A very bitter night of Overwatch last night

[Moira-21906]

I really liked the number system for S1 The only thing I disliked about S1 was the coin clip thing, that was silly, so if you were unlucky to be defense… yeah lmaao. I never played S2 because I thought the 1st season with the coin flip was so bad that I went back to TF2 for a while.

[kaMMakaZZi9-1674]

WyomingMyst is a pillar of this community… maybe this post will have legs. Upvote.

[Rapierman-1720]

It has been my philosophy that if you pay to participate, you should only be allowed one account, and one copy of the game. I figured that it would be easy enough since the system should have cookies which can be detected on the server side. I realize that not everyone likes cookies due to privacy / security concerns, but this is the way it has to be. No, you don’t have to accept cookies. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. However, if you’re not accepting cookies, you don’t get to play, period. Every action has a consequence. If you try to purchase another copy of OW or another account, those should not be activated.

Further, any attempt to cheat in the above manner should be treated as fraud, a felony criminal offense in the USA (or however that works for your country of residence). That comes not only with fines but jail time as well.

Sorry to be a hard-nosed person, but it’s the only way to clamp down on this nonsense.

[gearheart-1739]

Yea, GL with that, lol. This is blizzard after all.

[vonKlippe-1646]

It’s been so long since I had any good interaction in OW that I actually enabled Parental Controls on my account and permanently silenced myself. Now I can’t say anything back to the people with 20 accounts who spew hate and abuse all match long. Neither can I see or hear anything they say. It’s bliss.

It should be easier to self-silence than this.

The core issue with “smurfing” is that someone with multiple accounts gives very little value to each one except maybe their “main” that they protect. I, however, only have one account and I’m not going to buy another one. That means that what I stand to lose is much more valuable and unique than what the trolls and griefers stand to lose. It’s always going to be in their favor, so long as there is no reliable method of associating all of someone’s alt accounts together as a single user. No “smurf” would be abusive and leave matches if the fate of his “main” was at stake.

[BEGUILER-11491]

You know there’s something up when WyomingMyst starts talking about it.

[Krojack-1117]

I still think that soloq is a mistake and that comp should be restricted to full stacks and LFG stacks.

If this became a thing then they better make a unranked mode where solo queue people can still play for competitive points. I like others enjoy getting the gold skins for heroes we like but don’t enjoy competitive modes. I stick to just doing placement matches and that’s all.

[Dysvalence-1915]

I like others enjoy getting the gold skins for heroes we like but don’t enjoy competitive modes. I stick to just doing placement matches and that’s all.

I’d def be in favor of restoring QPC to full status and making a 2/2/2 unranked with some MM, the comp ruleset, and leaver penalties.

[Terx2-1856]

but I am concerned there is still a culture of disruptive behavior that is impacting a good portion of our community because of the ability to create alternate accounts exist. I know this is not an easy problem that can be solved directly (just as Jeff Kaplan pointed out when addressing a similar question for consoles).

This is one of the reasons comp on consoles is dead to me. I report a toxic player who gets actioned against and they jump onto another account. Doing the song and dance and it gets sickening.

It discourages even playing the mode because you notice it far more the longer you play.

Put short “I’d rather fight with Golds on pc (I’m climbing, just don’t have time to play comp, much less all three roles) then play with Diamonds on console because they’d just throw and jump onto another account and evade any true punishment.”

[aieeegrunt-1422]

In my diamond lobbies, my Genji is worthless

And by starting a new account, I figured out the reason, because he is basically just silver rank.

It is not fair to play him on my main and ruin the game for my team.

Now the real question is what do I do when I am on my Genji account but want or need to swap? That is where things get really dicey and I do not actually know what to do

If I understand you correctly you are saying that you are a diamond ranked player with other hero’s, but your Genji is a silver?

So when you que as Genji, you get placed in silver level matches.

If you switch, you are now essentially a Diamond level player playing against silvers

That seem fair to you?

Well, you see, that’s the problem with Role Q (and this game, in general). No matter what Seraph does, there is no way to truly make it “fair”.

In the old days, a lot of us Flex Players had “Pools” that we used in Comp. Now, the general hope back then was we could play all those Heroes, at the same rank and we wouldn’t play Heroes that weren’t in that Rank. For example, if I was a Diamond Widow, but I knew my DF was Gold, at best, I wouldn’t bring that into a Comp match.

Well, then Role Q came along and all of a sudden, instead of a “Pool” across all roles they could work with, people were forced to play on one role and almost expected to play all those Heroes at the same level (especially, Tank and Support). The thing is, that isn’t realistic, either. I doubt most people’s Ana is the same level as their Moira or their Widow is the same level as their Pharah or what have you.

Honestly, there is no way Seraph could truly play “fair”, given what they just said. If they make a Genji account (and it places Silver) and they switch to one of their Diamond level DPS, they’re smurfing. But, if they do the opposite (play their Genji on their Diamond account), then they are, basically, throwing.

Now, I suppose they could “solve” this issue, by making a 1 trick Genji account. But, then one could argue that isn’t “fair” to their teammates, especially, if they are getting (hard) countered. So, this “solution” doesn’t really work, either.

I suppose another “solution” is they just don’t play Genji (in Comp). But, then that’s not “fair” to them, as someone who enjoys playing the Hero.

So, no matter what they do, they can’t win

And, honestly, it’s not just them. I’m sure a lot of players are in this boat, Seraph is just more self-aware of their situation than most people are. And, short of having Hero Based SR, this is no way to “fix” it. And, Hero based SR would have its own problems, especially, in a game where swapping to counter and/or for team synergy is baked into its core game play. In order to do Hero based SR properly, they would have to lock people into one Hero, but They would also need to redesign the game, so things like hard counters didn’t exist and so team synergy is much easier to achieve.

But, unless they do that, there really is nothing players like Seraph can really do to make whatever game they are in truly fair, for the reasons I mentioned above. So, unless the entire gameplay system of Overwatch is changed, there isn’t much anyone can do.

Honestly ditching the whole concept of “countering” would solve not only Seraph’s problem but a whole host of other problems with the game, and that includes toxicity

How much of the toxicity in game and on the forums comes from, correctly or not, the conception that certain heroes are “broken” because they counter too many things, or have no realistic counters themselves etc

Then you have the endless campaigning by certain hero mains to make sure that their counters get nerfed etc

I spent most of the evening tonight playing Unreal Tournament. Just about every time I died, I could pinpoint exactly how I screwed up and it felt like my deaths were deserved

A lot of the time when I play Overwatch it feels like my deaths were preordained by the hero select screen. That is sure to promote a toxic attitude

[Dopamine-11145]

I play on console and I’m at my wits end with smurfs and the fact that nothing seems to be done about them.

I’m in high silver/low gold across all 3 roles on PS4 and there’s a masters player that I regularly run into in comp who throws every single game they’re in. I’ve seen this person so many times just over the past few weeks. They’re on their main account (silver border, lots of good skins and gold weapons) and their career profile is open (so you can plainly see their season highs of 3600-ish) which says to me they aren’t even remotely afraid of being banned. This person must have been reported many, many times and yet I’m STILL seeing them and they’re still continuing this behaviour.

[aieeegrunt-1422]

Unfortunatly the “solution” I am seeing is that more and more of my friends are getting frustrated and simply moving on to other games

[ȐĔƆƐĨPŦŜ-1436]

So really I feel there need to be changes to Competitive Play’s skill ranking and system to filter out those who attempt to deliberately smurf.

This is the number one issue with Overwatch. Number2 being the automated report system (not the penalties, but certifying reports). Not balance changes, not hero bans, not OWL hype, not icon sorting, not experimental games, not crunch time.

The most pressing, central issue is ladder design and matchmaking integrity, with queue times and 222 also polarizing and alienating the population.

I have been in this debate about alternate accounts a lot and I agree there really is no effective way to directly deter the creation of alternate accounts.

Offer a seasonal buy-in for premium status. $10 for the 3month season ($3.33/month). Prioritize the best servers, match premium comp accnts with premium comp accnts, and require SMS/phone or HardwareID/buildinfo to limit premium to basically 1 account per PC.

For that price you get increased human-level support for policing/enforment of ladder integrity. Maybe you even get prioritized matchmaking (queue time reduction).

• lack of sense of progression in the current system seems extremely unrewarding.

• the original rules had planned skill rating resets

• That encouraged continuous play on one account and there was a sense of progress

• once they reached a certain tier, they could not drop out for the rest of the season.

In a premium model you might have seasonal ‘resets’, where everyone grinds from the ground-up. But the ground is some kind of gold-equivalent. Win-out early on to warpzone up, the way a micro-tournament works (winners of winners bracket, loosers of loosers bracket, etc).

Far more mobility and progression this way, with a lot of burner accounts being gated out of the comp experience.

[GhostStryker-1159]

I think they should consider raising the level from 25 to 200 to play comp

[anon11337967]

Instead of a full reset, maybe instead make a partial? Let’s say that you would start a tier below where you ended the previous season. That means that Diamonds will start in Plat, Plats in Gold, Gold in Silver etc.
All in Master+ should start at Diamond (3000).

This will ensure that people will have some climbing to do. They will feel the progression, and first in mid-season will they hit the wall, that can be so frustrating. It will also ensure, that people that don’t belong at the higher tier for whatever reason (not the least boosting), will have to prove themselves by climbing again.

I would be very much in favor of Stops where you couldn’t fall. I am just afraid that it would be complete chaos around the Stops, as people would have nothing to lose.

[aeggin-1645]

For the self-silence, you can ctrl-shift-c to suppress chat and you can set it so you never join voice chat.

Not perfect but the keybind does last all match

[Jaydlav-1585]

It doesn’t sound like the problem here is multiple accounts. You can’t and shouldn’t stop people buying multiple accounts. It also doesn’t sound like a normal smurf is a problem because they should just rank up and be our of your way quickly.

If the problem is people are sabotaging games with no disregard for the consequences because they can just buy a new account, why are accounts banned and not players?

If i have 3 accounts and i get a player ban, why aren’t all my accounts banned so i actually cannot play. Surely your OW install has some kind of UID that can be passed around the accounts you play and enforce the ban? Hardware addresses?

If there are rules that don’t actually have a consequence when broken, they aren’t really rules.

[vonKlippe-1646]

Yes, but I can hit Esc and rejoin chat. If I silence myself with Parental Controls, I can’t undo it quickly. I recently got suspended for a week because I called out aimbotting and boosting and got mass-reported. No more of that. It’s just me and the game now.

[turtle-13106]

There’s hardly a problem here. Very easy to detect, warrants strong punishments, perhaps immediate account banning. If you could tie such smurfs to main accounts going after those is warranted too. Consoles are asinine or maybe how OW handles them. The actual problem that’s difficult to handle with multiple accounts is of a different nature.

[Starlord-22320]

I start to give up on it… One player can ruin a game whatever you play, even if the whole roster is your hero pool, even if you play outstandingly, one thrower in your team or a smurf in the enemy team can ruin a whole match. The cheaters are more blatant than ever. Not even flicking, but the crosshair teleporting to the enemies heads, players straight walking to enemies behind walls without their team having wallhack abilities, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Bot and boosting services are being marketed on Social Media in front of everyone without searching to it yet they dont even try to take it off. There are very well talented people stuck in lower ranks. I’ve seen silvers and golds with the skill of diamonds yet they never were able to climb even with them having the game from years.

The Devs have to do something ASAP. The MMR system is in ruins. The number of cheaters and abusers are growing every day. Putting a band aid on it doesnt help.