For a lot of us, we're trying to play the game, but we're getting steamrolled by players who are below level 100, aiming like gods, we're put into matches where players are way higher ranks and skill levels than us, players who know where we are 24/7, (aka using wall hacks and trying to use legends like Seer to hide it), and I'm also seeing players who shouldn't even be on a rank team according to the game's rules on it.Below is a plat Seer playing with a silver Mirage and a silver Pathfinder, while my current rank is gold. It makes sense to see either the Seer OR the Mirage and Pathfinder in the match, but all 3 of them makes no sense due to the tier difference in their ranks.While this applies to pre-mades, it would stand to reason that random teammates should still be matched based on the rules as well.This game used to be really fun, now every match just has players on new accounts, diamond to pred players in bronze to gold lobbies, and it feels like there is always someone using cheats each match.Edit 1: Game threw a diamond player onto my team and every other player we came across were mostly in plat. My guess is that the diamond player was lag switching when joining the plat player, (they're in the same club), and the game just adds a bunch of plat players thinking this is a plat tier lobby, when its suppose to be a gold tier lobby.And yes, they are randoms:Edit 2: While still playing the game trying to make it to plat again, I just see this masters player in my match. Do note that I was 74 points away from plat IV when I got this player as a random, (their masters badge says "17,239 RP"):

@Palette24caratsI partied up with two other gold players, (they were randoms at first), and the champion team has been diamond players. Its been an hour and a half of that.

@Balladalidila I'm not sure how each player is where they belong, when in plat II, along with other random plats or golds, the incomming champion squad is a premade master/pred squad, and I'm being killed by a pred.I've previously posted screenshots of this. There is no equality or fun to be had there.

@Midnight9746 I have never seen that, this is innaceptable.It is not the moon that is broken.

According to EA people are allowed to have additional accounts. But not allowed if they're doing so in order to bypass a ban.Using a smurf account means after few good games will be back in higher lobbies anyway. I remember watching a video of some guy using invite system so you could bring a higher level player into a bot lobby by smurf account inviting it in. It should match make according to EOMM rating of highest player in party, that should solve things.

@Midnight9746 wrote:@OldTreeCreeperI have no idea how the game isn't catching and banning all the smurph/cheater accounts. Game after game, level 1-50's are beaming up the lobby, and its "undetectable".Edited: Last night it was nothing but plat and diamond players with some smurphs and cheaters. Today, its nothing but smurphs/cheaters aimbotting and wall hacking. This game is fun, don't get me wrong, but EA/Respawn are going to really need to overhaul everything to keep it alive.Respawn has made it perfectly clear, even explicitly expressed how its NOT even illegal to smurf, i.e play on new accounts in ranked. Whats illegal is to create new account after account to get those easy 2-3 first matches, this with the sole purpose to farm damage and kill badges. I think the best solution would be even faster RP gains for good players. Bottom line; if you are good enough to get 10 kills, 3000+ dmg at your current rank, regardless what rank that may be, then you too good to play there and should be boosted SEVERAL ranks up. If it turns out you got boosted to a rank out of your skill level; well NP because then you will gradually lose RPs until you are demoted your "correct" rank. This would make it much less fun to smurf because you would only have a handful of matches anyway if you keep stacking high dmg/kills matches. Imagine those sad, pathetic master players who team up and smurf in Bronze4. First match, they get 30 squad kills and boom; now they are, lets say silver2. Next match--> 25 squad kills and boom, gold4 etc etc.. This would make it so unworth to smurf since they soon would be in high elo lobbies.But regardless of the faults of the current rank system; the rank system still put each player exactly where they belong. Most I see who complains about the rank system are previous "hardstuck platinums" who now is hardstuck gold in the new system, or "hardstuck diamond 4s" who now is hardstuck platinum and now are sad because of this and blames the system. I think we must just realize that old achievement means nothing. Take me for example; this split, I got to diamond 4 by solo Qing quite easily but then I really had to tryhard and grind to get to Diamond3 but there I got totally smashed every match and got so titled that I demoted all the way back to Diamond mid diamond 4. So I guess my peak rank this split in this system is low Diamond 3 and perhaps I should be Ok with this instead of looking for way to essentially make the system easier for me to get even higher.

The Ongoing Smurphing/Cheating Issues

22 Replies

Palette24carats
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@Midnight9746 Same thing is happening to me sincee being Gold 2... this is the very worst thing I have ever seen of Apex ... game is over 3 years old and getting worst every season.

First it's already way harder to grind (boring, painful, takes hundreds of hours for us to grind a little) since they followed the recommendations of pros and streamers for the new rank 2.0 then THIS!!! Preventing us to reach platinum by having us play against triple stacks Platinum 3 while my team is a trio of solo queue Gold 1 !!!!

Then I lose points no wonder why!! Then I try for days to get over Goldd 1 but nothing does it! I keep getting killed by Platinum players or smmurfs . I tought we had it bad with smurfs but now they add Platinum 4, 3, 2, 1 agains me Gold 1 trying to reach Platinum 4 while I was able to reach Diamond 4 before as a solo.

I mean I know there is less players at night but dam I could wait a little to play a game... it's the middle of the night and the game starts 2 seconds after I click it and I end up going 3 gold players against soon to be Diamond players. What????
Midnight9746
Hero+
3 years ago
@Palette24caratsI partied up with two other gold players, (they were randoms at first), and the champion team has been diamond players. Its been an hour and a half of that.
Palette24carats
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@Midnight9746 I have never seen that, this is innaceptable.

It is not the moon that is broken.
OldTreeCreeper
Hero+
3 years ago
@Midnight9746 wrote:

While this applies to pre-mades, it would stand to reason that random teammates should still be matched based on the rules as well.
______________________________________________________________
@Midnight9746
Nothing about the match making stands to reason recently. I stopped playing ranked. I tell a lie, I played 2 games tonight just cause. Plat II, got matched with an ex master, we got dispatched v quickly. Ratted the second match, just cause, got to 3rd, went and played Fortnite arenas.
Looking forward to the touted matchmaking blog when it arrives.
Midnight9746
Hero+
3 years ago
@OldTreeCreeperI have no idea how the game isn't catching and banning all the smurph/cheater accounts. Game after game, level 1-50's are beaming up the lobby, and its "undetectable".

Edited: Last night it was nothing but plat and diamond players with some smurphs and cheaters. Today, its nothing but smurphs/cheaters aimbotting and wall hacking. This game is fun, don't get me wrong, but EA/Respawn are going to really need to overhaul everything to keep it alive.
PeterN_UK
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
According to EA people are allowed to have additional accounts. But not allowed if they're doing so in order to bypass a ban.
Using a smurf account means after few good games will be back in higher lobbies anyway. I remember watching a video of some guy using invite system so you could bring a higher level player into a bot lobby by smurf account inviting it in. It should match make according to EOMM rating of highest player in party, that should solve things.
PeterN_UK
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@Midnight9746

It's a losing battle. Cheaters are able to spoof machine ID so they don't have to buy new hardware or using virtual machines and it takes only few mins to create another gmail account. Don't even have to create a gmail account as you have unlimited aliases by adding +XXX i.e. [edit: email address removed]

Valorant for example prevents use of virtual machines. But the problem is that it prevents game being played on cloud hosted gaming services such as shadowtech.

They do ban cheaters, but nothing to prevent them coming back easily. At very least 2FA should be enforced linked to mobile phone number. So then bans are by number association as well. Yea can easily buy VOIP to SMS service, but if they forced authentication by android/iphone app, it's more costly and time consuming for them to repeatedly register new mobile phone numbers.
Midnight9746
Hero+
3 years ago
@PeterN_UK The problem is that its already possible to spoof phone numbers, while people who get new phone numbers are at risk of a ban due to using numbers that were associated to a banned account.

Its too bad that they can't just make new accounts take time to be playable. In other words, EA/Respawn start requiring new accounts to be approved. My thinking on that is to delay how quickly smurphs/cheaters could get back into the game. However, that won't work either as there's no real way to figure out if its really a new player, or a smurph/cheater, and also the staffing and resources required to sort that out as well.

The only thing I can think of right now is getting a better anti-cheat for the cheating problem. Easy Anti-Cheat just sits there for the most part, while depending on player's reports to even function.

Cheaters are able to play for hours, days, and even weeks, using aimbot and wall hacks, and there are other kinds of cheats that existed in Apex, although they're less common.

Some of the less common ones are speeding up how fast the gun shoots, the damage the bullets do, infinite charge riffle beam, (which hasn't been a thing in a while, that's good), auto armor swapping, (they automatically pull armor out of nearby deathboxes without opening or looking at them), and even spawning armor, (saw a video where a guy had blue evo armor, which when dropped would instantly equip a white evo armor like they just dropped out of the drop ship).

Its honestly a shock that these sorts of things were possible and that they flew under the radar for so long. You would think that faster fire rates and more damage would be an automatic red flag, but I guess not.
Balladalidila
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@Midnight9746 wrote:
@OldTreeCreeperI have no idea how the game isn't catching and banning all the smurph/cheater accounts. Game after game, level 1-50's are beaming up the lobby, and its "undetectable".

Edited: Last night it was nothing but plat and diamond players with some smurphs and cheaters. Today, its nothing but smurphs/cheaters aimbotting and wall hacking. This game is fun, don't get me wrong, but EA/Respawn are going to really need to overhaul everything to keep it alive.
Respawn has made it perfectly clear, even explicitly expressed how its NOT even illegal to smurf, i.e play on new accounts in ranked. Whats illegal is to create new account after account to get those easy 2-3 first matches, this with the sole purpose to farm damage and kill badges.

I think the best solution would be even faster RP gains for good players. Bottom line; if you are good enough to get 10 kills, 3000+ dmg at your current rank, regardless what rank that may be, then you too good to play there and should be boosted SEVERAL ranks up. If it turns out you got boosted to a rank out of your skill level; well NP because then you will gradually lose RPs until you are demoted your "correct" rank. This would make it much less fun to smurf because you would only have a handful of matches anyway if you keep stacking high dmg/kills matches. Imagine those sad, pathetic master players who team up and smurf in Bronze4. First match, they get 30 squad kills and boom; now they are, lets say silver2. Next match--> 25 squad kills and boom, gold4 etc etc.. This would make it so unworth to smurf since they soon would be in high elo lobbies.
But regardless of the faults of the current rank system; the rank system still put each player exactly where they belong. Most I see who complains about the rank system are previous "hardstuck platinums" who now is hardstuck gold in the new system, or "hardstuck diamond 4s" who now is hardstuck platinum and now are sad because of this and blames the system. I think we must just realize that old achievement means nothing. Take me for example; this split, I got to diamond 4 by solo Qing quite easily but then I really had to tryhard and grind to get to Diamond3 but there I got totally smashed every match and got so titled that I demoted all the way back to Diamond mid diamond 4. So I guess my peak rank this split in this system is low Diamond 3 and perhaps I should be Ok with this instead of looking for way to essentially make the system easier for me to get even higher.
OldTreeCreeper
Hero+
3 years ago
@Balladalidila I'm not sure how each player is where they belong, when in plat II, along with other random plats or golds, the incomming champion squad is a premade master/pred squad, and I'm being killed by a pred.
I've previously posted screenshots of this. There is no equality or fun to be had there.