Smurfs

I'm glad you asked this because I have questions about smurfing too.  It has to be one of the most difficult forms of cheating to punish because how do you actually define and even catch smurfing?  For instance, I had two guys on my team in wildcard last week that said they both came over from Fortnite and it was their first week in apex.  They were even scared we had lost once because we fell off a tall cliff and they were used to taking fall damage in Fortnite and were surprised when they saw apex didn't have fall damage.  They both got shotguns and just shot at people the best they could, but they had built up lightning quick reflexes from their time in Fortnite and we actually finished 2nd place in that wildcard match.  Makes you wonder when people saw them with fresh accounts and default skins if they didn't report them for smurfing.  So, how can we tell someone isn't just a veteran FPS player who happens to get lucky in their first apex matches versus a smurf.

On the flipside, my first victory in apex was my very first match after my orientation matches were done.  I was placed with two guys with new accounts and they both told me they were championship players who were trolling beginner lobbies for the fun of it, and that if I kept my mouth shut the whole game and just stayed behind them they guaranteed me my first victory in apex.  I didn't know this violated the rules at the time so I went with it.  It's funny I was so green at the time one of them said "You M-F-, you just made me waste my push" and I responded "Hey, what does a push look like?  I'll go try to find one in the loot boxes in this building."  They laughed at me and explained what a push was, and told me to stay in the firing range for awhile before playing when I told them apex was my first FPS game. lol  Anyway, we won that match and it was definitely smurfing, they could have been reported for that.

So, I'm wondering how do they know someone is smurfing?  Also, as the OP says, does it do anything to actually report it?

As long as they are below lvl 100 (even tho I know ppl that are lvl 250 and still can't hit anything), you can report them for smurfing. If they get reported 10x, the account will be banned. 

It has been confirmed by Respawn that smurfing is allowed in ranked "for the grind"

Fine - but Pubs is almost only smurfs, and hmmm, why would someone smurf in pubs???  Gee, I wonder. Respawn - would you care to comment or answer that one?? 

Anyone? 

In this game, I only get feedback for text chat reports, nothing else. The reporting system is a joke.

I'm not surprised they don't ban cheaters. There really wouldn't be anyone playing this game on my server (EU). I wait 2-3 minutes for matchmaking (Joker) just to play with the same names every day in the lobby, where a lot of people are clearly cheating.

Well... you shouldn't kick a person who's down, so I won't say anything more about it.

All the changes like TTK, free movement, and the increasing number of wallhacking-based skills further aid cheaters and allow them to better conceal themselves in the game. I congratulate the developers for actually helping cheaters in many ways.

"It has to be one of the most difficult forms of cheating to punish because how do you actually define and even catch smurfing?"

It isn't complicated at all. Two different accounts running off the same IP address is your first red flag. Sometimes this is legitimate. Two siblings who play on the same hardware, etc. But it's very obvious when that "new" player gets matched into a bot lobby and leaves with 25 kills and 6k damage. That's red flag number two. Red flag number three is when a single IP address has DOZENS of individual accounts. There are more red flags but these are already more than enough. Respawn should freeze every account on the IP address except the oldest. Or grow a pair and develop an mmr system that identifies mechanical skill and automatically rushes a "new" player to their correct mmr without giving them dozens or even hundreds of easy lobbies. At the expense of real players.

Of course, the matchmaking in this game is so loose that the developer could implement auto mmr on new accounts and we would likely never even realize it. Bad matchmaking is their cover for anything they do wrong and for anything they passively allow the players to do wrong.

So sure, they could identify and eliminate smurfs tomorrow. In any one of a number of different ways. Ban the account, or just move the player to their appropriate mmr without allowing them cake walk matches. Either would work. But their player count would look so much worse if they purged that I'm sure EA would panic and... I don't even know. Shut down the studio altogether? As if there's much of it even left at this point....

Nope, you have to artificially inflate your player numbers any way that you can, and you also have to prop up content creators any way that you can. Up to and including the tacit approval of various different forms of cheating. Of which smurfing is only one. Respawn loves to say that multiple accounts are okay as long they are not created with sole purpose of cheating the matchmaking algorithm. So I'll say it for what must be the tenth time in these forums: If anyone can name me a reason for a secondary to exist other than to cheat matchmaking then I would love to hear it.

What do you guys truly think the percentage of Apex players are using third party devices and/or cheats? I know Wallhacking is prevalent, but I see constant YouTube videos on people who blatantly using Cronus or some type of additive 

From my experience while Riot games constantly ban everyone via their amazing AI automated system :) or simply by comparing how many mass reports by crying kids you got over X games, Respawn basically does not ban anyone since I have been playing (for years).

Only reports that I guess are taken into account are ones for chat slur, rest ... not really.

Also from my experience and official reply via support ticket Respawn confirmed that smurfing is as blurry as it gets:

• creating lower level profiles to "play with friends" is not smurfing for them
• streamers / pros creating new profiles to make those "bronze to pred" run videos is not smurfing for them
• having multiple profiles which has been a thing for very many who play ranked (reaching plat / diamond on main -> stop grinding hard lobbies -> switch to smurf) is not smurfing for them

Basically they said that only thing that qualifies as smurfing is going say to D4 and then dropping like 100 games to get back to Silver or whatever and grind back again. Even though I am 100% sure if someone would do that they would still get away with it.

Thing is that FPS industry created this term and abuse yet in reality I think noone is really doing much about it (except LoL, heard something about them actually banning smurfs actively). Also form business perspective I guess it makes no sense: more smurfs = more "active player base" data, some might even spend money on multiple accounts = revenue stream, more smurfs = faster queue times for lower ranked players etc.

Apex also is just a game where noone gets banned and you have to live with that.

Pros: crying kids with mass reports can't get you out of the game + you can trashtalk back via voice to defend yourself vs Riot insta-banning you if you do that e.g. in Valorant or Overwatch

Cons: loads of hackers, smurfs and slur talking people...personally I care only about the first category that has been a plague for this game

75%+ games above Plat 4 currently have at least 1, in most cases multiple hackers / hacker 3stacks in EVERY game.

If you have experience in FPS games and take time spectating people, you can clearly see that:

• people tracking walls
• shooting random low HP people across the map to kill farm
• some low level players doing 10+ KP games in higher ranked lobbies
• insane target switching speed / spotting enemies that are stealth
• finding solo players ratting

Current state in EMEA is sad = can't play it. Yet NA unfortunately is becoming as bad... usually top 5 squads = hackers vs hackers in EVERY game. You can just tell when you get lucky and those hacker squads die fast or potentially are not present in the server = for me I go from having 0 chance to compete to winning games instantly and most importantly I can see that from outsmarting people - no wallhacks, my success  rate with smart plays is 50%+, yes wallhacks, everyone just prefires and switches to me flanking instantly.

It's high. And the higher you go in the ranks the more of them you see.

Fix number one: segregate PC players to their own lobbies then console players would never see another subscription-based cheater again. And sorry, but I don't care what happens to legit PC players. If there are any left.

Fix number two: eliminate recoil from all weapons and suddenly a bunch of cheaters just wasted $100 bucks on a xim or however much they cost and whatever it is they're calling them these days.

Well, we finally got the true statement "this game is dead".  Hundreds of people like this run around on "Joker" mode every day during my session. I can't wait for this game to be defunct so people no longer have to waste their time on Cheater Legends. The game is cooked.