HOw do we stop smurfs

General Discussion
61

Just because it should be doesn’t mean it is. It’s fully within rules to have any number of free accounts and it doesn’t matter why as long as they are not breaking the rules. Heck these forums were filled with people who were encouraging to make smurfs in early years of HL as way to get out of their imaginary MMR Hell and they ruined games for years in high ELO by abusing the MMR seeding. Something being legal doesn’t automatically mean it’s morally right nor does something being illegal mean it’s morally wrong. People who report smurfs are actually making false reports and breaking the rules.

Devs actively made smurfing easier knowing it would increase smurfs. All they cared about was the “new players” it creates for their statistics. Did you know back when HL was a thing new accounts needed to be confirmed by email or optional phone number when you first login with them? Since SL you can use fake e-mail as there is no longer any validation needed. They also made smurfing easier in-game by lowering ranked requirements for them when SL was created. Everything devs have done that has any relation to smurfs in the last 3 years has been in favor of smurfs. They haven’t done a single thing to make smurfing harder nor have they condemned it at any point(because again, it is fully allowed within terms of service which you have agreed to).

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62

Which is fine. It’s not going to stop me from reporting and I will continue to do so. Like I said Blizzard will eventually have to deal with the reprecussions of their inaction. Whatever rationalizations they’ve concluded to promote smurfing is on them. There are far more more bronze-gold players than there are Dia-GM in SL. As SL slowly withers to oblivion, the Dia to GM ranks will be the first to suffer the consequences of their immaturity, if it isn’t already there yet.

63

I don’t like smurfs, but what HammerTime said is fact, smurf accounts aren’t against the rules. Doing what that person did with botting multiple accounts that Lucifer posted, that is against the rules and something you can report. Considering Fan has made his public career out of “Bronze to GM” challenges, which are very popular,it would seem to suggest many people don’t care about smurfs. I’d argue what Fan does isn’t healthy for the community, but the community holds him in high esteem.

I have my real account that I play on, and this account here that I post on the forums only. I have had terrible experiences in the past revealing my B.Tag or having someone on forums find it and harass me. Maybe you think I’m bad for having this, or Sadius/Dr. Logan? He had to remove his main account from posting as he too was harassed and false flagged.

All I’m saying is many people have different reasons to have a smuf and it’s not agasint the rules. Also, how can you tell a new player who is highly skilled (maybe from DOTA or LoL) from a smurf? You then report someone for something that’s not against the rules on a hunch they are a smurf?

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What you are saying is true, Fan has made money from doing Bronze to GM, however, the claim that ppl don’t care because Fan isn’t a valid argument. Let’s use a different example to prove my point:

In LoL, there’s a player called Tyler1. He once upon a time used to be a very toxic streamer who would eventually get perma-banned for LoL for multiple years. At the time, this player would stream Draven at Diamond 1 to GM level and be as toxic as possible. He was scoring record high viewers because of his toxicity, by your logic, this would mean ppl love toxicity, which we do not. Streamers are simply entertainers, they do what the viewers want.

You’re right that what Fan does isn’t healthy, its downright selfish and he should be banned for it. The fact that he hasn’t been just shows us a problem, not just at low elo levels but across the entire board. For all we know players like Lucifer could be low GM tier and we wouldn’t know because of how prevalent smurfs are and is partially why high elo players suffer from playerbase.

Then you’re not smurfing, you’re simply remaining anon for the purpose of the forums. We’re you to play at Bronze levels just to stomp them, then that would be smurfing and should therefore be reportable and I would encourage others to report you.

For an account to be considered smurfing, you have to be playing at a lower tier than what you actually are. So if you created an account and it’s Gold 5 and you’re previous acc is also Gold 5, then you’re not smurfing, you just suck and refuse to acknowledge it.

You pay attention the same way you can differienciate a subtle feeder to a bad player. LoL and Dota players won’t know the game as well as a smurf. Odds are a LoL or Dota player will not be rocking a SL match at lvl 50 and if they are, their game play won’t be nearly the same as an actual high tier HOTS player. Lane rotations, talent picks, how they’re playing their heroes, etc. They just don’t have enough knowledge. All I could expect them to have is good mechanical skills.

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I did qualify my statement with “seems to suggest” people don’t care. I should have been more precise, as I know from the forums many have been critical of Fan for this, but many not.

Smurfing is less of an issue though at the very highest ranks of Master and GM. In the past you could make a new account, abuse QM in groups for a very high win rate and rank into Masters. Back then they also didn’t have rank decay, so you could abuse the system by smurfing and potentially hold your rank if you played 3 games a season. Hero League also didn’t allow players to group, so once someone abused this system if they didn’t have the skills and played consistently they would not remain at a high rank.

Now you can’t get higher than Gold 5 (most new accounts landing in Silver) the smurf problem is mostly a problem in the ranks of Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum, I reject that smurfing is much of a problem for Master/GM players. That Ranked now allows people to group as any party size and two ranks apart, that has allowed more skilled players to boost a much lesser skilled player to a rank they don’t deserve. This creates exactly the same problems that comes with smurfing, yet this was the model Blizzard created to help “discourage” smurfing. It clearly hasn’t worked.

As it isn’t agasint the rules to smurf, I did at least try to suggest a solution in my post, rather than reporting someone for something that isn’t agasint the rules. I suggested they go back to their old system where people can rank higher than Gold 5. At last that would more evenly distribute the smurf players though the ranks, rather than concentrating them all in the lowest 3 (mostly Bronze/Silver). You could put a cap on it to Diamond 5, or other refinements, but unless they change the rules on smurf accounts, that’s all I can suggest.

The majority of complaints about smurf accounts (outside of QM) come from players in Bronze, Silver and Gold, it’s rare to hear any of the forum Master and GM players complain about it, in fact many of them have smurf accounts of their own.

This is an unfair and unverifiable supposition. I’ve introduced players from LoL who surpassed my rank (Plat) very quickly as they found HOTS rather simple mechanically. They had the benefit of me explaining the maps and objectives, so people could easily confuse them as a smurf and report them.

Again for the record so we don’t have anything unclear here, like you I don’t think smurfs are good for the game, but I also think it’s wrong to report for something that isn’t agasint the rules.

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Naw, I must of skimmed over the word and not give proper attention to its definition.

I agree with you on this. However, my concern comes from when GM players start having 5-10 accounts at that level and can somewhat screw with statistics and taking other GM slots. One player is one player and should remain one player.

This seems to be accurate assessment, however, I do not use other forums, nor have I ever used them in the past even during the games climax, so I wouldn’t know where the stance of d-Mid GM players, nor do I have constant communication with them.

Perhaps, but I feel like this would be more the exception than the rule. But again, unverifiable.

I guess this is where you and I really differ in opinion. I don’t. Just because Blizzard has validated smurfing doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be reportable when it’s problem. Blizzard has been out of touch with its community for over a decade. This isn’t new. I’d rather report it and hope they do something about it than not report. It’s basically the only voice you have left in the game, if even that. In the end nothing is going to happen anyways so it barely matters, but at least now it’s statistic. So if they ever decide to grow a conscience, they do something about it with nore information. And Yes I’m aware that I’m rationalizing.

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Thanks for the reply, you’re right, we agree more than we disagree about this issue. My concern with reporting is that many people (certainly not all) have been falsely reported and punished. This has often led those people to feel wronged and then led them to create smurf accounts, if the gazillion posts about this issue on the forums is to be believed.

I get where you’re coming from though and it’s too true that Blizzard no longer seems to engage with their community. Since AZ left, there hasn’t been a single blue post here and very little before that but from AZ himself.

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Yes, but you’re talking about a whole different issue. I guess this has more to do with the English language and it’s precision in terminogies. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re actually talking about “fabricating” a false report, which would be entirely different. If reporting a smurf for smurfing when smurfing isn’t a bannable offense, then one can assume that they cannot be banned for it and that’s the end of that conversation. The question therefore becomes, why is this happening? But this generally happens all the time with motives outside of smurfing.

In other words, if for instance I report you for smurfing under “cheating” for and in the notes I wrote “smurfing” I doubt you’d ever get banned for this.

However, if you smurf, and I disliked that, and I reported you under “abusive chat” and used buzzwords to attempt at getting you banned, that’s an entirely different thing. And this is what I believe you’re talking about.

69

From my interactions with you I have no doubt this is how you would report someone for smurfing. I have my doubts other people would do the same. Still, smurfing isn’t cheating, or agasint the rules.

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70

It might sounds wrong in theory, but it’s not wrong at all to boost players, because this a team game and imagine better players want to play with their low level friends? What should they do? It’s only logical that they create a second account that is able to play with them. I don’t see nothing wrong with it. But if you ban smurfs, you would reduce the amount of players even more, because then you scares away this kind of players, who plays with their friend.

A better solution would be just to make smurfing less incentive like Agrobot or I did:

EDIT: @Agrobot

Sorry to say that, but this would kill ranked in it’s current state for sure, because we had Teamleague / Hero league (Solo League) before Storm League and why do you think both modes got merged in? Because there is not enough players to play it. That’s why I disagree with you on this point. Even my proposal struggles most likely, because the population of this game is lower than we expect.

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71

Remember that everyone who had account banned for whatever reason and created a new one can be considered a smurf by a common player (yes common, the one who belongs in that rank, plays worse because of lower skill or knowledge and is going to press that report button). Even a gold 3 playing in bronze 5. So are we supposed to ban basically every new account, unless the player defends himself and proves he is indeed a new player?

Smurfing is a consequence of bad system, not a cause. Focusing on consequences won’t change anything if the cause is not cared for as well.

And if there is simply not enough players on top to avoid long queue times, can you blame them for wanting to play the game?

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Its important to highlight that banning can allow phone banning, and replacing phone numbers are a huge pain too. It’s not an easy to task.

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73

I think the phone ID method would be fine. Yes people can get burner phones, but you have to be a more “dedicated” troll to do so. I would not trust Blizzard to keep safe my SSN, but sure, phone number, why not.

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This also might kill this game, because not everyone likes to share his personal data to companys, but using this data as access point requires a higher level of trust. But you’re right about it, if it works, it can remove smurfs from the game.

At least it would be interesting to know though how many players are using the Bnet authenticator…

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75

You hit on the right word there, trust. If I think a company will make sure my personal information will not be shared on purpose or can be trusted to keep it safe, that’s the question. I honestly don’t trust Blizzard for either premise.

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Do you use an bnet authenticator? If all or the majority use one then it would be a proof that this idea might work, but I highly doubt that the majority is using it, I know players, who don’t use it at all.

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I have used it since Cata x-pack got out. Never been hacked.

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My WoW account got hacked once and after that I started using it, but I have no disadvantage from that, but I remember I got Cata and Pandaria for free, lol, because I stopped playing after WotL. :joy:

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Not for this account, which is only for posting on forums, but for my main account yes.

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I had a friend who told me he got hacked by a key locker back in Lich King x-pack. But fun thing was. When he got his account back again all his gear was still on it and on top he suddenly had all his pockets full of mining ore Icecrown area. What a good friendly little hacker he came to be :smiley:

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