Hiya!
As I mentioned previously, I have given up on reaching the Master Rank with any character in Street Fighter 6. That hasn’t stopped me from playing against other players online, however. I still log into the game to get in a good stretch of matches. Alas, I never activate the Ranking Battle search anymore as no one wants to play against a lowly WiFi player, especially at the upper Platinum and Diamond ranks. While I don’t like the discrimination as the game seems to play fine with around a 60ms ping rating, I understand the hesitation. Even a split second can mean the difference between eating a Drive Impact or countering a Drive Impact with a Perfect Parry.
Anyway, since there’s no way for me to play Street Fighter 6 besides connecting via WiFi, I’ve pretty much given up on ever reaching a Master Rank as it’ll take me too long to wait for people to actually accept my fight requests. While my rank hasn’t gone up in the game, my skill has. What’s my proof? Well, I can routinely beat on upper Platinum, some Diamond ranks and a Master Rank here and there.
So, while I might be around a Diamond ranked player in reality, my Guile is still stuck on upper Gold. My Street Fighter 6 account has accidentally become a “smurf” account. Despite this, I do as much as possible to not let my undeserved low ranked Guile to be used for evil.
Before we talk about my journey as to why my Guile became a “smurf” account, I guess I have to explain what a “smurf” account is and why is having one considered bad. In the broadest of terms, having a “smurf” account is when an exceptionally skilled player keeps a side account where he intentionally plays bad so that, when whatever competitive game comes to “rank” them based on their skill level, gives them a poor ranking. This highly skilled player then uses this “smurf” account to play against low ranked players as the game will match the highly skilled player with opponents of his rank. As he intentionally played bad to get a poor rank, he can then wipe the floor with these low ranked players easily.
There are a lot of reasons why this is generally frowned upon. Some would say it’s like bullying because you’re beating on people who aren’t as good as you are. You’re intentionally disguising your rank just so you can beat on other players less skilled than you. There’s also the weird safety net feeling of challenging a player of your skill and, if you lose, that super skilled player just beat up a low ranked player. If you win, well, haha! That idiot upper Diamond rank player just lost to a Gold ranked player! What a loser!
For me, I didn’t go about making my Guile a “smurf” account. I got there by accident. I initially went into Street Fighter 6 and went through the dutiful purpose of finding my main character. Since I do prefer charge motion characters, I eventually settled on either Guile or Dee Jay. Both characters are pretty much the same on paper. They both have a charge motion projectile as well as a charge motion anti-air kick. I tried playing Guile early on in the Ranked matches and they didn’t go well. In retrospect, a lot of it revolved around me trying to hit the “perfect” Sonic Boom and the “perfect” Flash Kick, which I wasn’t really good at since my muscle memory was configured to doing “pre-charge” motions when executing these attacks. So, hitting the attack button as you push the direction just felt weird.
This shouldn’t have affected my gameplay as I wasn’t doing any complex combos because, like I said, I was just trying to settle on a character. In the end of my official ranking matches, my Guile only hit 1-star Gold. Mind you, this was before Capcom implemented changes to Street Fighter 6’s ranking system where you can get more than just a 1-star anything. Anyway, ranking up was really terrible as I kept on winning some and losing a little bit more than some. I struggled but did get my Guile to 5-star Gold but it wasn’t fun.
What I did notice was I kept on losing to Dee Jay, the other character I was thinking of choosing. He actually seemed to be much better than Guile in some aspects. For one, Dee Jay can normally toss out 2 projectiles with the heavy version of the Air Slasher, beating out Guile’s Sonic Boom. He also has a couple of non-charging special attacks, which could be handy in a pinch. One of his better non-charging special moves is his Rolling Sobat, which is great in combos if you didn’t have time to charge up properly or if the opponent is ducking so the Jacknife Maximum kick wouldn’t connect. What really made me switch over was Dee Jay’s most damaging bread and butter combo. While it does involve burning some meter as it requires you to execute an OD Jus Cool, it does a lot of damage, has different routes from it and can lead to a Level 3 to close out the round.
I then switched over to Dee Jay and hit Platinum. This was much better than Gold and I didn’t struggle all that much. I actually thought Dee Jay was much easier to play than Guile. So, I stuck with him for a good while. In fact, I stuck with my Dee Jay until I ranked him up from Platinum to a 1-star Diamond rank! However, the higher I got into the ranks, the more I became disillusioned with Dee Jay. I do think he’s a good character but he just didn’t suit my playstyle. Dee Jay is more of a tricky character as he can use fake outs to cause his opponents to make wrong reactions. His Level 1 came off as very useless as it wasn’t invincible, making it only good as a combo ender rather than a “get of our jail” move when cornered like most Level 1 Super Arts in the game. The biggest reason is I never got the hang of performing all the hits of his Level 2 Super Art. This made me feel like Dee Jay only had his Level 3 as it was the only one I could use… and it had very poor range!
Coincidentally, this was around the time when I pretty much gave up on going through Ranked matches as, despite Capcom doing a good job with getting us WiFi players get respectable connections, very few Street Fighter 6 players in the upper Platinum and Diamond ranks would play us. This is when I chose to play exclusively in the Battle Hub. However, as I already got a lot of experience against a lot of other players while playing as Dee Jay, my skill with Guile also ranked up! I didn’t notice this for a good while as I still chose to play against whatever Gold and lower ranked Platinum players I would see in the Battle Hub. After a while, I did discover I wasn’t losing to most of the Gold and Platinum players I was challenging in the Battle Hub.
So, for laughs, I decided to play against a 3-star Diamond ranked Dee Jay, who was the bane of my existence when I first picked up Guile. You can imagine my delight when I actually beat him! This did embolden me to play against other high ranked players and I would win some and I would lose some… but I was getting better. I still can’t hit those “perfect” Sonic Booms in combos and getting those super sweet super damaging Sonic Boom loop corner combos… but it didn’t matter because I was winning without them.
Fast forward to now and I can confidently say I can beat a lot of the Platinum players and some Diamond ranked players in the Battle Hub. It’s not 100% but, considering how bad I was before, that’s saying something! Still, this ultimately left me with a “smurf” account with a Gold ranked Guile. While I know I can definitely get my Guile up to Diamond now, I don’t really see the point since I’ve stopped chasing after the Master rank because, in the end, I know it’ll take me too much time to get there.
So, for now, I roam the Battle Hub, looking for contenders. I did set a few rules for myself as I don’t want to come off as a jerk with a “smurf” account. I never sit on a cabinet in the Battle Hub to wait for regular matches. That’s because they would see my Gold rank and assume I’m easy pickings and I believe that would be dishonest. Rather, I’m the one going from cabinet to cabinet to look for matches. Extreme Battle cabinets and Avatar Battles are fair game as I do want to get those Daily and Weekly Challenges over with for Drive Tickets.
I do join the Ranked Tournaments with my Gold ranked Guile but I only enter the ones without any players! I have noticed no one really Ranked Tournaments when I play, which is around 4 AM Philippine Time. So it’s super efficient to just join one of the empty Gold Ranked Tournaments. I get a couple of hundred Kudos without having to lift a finger! However, if there aren’t any empty Gold Ranked Tournaments, then I just join the other Platinum Ranked Tournaments with one of the myriad of Platinum ranked characters I have.
In short, while I do have a “smurf” account, I never give off the idea my skills level is just Gold level. I never let anyone try to challenge me because, if they lose because they’re surprised my Gold ranked Guile can beat their Platinum or Diamond or Master ranked character, they could accuse me of using a “smurf” account. They’d be right, by the way. That’s why, as much as possible, I’m never going to let that happen. I’ll still play but you’ll never accuse me of faking my rank because you would have no idea Capcom placed me in the Gold rank.
Byee!
What’s your take on “smurf” account in competitive games? Let me know in the comments section below!