Do not put valve in the same basket as blizzard lol, they are not even close to comparable, valve taken some serious steps against cheaters and smurfs a like. Not to mention they allow for outsourced MM systems that cost actual $$$ to play on, services that at the same time put great efforts in to ensuring the quality and fairness for all players.
Practicing heroes you dont usually play and cant practice at your elo is not gaming the system, its necessary for improvement.
At the same time switching to his main and wrecking people because he can is a really BM thing to do.
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People are still complaining about me swapping to Genji.
If people are intentionally going to be assholés I am going to do something about it.
I will do it again, I really couldn’t care less if I get banned on my alt.
I never abused the system to purposely get put lower, I just played Heroes I am not strong with. WHICH I ALREADY STATED, LEARN TO READ.
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My friend, are you sure they are not calling you cheater because they think you are cheating? You see, there is some aimbot leak that has happened in the past two weeks and everyone is cheating with hanzo, genji, tracer, widow, mcree etc. Maybe they report you for that? Blizzard can flag your account maybe even just by seeing this post and look at it to find out if you are, so you can easily prove that you are indeed not cheating, so do not worry about it.
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Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, and I can honestly say my view on this issue has done a 180 to my current view, which is i enjoy fighting smurfs.
My reasoning is this: highest ive ever been is gold. Current rank, rat league bronze. Im a support main who loves Zen (though I get told to mercy 90% of the time). Dealing with smurf widows and tracers has actually helped me be a better zen. Simple things like charging M2 after establishing widows position and doing a super quick peek to get that volley headshot. Against bronze widows I could stand still and pump M1 at them for minutes without being looked at.
My point is, smurfs FORCE people to be better at the game, in fact it’s kind of a handicap for the team the smurf is on, and long term they learn less from the fight than we did fighting against the smurf.
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People get salty when they see someone better than them.
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I think it goes do method of deranking and intent of account.
Honestly, if I took this account and just played more I would drop. Not because of ill intent or throwing, but because my reaction time sucks when I’m tired and I’m tired most nights when I can play.
When I got on to play on Saturday mornings, though, I’d totally stomp.
There’s a difference between being inconsistent and smurfing. But it’s a difference in intent, not in effect.
I generally only use the term “smurf” to indicate an account that deliberately throws in an effort to make games easier. It’s super easy to lose a game but hard to win when you are correctly ranked. If you want easy wins, you have to force losses.
That’s why this particular case is difficult. He went for the easy win, but didn’t force losses in the process.
I think it’s the forcing of losses that is the problem. It’s likely that you will need to lose more than you win. Honestly, if the wins and losses were equal I’m wouldn’t say it really affects comp. Bad for QoL, but fine for ranking. If you bring more people down than you bring up though, that’s a problem.
I think he should feel bad. I think he should have the integrity and self-control to not do it again, but I don’t think that NOT holding yourself back is cheating, necessarily. It’s not like he promised anyone but himself that he wouldn’t do it.
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Whether they were toxic or not doesn’t warrant giving yourself a free win or them automatically losing, as nice as that would be. People deal with toxicity the all the time. It’s not fair that you had the Genji option in your pocket which is something the system is wholly unaware because you made the account for playing off main. It’s cheap and no one else in your situation playing in their proper ranking have that option because they’re where they should be.
It breaks whatever balance the system is trying to have in place because your overall group sr is realistically higher with the genji taken in account which is the main reason I’d report it. The only time I’d be cool with someone pulling out their main in a smurf account is if the other team blatantly did it first because it balances again.
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wtf is this even a thread? who cares really
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So from what I gather, you want everyone to pat you on the back because you kneejerk reacted to the enemy team simply saying “easy” (yeah it’s not nice but you think that’s reportable???) and are literally bypassing the forum profanity filter when not even provoked.
And then boasting about not being banned and not even caring if you are. Yeah, you sound like a lovely individual. I don’t support this, knowing your rationale. You know if you played your main on that account you’d climb out of that rank. So instead you just play your main when your ego is bruised by both your team and the enemy’s… knowing that this is supposedly your account to practice heroes you may just not do well on.
For someone who acts so entitled, you certainly seem to need a lot of justification and affirmation.
To be clear, I’ve never encountered a smurf in this kind of situation, to my knowledge, so I have no personal bias. You just give me really bad vibes the more you talk.
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No you obviously weren’t cheating. If you’re a master/GM player, I highly recommend you stay off the forums on the topic about smurfing. It’s treated like child molesting here, especially since the majority of the posters are plat or below.
You will get a very biased and negative response, it’s really pointless.
Should read the comments lol. The majority says he isn’t cheating. Hate people assuming ![:joy:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=5" ":joy:")
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To be honest it is not hard to answer the question.
Wikipedia: Cheating is the receiving of a reward for ability or finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation by dishonest means. It is generally used for the breaking of rules to gain unfair advantage in a competitive situation.
Competitive has reward system (SR, Gold weapons). How valuable it is, is another question, but it’s obvious you get reward in an easy way by playing at lower ranks thus having advantage over other players, so in most narrow sense it is cheating.
Nevertheless we can get a bit deeper and somewhat justify smurfing. For example you play as god on tracer but get 6 dps composition in Masters/GM (theoretical example) and wish to learn healer which you have no idea how to play with. Quickplay/Arcade can be an option but QP has immediate fill ins and the game doesn’t feel the same way as competetive therefore you buy another account and start ranking up as Zen.
You don’t know how to play Zen (on the same level as Tracer) therefore your actual (ZEN) SR is lower than normal (Tracer) which makes it ok to play in lower ranks (you still have better mechanics, game sense, map knowledge, etc., but some of the advantages can be carried from CS:GO, TF2, etc., I mean you wouldn’t start at zero anyway).
The problem starts when you get irritated as your team picked up 5 dps’es (fckn bronze, silver, gold players, am I right), you can’t heal out, so you switch to Tracer, dominate a bit, influence the game and when victory becomes easy to obtain you switch to Zen or stay Tracer and justify yourself by telling it is team’s fault that you had to switch.
Now this is cheating as you switched to something you have huge advantage with against other players in a place where you shouldn’t have one (GM player at bronze with his main).
Then people start crying/complaining that they can’t climb out of bronze/silver/gold/platinum/etc. They get usual response of try harder, you belong there, etc. In a way, that’s true, but if smurf plays with his friends and carries them, it’s cheating cause his friends get unfair advantage and rank up, while enemy team drops their SR not due to their lack of skill (for that tier) or lack of communication (usual to that tier) or somebody leaving (usual for that tier) but because of the potentialy gold players were figuratively raped by player who is way higher than their potential SR.
To sum it up:
high player with his main in lower ranks is cheating by default (whether for his personal gain or the benefit of his friends);
high player with his alt hero in lower ranks can be justified if he does not revert to his main the second he doesn’t like the odds of the game;
throwing a game to stay in rank (whether for “fun” or to maintain rank to improve more) is non smurf related problem and should be bannanle by itself.
Competetive is ment to reveal the skill of players by measurable rating and influencing it is wrong for the system itself despite the intentions of said player.
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You’re not boosting, so you’re good in my books.
And hey, even if you played sub-optimal heroes, the system PLACED you in that rank. So that’s CLEAN. I assume you didn’t throw games to get into that rank? So its not your fault.
Crybabies throw the word “cheater” when they get rekt by a skill level they cant accept.
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Well it’s kinda like the Clark Kent / Superman thing.
You’re doing this so you can learn the heroes you have much less experience with. You can’t learn to play them in the SR rank your mains have brought you up to without pulling your team down… so you gotta smurf.
But then you see some jerk on the other team start bagging your mates and you gotta find a phone booth and tear off that shirt and throw down Kryptonian style.
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I would say that this is a problem brought on by the rules, also the ones you set up for yourself and your own integrity.
It’s not against the rules, but if you are a master/gm Genji on your main, and a gold plat on your Hanoi, Mccree account…
And as a response to getting smashed on Hanzo, you switch to Genji…
You aren’t cheating but polluting that rank.
Again, this is why comp isn’t really competitive.
I hate people assuming too, when you actually have eyes and read the forum, you will know the general consensus towards smurfing. Which is the topic at hand. Funny isn’t it?
This precisely. Also the whole system essentially solves smurfing by itself, with performance based SR. As long as the smurf isn’t throwing and is winning, he will obviously get out of that rank range. With enough games played anyone who was remotely “affected” by the said smurf would easily balance out their SR too.
It literally, makes no difference. Just something bad players want to conveniently blame other than themselves, as usual.
It’s a complete joke to say that someone who is smurfing is “cheating” the elo system. It is completely no different from someone else coming in with a lot of talent, either from another game or just natural talent. Simply illogical salt.
Cheating not really but unfair.
Smurf lead to unfair match who lead to a toxicity in the enemies team and may be leaver.
Smurf is a big part of the toxicity problem in Overwatch in my opinion.
Example yesterday : i played against a player who was great master in saison 3 and 4 than only plat now (to play with this friend i presume). The gap in skill was soo big that half of the team tilted in the
first minutes of the game. We got rekt. It was fun for him but not for my team.
To have fun with your friend you have QP or arcade or custom game
Step 1: Play heroes you are bad at on new account
Step 2: Get placed and play at a lower elo
Step 3: When games are not going good switch to higher elo heroes so you can carry the game
Step 4: Carry
Step 5: Get mad the other team doesn’t like the FAIR match they were expecting to have is not because it was based on heroes you are bad but now you are playing your main heros.
Step 6: Cry about being a scumbag on the forums
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