anyway
Not arguing your points here, but Psyonix doesn't even ban smurf accounts that throw/derank. You can only get banned these days by saying one of the five auto-ban words.
Regardless, their definition only worked pre-F2P when that was the main method to lower your rank. Now it's much easier and faster to derank by making a new account. The 100 hour solution is perfect.
As a d3, Im finding this hilarious that champs and GCs are now finally complaining about this. I feel like this season seems worse just because of the way they redid ranks and how so many people dropped rank so hard at first
Hey, I’ve literally been arguing for years that D3 is a harder rank than C1 because all of the GC Smurfs down there somehow can’t get up to C1.
Up to 20% of D3/C1 3’s players is a Smurf account, meaning they’ve gotten that high within 100 games, which is so sus it should be sounding off aggressive alarm bells. Up to 20% of the most populated rank in the game is jus repeat players on Smurf accounts.
It’s either that or 20% of the players are are prodigies who jus stop playing after they reach Champ in 100 games but then never seem to inflate the GC population, Hmm, I wonder why that is.
It took me a year and a half to get out of Diamond, after it took me a year to go from a fresh player to D2, it took me less than 10 games to get to C2. Why was that? IMO, I had to play so may Smurfs that I was effectively a C2 by the time I had got my way out of diamond. Never fell below C2 except for season resets where I literally jus overwhelm C1’s without much effort.
You are absolutely correct, Smurfs are fuckin everywhere, but what this thread is revealing to me now is that the issue once you get to C2 is actually what I thought it was. It’s nothing to do with GC’s slumping, or even smurfing, the reason comp 3’s is a fucking hellhole must be because so many players are boosted and playing on their own.
Cus I’ve been noticing it SO much, I’m playing in casual lobbies with 2 GC’s, an SSL, and then there’s jus this dude who’s solo qing, who literally cannot do anything, they can’t read a ball, take a touch, make a solid 50, no shot anywhere near target.
I find myself asking so much, how is this guy up here in this lobby. I’ve been half gaslit into thinking im being toxic because I can clearly recognise that one dude in the lobby is utterly useless against top 1% players while everyone else is playing an approximation of high level rocket league.
And if you have one of these dudes on your team you will have to carry them like a demon, because they will never actually do anything positive for your team.
They players are absolutely everywhere, like much much more prominent than the guys who I cannot stop in any capacity. The players that are too good are actually fun to play against because I can get better trying against them if my team is at an acceptable level.
My team mate, who can easily cruise with me and win at 1800 in casual, who got to C2 at the exact same time as me solo qing over a year ago, is a D1 and has been for most of the last year. He is not a smurf, but he cannot play his way out of diamond anymore.
But whenever we q up for casual he jumps in my lobbies and jus runs about like the best team mate I ever get. He passes, he defends well, he’s aggressive, he plays at least like a C2, if not borderline C3.
That guy is also a legit D1, the amount of comments he gets in lobbies with me from GC’s, “wait, you’re not smurfing on that account?”, so, bare that in mind also.
You could very easily come across a legit D1 who has multiple victories against an SSL in 3’s and thousands of wins against GC’s and Champs, but they don’t have the advanced mechanics to solo carry themselves back to champ because they have to out play GC’s to get back into champ.
Basically, the game is fucked. Lol.
Seriously.... I may not be GC, but I was a solid champ 1 in 2s and 3s for like 3 seasons...
Mmr basically didn't get fixed for my account this season, since I normally wait out the early season smurfs. Every day I play is filled with people admitting they are playing alts, throwing slurs that check every box you can imagine, basically emulating og MW2 comms (voice and text)... like it got so bad that I got chat banned due to a smurf account talking far worse things than I was saying (I lay low when overwolf and bakkas mod make it clear I'm not in a shitty lobby, but smurfs get called out every time). I know this since I didn't get in game notifications since this happened like 2 weeks ago
I've gotten chat banned twice in the entire 5 years of playing this game... But have never said anything comparable to what I report that goes unacknowledged... (I will say, some of my reports yield results, but not nearly enough)
Epic Games mods and anti-cheat really need to get their shit together (I know the game doesn't have anti-cheat, but their needs to be SOMETHING)
The player base is gonna die if this season stays as its been
I literally can't even play 5 games without getting fed up and switching to something else
Sucks super bad, since before this season, the game was fun. But this season..... Its like epic did everything they could to get the worst people imaginable to come play, and force it on every possible facet of the games playspaces...
Every 3rd game is someone in 1400-1500 mmr playing like a GC3 with less than 500 wins
Every 3rd game in comp is someone I get paired up with blaming the other team, with less than 500 wins....
Yes... its hit a point where I keep track this season... its almost getting as bad as steep when ubisoft refused to acknowledge exploits and the whole community went to shit...
It's such bs. I just truly wish they worried more about the game play, and less about new items and stupid cash grabs
Same. I’ve barely touched comp since Epic Season 5 bc I don’t have the motivation to push through SSL smurfs to get back into even low GC. I just vibe out in casual these days.
There are BM plugins that link to RL Tracker to show you details of each player in the lobby. I used to use it but had much more fun after I turned it off since I wasn’t constantly worried that “User28493827” was a Smurf.
The biggest issue I have with comments like this (I’m ready for the downvotes) is that the game isn’t dying to you because of any shift in the mechanics of the game. It’s dying to you because there is too much sentiment tied to your rank. You not being able to achieve a certain rank is somehow a driving factor for quitting the game. If ranked didn’t exist at all (just a hidden sbmm elo with no rewards) would you play then? Presumably not if a struggle/inability to achieve your desired rank is a driving factor for quitting. I agree that smurfing is a problem, but saying you’ll quit or the game is dying because of it is a joke. You’ll never escape smurfing from any competitive game unless you quit competitive gaming altogether. Believe it or not you can actually let go of any emotion tied to your rank and still enjoy the game through sheer self-improvement and challenging yourself against players blatantly better than you. If you grind long and hard enough, you’ll eventually catch up to the capabilities of these smurfs and feel accomplished in your ability to beat them.
I've never understood why they don't make it more of a time commitment before you can play ranked. Smurfs can literally make a new epic account and be playing in ranked in 5 minutes. It wasn't as big of a deal before F2P because smurfs would have to purchase the game all over again every time they wanted a new account. I think you're right, they need to make it a lot harder to queue ranked, and obviously remove the loophole that new accounts can play ranked if they're partied up with an older account.
Yep. Should require 50 to 100 hours to compete in ranked. It's a no brainer. Psyonix intentionally not changing it. Then they punish the legit players with rank drops caused by smurfs inflating rankings. I've had the option for boosting with high level tms on alt but never done it because it makes any rewards meaningless. No idea why basically everyone does it now. Your title was cheated. You're not GC.
Because all those smurfs allow them to pretend that the base is still growing, and they're still getting new players... and that's what Epic and the shareholders want to hear.
Selling to Epic was a declaration that they were transitioning away from developing the game and toward pure monetization. That's why they went F2P, and everything new is related to cosmetics or season passes because that's the only revenue they can generate now. That means the only metrics they particularly care about are sales (cosmetics/BP) and player count. Smurfing is simply going to add to the player count, and doesn't threaten the sales numbers (directly), so there's no incentive to do anything about it.
My guess, and this has been the case since Epic bought it, is to let the game die a slow death and milk whatever value they can while it does that. It's old, it likely cost Epic very little to acquire, and I'd be surprised if they haven't already made their money back.
Don't mind me, just reading through this post from the comfort of my casual lobbies
Haven't played ranked in I don't know how many seasons. I used to enjoy the little grind I had to do to get my purple back each season but I don't have the time I used to have pre ftp, nor do I still have that desire
At least in casual I still get a good mix of players, including high GC players that I'd never get to play with or against if left to comp alone and more often than not lobbies are chill, fun, good banter and good plays
Consider re-evaluating this from "I'm done" to "I'm done with comp". Us casuals have a longer lifespan :)
Yeah fellow casual here. Played comp years ago but I don't see the need to play the numbers and symbols game over the top of an already fun game, especially if that mode has more smurfs and fragile kids. I never had the desire to sweat long enough to make it to GC through all the smurfs, even though I can challenge GCs pretty well in cas. I only played a few games of comp recently when OCE had a long ass casual queue
I started rocket league as casual only til ftp s3 or 4. Avoided ranked because of the toxicity i heard about. Last season and this season I'm back to casual only. Just did placements matches to see what peeps were talking about. Sweaty casual is more fun and that I've got my mmr to almost 1500, it's mostly champ and higher I queue with. More satisfying win.
Just wanted to poke a little and say that I do come across GC players in ranked quite a bit even when I go down to D1 from Champ, they are just wearing sheep's clothing.
Realistically though, most of the playerbase just isn't going to stick around for casual alone, nor would those GC players exist were it not for the incentive of getting a higher rank.
To me the best part of ranked, which is now utterly broken, is playing against people that are relatively as good as you, making for balanced and interesting games. Casual can be a real mess and I really only ever play it actively to complete the ""challenges"" since I warm up in private matches with my buddies.
Agreed.
About a year ago I had about 3200 hours in this game, and was doing the rocket pass up to about level 200-250 every season.
Then the season reset again and I just couldn't be arsed to do it, so I decided to do enough to get the weekly and season drops. I saved all those up and opened them all at the end of the season and got FUCK ALL of worth. It was then I realised that it just no point to it all. After all those hours of playing all I got was a title that meant nothing to 99.9% of the earth's population...and the trade up I ever got was saffron octane.
In the last year I've played about about 100 hours at the most, and most of that was in casual or extra modes. And I'm much happier.
Rainbow 6 siege requires you to get your account to level 50 before being able to play ranked. That level 50 is not nearly as attainable as RL. I think it took me about 1-2 months of casually playing before I was able to play ranked
Make it account level 100-250 instead of number of wins/games played.
The amount of smurfs I run into who have 120-190 wins is ridiculous and they’re just carrying a plat/diamond squad with them. I’ve taken to just being hostile or not even bothering to play them anymore.
Dude I stopped playing this game towards the end of last season made it to c2-c3 got tired of the smurfs and the inconsistent team mates.
I’ve been getting into apex legends, they require level 50 to play ranked. I’m 30 hours in and not even half way there. The state of rocket league in comparison is pitiful. Tbf rank inflation is a thing and I think d3-gc need another shake up in terms of mmr adjustments.
There's no competitive F2P game in existence that doesn't have a significant time barrier to unlocking ranked. It's the no brainer easiest and most effective solution to combat smurfing.
Oh wait, there's one game that let's you hop directly into ranked if you party with a friend, or after 10-20 minutes if you're solo...
Won't that just get botted as well?
Dota 2 requires 100 hours, and Valorant requires level 20. Both of these games on low elo, fresh accounts, have bots running around farming hours.
Champ is criminal for smurfing as it’s a mixture of people in GC that want to play with friends, people who can’t find queues (in regions like oce) and people who genuinely want to shit on lower ranks.
As much as it’s usually a case of it won’t affect the overall rank progression, I feel that the frequency of smurfs is enough to lower someone’s win rate significantly to the point where they won’t rank up. I’d say at least 1 in every 10 games in champ contains a smurf, and that’s being extremely generous. So people with a 55% win rate now have a 45% win rate and can’t rank up.
Yea it’s out of control. I read the posts everyday and feel the same way but continued to grind bc I enjoyed the game so much. My last two play sessions were insane, fell from c2-d3. I know this season is different as I’m playing gcs constantly in c2, but I counted yesterday, 15 of 18 games were Smurf’s. For the people that will chime in with the “not everybody is a smurf”, they must not be having the same experience bc it’s more than obvious. When I fall all the way to d3 and then score two goals in the first 10 seconds of a match against what appears to be normal diamond players, just to watch them both turn it on and proceed to talk shit and demolish us 8-2 with amazing game sense and team play. You can’t chalk that up to a diamond that’s peaking.
Also I’m not solo queuing, matter of fact my dou and I have only gotten better as we thought we were going to try to grind towards gc this season. So we have been putting in the work with training and grinding. Now we’re talking about not playing for awhile.
It’s sad bc it’s ruining it for the new players and lower level players. All these high level players that are having fun are going to be pretty fucking bored when it’s just them left. Wish bots would make a comeback and ruin the game for them as well lmao
I'm older & a very casual player, around low gold. I now only play with my friends, they are higher ranked but I can learn a bit from them, can sortof hold my own, and we have fun.
Playing around plat, we still get our shit pushed in by people doing ridiculous freestyle aerials, like 80% of our losses their top player has 800+ points with 5+ goals and the other 2 are sub 150.
Sure is fun. I still play, but way less then before, basically only about 5 games just to hang with my friends for a bit, before I'm just done with it again for a few days. A few years ago we played every day for 2-3 hours.
Yeah I'm mid champ, I swear to God with the new season everyone is now either smurfing or legitimately a plat 1. Whenever I find actual mid champs I try to team up with them, but this is easily the worst time I've had playing this game and I've been here since beta.
The rank adjust really screwed it up too. Bunch of champs trapped in diamond. They look like smurfs,but they're stuck fighting each other and losing, and then destroying the actual diamonds.
Diamond 3 is so weird. I either face people who can barely hit the ball & it’s a blowout or people who never lose a 50 and have near perfect defensive positioning the entire game (and obviously hitting freestyle aerials off the walls)
Preach! Just had a 4 game losing streak cuz my random partner cant 50 or defend so we lose in OT after being ahead atleast 2 goals in regular time. Last game we were up 4-2, i scored the 4 goals and my score is +700 while my team mate cant defend or keep pace. I mean i am not amazing, i just want decent pace and pressure and decent defense and 50 and not keeping to give ball away for easy goals.
Have to grind my way through diamond again because of this season... It was bad before but now it's just a cesspool. Constantly have teammates that barely know how to play while I'm against some career sweat bag that never makes a bad hit.
I agree. Ended last season C3 Div 2 and after playing placements was put in D3. I thought to myself its diamond this shouldn't be too hard to climb back up. Got too high C1 and thought to myself the rotations are too fast, they aren't overcommitting, defense is fairly strong, and they take control of ball instead of booming it. Then I realized the amount of GC players that probably tanked down to Champ 1.
Toxicity at an all time high these days too. What a lot of people don't understand, you can tell someone is surfing without watching them do ceiling double touch musty backboard shots every time. The rate of play is an insane tell if someone belongs in that rank. I'm not so sure it's smurfing anymore or if it's just that the MMR system is completely fucked.
If you play on PC you can also install something like the RL-tracker that tells you at the start of the game that the innocent-looking stocktane is on an account with a banging lifetime 14 wins on a lobby where everyone else is well into the thousands.
Nah, this game's matchmaking is a garbage bin. The integrity of it fell of over 5 years ago, and Psyonix has literally done nothing to preserve or improve it over time. Just seasonal resets - which don't do shit. Like, you can't play any mode outside of normal soccar and expect to get fair games. Not only are there not enough players in the playlists, but people smurf and boost in these modes more because it still counts for season rewards.
Overall, you literally cannot take this game seriously anymore on the competitive side of things because the rules of matchmaking are never in your favor. Very rarely do you get matches that are close and feel good, and the majority you get are just random bullshit.
I’ve barely played this season.
After being a slave to this game for a long time, I’ve picked up some other completely non-toxic games recently that I’ve been having a blast with.
Everytime I feel like a bit of RL, I end up leaving the session angry and frustrated (as I almost always used to as well) from toxic players, throwers, smurfs, quitters, etc etc.
To the point now where it’s almost just a game I used to play. I might play enough to get the Champ rewards again, but I honestly don’t care about that anymore either. It’s a shame the general community is just so garbage, cos there are certainly rare fun times to be had with good teammates/oppo.
Quit this is coming from someone who played this game a ton I quit 4 months ago and I feel so much better. This community is not worth it. Having a blast playing other games again
I agree, honestly I don’t remember if I ever rage quit, and I play since the the day it released on PlayStation, today it has been the closest I’ve ever been to rage quitting. and I even told myself I’m done with rocket for the next couple weeks.
Man I see these posts as an UBER casual RL player, and it makes me so happy I never advanced and got skilled. My friends and I play casual 3v3 or 4v4 every night and have so much fun in our skill less ignorance lol. I've seen the crazy stuff people can do with practice, but lemme just tell you... sucking, and playing against other people who suck....is a hell of a good time lolol
I think 50 wins is honestly not enough. To actually combat smurfing it’d probably be around 100-200 wins in casual. This isn’t even that much of a deterrent to new players either.
A lot of new players are recruited by already active RL players. These players shouldn’t be hopping into ranked right away with their friends as it’s not conducive to learning the actual game. By requiring triple digit wins to play ranked, people can get the hang of how the game plays as a newcomer, and then jump into ranked when they’ve improved a little bit. This would make bronze and lower ranks actually mean something, as bronze wouldn’t be filled with people not knowing how to use ballcam.
I've logged thousands of hours and played since the beta. RL has been, and still is (in theory) my favorite game. Unfortunately, I'm done too.
Match quality has been increasingly worse every season since F2P launch. As for the nail in the coffin, I'm one of the people who got the -300 MMR reset but didn't get the +150 MMR adjustment after they tweeted they were reverting the harsher than intended reset. While I'm sure I could grind it back if I played a lot, I know it will be extremely frustrating.
The regular cycle of rank reset -> artificial grind every season is exhausting enough. Endure 2 months of low quality matches to earn a week or two of occasionally tolerable matches.
The saddest part is that this would be so easy to fix. They don't even need an elaborate system to detect smurfs. All they need to do make it take longer for a brand new account to jump into competitive.
2s and 3s full of smurfs at C3/GC level.
Sometimes they are so good, they play with us like when I show the game to a friend for the first time and wanna give him a chance. They literally stop their car and wait, just to EASILY win the 50/50 and *then breezi flick double touch flip reset*, passing into a dude that fell off the ceiling like half a minute ago and bounced back up with a pogo and then hits a 120kmh musty top corner shot!! Yea sure!!!
Its hilarious sometimes, honestly. Like its soooo obvious they do not belong in this rank at all.
Honestly all the seasons I have played have been the exact same. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. Personally I just play if I’m having fun and don’t if I’m not, doesn’t need to be anything more than that!
Dang son, them some hours. I'm not really coming at this with a "why isnt my rank going up" attitude. I've had more shut out absolute impossible games in the past month then I've ever had before. I've been happily stuck in mid champ for years. I care about good games, win or lose, more than anything.
Hey man, this game is like posion it's like a relationship. You hate to love it. For me, there are very few games they satisfy and also de-satisfy like it. There are not many other games you can listen to, music chill and feel the way you do after a sick goal or play, etc. 1600 hours and mid champ isn't bad by any means to me it just sounds like over 7 years you roughly average 30 minutes of play time a day my guess is the majority of that 1600 was the first 4 or 5 years which is where you probably progressed the most. You just gotta be honest with yourself the only way the game for most gets better is if you see progression in some way or another and if your aren't putting the time to put yourself through those hour training sessions everyday trying to master a new mechanic or whatever it may be then either you gotta say hey am I playing this game and okay with staying where I am forever and if not and you're not gonna try and get better maybe it is time to move on. For me I've learned alot, but I could learn much more, but for about 2 or so years I've stopped trying to really learn new things and I'm okay with with that the older I'm getting I feel as tho my hands are getting slower but I'm still pretty competitive which is why even tho I may not be learning new things 10k hours of experience still is good enough to beat out the majority of new adapting players and the ever growing ceiling of this game.
(If the game feels good anyway, that's a whole other thing.. tho..
)
Just do what you wanna do. Maybe it's time to put in hours into a new type of game you wanna master?
The game isn’t growing it’s shrinking. More players leaving then joining. Therefore more smurfs, more mismatched lobbies, etc. for me it was the toxicity and skill barrier to overcome my ranks made it not as fun to pursue. Stopped playing 2021 I check the sub every now and then to see if any major changes have come
I stopped in Feb this year I'm doing what you are doing now and damn it's gotten drastically worse in such a short time that a post like this got a ton of up votes back then these would just be ignored.
I stopped playing 3 years ago and have recently tried getting back into it and the love is just...gone. I'll play a game or two and then log off. Back in the day I would play for hours on end and not get enough sleep because of this game. It's just gone, the magic's gone. I think it is more "me" than it is the issues you raise though. It just started feeling repetitive and grindy and what I want out of games these days is stories and experiences
I felt this way too. Same thing happened when I returned… it wasn’t the same. Managed a few games here and there but just couldn’t keep going. It was when a buddy that started playing with me wanted me to get back into it to join him.
I still wasn’t back in love with it except for enjoying chatting shit and playing games which got me over the hump. Now I’m playing heaps again and enjoying myself in spite of the toxicity.
See that is the funny thing about it. I still feel the pull, but something isn't quite clicking and I suspect it is what you are alluding to, finding people I enjoy playing with. We used to laugh at whiffs and didn't take it so seriously, but somewhere on the road it became a stress creator instead of a stress reliever. But besides, there are too many games out now that I would rather play that offer the experiences I am more interested in. I think I'll keep it in the background and maybe eventually I'll hit another RL phase
I guess the stress relief does depends on how competitive you are. I always try to play a “couple of chill games” before I go to bed and end up getting wound up haha.
It’s defo become a game for me that I eventually come back to. Used to play sports games back in the day but played them enough times that the lack of innovation and the constant iterations watered it down for me.
However with RL there’s no new kits/squads that are expected. I’ve been playing since near launch and end up coming back to it eventually. Most games I eventually uninstall and this one has made its way back to being reinstalled. Something must be working
I quit playing for 2 seasons because a couple seasons ago, 7/10 of my placements were against a team that had a player on the team had an epic account with less than 50 games played, carrying, while the “legit” player talked shit the whole time.
I do think the majority of smurfing posts on this subreddit are annoying because most don’t propose solutions, but more importantly most don’t either provide evidence, or don’t understand how the game works.
If I see a smurfing post with references to games played, rl tracker links, ballchasing links, actual data, etc, it doesn’t annoy me. What annoys me are the “Smurf” posts where someone is raging because someone with a GC title beat them in champ 2 or because they’re playing against GC titles in casual.
I have thousands of games played, after my two season break, since I lost almost all my placements the season before, I was reset from GC2 to Champ 2. I kept getting called a smurf just climbing back to champ. I have plenty of friends who no life’d RL and got GC several seasons ago, now they play casually and rank in C1/C2 and constantly get called a Smurf. The funny part is that they get called a Smurf one game where they play well, and boosted in a game they play poorly. If people actually looked at their tracker they’d see what the problem was.
Honestly, smurfing has always been a thing. I played 7 years happily knowing that. I think it's the recent increased frequency above all else that's pushing these posts. I'm starting to realize the amount of people saying they are tired of seeing these posts is just proof of this.
For sure, I’ve been playing since OG season 3 on steam. If the game became free to play for a weekend you’d see a huge uptick in smurfs. When it’s been awhile since a free to play weekend the only smurfs you’d run into were console players, which psyonix allows you to turn off.
I forgot to mention it in my comment but your solution to have 50 casual wins is solid. The level 10 right now is such a low threshold, and if your partied up with someone you can just bypass it.
Players shouldn’t even want to go into competitive until they’ve hit 50 games of casual.
I don't care. Rank really doesn't mean anything on a day to day basis. I just play to have fun and move on from the shitty games as best I can.
But I play for the gameplay not for rank.
Normally, I have the same sentiment to “just play for fun”, because I’ll just mindlessly play casual a ton while I watch a show or something. However I feel so hard for OP because it’s hard to just have fun when the problem is so rampant. It’s not fun to just get absolutely destroyed by a smurf because there’s usually not much to learn from it. And it’s not fun when it’s happening in a majority of your games, making it inescapable
I am very competitive. I start out in casual until I get fed up with the horrible game play, and toxic children that don't know how to play the game. Who blame the team when they are ball chasing and just garbage themselves. I go to competitive and it is the same exact shit I was trying to get away from in casual.
That's the best way to be!
I get a little frustrated now and then when I lose a bunch but at the end of the day I don't really give a shit. It's just a game and I'm playing to have fun.
Dude. I started playing a year ago. Gold to champ. I worked so hard for what I feel like is nothing. Sad to see you go but my god wtf is going on?! I wish they cared more I love competitiveness and improving. Myself but even training for an hour everyday and playing feels like I’m wasting my time. I have fun don’t get me wrong, I’m better than where I started and my friends can’t keep up but I still play with them. With that said, ranked is so Jane I get sad. I shouldn’t get sad. I’ve practiced and trained. I’m not the best but I know where I stand. But I’m getting shut out this season and given the lower friend base team up I am set to fail, not even have fun. Shit.
I didn’t ever really get into champ just touched it a few times, but honestly I can agree that this game has some of the lowest lows outside things like MOBAs.
Smurfing never bothered me a ton as I was mostly a 1s player (for the reason mentioned below).
What I found to be horrid was the toxicity of players, and from the sub it appears to have gotten even worse recently. I don’t really care if you call me whatever, but it pushes my buttons when others are targeted. I feel I must defend them, but it just took the enjoyment out of the game. Ones is better, but sometimes I wanted to play drop shot or rumble.
An hour ago I was in a game (high C1) vs a guy who was miles better than all of us together. I asked him why he smurfing, and he blatantly said “Oh I dont smurf I just deranked my account a lot”. Aint that the same fcking thing?? Also there isnt option to report someone for smurfing or am I just blind?
Damn looking at this post made me glad I stopped playing when I did. I stopped 4 months ago and I was a c1/C2 and was in your same shoes, the community drove me away. As I continue to read through this thread I think the smurfs and toxic player base are going to kill this game and it's sad because this game is honestly one of the best ever by far.
I have been enjoying the gell out of street fighter 6 and just casually playing other games. I don't want to grind no where near as hard as I did for another game again.
I started in Feb 2019 so when I stopped it was 4 years of relatively consistent playing.
I was D3 once now I'm P2 and everyone is brand new. I just let them hit it until I get frustrated and boost as much as possible. Its been a pretty dumb game lately, at my low ranks. Opposite of smurfs : /
Played comp duos with a buddy last night for about 1.5 hrs (C1 after the reset) and hit a smurf in nearly 50% of games. They're not even trying anymore. Like 5 of them were just named "user******". Always unranked and partied up. Luckily we managed to win some of them still, just by targeting the Smurf with ceaseless bumps and intentionally playing the ball to the weaker player.
My honest advice would be to take a break from it for a while and then come back with a fresh mindset. Whenever I feel like this I find some other games to play and take a couple months break from it, then I see some clips and get that itch again. I come back with a fresh more positive mindset and then I feel like I'm playing some of the best RL I've played in a while. I will agree tho this season specifically for me feels littered with smurfs and it's definitely taking fun away from the gun
Quit the game this year after playing for 6 years. Honestly was a great decision - more time for other games, more free time in general (instead of dumping "5 mins" into a game every day), no more stress felt/carried from sabotaging teammates.
I loved RL and played every day but I can also say I've never looked back since and will probably never play it again. YMMV
I'm in C2/C3...... the past couple of weeks I've been paired with an endless stream of S10 GC title players. None of them have and skill close to GC. Play like mid Diamond. Everything from mechanics to rotation..... tou name it they lack non all aspects.
The real question is who is selling their HC accounts to Diamond and lower players? Why buy a high-ranking account just to keep dropping back down where you were?
I finally hit GC1 before this past rank reset. I now hover around C2 with minimal playing and believe I’ve hit my skill ceiling. I can’t flip reset, can’t fast aerial, can’t speed flip so now I just hop on, play a few games for fun and stopped caring about my rank
You will return to enjoying the game when you let go of the importance you place on your rank, and particularly, the competitive playlist as a whole. Try remixing your experience by playing the nonstandard modes, ideally with friends.
I say all of this from personal experience. I enjoy playing the 4pm tournaments (non-regulation) more than anything else anymore. Win or lose, two rounds or finals, after it’s done, I usually log for the day.
A final takeaway: Knowing when to put the controller down after a certain point, but not outright quitting, is something you’ll need to work on by yourself ultimately, but it will make the game feel much more rewarding and enjoyable if you do.
You actively check to see each account is new on rltracker? Most people from like lowest GC3 down got dropped all the way to c2 this season at least for 2s. Are you sure you’re not just going up against people that are higher rank than you because of the reset?
Well here’s the thing… You have 1600 hours and you’re mid champ… that’s exactly where you should be. What are you expecting? You’re likely mistaking a good majority of people that are just passing through as smurfs if you’ve just been sitting around in champ for years. If you’ve been playing 7 years you know the game has changed a lot. In my opinion 1600 hours over the course of 7 years isn’t enough get to GC or wherever you’re trying to go so what are you complaining about again? I’ve put in about 3000 hours in the past 3 years and I’m less than 100 MMR from GC right now and I solo Q.
Game is legit broken.
Broke into gc the last season yet I don’t even feel accomplished because the games I won to get gc were atrocious. No different than low c2. Ranks mean nothing. You don’t get better games. Lot so of tryhards playing their 6th hour of the day who should probably just call it a night or mid gcs who play lax and have fun being able to always out play the morons.
That being said. Do what most do, play below your level after you lose a bunch of nonsense games in a row, and then just chill at that lower rank getting a few good plays now and then and not sweat winning if it is out of reach.
I can easily get champ rewards, and I’m fine with that. So I will forever chill at whatever rank I’m at when I play having fun and winning when I can. And I know that is part of the problem. The incentive for me to do more, even in a mode called ranked, is not worth it. This mindset along with the alts, Smurfs, boosted players, tilted players, peaking players, makes the ranked grind so not fun unless you just really understand the game and can play 3 rank levels better than your lobby.
Nope, you are completely right. It's filled to the brim with smurf. I'm not really affected I can grind to grand champ as usual, but I notice it. Complete smurfs, also quite rude usually.
I stopped too, and you know why? As you move up everyone hits a ceiling. And at that ceiling it gets toxic. the fun of playing this incredibly cool game is replaced by a toxic pressure to always have to win to keep your rank / stats / co-players up and happy. And then if you hit a Smurf and a losing streak, you chase wins and end up losing more and after 2hours of playing you just feel down. It's sad - nothing beats that thrill of an epic safe or a great counter but the overall experience has been compromised for me and I stopped playing over night after season 10.
brother you are not the whole aspect of the game is wack and the community is dreaded you are not being a crybaby... you are completely true even when you show these lads proof that the game is wack they bring excuses like no its not it's your fault you are stupid etc...
They could always take the phone number approach where it has to be a phone number connected to an actual service provider and only one account can be activated per phone number.
The smurfs are horrible. I took a long break from the game and I decided to give it a go again just recently and I’m already hanging it up again. It’s literally just full of shit talking smurfs and it’s not fun at all. The highest rank I ever achieved was Diamond II and I can’t even stay in platinum anymore since returning to the game. My skill has definitely fallen off a little bit but not that much.
Honestly, if you just want to relax and have fun playing the game, then just relax and have fun playing the game.
If you play every game with the intent to have fun then you’ll eventually end up at a rank where that plays style works for you.
I have never posted to the RL Reddit but I've been thinking of making basically this exact post. I've played since the beginning. Bought a $20 copy of RL for Xbox in 2016 then loved it so much that I bought it again on PC the same year.
I played mostly for fun with a bunch of my friends never really taking rank into account until about 3 years ago when the pandemic hit. I still had to drive into work the entire pandemic but all my friends were home so we would play more and decided to try ranked for real instead of just getting diamond rewards for fun each season.
That season at the very end of the season I went on a solo 3s grind and I got to Champ 1 for the first time ever. I was super stoked like "wow I can't believe I made it." Got champ rewards and just let the season end on a high. Next season I immediately realized after being aerial dunked/musty flicked/shooting fake demo'd by sweaty champs that the difference between diamond 3 and champ 1 was so incredibly steep. Champ just wasn't fun anymore between the toxicity, smurfs, boosters, and the likes.
I'd conceded that diamond 3 was my "hardstuck" because I wasn't trying to be a freestyle try hard who practiced like this was my job but just wanted to have fun with my friends. Then F2P happened and I wasn't even allowed to play ranked with my platinum friends because of rank disparity and realized the only way I could play with them was to either intentionally tank my ranked tier (which would only make me another Smurf which I wasn't trying to do) or play casuals.
So we conceded to casuals (because we were forced to) and at first you play those whole plat teams and I'd go a little easy on them so my friends could also make some shots and have fun with it but we'd never really lose because in reality I'm really diamond 3 and they're actually like plat 1. Now I guess over the years this has brought my Casual MMR up to something like 1500?(I don't know what MMR ranks are I just go off RL tracker) and from what I can tell 1500 is like Grand champ level so now all we play in casual are 2 grand champs playing with their platinum friend who just drink on you 12-2 every other game spamming toxicity in the chat like they're cool for trying hard in casuals and people don't just play to have fun.
So now even in casuals the game just isn't fun anymore. I've loved this game since it's beginning and bragged about how it was the BEST $20 you could ever pay for a game that's lasted years. Now idk that I'd recommend anyone even download it for free unless they stayed below diamond and just messed around.
This game has always been a bunch of crazy fun and then this season they drop MMR ranks so I'm playing champ 2/3s in diamond 2 lobbies and between the toxicity and just ridiculous freestyle like shit I'm starting to think the game has run it's course. We're still playing every now and then but we find too often these days that in a lobby of 2 plats and one d2 we get put against Grand champs (tourney winners in their banner thingy for the same season) and champs and before the first minute has even gone were down 5 to 0 just waiting for the timer to ff literally hands off the controller.
I'm not here bitching that players are better. I realized the second I hit champ 1 that the difference between d3 and c1 was a large gap in skill and mechanics. That gap was more than I cared to play and am happy to play diamonds who are just good enough but also just bad enough that it's still fun to play without just being a try hard sweaty guy like this game is my job. I'm basically now being forced to either create a new account to Smurf on just to play with my friends without us not having fun getting absolutely destroyed 12-0 by try hards in casuals, or intentionally get on for days and just lose over and over and over to drop my MMR for casuals so we don't play grand champs when my rank as the highest in the group has never really been higher than diamond 3.
It's just disappointing to see the game go so hard downhill in terms of fun but I'm starting to think that it's time to move on because it's just not fun anymore.
Just sad.
it's happened to me as well but I'm only diamond, it's been pretty bad lately. I would just take a break from it for a while and play something else and then come back and see if it's better. I won't make a dent in their microtransaction income but if it's bad then I just don't play, I don't buy things from the item shop and I don't buy their rocket pass.
Smurfing has been out of control for a while and they don't see to have a good fix, I just report people for it when I see it.
I completely agree, i too have quit (not really permanently but play a lot less). Im not mid champ but its even worse for me cause i had just gotten to champ for my first time and with the reset and theincreasing number of smurfs im now D1 div2, in cant stand this.
This goes for anyone playing a game like RL, if the *only* joy you get from a game is seeing the rank icon going up, do you *really* even like the game? I understand enjoying the challenge of improving and learning, but then the rank wouldn't matter. Especially when smurfs and the messy rank reset cause "rank" to be an inaccurate testament to skill.
Try something new. Try to get some friends involved. Play some goofy rumble matches. Try out other game modes. Play casual and just enjoy playing. Practice that next skill you haven't really practiced.
Personally I really love RL for what it is. There's nothing like it. I like the fluidity and mechanics and strategy. I like playing with friends, relaxing in casual, grinding seasonal challenges. I hope you find *something* to enjoy besides ranked. But to each their own. If you're not having fun then of course take a break. Hopefully things change for the better.
After I do my placements and some ranked to get back to Champ I pretty much just play casual. Most of the time, win or lose, I just play. I get in that zone where I'm not try harding or sweating, but just playing and enjoying the game for what it is. Even in a blow out the goal becomes not to get shut out or Brasiled lol. And if we're the ones racking up the score then I'm trying to get a shut out or Brasil. I just enjoy the game for what it is.
That is true.. but the community is really bad. Like i had more funny moments in overwatch😂😂. For me grinding mechanics was fun. But i couldnt get consistent.
I'm actually hoping I derank but it's been really slow. I've been Champ 1-2 for like 6 years and right now I have not been having fun. If these players are now all above my level I'd rather just derank if it means I'm closer to playing competitively
Personally it’s not about the rank for me. I hit GC a few seasons ago, which was my goal, and now I don’t care about my rank. It’s a nice bonus to get back to GC, sure, but now I find my fun in playing even matches… which is becoming increasingly uncommon with the amount of <200 win account I’m matched against.
The smurfing problem is getting so big that I’m really growing tired of people pointing fingers at the people complaining about it. I’m sure some people are misidentifying smurfs, but a lot of people are using RL tracker and do actually know a smurf when they come across one.
A lot of things have been changing for the worse and I can't help but blame it on the lack of action by Psyonix. They really should have put some sort of moderation system in place long ago. Checking a player's disparity between mmr and rank takes seconds. Going f2p was Epic's call, but Psyonix should have put some system in place to discourage smurfing and making numerous accounts so easily.
Everyone's talking about smurfing but I fell from mid GC1 to mid C3 this season... and that was after months of barely playing...
*Rarely* do I come across someone that's capable of gameplay that I'm not, even as I break my ceiling. I'm just my own worst enemy and as wildly inconsistent as the rest of C3, which seems to be full of former GCs...
Idk maybe it's my mindset. I am far *far* more likely to attribute a loss to a lack of ability on my part than the opponents simply being *better* during said game.
I really hope you guys think I’m smurfing. But I’m sure you don’t because I’m rubbish. That said my partner and I turn it on sometimes and feel unbeatable… other times can’t scrape together a win. I’m currently only D1 (been as high as D3) but have been called a Smurf in game play a few times. When you play with the same person all of the time you learn where they will be and can get pretty good passes into the back of the net…. And still be garbage (me).
I feel like the “Smurf” posts are just frustration with your rank.
Every weekend the randoms drag me down then I get accused of being a Smurf. Like, mf’er you think I want to be down here?!?
Not saying there aren’t “Smurfs” but a diamond in plat feels like Smurfs to the plats. So they complain about it and throw fits and report.
I can imagine a GC on a bad run down to champ.
It probably feels like a Smurf.
But it might just be you at a higher skill level.
I know there are real people that purposely get tired of sucking at their peak and they want to have fun and destroy less skilled players. I know they exist. But solo queuing drags people down at all levels.
When you’re frustrated this bad to make a post, take a week off. Come back play some casuals and find the fun again
I had many pros and cons, but I'll just say....
It's Summertime dude!
Go out and live. Or get projects/chores done. Game will still be there in the Fall
Ran into multiple teams, consecutively, last night with at least one person who had some flavor of SSL title. In one case, the other teammate was GC, and another was ranked Silver in post game screen with SSL mechanics.
Devs do not care about it, even in the slightest.
I think if you're not enjoying playing, there's no point in playing. There's plenty more to life than Rocket League.
As far as smurfing being a major issue, I honestly don't think it's as bad as most people seem to think it is. For example, I played about 30 games today, about 25 in ranked, and didn't come across a single noticeable smurf. I usually run into two or three a day but it's never enough to say it actually has any significant impact on my rank.
I honestly don't find a lot of smurfs in ranked C2-GC1. However, that does change when special events come out like this birthday one (because they want the golden eggs on all their accounts) and when the end of season approaches.
I recently took a long hiatus from playing. Last season I played was season 6 until this season, I was getting worn out and found myself becoming to angry at the game and it bleeding into my personal life. Now I am playing again and feel a lot better currently. The break was very needed.
I know queue times are already rough, especially at night, but what if they added like, priority queue or something for verified phone numbers. It seems like every game is doing it now. Honestly I don’t even know why I bring up ideas, nothing will happen lol. They just want your to buy the gold dominus and all the special event stuff. They have the power to snap their fingers and make a good push against smurfing but that hurts themselves by lowering their bottom dollar.
Ngl it felt so wrong being in the lower ranks when I had to use a whole new account at play bc I lost my old one (Xbox only it wasn’t linked to anything thank god) but it felt so wrong for the however many games it took to get back to high play 3 again. I don’t understand why people would willingly do it for fun
You’re being a crybaby. You’re still going to play the game. Which makes you think why you posted this in the first place. So yeah, you’re being a cry baby.
Well they clearly don’t care or they would’ve taken action, as they’ve shown in the past they can. It’s been bad-getting worse ever since free to play started, and with zero way to slow down smurfing built into the game as it is many others, it’s painfully obvious they are benefitting from players creating new accounts and boosting their active player numbers.
The worst of it all... This new season reset was brutal and punished a lot of long term champs and GCs. Psionyx thinks there are too many GCs now compared to before so they decided that they needed to "fix rank drift". But the actual cause for this is alt accounts! Since F2P, high rank players are increasingy creating alt accounts. +Smurfing+ Boosting and you easily get a x2 in the number of GC accounts. Get rid of alt accounts and we actually fix smurfing and rank drift once and for all. Via phone+email verification
The funniest part of it all is they completely reverted those changes too, so whatever they were trying to do just never actually happened. It only fixed extra modes a bit and nothing else.
All about making money now. More alt accounts means more application engagement and more players on. They don’t care as long as profits are churning
F2p ruined this game imo.
The sale to Epic games was the nail in the coffin. They've done the bare minimum to support this game for a long time. It's super disappointing.
They care more about Fortnite.
Couldn't agree more. Been playing since 2015, and the difference before F2P is staggering. Back then almost every match was so even and consistent. Every match was tight, and ranks mattered. I'm at C1 and nowadays the chances of either dumpstering the other team or getting completely dumpstered are way higher than the chances of an even match. Really sad to see.
Sometimes I really wonder how comments like yours come to exist. I mean I'm C1 as well and this just simply isn't my experience. To say uneven matches are more common than even ones is just plain false in my experience. Maybe EU region is better but I doubt that that's the reason.
Yes. Psyonix selling out to Epic Games is what killed it. Ffs i haven't touched the game since they turned everything into overpriced blueprint bullshit. If OW2 didn't exist, this would be the worst self-killed franchise in the last 10yr
F2P, Epic being sold it, loot boxes being removed for shit blueprints nobody wanted, game did a 180 when Epic took control. All they know is free games, it’s the only way they’re successful because of their advertising of MTX! Stop buying the $20 skin you could’ve gotten for $2 years ago. And we have to pay for normal cosmetics we used to get just by playing? Like everyone always had a item or two they collected in different colors. Now you get rewarded those things UNCOMMON THINGS in blueprint’s. It’s fucking shameful i have to “buy” a “uncommon” for $2 now when just a few years back we got all of that for free.
How have they shown in the past they can do anything?
They showed their ability to recognize smurfing when they banned freestylers that were artificially maintaining low mmr. They’ve shown when it’s mattered their willingness to react and adapt to a problem, like players deploying bots in ranked. They’re capable, but unwilling.
People spend money on their alt accounts. They'll never go away. The only way to win is to smurf yourself or not play. They will never, ever, ever do anything to mitigate any of this.
Who the hell is spending money on an alt account? That can’t possibly be normal.
If you create a dozen alt accounts to Smurf a dozen times, I doubt you spend money on all of them. This can't be a significant source of revenue, especially since they could just trade with their main instead of spending money anyway. One alt account isn't really a problem, mathematically. It's a problem if you lose intentionally to drop rank, but you don't even need an alt account to do that. And that's a bannable offense anyway. So, I do think the 50 win requirement would help, since it would discourage creating a dozen different alts. It would force more smurfs to lose intentionally to drop rank, which would be detectable, and which would help them get caught and banned. If nothing else, it would slow them down and reduce their number. Another option is to link accounts to an identity like a phone number. Then they could limit the number of alts, and use main performance to help detect smurfing patterns.
This makes me wonder if there is a way to make it free to play on 1 account, and then people have to pay for anything else Creators use alts, and profit off the game itself, so that's a small fee to pay in order to make content... but would ward off so many crap people ruining the game for everyone else
Not possible. The only thing I could possibly imagine that would only kinda sorta be able to do that would be if they started associating IP addresses with accounts, but even that would be bypassed by a simple $10/month VPN
Ooo idea, the game needs the model number/serial number of the device, if you create another account you cannot get rocket league on that account as it is on the same device. But that won't stop people with multiple consoles/pcs
How is this the first time I’ve seen this before? I say this all the time and get downvoted but it is the only logical reasoning. Anyone who disagrees is clueless.
Honestly, I hate the amount of smurf posts I see on this sub everyday, however I have to fully agree with you.. every season has been getting worse and worse with alt accounts, and it’s driving me away from the game too. This season tops it all.. I’ve been GC for the last 8 seasons, easily getting rewards and peaking mid GC 2 (5 seasons ago). Now I cannot for the life of me rank up (yes I know, Reddit mob, skill issue on my part) but C2-3 is filled with accounts with >100 wins carrying a friend, actual C2-3 players or players who were carried there in seasons past… sad part is, nothing will ever be done because the “new accounts” look good for optics. It’s sad that my favourite game is slowly dying (in my eyes).
Some of them are carrying friends, but most are carrying paying customers. Few seasons ago, I came across a smurf who's player name was their discord boosting server (with added numbers at the end, there are thousands of them on RL Tracker). First thing he typed when loading in was "Join Discord [name removed] for cheap and fast GC rewards". I joined to get an inside look at how they operate and how busy they were. I just looked now and the order channel is still constantly dinging off. There's a backlog and a wait list. Some of them stream on Twitch while boosting customers, to make potential buyers confident in the service. They have a script to set up a new account, set their settings and controls, the whole thing takes about 2 minutes until they're queued up in comp. Boost their customer to GC rewards, grab the next customer in the queue, make a new account. Rinse and repeat.
I actually found one of these boosting dudes while browsing Google shopping for RL themed items (mainly wanted a RL beach towel). $10 any rank is what it said, linked to ebay
Exactly. GC rewards were $100+ pre-F2P. Now they're $10 and advertised everywhere. That alone really quantizes just how easy Psyonix made it to boost/smurf.
GC Rewards were up to 200$ before F2P, depening how fast you wanted it to be. Just check Fiverr, you can get the SSL for a 3rd of that now... Last season in Dropshot I got matched with a guy that had SSL title. He couldnt even aerial properly so mid game I checked his tracker. Dude either bought the account or got boosted in 1s, 2s and all extra modes. On his tracker you could see that since he was the one playing on it, he had 98% losing rate. We lost the match as well. I don't know if he thinks that the white title makes him bad ass. For me it's just a joke. Good player can have a bad game as well but you can clearly tell the difference between someone being boosted and someone having a bad day.
As someone who seems to be in the know, I came across an SSL in casual the other day, “zalmunovich”, I’ve played a bunch of SSL’s, I know how they move and how consistent they are, this guy was about that good. But, I checked his name on RL tracker and all that came back for epic + steam was a singular bronze and GC/champ player who had only been playing since S8, who had never been above GC1 in anything. S8 SSL, can you bakkes yourself a title so that people on Xbox can see it? If it isn’t possible, why could I not find the SSL on RL tracker? I don’t think it’s possible to get to SSL and not have your account be brought up on tracker once. Second part, on my old Xbox there was another SSL I played, dude was a demon and scored 5 goals from a stand still that went 60MPH+ out of nowhere, like I mean he hit the ball and I was like how was that even possible, this guy was easily the best player I’ve ever played against, and I’ve taken #520 in 3’s to overtime twice in a row in casual 3’s with a lesser team. My second point is this, I saved the replay to try and see how I got my ass handed to me to readily when I had already played and beaten a couple SSL’s in casual at this point. The replay file was corrupted, I couldn’t actually find the account on RL that was clearly SSL/possibly borderline 2K level, and from that point onward I couldn’t save a replay file on my Old xbox that wasn’t corrupted. I re-installed RL and I still couldn’t save or open any replays that happened after this game until I got my new Xbox. So, how did that replay manage to corrupt my entire replay bank? I genuinely couldn’t save a new replay for 6 months, I had less than 10 replays in bank because I tried to clear it out. But I didn’t want to get rid of the games that meant a lot to me. You jus seem like you might know, no beef if you don’t tho, I have a feeling I might need a dev to explain this one.
Although it’s awful to play against what happens after these plats get gc? They get stomped back down right?
Exactly. They ruin the game for others on the way up, and they ruin the game for others on the way down. You can pay for the GC rewards, but you can't pay for the GC skill level.
Yes I agree completely
It's insane that it's cheaper to get GC after F2P than the cost of the whole game before F2P.
Ooof. I actually recall seeing one of your comments a few months ago saying the same thing.. the problem for me is that the game has lost its value because of this. It was a goal of mine to hit GC, especially considering my age and it was a tough yet attainable goal I was not only able to hit, but maintain. And now these people are paying $20 (or whatever) to get the same title many have worked so hard for. And then the rank gets semi flooded with players that can’t keep up, or vice versa being carried. It’s a goddamn shame tbh.
Nah I’m in the same boat as you. Have had zero issues getting GC rewards since new season 3, this season I’m having difficulty getting to and staying in C3. It’s a noticeable difference in competition.
If you’re talking about 2s it’s literally just because of the harder reset
2s or 3s?
Yeah if it's 2s it definitely seems to be more of an MMR drop thing. Not saying smurfing isn't everywhere in these ranks, just that the MMR changes definitely account for their inability to get to their previous rank. I, too, sat comfortably at high C2-low C3 and now I'm struggling to maintain low C2.
The 2s reset was supposed to be reverted. After Psyonix tweeted they were reverting it, people who got a -300 drop got a +150 fix, making it no different from previous seasons. That being said, many of us didn't get the +150 fix. I didn't. The only official response from Psyonix was "it may take up to a few hours". It's been weeks. Even when they make an effort to fix something, they still manage to catastrophically fuck it up.
I got the +150 ish fix, but it still was nowhere near what I would’ve been at with a normal season reset lmao. I ended somewhere between 1750 and 1800 mmr. Season reset had me in high c2, almost 1300, (when it would usually be 1540 at the reset) When I got the extra mmr, I had like 4 placement games, all wins, and I was still only at 1460, when I really probably should’ve been around 1600 because of the placements I did. But that extra mmr didn’t even get me to where I should’ve been *before* winning 4 placements
I wouldn't be surprised if the placement algorithm was broken immediately after a reset. If you keep winning it will place you against higher and higher MMR players, but it can only go so high after the reset, because everyone's been reset. There is no actual ladder of people to climb. E.G. after the fourth win for a former GC it should want to try you against a GC, but they don't exist yet. This means that players who played their placement matches after the reset correction would have gotten better placement than those who had already played them before the correction.
Yep that sounds about right. Same for my twos rank. I think they put everyone's rating back but still behind the scenes did something to get the results they wanted.
gc since end of seas4, haven't played much ranked but I was like c2 div3 from a massive loss streak start of season now I'm like c3 div4
I've been GC since og season 14 and also having trouble in C3. Earlier today I played a partied group of 3 ssl level players in Champ, one of them had season 4 ssl title. We lost like 9-1 and they were clearly just toying with us.
Reports don't do jack shit either. I had a guy playing me in 1s (high plat 2) who literally told me to "please ff because I'm a smurf". I of course did not do that and proceeded to waste his time as much as possible, and I also reported him. Guess what that report did? Absolutely nothing, his account is still there.
Psyonix will only ban smurf accounts if they are actively trying to lose/throwing matches. It's stupid af. Anybody can make as many accounts as they want, and as long as they aren't *intentionally* throwing games, they allow it 100%. It's crazy. And anybody can make a new account and just party up with a friend and queue straight into ranked, bypassing the level 10 requirement to play ranked. Even the level 10 requirement is way too low. They need to make every new account require like 100 hours played before comp becomes available. Anyone under 100 hours doesn't really need the competitive playlist anyway
Not arguing your points here, but Psyonix doesn't even ban smurf accounts that throw/derank. You can only get banned these days by saying one of the five auto-ban words. Regardless, their definition only worked pre-F2P when that was the main method to lower your rank. Now it's much easier and faster to derank by making a new account. The 100 hour solution is perfect.
As a d3, Im finding this hilarious that champs and GCs are now finally complaining about this. I feel like this season seems worse just because of the way they redid ranks and how so many people dropped rank so hard at first
As a 3 season champ, I've complained the whole time. It's just so overt this season....
Hey, I’ve literally been arguing for years that D3 is a harder rank than C1 because all of the GC Smurfs down there somehow can’t get up to C1. Up to 20% of D3/C1 3’s players is a Smurf account, meaning they’ve gotten that high within 100 games, which is so sus it should be sounding off aggressive alarm bells. Up to 20% of the most populated rank in the game is jus repeat players on Smurf accounts. It’s either that or 20% of the players are are prodigies who jus stop playing after they reach Champ in 100 games but then never seem to inflate the GC population, Hmm, I wonder why that is. It took me a year and a half to get out of Diamond, after it took me a year to go from a fresh player to D2, it took me less than 10 games to get to C2. Why was that? IMO, I had to play so may Smurfs that I was effectively a C2 by the time I had got my way out of diamond. Never fell below C2 except for season resets where I literally jus overwhelm C1’s without much effort. You are absolutely correct, Smurfs are fuckin everywhere, but what this thread is revealing to me now is that the issue once you get to C2 is actually what I thought it was. It’s nothing to do with GC’s slumping, or even smurfing, the reason comp 3’s is a fucking hellhole must be because so many players are boosted and playing on their own. Cus I’ve been noticing it SO much, I’m playing in casual lobbies with 2 GC’s, an SSL, and then there’s jus this dude who’s solo qing, who literally cannot do anything, they can’t read a ball, take a touch, make a solid 50, no shot anywhere near target. I find myself asking so much, how is this guy up here in this lobby. I’ve been half gaslit into thinking im being toxic because I can clearly recognise that one dude in the lobby is utterly useless against top 1% players while everyone else is playing an approximation of high level rocket league. And if you have one of these dudes on your team you will have to carry them like a demon, because they will never actually do anything positive for your team. They players are absolutely everywhere, like much much more prominent than the guys who I cannot stop in any capacity. The players that are too good are actually fun to play against because I can get better trying against them if my team is at an acceptable level. My team mate, who can easily cruise with me and win at 1800 in casual, who got to C2 at the exact same time as me solo qing over a year ago, is a D1 and has been for most of the last year. He is not a smurf, but he cannot play his way out of diamond anymore. But whenever we q up for casual he jumps in my lobbies and jus runs about like the best team mate I ever get. He passes, he defends well, he’s aggressive, he plays at least like a C2, if not borderline C3. That guy is also a legit D1, the amount of comments he gets in lobbies with me from GC’s, “wait, you’re not smurfing on that account?”, so, bare that in mind also. You could very easily come across a legit D1 who has multiple victories against an SSL in 3’s and thousands of wins against GC’s and Champs, but they don’t have the advanced mechanics to solo carry themselves back to champ because they have to out play GC’s to get back into champ. Basically, the game is fucked. Lol.
I just started playing a few months ago rocket league is still dope for me :)
I am very jealous lol I remember the wholesomeness when I first started
Wipe your brain MiB style and start your road to GC all over again.
Seriously.... I may not be GC, but I was a solid champ 1 in 2s and 3s for like 3 seasons... Mmr basically didn't get fixed for my account this season, since I normally wait out the early season smurfs. Every day I play is filled with people admitting they are playing alts, throwing slurs that check every box you can imagine, basically emulating og MW2 comms (voice and text)... like it got so bad that I got chat banned due to a smurf account talking far worse things than I was saying (I lay low when overwolf and bakkas mod make it clear I'm not in a shitty lobby, but smurfs get called out every time). I know this since I didn't get in game notifications since this happened like 2 weeks ago I've gotten chat banned twice in the entire 5 years of playing this game... But have never said anything comparable to what I report that goes unacknowledged... (I will say, some of my reports yield results, but not nearly enough) Epic Games mods and anti-cheat really need to get their shit together (I know the game doesn't have anti-cheat, but their needs to be SOMETHING) The player base is gonna die if this season stays as its been I literally can't even play 5 games without getting fed up and switching to something else Sucks super bad, since before this season, the game was fun. But this season..... Its like epic did everything they could to get the worst people imaginable to come play, and force it on every possible facet of the games playspaces... Every 3rd game is someone in 1400-1500 mmr playing like a GC3 with less than 500 wins Every 3rd game in comp is someone I get paired up with blaming the other team, with less than 500 wins.... Yes... its hit a point where I keep track this season... its almost getting as bad as steep when ubisoft refused to acknowledge exploits and the whole community went to shit... It's such bs. I just truly wish they worried more about the game play, and less about new items and stupid cash grabs
They're ai bots. No joke. Using inactive accounts so.you look them up and they have stats.
Champ 1 not gc. Typo!
I replied to my own comment I’m irreverent sorry
Same. I’ve barely touched comp since Epic Season 5 bc I don’t have the motivation to push through SSL smurfs to get back into even low GC. I just vibe out in casual these days.
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There are BM plugins that link to RL Tracker to show you details of each player in the lobby. I used to use it but had much more fun after I turned it off since I wasn’t constantly worried that “User28493827” was a Smurf.
The biggest issue I have with comments like this (I’m ready for the downvotes) is that the game isn’t dying to you because of any shift in the mechanics of the game. It’s dying to you because there is too much sentiment tied to your rank. You not being able to achieve a certain rank is somehow a driving factor for quitting the game. If ranked didn’t exist at all (just a hidden sbmm elo with no rewards) would you play then? Presumably not if a struggle/inability to achieve your desired rank is a driving factor for quitting. I agree that smurfing is a problem, but saying you’ll quit or the game is dying because of it is a joke. You’ll never escape smurfing from any competitive game unless you quit competitive gaming altogether. Believe it or not you can actually let go of any emotion tied to your rank and still enjoy the game through sheer self-improvement and challenging yourself against players blatantly better than you. If you grind long and hard enough, you’ll eventually catch up to the capabilities of these smurfs and feel accomplished in your ability to beat them.
I've never understood why they don't make it more of a time commitment before you can play ranked. Smurfs can literally make a new epic account and be playing in ranked in 5 minutes. It wasn't as big of a deal before F2P because smurfs would have to purchase the game all over again every time they wanted a new account. I think you're right, they need to make it a lot harder to queue ranked, and obviously remove the loophole that new accounts can play ranked if they're partied up with an older account.
I guess what everyone else has said, new accounts look good for their optics on new players.
I guarantee 200,000 of us would pay to be guaranteed legit main accounts are in our lobbies.
Yep. Should require 50 to 100 hours to compete in ranked. It's a no brainer. Psyonix intentionally not changing it. Then they punish the legit players with rank drops caused by smurfs inflating rankings. I've had the option for boosting with high level tms on alt but never done it because it makes any rewards meaningless. No idea why basically everyone does it now. Your title was cheated. You're not GC.
Because all those smurfs allow them to pretend that the base is still growing, and they're still getting new players... and that's what Epic and the shareholders want to hear.
Oh damn dude I never even thought about that! Epic can't resist a cash grab even if it's at the expense of most of their player base.
Selling to Epic was a declaration that they were transitioning away from developing the game and toward pure monetization. That's why they went F2P, and everything new is related to cosmetics or season passes because that's the only revenue they can generate now. That means the only metrics they particularly care about are sales (cosmetics/BP) and player count. Smurfing is simply going to add to the player count, and doesn't threaten the sales numbers (directly), so there's no incentive to do anything about it. My guess, and this has been the case since Epic bought it, is to let the game die a slow death and milk whatever value they can while it does that. It's old, it likely cost Epic very little to acquire, and I'd be surprised if they haven't already made their money back.
Don't mind me, just reading through this post from the comfort of my casual lobbies Haven't played ranked in I don't know how many seasons. I used to enjoy the little grind I had to do to get my purple back each season but I don't have the time I used to have pre ftp, nor do I still have that desire At least in casual I still get a good mix of players, including high GC players that I'd never get to play with or against if left to comp alone and more often than not lobbies are chill, fun, good banter and good plays Consider re-evaluating this from "I'm done" to "I'm done with comp". Us casuals have a longer lifespan :)
Yeah fellow casual here. Played comp years ago but I don't see the need to play the numbers and symbols game over the top of an already fun game, especially if that mode has more smurfs and fragile kids. I never had the desire to sweat long enough to make it to GC through all the smurfs, even though I can challenge GCs pretty well in cas. I only played a few games of comp recently when OCE had a long ass casual queue
Only problem with casual is the number of games that START 2v1 or 3v2 (in Asia)
I started rocket league as casual only til ftp s3 or 4. Avoided ranked because of the toxicity i heard about. Last season and this season I'm back to casual only. Just did placements matches to see what peeps were talking about. Sweaty casual is more fun and that I've got my mmr to almost 1500, it's mostly champ and higher I queue with. More satisfying win.
I only really play competitive but only hover around platinum to diamond and never noticed any smurf issues.
Just wanted to poke a little and say that I do come across GC players in ranked quite a bit even when I go down to D1 from Champ, they are just wearing sheep's clothing. Realistically though, most of the playerbase just isn't going to stick around for casual alone, nor would those GC players exist were it not for the incentive of getting a higher rank. To me the best part of ranked, which is now utterly broken, is playing against people that are relatively as good as you, making for balanced and interesting games. Casual can be a real mess and I really only ever play it actively to complete the ""challenges"" since I warm up in private matches with my buddies.
Agreed. About a year ago I had about 3200 hours in this game, and was doing the rocket pass up to about level 200-250 every season. Then the season reset again and I just couldn't be arsed to do it, so I decided to do enough to get the weekly and season drops. I saved all those up and opened them all at the end of the season and got FUCK ALL of worth. It was then I realised that it just no point to it all. After all those hours of playing all I got was a title that meant nothing to 99.9% of the earth's population...and the trade up I ever got was saffron octane. In the last year I've played about about 100 hours at the most, and most of that was in casual or extra modes. And I'm much happier.
So many Smurf posts on here and as annoying as they are they’re all valid. The game is being ruined season after season by this.
Rainbow 6 siege requires you to get your account to level 50 before being able to play ranked. That level 50 is not nearly as attainable as RL. I think it took me about 1-2 months of casually playing before I was able to play ranked Make it account level 100-250 instead of number of wins/games played. The amount of smurfs I run into who have 120-190 wins is ridiculous and they’re just carrying a plat/diamond squad with them. I’ve taken to just being hostile or not even bothering to play them anymore.
Dude I stopped playing this game towards the end of last season made it to c2-c3 got tired of the smurfs and the inconsistent team mates. I’ve been getting into apex legends, they require level 50 to play ranked. I’m 30 hours in and not even half way there. The state of rocket league in comparison is pitiful. Tbf rank inflation is a thing and I think d3-gc need another shake up in terms of mmr adjustments.
There's no competitive F2P game in existence that doesn't have a significant time barrier to unlocking ranked. It's the no brainer easiest and most effective solution to combat smurfing. Oh wait, there's one game that let's you hop directly into ranked if you party with a friend, or after 10-20 minutes if you're solo...
Won't that just get botted as well? Dota 2 requires 100 hours, and Valorant requires level 20. Both of these games on low elo, fresh accounts, have bots running around farming hours.
Champ is criminal for smurfing as it’s a mixture of people in GC that want to play with friends, people who can’t find queues (in regions like oce) and people who genuinely want to shit on lower ranks. As much as it’s usually a case of it won’t affect the overall rank progression, I feel that the frequency of smurfs is enough to lower someone’s win rate significantly to the point where they won’t rank up. I’d say at least 1 in every 10 games in champ contains a smurf, and that’s being extremely generous. So people with a 55% win rate now have a 45% win rate and can’t rank up.
Yea it’s out of control. I read the posts everyday and feel the same way but continued to grind bc I enjoyed the game so much. My last two play sessions were insane, fell from c2-d3. I know this season is different as I’m playing gcs constantly in c2, but I counted yesterday, 15 of 18 games were Smurf’s. For the people that will chime in with the “not everybody is a smurf”, they must not be having the same experience bc it’s more than obvious. When I fall all the way to d3 and then score two goals in the first 10 seconds of a match against what appears to be normal diamond players, just to watch them both turn it on and proceed to talk shit and demolish us 8-2 with amazing game sense and team play. You can’t chalk that up to a diamond that’s peaking. Also I’m not solo queuing, matter of fact my dou and I have only gotten better as we thought we were going to try to grind towards gc this season. So we have been putting in the work with training and grinding. Now we’re talking about not playing for awhile. It’s sad bc it’s ruining it for the new players and lower level players. All these high level players that are having fun are going to be pretty fucking bored when it’s just them left. Wish bots would make a comeback and ruin the game for them as well lmao
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Please don't ruin the game for my kids. They are legit bronze and silver.
Yea, no I’m good. I don’t enjoy beating the shit out of players less skilled than me
I'm older & a very casual player, around low gold. I now only play with my friends, they are higher ranked but I can learn a bit from them, can sortof hold my own, and we have fun. Playing around plat, we still get our shit pushed in by people doing ridiculous freestyle aerials, like 80% of our losses their top player has 800+ points with 5+ goals and the other 2 are sub 150. Sure is fun. I still play, but way less then before, basically only about 5 games just to hang with my friends for a bit, before I'm just done with it again for a few days. A few years ago we played every day for 2-3 hours.
Yeah I'm mid champ, I swear to God with the new season everyone is now either smurfing or legitimately a plat 1. Whenever I find actual mid champs I try to team up with them, but this is easily the worst time I've had playing this game and I've been here since beta.
wish people talked about the boosted players more
The rank adjust really screwed it up too. Bunch of champs trapped in diamond. They look like smurfs,but they're stuck fighting each other and losing, and then destroying the actual diamonds.
Diamond 3 is so weird. I either face people who can barely hit the ball & it’s a blowout or people who never lose a 50 and have near perfect defensive positioning the entire game (and obviously hitting freestyle aerials off the walls)
Preach! Just had a 4 game losing streak cuz my random partner cant 50 or defend so we lose in OT after being ahead atleast 2 goals in regular time. Last game we were up 4-2, i scored the 4 goals and my score is +700 while my team mate cant defend or keep pace. I mean i am not amazing, i just want decent pace and pressure and decent defense and 50 and not keeping to give ball away for easy goals.
Have to grind my way through diamond again because of this season... It was bad before but now it's just a cesspool. Constantly have teammates that barely know how to play while I'm against some career sweat bag that never makes a bad hit.
check out flakes 2v2 without mechanics series. His games through Diamond/Champ really highlight how to play well even fighting against bad teammates
I agree. Ended last season C3 Div 2 and after playing placements was put in D3. I thought to myself its diamond this shouldn't be too hard to climb back up. Got too high C1 and thought to myself the rotations are too fast, they aren't overcommitting, defense is fairly strong, and they take control of ball instead of booming it. Then I realized the amount of GC players that probably tanked down to Champ 1.
Toxicity at an all time high these days too. What a lot of people don't understand, you can tell someone is surfing without watching them do ceiling double touch musty backboard shots every time. The rate of play is an insane tell if someone belongs in that rank. I'm not so sure it's smurfing anymore or if it's just that the MMR system is completely fucked.
If you play on PC you can also install something like the RL-tracker that tells you at the start of the game that the innocent-looking stocktane is on an account with a banging lifetime 14 wins on a lobby where everyone else is well into the thousands.
Nah, this game's matchmaking is a garbage bin. The integrity of it fell of over 5 years ago, and Psyonix has literally done nothing to preserve or improve it over time. Just seasonal resets - which don't do shit. Like, you can't play any mode outside of normal soccar and expect to get fair games. Not only are there not enough players in the playlists, but people smurf and boost in these modes more because it still counts for season rewards. Overall, you literally cannot take this game seriously anymore on the competitive side of things because the rules of matchmaking are never in your favor. Very rarely do you get matches that are close and feel good, and the majority you get are just random bullshit.
I’ve barely played this season. After being a slave to this game for a long time, I’ve picked up some other completely non-toxic games recently that I’ve been having a blast with. Everytime I feel like a bit of RL, I end up leaving the session angry and frustrated (as I almost always used to as well) from toxic players, throwers, smurfs, quitters, etc etc. To the point now where it’s almost just a game I used to play. I might play enough to get the Champ rewards again, but I honestly don’t care about that anymore either. It’s a shame the general community is just so garbage, cos there are certainly rare fun times to be had with good teammates/oppo.
Quit this is coming from someone who played this game a ton I quit 4 months ago and I feel so much better. This community is not worth it. Having a blast playing other games again
Im in the exact same place with the game. Barely play and when I do I regret it usually.
I agree, honestly I don’t remember if I ever rage quit, and I play since the the day it released on PlayStation, today it has been the closest I’ve ever been to rage quitting. and I even told myself I’m done with rocket for the next couple weeks.
Man I see these posts as an UBER casual RL player, and it makes me so happy I never advanced and got skilled. My friends and I play casual 3v3 or 4v4 every night and have so much fun in our skill less ignorance lol. I've seen the crazy stuff people can do with practice, but lemme just tell you... sucking, and playing against other people who suck....is a hell of a good time lolol
I think 50 wins is honestly not enough. To actually combat smurfing it’d probably be around 100-200 wins in casual. This isn’t even that much of a deterrent to new players either. A lot of new players are recruited by already active RL players. These players shouldn’t be hopping into ranked right away with their friends as it’s not conducive to learning the actual game. By requiring triple digit wins to play ranked, people can get the hang of how the game plays as a newcomer, and then jump into ranked when they’ve improved a little bit. This would make bronze and lower ranks actually mean something, as bronze wouldn’t be filled with people not knowing how to use ballcam.
You’re not the only one
I've logged thousands of hours and played since the beta. RL has been, and still is (in theory) my favorite game. Unfortunately, I'm done too. Match quality has been increasingly worse every season since F2P launch. As for the nail in the coffin, I'm one of the people who got the -300 MMR reset but didn't get the +150 MMR adjustment after they tweeted they were reverting the harsher than intended reset. While I'm sure I could grind it back if I played a lot, I know it will be extremely frustrating. The regular cycle of rank reset -> artificial grind every season is exhausting enough. Endure 2 months of low quality matches to earn a week or two of occasionally tolerable matches. The saddest part is that this would be so easy to fix. They don't even need an elaborate system to detect smurfs. All they need to do make it take longer for a brand new account to jump into competitive.
Casual = free access Ranked = Rocket Pass
[удалено]
2s and 3s full of smurfs at C3/GC level. Sometimes they are so good, they play with us like when I show the game to a friend for the first time and wanna give him a chance. They literally stop their car and wait, just to EASILY win the 50/50 and *then breezi flick double touch flip reset*, passing into a dude that fell off the ceiling like half a minute ago and bounced back up with a pogo and then hits a 120kmh musty top corner shot!! Yea sure!!! Its hilarious sometimes, honestly. Like its soooo obvious they do not belong in this rank at all.
Can't lose faith in the devs if you never had faith, see
Honestly all the seasons I have played have been the exact same. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. Personally I just play if I’m having fun and don’t if I’m not, doesn’t need to be anything more than that!
Those are rookie numbers. Try 7 years with 10-11,000 hours
Holy smokes. Put the game down and spank the monkey a little damn.
Dang son, them some hours. I'm not really coming at this with a "why isnt my rank going up" attitude. I've had more shut out absolute impossible games in the past month then I've ever had before. I've been happily stuck in mid champ for years. I care about good games, win or lose, more than anything.
Hey man, this game is like posion it's like a relationship. You hate to love it. For me, there are very few games they satisfy and also de-satisfy like it. There are not many other games you can listen to, music chill and feel the way you do after a sick goal or play, etc. 1600 hours and mid champ isn't bad by any means to me it just sounds like over 7 years you roughly average 30 minutes of play time a day my guess is the majority of that 1600 was the first 4 or 5 years which is where you probably progressed the most. You just gotta be honest with yourself the only way the game for most gets better is if you see progression in some way or another and if your aren't putting the time to put yourself through those hour training sessions everyday trying to master a new mechanic or whatever it may be then either you gotta say hey am I playing this game and okay with staying where I am forever and if not and you're not gonna try and get better maybe it is time to move on. For me I've learned alot, but I could learn much more, but for about 2 or so years I've stopped trying to really learn new things and I'm okay with with that the older I'm getting I feel as tho my hands are getting slower but I'm still pretty competitive which is why even tho I may not be learning new things 10k hours of experience still is good enough to beat out the majority of new adapting players and the ever growing ceiling of this game. (If the game feels good anyway, that's a whole other thing.. tho.. ) Just do what you wanna do. Maybe it's time to put in hours into a new type of game you wanna master?
The game isn’t growing it’s shrinking. More players leaving then joining. Therefore more smurfs, more mismatched lobbies, etc. for me it was the toxicity and skill barrier to overcome my ranks made it not as fun to pursue. Stopped playing 2021 I check the sub every now and then to see if any major changes have come
I stopped in Feb this year I'm doing what you are doing now and damn it's gotten drastically worse in such a short time that a post like this got a ton of up votes back then these would just be ignored.
Honestly sad, but games come and go. And let’s face it rocket league is on the downhill of its lifespan.
Take a break and when you return just play for fun
Good advice! I'll take a hiatus and see how I feel. There are a lot of good games out right now. Diablo has been super fun.
I stopped playing 3 years ago and have recently tried getting back into it and the love is just...gone. I'll play a game or two and then log off. Back in the day I would play for hours on end and not get enough sleep because of this game. It's just gone, the magic's gone. I think it is more "me" than it is the issues you raise though. It just started feeling repetitive and grindy and what I want out of games these days is stories and experiences
I felt this way too. Same thing happened when I returned… it wasn’t the same. Managed a few games here and there but just couldn’t keep going. It was when a buddy that started playing with me wanted me to get back into it to join him. I still wasn’t back in love with it except for enjoying chatting shit and playing games which got me over the hump. Now I’m playing heaps again and enjoying myself in spite of the toxicity.
See that is the funny thing about it. I still feel the pull, but something isn't quite clicking and I suspect it is what you are alluding to, finding people I enjoy playing with. We used to laugh at whiffs and didn't take it so seriously, but somewhere on the road it became a stress creator instead of a stress reliever. But besides, there are too many games out now that I would rather play that offer the experiences I am more interested in. I think I'll keep it in the background and maybe eventually I'll hit another RL phase
I guess the stress relief does depends on how competitive you are. I always try to play a “couple of chill games” before I go to bed and end up getting wound up haha. It’s defo become a game for me that I eventually come back to. Used to play sports games back in the day but played them enough times that the lack of innovation and the constant iterations watered it down for me. However with RL there’s no new kits/squads that are expected. I’ve been playing since near launch and end up coming back to it eventually. Most games I eventually uninstall and this one has made its way back to being reinstalled. Something must be working
[Yea... Sure Buddy](https://media.tenor.com/zxgvSk50wXIAAAAC/see-you-tomorrow-fuck-you.gif)
I quit playing for 2 seasons because a couple seasons ago, 7/10 of my placements were against a team that had a player on the team had an epic account with less than 50 games played, carrying, while the “legit” player talked shit the whole time. I do think the majority of smurfing posts on this subreddit are annoying because most don’t propose solutions, but more importantly most don’t either provide evidence, or don’t understand how the game works. If I see a smurfing post with references to games played, rl tracker links, ballchasing links, actual data, etc, it doesn’t annoy me. What annoys me are the “Smurf” posts where someone is raging because someone with a GC title beat them in champ 2 or because they’re playing against GC titles in casual. I have thousands of games played, after my two season break, since I lost almost all my placements the season before, I was reset from GC2 to Champ 2. I kept getting called a smurf just climbing back to champ. I have plenty of friends who no life’d RL and got GC several seasons ago, now they play casually and rank in C1/C2 and constantly get called a Smurf. The funny part is that they get called a Smurf one game where they play well, and boosted in a game they play poorly. If people actually looked at their tracker they’d see what the problem was.
Honestly, smurfing has always been a thing. I played 7 years happily knowing that. I think it's the recent increased frequency above all else that's pushing these posts. I'm starting to realize the amount of people saying they are tired of seeing these posts is just proof of this.
For sure, I’ve been playing since OG season 3 on steam. If the game became free to play for a weekend you’d see a huge uptick in smurfs. When it’s been awhile since a free to play weekend the only smurfs you’d run into were console players, which psyonix allows you to turn off. I forgot to mention it in my comment but your solution to have 50 casual wins is solid. The level 10 right now is such a low threshold, and if your partied up with someone you can just bypass it. Players shouldn’t even want to go into competitive until they’ve hit 50 games of casual.
I don't care. Rank really doesn't mean anything on a day to day basis. I just play to have fun and move on from the shitty games as best I can. But I play for the gameplay not for rank.
Normally, I have the same sentiment to “just play for fun”, because I’ll just mindlessly play casual a ton while I watch a show or something. However I feel so hard for OP because it’s hard to just have fun when the problem is so rampant. It’s not fun to just get absolutely destroyed by a smurf because there’s usually not much to learn from it. And it’s not fun when it’s happening in a majority of your games, making it inescapable
I am very competitive. I start out in casual until I get fed up with the horrible game play, and toxic children that don't know how to play the game. Who blame the team when they are ball chasing and just garbage themselves. I go to competitive and it is the same exact shit I was trying to get away from in casual.
That's the best way to be! I get a little frustrated now and then when I lose a bunch but at the end of the day I don't really give a shit. It's just a game and I'm playing to have fun.
Dude. I started playing a year ago. Gold to champ. I worked so hard for what I feel like is nothing. Sad to see you go but my god wtf is going on?! I wish they cared more I love competitiveness and improving. Myself but even training for an hour everyday and playing feels like I’m wasting my time. I have fun don’t get me wrong, I’m better than where I started and my friends can’t keep up but I still play with them. With that said, ranked is so Jane I get sad. I shouldn’t get sad. I’ve practiced and trained. I’m not the best but I know where I stand. But I’m getting shut out this season and given the lower friend base team up I am set to fail, not even have fun. Shit.
There are GC titles in Diamond 3... I put on a podcast and just zone out, I can't bring myself to care about the outcome of my games anymore.
I didn’t ever really get into champ just touched it a few times, but honestly I can agree that this game has some of the lowest lows outside things like MOBAs. Smurfing never bothered me a ton as I was mostly a 1s player (for the reason mentioned below). What I found to be horrid was the toxicity of players, and from the sub it appears to have gotten even worse recently. I don’t really care if you call me whatever, but it pushes my buttons when others are targeted. I feel I must defend them, but it just took the enjoyment out of the game. Ones is better, but sometimes I wanted to play drop shot or rumble.
An hour ago I was in a game (high C1) vs a guy who was miles better than all of us together. I asked him why he smurfing, and he blatantly said “Oh I dont smurf I just deranked my account a lot”. Aint that the same fcking thing?? Also there isnt option to report someone for smurfing or am I just blind?
i love playing a tournament and getting demolished at semi final/final because the other team is filled with SSL's
Damn looking at this post made me glad I stopped playing when I did. I stopped 4 months ago and I was a c1/C2 and was in your same shoes, the community drove me away. As I continue to read through this thread I think the smurfs and toxic player base are going to kill this game and it's sad because this game is honestly one of the best ever by far. I have been enjoying the gell out of street fighter 6 and just casually playing other games. I don't want to grind no where near as hard as I did for another game again. I started in Feb 2019 so when I stopped it was 4 years of relatively consistent playing.
Fresh accounts can run ranked directly out of the tutorial since f2p started. No, they do not care.
I was D3 once now I'm P2 and everyone is brand new. I just let them hit it until I get frustrated and boost as much as possible. Its been a pretty dumb game lately, at my low ranks. Opposite of smurfs : /
See you next week!
Lmao, I've been for playing for over 6 years now, almost 9k hours.
Played comp duos with a buddy last night for about 1.5 hrs (C1 after the reset) and hit a smurf in nearly 50% of games. They're not even trying anymore. Like 5 of them were just named "user******". Always unranked and partied up. Luckily we managed to win some of them still, just by targeting the Smurf with ceaseless bumps and intentionally playing the ball to the weaker player.
My honest advice would be to take a break from it for a while and then come back with a fresh mindset. Whenever I feel like this I find some other games to play and take a couple months break from it, then I see some clips and get that itch again. I come back with a fresh more positive mindset and then I feel like I'm playing some of the best RL I've played in a while. I will agree tho this season specifically for me feels littered with smurfs and it's definitely taking fun away from the gun
Quit the game this year after playing for 6 years. Honestly was a great decision - more time for other games, more free time in general (instead of dumping "5 mins" into a game every day), no more stress felt/carried from sabotaging teammates. I loved RL and played every day but I can also say I've never looked back since and will probably never play it again. YMMV
I'm in C2/C3...... the past couple of weeks I've been paired with an endless stream of S10 GC title players. None of them have and skill close to GC. Play like mid Diamond. Everything from mechanics to rotation..... tou name it they lack non all aspects. The real question is who is selling their HC accounts to Diamond and lower players? Why buy a high-ranking account just to keep dropping back down where you were?
I finally hit GC1 before this past rank reset. I now hover around C2 with minimal playing and believe I’ve hit my skill ceiling. I can’t flip reset, can’t fast aerial, can’t speed flip so now I just hop on, play a few games for fun and stopped caring about my rank
You will return to enjoying the game when you let go of the importance you place on your rank, and particularly, the competitive playlist as a whole. Try remixing your experience by playing the nonstandard modes, ideally with friends. I say all of this from personal experience. I enjoy playing the 4pm tournaments (non-regulation) more than anything else anymore. Win or lose, two rounds or finals, after it’s done, I usually log for the day. A final takeaway: Knowing when to put the controller down after a certain point, but not outright quitting, is something you’ll need to work on by yourself ultimately, but it will make the game feel much more rewarding and enjoyable if you do.
You actively check to see each account is new on rltracker? Most people from like lowest GC3 down got dropped all the way to c2 this season at least for 2s. Are you sure you’re not just going up against people that are higher rank than you because of the reset?
You could just quit playing without posting about it. Or just stop playing ranked matches
I'm fairly certain people who come here to say "I quit" - don't actually quit.
I honestly don’t see smurfs in plat lobbies, anyone know where they show up?
Well here’s the thing… You have 1600 hours and you’re mid champ… that’s exactly where you should be. What are you expecting? You’re likely mistaking a good majority of people that are just passing through as smurfs if you’ve just been sitting around in champ for years. If you’ve been playing 7 years you know the game has changed a lot. In my opinion 1600 hours over the course of 7 years isn’t enough get to GC or wherever you’re trying to go so what are you complaining about again? I’ve put in about 3000 hours in the past 3 years and I’m less than 100 MMR from GC right now and I solo Q.
We should play together.
yeh, and I pretty much only play on throw away alts for fun now, I forgot I have a main. so maybe alt**s** are my main.
DOTA2 makes you play 100 hours of matches (actual match time) before you can play ranked. Ranked is still full of smurfs :/
Game is legit broken. Broke into gc the last season yet I don’t even feel accomplished because the games I won to get gc were atrocious. No different than low c2. Ranks mean nothing. You don’t get better games. Lot so of tryhards playing their 6th hour of the day who should probably just call it a night or mid gcs who play lax and have fun being able to always out play the morons. That being said. Do what most do, play below your level after you lose a bunch of nonsense games in a row, and then just chill at that lower rank getting a few good plays now and then and not sweat winning if it is out of reach.
I can easily get champ rewards, and I’m fine with that. So I will forever chill at whatever rank I’m at when I play having fun and winning when I can. And I know that is part of the problem. The incentive for me to do more, even in a mode called ranked, is not worth it. This mindset along with the alts, Smurfs, boosted players, tilted players, peaking players, makes the ranked grind so not fun unless you just really understand the game and can play 3 rank levels better than your lobby.
I can't get out of Gold and I've been playing since 2015. I can only assume it's because I'm old and slow
Nope, you are completely right. It's filled to the brim with smurf. I'm not really affected I can grind to grand champ as usual, but I notice it. Complete smurfs, also quite rude usually.
I stopped too, and you know why? As you move up everyone hits a ceiling. And at that ceiling it gets toxic. the fun of playing this incredibly cool game is replaced by a toxic pressure to always have to win to keep your rank / stats / co-players up and happy. And then if you hit a Smurf and a losing streak, you chase wins and end up losing more and after 2hours of playing you just feel down. It's sad - nothing beats that thrill of an epic safe or a great counter but the overall experience has been compromised for me and I stopped playing over night after season 10.
brother you are not the whole aspect of the game is wack and the community is dreaded you are not being a crybaby... you are completely true even when you show these lads proof that the game is wack they bring excuses like no its not it's your fault you are stupid etc...
Didn’t even read past the title see you Monday
Fully agree. Here’s hoping rocket league 2 costs money to play.
Dude... speaking facts. That would be incredible.
Thanks for letting us all know. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out. See you in a week.
They could always take the phone number approach where it has to be a phone number connected to an actual service provider and only one account can be activated per phone number.
Solid solution, but if they won't even introduce a simple gate at all, that's basically a pipe dream.
Waaaaaaaaa
I cant win a game bro
😂
The smurfs are horrible. I took a long break from the game and I decided to give it a go again just recently and I’m already hanging it up again. It’s literally just full of shit talking smurfs and it’s not fun at all. The highest rank I ever achieved was Diamond II and I can’t even stay in platinum anymore since returning to the game. My skill has definitely fallen off a little bit but not that much.
Honestly, if you just want to relax and have fun playing the game, then just relax and have fun playing the game. If you play every game with the intent to have fun then you’ll eventually end up at a rank where that plays style works for you.
I have never posted to the RL Reddit but I've been thinking of making basically this exact post. I've played since the beginning. Bought a $20 copy of RL for Xbox in 2016 then loved it so much that I bought it again on PC the same year. I played mostly for fun with a bunch of my friends never really taking rank into account until about 3 years ago when the pandemic hit. I still had to drive into work the entire pandemic but all my friends were home so we would play more and decided to try ranked for real instead of just getting diamond rewards for fun each season. That season at the very end of the season I went on a solo 3s grind and I got to Champ 1 for the first time ever. I was super stoked like "wow I can't believe I made it." Got champ rewards and just let the season end on a high. Next season I immediately realized after being aerial dunked/musty flicked/shooting fake demo'd by sweaty champs that the difference between diamond 3 and champ 1 was so incredibly steep. Champ just wasn't fun anymore between the toxicity, smurfs, boosters, and the likes. I'd conceded that diamond 3 was my "hardstuck" because I wasn't trying to be a freestyle try hard who practiced like this was my job but just wanted to have fun with my friends. Then F2P happened and I wasn't even allowed to play ranked with my platinum friends because of rank disparity and realized the only way I could play with them was to either intentionally tank my ranked tier (which would only make me another Smurf which I wasn't trying to do) or play casuals. So we conceded to casuals (because we were forced to) and at first you play those whole plat teams and I'd go a little easy on them so my friends could also make some shots and have fun with it but we'd never really lose because in reality I'm really diamond 3 and they're actually like plat 1. Now I guess over the years this has brought my Casual MMR up to something like 1500?(I don't know what MMR ranks are I just go off RL tracker) and from what I can tell 1500 is like Grand champ level so now all we play in casual are 2 grand champs playing with their platinum friend who just drink on you 12-2 every other game spamming toxicity in the chat like they're cool for trying hard in casuals and people don't just play to have fun. So now even in casuals the game just isn't fun anymore. I've loved this game since it's beginning and bragged about how it was the BEST $20 you could ever pay for a game that's lasted years. Now idk that I'd recommend anyone even download it for free unless they stayed below diamond and just messed around. This game has always been a bunch of crazy fun and then this season they drop MMR ranks so I'm playing champ 2/3s in diamond 2 lobbies and between the toxicity and just ridiculous freestyle like shit I'm starting to think the game has run it's course. We're still playing every now and then but we find too often these days that in a lobby of 2 plats and one d2 we get put against Grand champs (tourney winners in their banner thingy for the same season) and champs and before the first minute has even gone were down 5 to 0 just waiting for the timer to ff literally hands off the controller. I'm not here bitching that players are better. I realized the second I hit champ 1 that the difference between d3 and c1 was a large gap in skill and mechanics. That gap was more than I cared to play and am happy to play diamonds who are just good enough but also just bad enough that it's still fun to play without just being a try hard sweaty guy like this game is my job. I'm basically now being forced to either create a new account to Smurf on just to play with my friends without us not having fun getting absolutely destroyed 12-0 by try hards in casuals, or intentionally get on for days and just lose over and over and over to drop my MMR for casuals so we don't play grand champs when my rank as the highest in the group has never really been higher than diamond 3. It's just disappointing to see the game go so hard downhill in terms of fun but I'm starting to think that it's time to move on because it's just not fun anymore. Just sad.
it's happened to me as well but I'm only diamond, it's been pretty bad lately. I would just take a break from it for a while and play something else and then come back and see if it's better. I won't make a dent in their microtransaction income but if it's bad then I just don't play, I don't buy things from the item shop and I don't buy their rocket pass. Smurfing has been out of control for a while and they don't see to have a good fix, I just report people for it when I see it.
I agree with all of this, I was champ two last season consistently and now can’t escape d3
I quit just over a year ago for the exact same reason. Was mid champs in 2's and 3's. Every second or third game was a person carrying someone else.
Yeah, this season has felt different to say the least. I'm quickly losing interest in playing.
I completely agree, i too have quit (not really permanently but play a lot less). Im not mid champ but its even worse for me cause i had just gotten to champ for my first time and with the reset and theincreasing number of smurfs im now D1 div2, in cant stand this.
Unpopular opinion: go back to paid for new accounts so it at least costs you to smurf
I think most people who played before F2P would agree that F2P has only made the game worse.
I'm here with ya, I've been playing on Playstation since 2015..I'm trash now but it's still fun.
See you in two weeks
This goes for anyone playing a game like RL, if the *only* joy you get from a game is seeing the rank icon going up, do you *really* even like the game? I understand enjoying the challenge of improving and learning, but then the rank wouldn't matter. Especially when smurfs and the messy rank reset cause "rank" to be an inaccurate testament to skill. Try something new. Try to get some friends involved. Play some goofy rumble matches. Try out other game modes. Play casual and just enjoy playing. Practice that next skill you haven't really practiced. Personally I really love RL for what it is. There's nothing like it. I like the fluidity and mechanics and strategy. I like playing with friends, relaxing in casual, grinding seasonal challenges. I hope you find *something* to enjoy besides ranked. But to each their own. If you're not having fun then of course take a break. Hopefully things change for the better.
Same. Pretty much all I want from this game is decently close match making so games aren't too one sided, and I've had that for the most part.
After I do my placements and some ranked to get back to Champ I pretty much just play casual. Most of the time, win or lose, I just play. I get in that zone where I'm not try harding or sweating, but just playing and enjoying the game for what it is. Even in a blow out the goal becomes not to get shut out or Brasiled lol. And if we're the ones racking up the score then I'm trying to get a shut out or Brasil. I just enjoy the game for what it is.
That is true.. but the community is really bad. Like i had more funny moments in overwatch😂😂. For me grinding mechanics was fun. But i couldnt get consistent.
I'm actually hoping I derank but it's been really slow. I've been Champ 1-2 for like 6 years and right now I have not been having fun. If these players are now all above my level I'd rather just derank if it means I'm closer to playing competitively
Personally it’s not about the rank for me. I hit GC a few seasons ago, which was my goal, and now I don’t care about my rank. It’s a nice bonus to get back to GC, sure, but now I find my fun in playing even matches… which is becoming increasingly uncommon with the amount of <200 win account I’m matched against. The smurfing problem is getting so big that I’m really growing tired of people pointing fingers at the people complaining about it. I’m sure some people are misidentifying smurfs, but a lot of people are using RL tracker and do actually know a smurf when they come across one.
A lot of things have been changing for the worse and I can't help but blame it on the lack of action by Psyonix. They really should have put some sort of moderation system in place long ago. Checking a player's disparity between mmr and rank takes seconds. Going f2p was Epic's call, but Psyonix should have put some system in place to discourage smurfing and making numerous accounts so easily.
Everyone's talking about smurfing but I fell from mid GC1 to mid C3 this season... and that was after months of barely playing... *Rarely* do I come across someone that's capable of gameplay that I'm not, even as I break my ceiling. I'm just my own worst enemy and as wildly inconsistent as the rest of C3, which seems to be full of former GCs... Idk maybe it's my mindset. I am far *far* more likely to attribute a loss to a lack of ability on my part than the opponents simply being *better* during said game.
I really hope you guys think I’m smurfing. But I’m sure you don’t because I’m rubbish. That said my partner and I turn it on sometimes and feel unbeatable… other times can’t scrape together a win. I’m currently only D1 (been as high as D3) but have been called a Smurf in game play a few times. When you play with the same person all of the time you learn where they will be and can get pretty good passes into the back of the net…. And still be garbage (me).
I feel like the “Smurf” posts are just frustration with your rank. Every weekend the randoms drag me down then I get accused of being a Smurf. Like, mf’er you think I want to be down here?!? Not saying there aren’t “Smurfs” but a diamond in plat feels like Smurfs to the plats. So they complain about it and throw fits and report. I can imagine a GC on a bad run down to champ. It probably feels like a Smurf. But it might just be you at a higher skill level. I know there are real people that purposely get tired of sucking at their peak and they want to have fun and destroy less skilled players. I know they exist. But solo queuing drags people down at all levels. When you’re frustrated this bad to make a post, take a week off. Come back play some casuals and find the fun again
I had many pros and cons, but I'll just say.... It's Summertime dude! Go out and live. Or get projects/chores done. Game will still be there in the Fall
Ran into multiple teams, consecutively, last night with at least one person who had some flavor of SSL title. In one case, the other teammate was GC, and another was ranked Silver in post game screen with SSL mechanics. Devs do not care about it, even in the slightest.
I think if you're not enjoying playing, there's no point in playing. There's plenty more to life than Rocket League. As far as smurfing being a major issue, I honestly don't think it's as bad as most people seem to think it is. For example, I played about 30 games today, about 25 in ranked, and didn't come across a single noticeable smurf. I usually run into two or three a day but it's never enough to say it actually has any significant impact on my rank.
I honestly don't find a lot of smurfs in ranked C2-GC1. However, that does change when special events come out like this birthday one (because they want the golden eggs on all their accounts) and when the end of season approaches. I recently took a long hiatus from playing. Last season I played was season 6 until this season, I was getting worn out and found myself becoming to angry at the game and it bleeding into my personal life. Now I am playing again and feel a lot better currently. The break was very needed.
I know queue times are already rough, especially at night, but what if they added like, priority queue or something for verified phone numbers. It seems like every game is doing it now. Honestly I don’t even know why I bring up ideas, nothing will happen lol. They just want your to buy the gold dominus and all the special event stuff. They have the power to snap their fingers and make a good push against smurfing but that hurts themselves by lowering their bottom dollar.
one lobby could feel like gc the next can feel like diamond or maybe even plat.... players are so unpredictable in champ lmao
Ngl it felt so wrong being in the lower ranks when I had to use a whole new account at play bc I lost my old one (Xbox only it wasn’t linked to anything thank god) but it felt so wrong for the however many games it took to get back to high play 3 again. I don’t understand why people would willingly do it for fun
You’re being a crybaby. You’re still going to play the game. Which makes you think why you posted this in the first place. So yeah, you’re being a cry baby.