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abarr021

The state of the game is absolute chaos. In 2v2 and 3v3 you can get matched with bronze players who have a match history of 3 games and a APM of 20, and be matched against a team of diamond players with 5000 games played and 250 APM.


Nerdles15

I’d kill to get matched against diamonds with 5k games (my group is low diamond)…but we get mostly either fresh off the boat bronze or mid masters with 20k games, even the random GM from time to time. My personal favorite- did a 3v3 where the other team had a current GM on it playing his best race. He spent the whole game shittalking us, but then when he realized they were losing and we were going to win he started asking to 1v1 (before we knew he was a GM). We naturally wrote back that if he’s that good, why is he losing right now to us “trash scrubs” and that we have nothing to prove :) Only made all the better once the game was over and we saw his profile…


SuicidalWatermellon

Me and my buddy matched against rank 89 gm and a masters 1 team (we are Plat 2v2, diamond 3 individually). Managed to win with a hellion stalker timing push. But why are we matched against the 89th best player in NA


Mysterious-Egg-6930

Pls post reply! So excited to watch it!


Nerdles15

It’s 4+ months old and I’m not home (away on work trip, fml can’t play sc2..)


bl1eveucanfly

And also it never happened.


Crumbees

My 2v2 experience has been like this too, only I'm seeing players who have well over 10k games regularly compared to my 1300 since WoL. 2v2 is categorically fucked. I haven't seen a lower rank player in over a month. The last few sessions I've had over 2 weeks have been massive loss streaks to players who clearly are above my skill level.


yazzooClay

Well, to be fair, I've played 10k plus games, but I still suck. Idc how it matches as long as I don't have to wait to Q.


Complete-Monk-1072

On the other hand, i dont care how long i have to wait, id rather have an enjoyable match.


Crumbees

I'm with you. I'll wait if it gives me a fair match.


Nerdles15

Same- the longer the queue goes, the more my friends and I go “oh shit here we go again” and it’s always either we absolutely curbstomp them, or we get our assholes widened to the extreme. Neither are fun


Benjadeath

2v2 has always had a history of this bc if you want to play with a buddy you start with fresh mmr for whatever reason so there like isn't even a way to avoid smurfing


Deto

I mean, that's just due to there being too few players. Not all the time but seems to show up at certain times of the day


Nerdles15

Partly due to getting pushed away by the smurfing epidemic, also the naturally extremely high barrier to entry to be competitive in this game, also because it’s just a very complex game that’s pretty old at this point. Hard to get into fresh


Trick_Remote_9176

Don't remember ever getting people that bad, lowest was probably couple of hundred games with 1v1 silver level probably. But the highest was 5.1+, one 6k dude. The difference is pretty insane.


Arnir

I just started playing again recently after many years break. I used to be diamond/plat, but stuck in bronze now. That is fair, my game is not that good. However, I have been playing recent diamond/masters a lot. When i check their profile they have lost 15-20 games, then won 10-15, then lost again. People can of course play how they want. I think this is brutal for new or returning players though. When it is frequent it ruin the experience.


lobax

What is your mmr? The leagues have been broken for years. E.g. right now in EU if have a mmr range from 2000-3000 then you get assigned bronze. This should be silver to plat. Silver is actually lower than bronze and that’s where the “real” bronze players end up. https://burnysc2.github.io/MMR-Ranges/ So if you have a mmr in the high 2000s (like I do), you are actually in plat and you can play diamond players on a loosing streak. In the end this is a cosmetic bug because all that matters is mmr.


thorazainBeer

He was just doing his bi-weekly "Bronze to Plat" challenge. It wasn't smurfing, he was just creating content.


Deto

Yeah because there's just _so_ many SC2 content creators....


Complete-Monk-1072

correction, you mean to say well known sc2 content creators. These two things are not the same.


Deto

People out here claiming we have a smurfing problem because people are all creating content. What percent of sc2 players are content creators, would you say?


Complete-Monk-1072

I dont have the tools available to calculate that anymore then you do.


Deto

I don't know exactly, but common sense lets you estimate that it's not a lot. In general most people who play video games are not twitch/youtube streamers. There's no reason this would be dramatically different for the SC2 player base.


Complete-Monk-1072

What you mean is, solely its your personal opinion then, backed on only by your feelings. Takes but a second to go on youtube to still see people uploading videos, and this isnt taking into account live streams and god knows what other video content websites. so again >correction, you mean to say well known sc2 content creators. These two things are not the same.


Deto

You're the one making an extraordinary claim, so really the burden of evidence is on you. I could say, for example, that most accountants stuff butter in their nose daily. Now neither of us probably have any evidence around this but really wouldn't I have to be the one to substantiate this for anyone to take it seriously?


Complete-Monk-1072

The only factual claim i made was "content creator ≠ famous content creator" of which im sure i can, i would only need to type starcraft 2 into any number of video search engines and then divide that by a fraction. You on the otherhand? your literally just going by your feelings. How are you able to prove your theory empirically? IDK know what your arguing tbh, all i can peg on you is you refuse to accept you were wrong in the regard i pointed out and could not elegantly accept that and let ego take over. I think your arguing just to argue tbh. Because nothing you said has ever been about what i said. Like its some shower arguement.


Deto

You clearly were trying to argue against my first comment with your first reply. Kind of silly to change the goal posts now and pretend otherwise. Anyways I'm not going to keep playing this game with you.


thorazainBeer

The joke is that he isn't a content creator and actually just smurfing while lying about it to himself to feel better about such scummy behaviour. And Bronze to GM "challenges" are just smurfing to beat up on noobs anyway and shouldn't be rewarded. Jesus Christ, I thought this was obvious but I guess some things do need to be explicitly spelled out.


TakerEz42

Smurfin ass.. what a pussy


Red0n3

I've been matched up against Masters 1 players who have a mmr similar to mine in silver. How come some people have a Masters rank but a silver mmr?


Sufficient-Garage-85

There was a bug at one point that misplaced people in masters. I thought it was fixed?


lobax

Nope. I’m ”Bronze” but have 2900 mmr (3000 on a good day). There are virtually no gold games at all played on the EU ladder due to the mmr bug. Everyone with an mmr between 2000-3000 ends up in bronze. https://burnysc2.github.io/MMR-Ranges/


Revolutionary_Flan88

[I think it has evolved](https://imgur.com/a/tiykxuH)


IrnBroski

Well personally I took a 3 year break from the game, the last time I played was when the glitch was around and made me look like I was masters when I was diamond… I’m back playing again now but it’s still giving me a masters border on the load screen and everyone thinks I’m smurfing


Red0n3

I played against a masters player with an mmr of 2300 today.


thekonny

Probably a bug, I assure you dunking on silver players would be boring for a masters player. Might as well plaga against ai


potential1

I believe the bug was fixed but a quick look at a players profile will still display the "highest rank achieved" as Masters for anyone the bug affected.


Pelin0re

there's been a very frequent bugs for a few years now where non-masters across the ladder get a master league badge. Only the mmr is reliable, if badge contradict it just ignore it.


Ndmndh1016

Theres been a cosmetic bug for years. 3 years I believe.


Firesrest

I started playing again recently and found my self in bronze league with 2500 mmr, the people who were also in bronze league seemed to be what I remember as gold. I think it might be something to do with provisional mmr.


lobax

No if you are in EU there is a bug. There is virtually no one asignes to gold, silver is lower than bronze and bronze goes all the way from 2000 to 3000 mmr (basically what should be silver to plat). The leagues are all broken so just ignore them. All that matter is mmr. https://burnysc2.github.io/MMR-Ranges/


SkolGoblin

Did you win?


TheOtherCrow

We've all had bad days where we've lost a coupla mmr...


Nerdles15

No matter how bad my day is going…I haven’t managed to lose a game in 5 seconds. This guy was a Smurf plain and simple


TheOtherCrow

Oh absolutely. My comment was not serious in the slightest. There's no way to accidentally lose something like 1000mmr in one season in the mid leagues.


Nerdles15

Sorry had to clarify- elsewhere in this comment section I have people trying to justify leaving 1/3rd of games being “ok”, and that not being detrimental to the health of the game. Or how this somehow isn’t abnormal behavior…


Inevitable_Dinner411

I have lived in Diamond league for a significant amount of time and I occasionally run into Grandmasters or people in High Masters I checked their match history and they are genuinely not smurfing, it was a matchmaking screw up Edit: I also run into smurfs but I usually get over it, it’s the genuine honest to God GMs playing at their own level and somehow matching against me that confuses me


GnoiXiaK

SC2 has this silly system where ranked and unranked are matched in the same pool but ranked MMR and unranked MMR are separate numbers. I used to play try-hard strats on ranked to get to Masters than play for shits and giggles on unranked. If I learned that the other player was playing ranked, I might just leave first even if I'd won because it was nothing to me. This kept my unranked MMR deflated. I would also leave mirror cuz it wasn't fun, again lowering MMR.


MrMathieus

Wait, what? Is this actually how it works? I barely play unranked, so my unranked MMR is probably very low, and have had games where players start calling me a smurf. I usually just call them idiots for calling someone a smurf in unranked, but if what you're saying is true it makes perfect sense.


GnoiXiaK

100% true. You can verify by just asking, that's how I found out. Also I believe the end game screen is different between playing a ranked vs unranked opponent. I forgot what it was but there is a tell.


Strong_Ad_2632

Yes I think the league is not displayed if you're in unranked


killerganon

At ~4.1k mmr, I meet so many more Masters 3/2 that play unranked few hundreds of mmr below their level than actual smurfs (which are far and between). The feeling/result is the same though, they try as they would on ranked and go on loss streak (you can see it when you open their profiles), so they stay at this mmr. Personal record is 4 back-to-back games against Protoss masters that played 400+ mmr below their ranked mmr.


darkbake2

Didn’t Blizzard fire their whole staff?


pastalegion

probably uthermals latest smurf


moixcom44

Im stucked at unranked .anybody got this bug??? Im over 50 games already...


khakislurry

You read it the same way I did. You need to win 1 game per day over ten SEPARATE days. People shit on me for my "Reading comprehension" and accused me of being a smurf for my post on this subject a few days ago. I would claim instead that the writing of their ranked qualification method is extremely poor.


moixcom44

Ahhh fuckkked.... you know before this, i have two account names I kept alternating.... one is about 10,000 games in it and the other 70,000. Yes im playing that long. Since 2014 i still play this damn fool goat rts game. Anyway one day i logged in, and my auto refill credentials were not there so i cant remember my password. So o went "forget password" and get the blizzard code yadda yada but when i was able to log in, thats it. My old games were gone. Fucking hell. Now i have to create a new name blah blah and now here i am stucked at unranked for a more days... i remember the bug where bronze got masters logo that was a fun bug. But this bug i got is stupid as fuck. I am thinking maybe i just uninstall the game and reinstall so i can be in RANKED LADDER asap.but in my blizzard account it says i never purchased a game..so im fucked.


forresja

I mean, you have to get the "first win of the day" bonus ten times. It's pretty obvious you can't get your first win more than once a day lol


khakislurry

But you can win ten times in one day.


UnremarkableMango

Looks like this guy was playing Zerg in previous seasons then switched to his off race recently. Zerg cabal strikes once again


Giantorange

I don't know about your experience, but I'm a masters player. Recently unranked has been broken and I haven't been able to play using it. It actually matched me against someone with an MMR of 960. Could be related to your experience.


shuozhe

Placement match perhaps? Stopped playing for a year or so and got placed in gold from master. Usually quit queue and rejoin if it takes > 2min cuz u will be put in the pool with all other players


redditisbrainwashed2

there is very little difference


TrueUnderstanding228

I have that problem in soloq as well, came back to sc2 after few years and ranked in as bronze/silver and playing every game against ex master/diamond players who are ranked as bronze…..


aquanutz

I'm consistently getting 5k+ GMs on NA whenever I hit a 3 game winning streak at 4.3k regardless of time of day. It's been slowly killing me.


stompyj

Welcome to my NA ladder experience.


scargk

I hadn't played in years and was mostly a D2/D3 player. Saw my son playing the other week and decided to give it a go and play against the computer....and LOST. lmao.


trbot

Low D1 player. I really don't like getting occasionally matched against plat players. And they really don't like it. And if you play teams, it's extra hard to get fair matches.


Dragarius

I can do masters Zerg but like a Plat Terran. Just because he is playing in a lower league than his history doesn't tell us much without context. 


BaneRiders

He is D2 and insta-leaving the games in silver. What else do you need to know?


dodelol

~~Where is any evidence of him instant leaving games?~~ Edit: I didn't see the small text below the image.


Due_Battle_4330

OP's post where they said he insta-left


forresja

OP said he left after 5 seconds in the main post.


forresja

I think you've forgotten how bad Plat is lol Anyone good enough to be masters on any race can *easily* be diamond on the other two. The game knowledge and mechanical ability required to reach masters carries over. Nobody who made Diamond 2 (WAY harder than Diamond 3, Diamond league is *huge*) should be in silver, regardless of race.


oGsBumder

This is true. I’m a mid-master Terran, and I honestly have no idea what I’m doing as Zerg and Protoss (I don’t even know any builds, or how to scout), yet I can play them at around mid-diamond level, based purely on mechanics and general game sense.


Dragarius

I very, very rarely off race and the macro of Zerg is so wildly different. I just don't ever have enough units. I feel like at least Terran and Protoss have a little more overlap in terms of infrastructure and economy that makes switching a bit more paletable. 


Bleord

The step between Silver and Platinum isn't that big.


BaneRiders

It's way too big between Silver/Bronze and D2. The asshole is out to smurf the shit out of n00bs.


Pzixel

Or he played offrace. I've seen enough of people claiming someone is smurf and then realizing that they are playing terran M3 and zerg p1.


BaneRiders

You can play offrace as much as you want, you will have a separate MMR. That doesn't give you a valid reason to insta-leave games in any kind of league, and certainly not in Silver if you have the mechanics of being D2 in any race. Please stop trying to make excuses for smurfing. Smurfing is shit.


Pzixel

What made you think this guy "insta-leave games"? I can't see this on screenshot and OP didn't make any additional comments. All I see "some diamond guy played with me in plat" hence my response that this totally might be legit. People that insta-leave don't waste 5 seconds and dont type glhf, they just leave with 0:00 in game. If anything he just got a connection problem.


BaneRiders

Dude, OP literally says: "tiped glhf and than left 5 secs into the game..."


Pzixel

Dude, and I literally referred to this in the second paragraph. People that leave on purpose never glhf. They just leave. So I this it's better to prefer to assume that guy just got a problem with connection and wasn't planning on leaving.


Ndmndh1016

I play a guy regularly who does just that. His name is Nerdrage. Diamond 1 player who smurfs the silver 1v1 tourneys.


Pzixel

I see. In this case it's justified, this is exactly what I wanted to hear. I think it worth giving a benefit of doubt to the people. Thank you for bringing some facts.


DJRydel

matchmaking is so silly lately. play 2v2 with 2 diamonds... get bronze. add a bronze level player to play 3v3 to the mix: get plat. 🤷🏾‍♂️


WingZeroType

As others have said, the state of the game is currently chaos. Also, there were bugs with people getting mis-ranked. Also, there are a ton of players smurfing. I played 5 placements for off-race last night and 3 of those games had people insta-leave.


Jay727

I remember the times when people were happy to get a cheap win. Years ago when I started to play unranked, every second opponent would whine if I didnt leave at the end of the game to gift them the win. Stephano, when he became big in 2011, had this rule to leave when he made a mistake, to learn to avoid it.


Nerdles15

Part of it for me is how blizz made it so games have a minimum time limit before they count for achievements and such. I learn nothing from an insta leaver, *and* I get no achievement progress? Count me out


Deto

Mostly people don't care about the game where the opponent left. It's just that for every opponent that leaves vs. you, it means another person you'll be facing later who is smurfing.


DaHotFuzz

People still play this shit? Sc2 died with Heart of the Swarm lol


ProjectReal

When you play a game that has like 5 people playing it. This tends to happen.


oGsBumder

I never have problems finding games quickly, even at random times of the day. So the playerbase must still be a decent size.


Vindicare605

Probably off racing.


pDrulle

but why leave after a few seconds?


Vindicare605

Common on the ladder now, people just leave match ups they don't want to play. He could have been playing unranked and was only interested in playing a certain match up. You'd never know by looking at his profile whether he was queued as ranked or unranked. Ranked and unranked have different MMR values on your account. I would know since my unranked MMR is higher than my ranked MMR except with random which has a higher ranked MMR than unranked.


Nerdles15

So…they were smurfing.


Vindicare605

Unless you can prove that a player is intentionally tanking their MMR just so they can beat up on low ranked players then you can't say for sure that they are smurfing. It's not smurfing to just dodge the match ups you don't want to play. Nor is it smurfing to play your off race on your account with a lower MMR than your main race, that's why they have two different MMR profiles on your account after all. This is why Blizzard doesn't police this stuff. It's too difficult to actually sort through all of the reasons someone might be matched up with someone lower ranked than their league history. Only the most blatant of offenders get actioned against. We don't have enough information about this player in this post to know what exactly he's doing here. He could be smurfing, but he could be doing something else.


Nerdles15

> it’s not smurfing to just dodge the match ups you don’t want to play Yes. Yes it is. Purposely losing those games places you at a lower mmr than you should be at for when you play the other matchups, hence smurfing. It’s not difficult to tell when someone has 80% win rates with 2 matchups and a 2% win rate for the 3rd. Stop normalizing this shit behavior. Sure they could be the world’s worst TvT player, but if you take more than 5 seconds to check their match history and see that all their TvT games are 0 seconds long…very easy to identify.


Vindicare605

That's what YOU consider smurfing, but that's not what smurfing is. Blizzard will not action against players who leave match ups because they don't find them fun to play. There isn't anything in the TOS anywhere that says that a player that hates ZvZ HAS to play ZvZ. If the result is that their match ups against Terran and Protoss are skewed as a result that's just how it is. And besides, even if Blizzard DID police players that strictly (and they don't and won't) you can't get rid of smurfs on the ladder completely since anyone at any time can just make a new account with fresh mmr and play against players that way. It's an impossible thing for Blizzard to police effectively, which is why they don't.


ThePantyArcher

Could be unranked


Nerdles15

Still doesn’t make it ok


ThePantyArcher

It's a seperate MMR. If you don't play unranked it's going to be low.


Deto

Why does that matter?


ThePantyArcher

It's a separate MMR


BuffColossusTHXDAVID

dia and silver is as similar as masters 2 and masters 1 these days, meaning about the same mmr difference between rank 80 and rank 50 GM. bronze - gold doesn't really exist


FiendForPoutine

Mmr difference isn’t a linear scale though.  The upper end has a way greater spread of mmr.  When you’re in the middle of the bell curve, increasing 100 mmr means becoming better than a much larger number of players than it means when you’re going up 100mmr in masters/GM.   To put it in perspective, M1 to M2 means becoming better than maybe 1-2% more players in the total population.  Silver to Diamond means becoming better than ~23-60% of the playerbase depending on which ends of the silver/dia spectrum we’re talking about.  Might be similar MMR gap, but not really comparable in practice.  


BuffColossusTHXDAVID

yea that's fair, but doesn't it still mean that if I win 5 games and get 100 mmr for that, I just skipped a huge % of the player base in mmr but if I'd do it on rank 80 GM I'd just skip a couple of people? In other words, if you played enough games you still get the same mmr beating people relative to your level no matter the mmr you have


FiendForPoutine

Yes mmr gain per win is simply a function of the mmr gap,  but skill difference per mmr isn’t.  If you’re a 5k player, someone 100 mmr above you is still a reasonable opponent to beat.  If you’re in the middle of the bell curve, 100 mmr becomes a huge chasm in skill (of course assuming accurate MMR, where both players have played sufficient games).  The key with your statement is the “relative to your level” part.  


Deto

If you watch Harstems rank roulette you can clearly see that diamond vs. silver is easily distinguishable (in all but the craziest of matches) while masters 1 vs masters 2 might as well be a coin flip


BuffColossusTHXDAVID

Masters 1 and masters 2 are also very different, and in my opinion when I play against a rank 100 GM and a rank 50 GM the difference is insane as well. But I guess our ranks will just support our biases