For the purposes of this discussion a smurf will be defined as a player who holds an account they keep in low rank solely to bully low-skilled players. They do this by pre-determining the outcome of matches by throwing or leaving.
This does not include alt accounts that are used to practice new heroes in a competitive environment
This isn’t going to be the usual rant about how I can’t get out of bronze because smurfs keep me there. Guess what. I am a bronze level player. It took me a while to accept that but I finally have. I am an adult with all the accompanying responsibilities that take up most of my time. I don’t have hours and hours to hone my skills. I would say I play less in a week than most of you do in a day. I am one of those filthy casuals. I’m also over twice the age of most of you and didn’t grow up playing video games. Reflexes slow as you age. It’s going to happen to YOU.
So what’s my gripe? As I mentioned I have limited time to play. When I go into a match and one to six players have already decided how it’s going to end, you have wasted my time and the time of the other six to eleven players. That’s just rude kids. It’s selfish, and shows a lack of basic manners and social skills.
I also wonder what’s happened in your life that you feel the need to bully people. It’s like playing dodge ball with small children and hurling the ball as hard as you can and knocking them down over and over. Wow, pathetic.
I was in a game the other day where the smurfs had decided this was going to be their win round. My team ended up unable to even get out of the spawn. Next game they were on my team. I called them on it and they started the usual BS about how I suck, etc. I explained about the time wasting thing and they told me if I didn’t like it I should go play something else. Excuse me? If you’re the problem, you leave. If you’re talking in a theater and disturbing the other patrons you don’t expect the rest of the people to leave.
I’ve been playing for about a year and a half now and it’s gotten worse and worse. I hope this makes an impression on some of you and encourages you to think about why you feel the need to bully people. You can be better. I believe in you.
People who smurf are the exact same people who walk though the hallways in school bumping into the little kids and knocking their books on the ground while laughing.
People who smurf have mental problems. It’s the only way they can make themselves feel powerful over others. These are the same people that if given the chance would become dictators in a country and control who they feel to be of lesser value.
OP literally mentioned in their post, clearly you didn’t read it all.
I agree OP. There are new players who come in to this game as well and they barely get a chance to know which way is up if they end up getting an enemy smurf that feels like stomping that round.
But those top 500 players who stream themselves doing it are just doing it to help lower ranked people! They have to experience what bronze is like so they can better teach bronze people \s
I can understand why someone wastes time to derank and stay in low ranks with the sole purpose to grief people. Smurfs might be antisocial idiots who throw their time to garbage just to annoy others, but their intent is clear.
What I never understood and still can’t understand are the people who defend smurfs, and in the same time they claim they aren’t smurfs. I mean, what’s the point in defending smurfing? What is the loss if these griefers get banned?
Note: Like op, I define smurfs as someone who deranks on purpose to grief people. Don’t confuse them with alt accounts
You know your rank, and you don’t need more than 2 if you wanted to play comp with a feiend or something.
All these “unranked to GM” challenges from streamers and stuff, it just ruins the game for so many people.
“Smurfing” by that definition is definitely an issue in Overwatch, among many other video games. And I’d be willing to bet a lot of players who defend smurfing are probably regularly smurfing and just don’t want their fun to be ruined so that other people can actually have fun for once. I think it makes them feel good about themselves, perhaps they don’t like the real challenge that comes by going against people of their own skill level so they’d rather stress other people out instead. Yes, that is selfishness and probably even psychotic.
While a good way to learn a game is to play against people who are better than you, when the skill gap is that drastically different, you are immediately dying and the only thing you are really learning is to simply not leave the spawn. It doesn’t make the game fun for the people who are genuinely trying to learn the game when even just two people in the game, on the same team, are high ranking smurfs playing against a full team of bronzes. People will act like smurfing isn’t an issue, but it is.
This factor is vastly overestimated in competitive gaming tbh.
I’m a 23 y/o female, and apparently my average reaction time is faster than my 15 y/o brother and my 12 y/o cousin.
I’ve also met people way older than me (with slower reflexes probably) who have much more SR than I do. They have gamesense and experience I can only dream of having, and great mechanics.
I’m not disagreeing with the main point of your thread tbh, just saying you shouldn’t believe you are destined to be Bronze forever because of age.
Jeff recently said that they are going to have a system that detects smurfs when 222 role lock comes out, so we’ll see.
I don’t smurf, but personally I think it should be allowed. I think you should be allowed to shed SR with the click of a button. I’m around 1900sr. I think everyone that has an SR higher than that has not only the right, but also the duty, to shed SR with the click of a button and enter my games and stomp all over me.
I feel this way because I think stopping sandbaggers brings about more problems that it solves. Note: I don’t think Plats and GMs entering my games is that big of a problem.
Overall I’m happy with my match quality. I just have a different outlook/philosophy about how a multiplayer ladder should be administered.
I blame my lack of time more than my age. If I played for hours every day I think I could at least be gold. Another thing that bothers me is that thanks to match manipulation by smurfs I’ll never know what my true SR should be.