Smurfing in video games causes a real ruckus and fiery debates between players.
But before we jump into the age-old debate, here’s what a smurf account actually means: a higher ranked player who makes an alternate account with the intention of playing against lower skilled players in lower ranks.
There’s a whole host of reasons why players smurf but the main one that most players connect with smurfing is simply to play in easier lobbies after reaching their peak rank and struggling to climb on their main account. Some gamers love to stroke their ego by racking up 50 kills in a Silver lobby when they’re actually a Celestial player.
Most gamers would agree that smurfing for this reason is just completely wrong, these players often spam their main characters too. And it’s never an underpowered character, it’s always something like Hela, Moon Knight or The Punisher – one would assume that the smurf would harness the opportunity to improve their skills on other characters right?
Learning New Characters
Smurfing with the intention of trying something new, whether it be a new character or a new role entirely, is another big reason for making an alternate account to play at a lower rank which often applies to content creators. If you’re a Celestial+ Strategist and you want to learn the Duellist role, there’s often no good time to learn it, since you’re throwing by learning in ranked games. Moreover, quick matches are host to extremely unbalanced teams and a game environment that doesn’t represent the reality of a competitive match. I find that loading into a quick match game yields me with a quick loss and zero opportunities to learn anything substantial.
Keeping Content Creators Happy
Content creators often create alt accounts to try something completely new. Educational unranked to grandmaster runs have become popular on YouTube, actual authentic gameplay from lower ranks is an important learning aid. Coaching becomes pretty redundant if only Top 500 gameplay is studied, Marvel Rivals is played very differently at different ranks.
Nevertheless, keeping content creators on the game is definitely an effective marketing strategy. A large amount of popular streamers would likely leave Rivals if they were only allowed to have 1 account. It drastically limits the amount of content they can make, their content would become boring, and they would find the game boring which would most definitely influence their viewers to think similarly.
High Elo Becomes Incredibly Boring
But even without coaching, its very common for high elo players to get bored at Celestial+. Unfortunately, Rivals does promote a gameplay loop that a lot of players can find boring or unrewarding after a while, and we ALL know what that cycle is. A Duellist or Vanguard drops their ultimate and a Strategist casts a counter-ultimate in response.
While I personally don’t mind the gameplay loop, lots of high elo players are very vocal about there being too much healing in the game that renders the gameplay incredibly unfun. So as a result, they make smurf accounts to play at lower ranks simply to enjoy the game more.
Another high elo reason for smurfing is to protect the rank of one’s main account. There are various points in each season where players don’t try as hard or the matchmaking is extremely unbalanced because of resets. Players will often smurf or play on alt accounts in these periods. Queue times can also be pretty long at extremely high elo, this reason would only account for a small portion of smurfs but even so, it can be annoying having to wait 20 minutes for a single game.
Admittedly, it does suck that high elo players aren’t able to play with their lower ranked friends, unless they want to brave the wildly unbalanced quick match matchmaking.
Smurfs That Like To Troll
You know what’s really sad? Smurfing just to troll, throw games and be toxic. This is actually the most common type of smurf that I find in my games, players that type the most vile insults and unneeded digs, they will argue with a wall until the game ends. The very second something goes wrong or your team loses one fight, they will switch to Black Widow and declare that the game is unwinnable. While proceeding to flex their peak rank and bully their teammates after finding out they peaked Celestial, which makes zero sense because Celestial is a respectable rank!
There are lots of different variants to this type of smurf; instead of switching to Black Widow, sometimes they’ll pop their ult and proceed to jump straight off the map. Sometimes, they will just sit in spawn but walk out of the spawn gates justttt enough to circumvent the AFK punishment system. But overall, these smurfs are huge crybabies who usually have some sort of derogatory name, which somehow isn’t banned already, and simply throw the game if they can’t drop 60 kills within the first 2 minutes.
Why Are More Smurfs In Recent Seasons?
I took a break from rivals for a few seasons but there seems to be SO many more smurfs around than in the past. This might just be because the game is now in its 8th season and as time goes on, there are higher chancces that more players get bored and feel the urge to make a smurf. Rivals DOES incentivise the early climb and make it pretty easy to grab crazy amounts of points each game, in addition to the chrono shields that protect you from losing points on a ranked loss.
So I’m really not surprised that there are more players being drawn to that experience – a lot of players would rather hard stomp a game and be generously rewarded, rather than slaving away at high elo just to be handed pre-determined losses by the matchmaking system.
Unfortunately, Banning Smurfs Can Be Complicated
Banning bad smurfing isn’t as easy as you would think, if players were only allowed to make 1 account then a considerable amount of experienced players might leave the game. It stops players queuing with their friends and from learning new characters. Getting rid off all alternate accounts would reduce the numerical value of players on the game and the perceived popularity of the game, which could have bad effects for NetEase.
It is pretty hard for a game to detect all smurfs flawlessly, and it’s likely that normal players will get caught in the crossfire, the risk of banning actual honest players usually holds a lot of weight for developers. However, games like League of Legends and Valorant take a bit of a different approach to smurfs with dedicated smurf queues or promptly matching smurfs with higher ranked players. But, the detection system usually takes a certain amount of games to kick in and doesn’t work instantly.
Verdict – Should Smurfs Be Allowed in Marvel Rivals?
Smurfing definitely does ruin ranked integrity and undoutedly pushes some players away from the game. Imagine if you’re a gold player and the enemy Hela is 50/0 in your lobby, the chances of you queueing up again are very low – its not a very enjoyable experience. My overarching opinion is that if a player isn’t a content creator who is trying to teach players, a high elo player that is learning a different role/characters or just trying to play with their friends for fun – then it’s probably not a good enough or fair reason for smurfing.
I definitely think players that are dropping 50 kills and zero deaths in every lobby are obviously not putting themselves at some kind of experience disadvantage, but rather just spamming a character that they are already an expert at. This type of smurfing should definitely be banned. It is incredibly frustrating for ‘normal’ players to be matched with smurfs. Smurfing is a reportable and bannable offence, it actually comes up as a reason to report a player – but from my experience, smurfs aren’t actually banned that often. It’s definitely on the rarer side and feels more like a performative measure aimed at easing players’ minds.
