Smurfs - report, raise awareness or do nothing?

Hey folks!

Honest question. What should one do when they get stomped by a team of people with 80%+ winrates? No one feels good losing, but the “stomp” games are even worse. You can’t do a thing - it’s like climbing through an avalanche.

I would also like to know if there are secret ways you can avoid matches like this (some special comp, party size, etc.). I asked some folks in-game, but no one seemed to know the right answer.

A lot of people told me that the “reporting” system does not work at all and that stuff like that has been abandoned a long time ago by Blizzard. Is this true? Hope it ain’t, but it’s really bugging me. Please answer if you can.

All the best,
DJ

3 Likes

Unless you play the majority of your games in off peak hours, it should be very rare for you to face full 5 man teams. You didn’t say in your post if you were speaking of QM or SL, though you mentioned climbing, so I guess ranked?

The short answer to your question for both modes is, group up with friends. This was the way the game was intended to be played, the lack of useful LFG features like clans would suggest otherwise.

Again, yes being with friends help. If this is QM and you’re playing solo it’s often better to play with a very self sufficient hero, rather than a more niche hero like Genji. Sonya is a safer pick as an example, she has good macro, decent damage, can double soak lanes, grab merc camps fast, has good self sustain, has counters but none that will render her useless.

Do a search on these forums about “abusive chat” punishments and you will see it works for that. You might notice there is a pinned AFK topic about punishments. It’s out of date, but I’ve received an occasional email about someone I’ve reported for AFK.

6 Likes

You can’t really report someone for smurfing, or abusing QM with 5 stacks of low MMR smurfs played by high MMR players. It isn’t fair, but that is the way it is. However, there is something you can do to avoid them. If you use the Stats screen after a match to send them a whisper, it will let you know when they have found a new match, so you can queue without fear of facing them again.

Other than that, playing with friends is the best way to stay sane, especially on the smaller servers. That, and just accepting the fact that sometimes things aren’t fair, so do what you can when the odds are against you, and remember that there are good matches out there, too.

7 Likes

there is nothing “reportable” about smurfing

i do think its trashy to do that on lower population servers but its not against any rules

2 Likes

This players can easily climb out of your league and they will, if they are better. But why do you think it’s a problem and why don’t you see this as a challenge to improve yourself? I don’t mind playing against players with a 80% winrate and I beated them already, but also lost to them. But the only thing that frustrates me are ignorant players, who refuse to adapt, ignores advices and feeds. One of my recent games today I had a player, he played Tassadar and Zul’jin, both times he feeded hard (6+ death) and ignored advices. That’s ruins the fun for me, not smurfs.

Yes, the reportsystem it’s flawed, because it is an automated system, where people have the power to judge over their teammates and since this competitive genre tends to create a lot of toxicity this system can be abused by tilted, frustrated players or trolls. They can report anyone, they don’t like for bad communication, even though sth. individually you wouldn’t judge it as reportable at all.

But this problems aside this system is working quite well to punish extremely toxic players and that’s not too bad. People should know that there are consequences for their actions, even though I consider perma-bans as a generally wrong direction for an automated system at least.

1 Like

In dota 2 you can get banned for smurfing now. But ofc that wont happen in this game when playerbase is this low.

2 Likes

interesting i had to google that as i havent played dota 2 for some years now… seems since march of 2021 they will ban new accounts that have play patterns of high mmr players and those smurf bans will not be appealable

so their system can probably catch smurfs with very high accuracy and tell its not a real newbie

this makes financial sense, because 1 smurf can drive away 9 noobs every match they play

2 Likes

I have a very legit way to smurf
I dont want people here to stalk my profile on some sites in order to discredit me
But a stack of smurfs or boosters should be seperate report feature

2 Likes

I don’t think high skill party in QM is reportable by itself
Although I get the frustration and one thing you could do if you know for sure the party of 5 is abusing mm e.g. by not picking heal and tank and forcing 5dd vs 5dd chaos, where they have all the self sustain heroes is to make the game as boring as possible for them. Simple way would be afk as whole team. Make sure all 4 other teammates are on board with you

1 Like

I would rather think that this do more harm than good for the game, even though it might works for Valve, because a personal Steam account have more value for the players than Hots bnet.

1 Like

You can even report smurfs there now, no such option exists for Hots.

3 Likes

Indeed. I’m very grateful my husband insisted I create an account just for posting, many here have been stalked, doxed and harassed. The moderation is so bad on these forums the offenders are almost never punished, but the person who is harassed is more likely to be punished for false reasons.

You would think Blizzard would have some kind of AI to automatically detect this without the need for reports. I’ve seen those 5 stacks you speak about, they are new accounts with winrates of 90% and above. Considering a new player is unlikely to have four players to group with, let alone get over account level 100 with a 90% win rate, you would think this issue should be easy for Blizzard to deal with.

3 Likes

You just have to ignore and mute the players that shows obvious red flags in thier way of insulting others. Like the one comment from JeanTurtle. That comment was way over the line and a direct insult and mocking towards your husbands memory.

2 Likes