Apex Legends has a smurf problem ruining pubs and “discouraging” new players

Members of the Apex Legends community have slammed smurfs for ruining the new player experience and “discouraging” them from coming back.

In Apex Legends, the skill level of your matches is determined by your previous performances, which over time, should lead to balanced matchmaking.

Unfortunately, as with any multiplayer title, Apex suffers from smurfs who create new accounts to dominate lower-skill lobbies.

As these experienced players are disguised on extremely low-level accounts, they’re matched against new players who have no chance to compete.

Well, the Apex community has noticed this problem and has called on Respawn to “exterminate” all the smurfs to improve new player retention.

Respawn Entertainment

Season 14 of Apex Legends is expected to go live in August.

Apex community claim smurfs are “discouraging” new players

Posted to the Apex Legends subreddit on July 14, user RazrSupremem shared their experience attempting to introduce a new player to the Outlands.

In their first game, the new player ran into a level 6 Pathfinder who instantly beamed them down, giving them no chance to fight back.

After checking the spectate screen, it was obvious the player was a smurf as they’d racked up over 15 kills with four squads still in the match. This encounter was enough to put the new player off coming back to Apex and sparked a debate in the thread.

“She’s never played an fps before and wanted to try it and this is the type of s***y human she runs into,” they wrote. “Needless to say, she doesn’t want to play another game.”

In response, a lot of users have called on Respawn to take more action against smurfs and “exterminate” them from the game, as their existence in lower-skilled lobbies is damaging new player retention.

Others simply told the RazrSupremem to introduce the new player to another the game, as Apex is “anti-nooby” and there’s “literally no room to improve without getting your ass absolutely wiped”.

Overall, it’s clear the community feels as if smurfs are being overlooked by the devs and that the “discouraging” presence of high-level players in lower-skilled lobbies needs to be taken more seriously.

However, with countless other issues affecting the game in Season 13, it’s hard to know whether smurfs is a priority for Respawn at the moment.