What's with all the smurfs lately?

[codepants]

Without naming names, I've noticed a sharp increase in the amount of smurfs online lately. I have counted at least five distinct accounts in the past two weeks that have either revealed they are smurfs or a trusted friend has told me they are smurfs.

I am not writing this thread to:
- Blame the admins that they aren't doing their job
- Blame the client because it can't keep smurfs away
- Whine

I am writing this thread to:
- Attempt to have a discussion benefiting the community about the consequences of smurfing

If you want to smurf and you know how, fine. I myself enjoy crushing people of significantly lower rank than me from time to time. Nothing quite like feeling you're a really good player.

But there are plenty of people willing to play games they *know* are imba. IE, games where one player is significantly higher than all the others. I humbly request that you use an account representing your actual rank to play those games. Hiding your actual rank so you can "have fun" might be fun for you, but it isn't fun for other plays. There are ways you can crush noobs without lying about it.

I have no statistically significant information to substantiate this claim, but I would be curious to see the count of *unique* players logging into FAF over time. I haven't been writing numbers down, but it seems to me there are fewer people online now than there were two years ago. I remember 1.2-1.3k players online on a Saturday at 2 PM CST (USA) being a regular thing back then. Now Saturdays peak at 700 if we're lucky.

If we had thousands of regular players online, sure. Smurf away. People would have plenty of other games to play and they could just avoid you. But given the community appears to be shrinking, the only thing your "fun" does is discourage new players who cannot avoid you. When there are only 2 non-gap games to choose from and both have smurfs or stacks, there are really no "fun" games for people who like semi-balanced games to play. My humble opinion is that these situations discourage new players from playing and staying.

Again, not complaining that every game is imba or that any game is imba. Not saying smurfs are terrible people and need to go die in a hole. Just saying that, in my opinion, FAF is more fun when there are, on a semi-regular basis (not even all the time), games that are roughly (not completely, because that's impossible) balanced, without smurfs.

If you want to crush noobs, host a game using your actual rank and be honest about your intentions. But please don't ruin the fun for those of us who like balanced games -- especially when what we need now is to welcome new players, not discourage them.

- - -

P.S. Just to get us all on the same page: This post defines "smurf" as a player who intentionally and artificially deflates his or her rank so it is not representative of the highest rank at which he or she is capable of regularly playing -- either by using a different account, intentionally losing games to decrease their rank, or other methods I can't think of. I am not referring to people who every now and then have a spurt of geniousness and play above their rank, people who play with sh!tty team members that decrease their rank, etc. Use common sense. Let's not bicker about words.
P.P.S. Please substantiate with statistically significant data any claims that FAF is growing. About a year ago I saw there was actual data on the number of (non-unique) players logged in every day. Would be interested in seeing that again.
P.P.P.S. Saying we have "more accounts now than before" does not mean FAF is growing. Accounts can stop logging in faster than new accounts are created -- you need both numbers to make a claim, not just the latter.

[Blodir]

There's a lot more to say about smurfing, but I'll just point out this BS:

I have no statistically significant information to substantiate this claim, but I would be curious to see the count of *unique* players logging into FAF over time. I haven't been writing numbers down, but it seems to me there are fewer people online now than there were two years ago. I remember 1.2-1.3k players online on a Saturday at 2 PM CST (USA) being a regular thing back then. Now Saturdays peak at 700 if we're lucky.

This is not true, FAF was growing and larger than ever until the server change, which saw a pretty large drop in players, but we have continued growing after that afaik

[codepants]

This is not true, FAF was growing and larger than ever until the server change, which saw a pretty large drop in players, but we have continued growing after that afaik

From what data are you drawing those conclusions?

[briang]

Uh, the official data he has access to that people have posted on the forums and discuss regularly in aeolus. The consequences of smurfing are outlined in the rules, no need to discuss them here. If you know (not think, fucking KNOW) that certain accounts are smurf accounts write a PM to the mod group... I don't see the point of this thread.

[biass]

I am writing this thread to:
- Whine

You should know as apparently a 1300 in ladder that you have the ultimate counter to "smurfing" as the replay vault and the only reason you would come here instead of trying to learn off of someone "better" then you was if you were maybe a little butthurt about losing rating..

Also, there has been rating bug and outbound traffic errors resulting in people wanting to make (alternate) accounts in order to just play, just know the player and stop leaning so hard on the rating, and you will be fine..

[speed2]

I'd like to know how many smurfs you've reported.

[theeggroll]

Do smurfs get banned? Nope. I am 100% with him. biass your best counterargument is "you're probably butthurt". Seriously? That's just pitiful to come here and say that to him. Literally within the past two days I have played at least two games that were completely ruined by the presence of smurfs, and at the moment I KNOW more than 5 people who regularly use smurfs just because they can, since faf no longer makes it difficult at all to make a 2nd account. If you guys would like, I'll report those 5+ people who have smurf accounts, except fucking nothing will happen. Code you are wrng about the player count from a couple years ago because we hit 1.1k just before the server update and everyone was excited because it was a new record, sorry bud.

[Exotic_Retard]

as someone who has been keeping track of the numbers, we are roughly at the same numbers of players as we were this time last year, within a few hundred.

what i have been tracking specifically is the number of unique id players who have played at least one game in one month.
i.e. count everyone in the last 30 days who played one game. just logging in doesnt count.

atm we are at about 10,000 and last year we were at 9900 or so; pretty much identical numbers.
we are currently in the middle of this kinda summer drop in players. every summer the numbers go down. i suspect a combination of exams and holidays.

however, not to say that the server change did nothing.
1 week before the server change we had 13,500 and 2 weeks later it was 10,500
this went up kinda steadily to 12,000 then started dropping again as summer arrived or people got tired of wait for modvault or w.e.

im not gonna say i know exactly why this happened like it did. these are just numbers and you can make up lots of different explanations.

tldr: we are pretty much stagnant. perhaps due to the server change.

enjoy.

[theeggroll]

Yes but there are still a lot of smurfs lately

[codepants]

Uh, the official data he has access to that people have posted on the forums and discuss regularly in aeolus.

Which has at best a correlation to the number of actual unique accounts. More people posting in aeolus does not mean more people are playing.

If you know (not think, fucking KNOW) that certain accounts are smurf accounts write a PM to the mod group... I don't see the point of this thread.

I have better stuff to do with my time than report smurfs, and reporting them does not keep them from coming. If you don't see the point of this thread you didn't read the part that said "I am writing this thread to:"

I am writing this thread to:
- Whine

Hooray for misquoting! Seriously though, you just did that?

You should know as apparently a 1300 in ladder that you have the ultimate counter to "smurfing" as the replay vault and the only reason you would come here instead of trying to learn off of someone "better" then you was if you were maybe a little butthurt about losing rating..

Also, there has been rating bug and outbound traffic errors resulting in people wanting to make (alternate) accounts in order to just play, just know the player and stop leaning so hard on the rating, and you will be fine..

I stopped caring about rating about six months ago. What I want is to have fun. And fun, for me anyways, is playing a game where the other players accurately represent themselves. As a 1400, going into a game against a 1400 is fun, whether I win or lose. Going into a game with someone who displays 1200 but is actually a 2k is not fun. And it's impossible to "know the player" if they keep making new accounts. That's kind of the point.

I'd like to know how many smurfs you've reported.

Zero. See above.

Code you are wrng about the player count from a couple years ago because we hit 1.1k just before the server update and everyone was excited because it was a new record, sorry bud.

Substantiate your claim with data.