yeah i’m naive, i wouldn’t switch but hey i’m not everyone else
i mean what’s the point of making another account to learn something until you’re good enough to play it on the main when you don’t play it
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Hey, that is fair enough. In YOUR case it would work. But you are an outlier.
Most people get angry, and ruin people’s games.
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If you deserve a higher rank you will get to that rank, you simply arent a GM flex stuck in Gold due to his “bad teammates”, thats not how it works.
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I don’t see how this is a problem. Everyone plays heroes at different levels. I personally play heroes ranging from Gold-GM level. Yes, I am either that bad or that good depending on my pick. Nobody plays all heroes at the same level.
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so why are so many people in high SR tiers complaining about boosted people then?
because that’s effectively the same
this is incorrect, players with lower SR are inherently subjected to and screwed over more by the wrath of smurfs.
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No I am a support flex stuck because I rely on my teammates to kill stuff, better than 50% of the time the DPS just isn’t getting it done, add onto the 15% thrower/Smurf and the odds are sickeningly stacked against a Support solo Q.
screwed over more when compared to people with better SR, not when compared with people who have the same SR
What half the forum calls a smurf, no. (They are usually just alt accounts, placed correctly by the MM)
Actual smurfs (ie people who purposely derank, and throw 3 out of every 5 games to stay at a low rank to rofl-stomp and mock low ranked players) yes.
(But there aren’t many who do this, simply for the sheer amount of time they would waste throwing so many matches when they could be doing ANYTHING else with their lives.)
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Smurf accounts make it harder for the system place people in their correct elos, hence, protracting people’s time in the lower elos, which, sorry Blizzard, is absolute garbage. The amount of throwers, rage quitters, one tricks and smurfing in bronze cause nothing short of Chernobyl levels of burnout.
If Blizzard seriously wants to fix competitive, they need to make the ladder system more fluid and allow people to move up more quickly and conversely dropping more quickly. This will allow new accounts to hit their proper elos much more quickly, move many of the smurfs to where they need to be more quickly, and hell, even help throwers get to where they want more quickly so they’re not spending more teammates’ time.
It’s a matter of time. They’re using too much time to fix a matter of wasted time.
Here’s a great idea, let us use coins to buy soft-resets on our elos between seasons. That still gives incentive for people to buy loot boxes and we won’t see as many threads on this subject.
You’ve never heard of elo terrorists? XD
I agree, I’ve never understood the complaints about alt accts. The person on an alt account basically paid to play another hero without it affecting his SR. As long as they don’t switch up to their non-smurf characters they aren’t really “cheating”.
I would however petition Bliz to actually make smurf accounts obsolete by making it so each hero has their SR and the player can determine what SR they play by disabling heroes from play so that they can’t pub stomp people with their high rated main.
But…
I don’t agree with this. The likelihood that there is someone try harding on a one-trick smurf or One-role smurf is just as likely as someone throwing matches… which is all the same proportions as people on one account that may throw games so they can get low enough to play with their friends or the number of casuals on one account that don’t care about anything but the golden guns. To link not trying to smurf accounts defies logic.
Considering that most new accounta get placed mid-gold, the likelihood of smurfs negatively impacting games in gold are far greater then bronze. Silver actually might be the rank smurfs have the largest impact on… as they both rise and fall in that rank.
I play mostly on console… and I’ve never understood the lure of making an alt account. (I have mind you, but that was because my clan at the time wanted all our names to have cool sounding names… I ended up using that account as a solo q one-trick account when the clan disbanded before we leveled up enough to get into comp… and it ended up placing higher then my main and I kept climbing where it finished just shy of masters before the symm changes) Back to the point, the whole “practicing a hero until you get good enough for comp” is a load of crap and frankly on PC is a waste of money tbh. You should be playing QP if you are looking for mechanical practice… Once you have the mechanics down, your game sense and awareness should be transitional to comp. If you are a Masters player and don’t know where the other roles should position or what their job in the team is… do you really belong in masters? If you need to practice mechanics, practice accordingly in quickplay. You don’t need teammates to do what you need them to do if you are in there practicing the mechanics you want to do in comp. You can do that stuff in a custom game, qp, or training vs AI or the range.
I have a couple ideas that would be better then that… though I do like the idea of soft resets… I think they should be done automatically between seasons… kinda to make the tiers and seasons mean something.
I certainly don’t like the idea of throwing GM players in with bronze players… but at the start of the season having a wide range of say 2499 players and 2000 players on the same level and branching from there and have maybe GM and Masters all reset to 3500 and have to be earned every season.
I also strongly feel that we should be earning SR for each hero, not on a global level. Our global SR should be the avg of all our roles, but not necessarily… but we can see the SR for each hero so that we can clearly show and see that say, I’m 2200… but my Symm is say 2700 and the rest of the heroes I play at a 1900 level or something like that.
I have a feeling the system already does this… but it would be nice to show things so maybe a little of the toxicity can go away by wanting to force people on roles they aren’t comfortable with.
Like… if you were complaining about having a Symm on your team… but saw that they were 1000 sr lower on all the other heroes… wouldn’t you try to make the symm work at your elo?
Maybe it is just my wishful thinking… but I think there are some things that Bliz could do to curb the things people do not to trash their SR and the toxicity of meta enforcement.
I know I would love to be able to lock Symm off my roster so that I can compete more at the level of my other heroes instead of being handicapped by having a higher SR because of my Symm play. People do it now with alt accounts… why should we have to spend extra money to have a bunch of accounts just to compete with other heroes.
It would greatly increase the quality of the games across the ladder. It won’t stop the throwers who do so just to pub stomp someone… but nothing can be done to prevent that.
These two points seem contradictory, and highlight what I consider to be the main issue with any debate about smurfing. Either a person is smurfing or using an alt so that both keep their profile(s) public and they can practice a character in peace without others griping about their time played, winrate, or SR…
Or they are playing like they normally would and general destroying players. Unfortunately, the only thing that separates one type of smurf from another is their word. I have been in games with smurfs who got angry at a particular person and decided to pick their best character and teach whoever their target was a lesson…or to prove a point to someone on their own team. Even if they made the smurf account with the intent of just practicing or playing with a friend, there exists no line of game code that prevents someone from changing that intention whenever they want to.
Even with the consideration that someone is playing one her to practice them, that by definition means that they intend to play a character (or role) they don’t know very well, with little intention of swapping.
I don’t think that is really contradictory… but more two completely different types of players on alt accounts. The later type, who throws games to get lower… then pub stomp their way back up… well, you really can’t do anything about it, despite the constant calls for it in the forums.
However, you can limit the need for purchasing a new account just to compete on other heroes at different ranks. But. Money. So, yeah, again… that kind of no-harm smurfing isn’t going away either.
I don’t like the swapping debate. Swapping in general is a improperly glorified position. It is actually punished by the game itself, so it isn’t encouraged. Swapping should be something reserved for when the PLAYER can do things better on a different hero to help the team. If a player can’t do something on their best hero, that doesn’t mean they know another hero that can do what you are asking of them.
I think that is what boils down the whole swapping idea into more about control of other people, then actually what is going on in the game.
The easiest example is Pharah. The team gets rekt by pharah and tells the close range dps player to swap to “hitscan”. Maybe they can’t do it… but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a different technique to neutralize the pharah besides running headfirst into her with a “hitscan”. But people keep on running out in the open, instead of forcing the fight on their terms.
Its funny, when i’m on symm and I run into pharah and the team starts complaining about my hero pick… I usually end up being the one to kill the pharah when the team identifies the pharah as the issue and its my role on the team to handle her.
I’m better handling the pharah on Symm, then jumping onto widowmaker or a hitscan hero.
The key thing someone in the game needs to be is flexible. Otp can be more flexible if they know their hero well. Is it ideal or would it work on a pro-level where min/maxing is important? Nope. But we are playing on ladder where min/maxing gets less value then just being effective on your hero pick and working as a team.
From what the developers have said, those types of smurfs are the easiest to detect and is punishable. So I don’t agree with you here.
That is irrelevant to this point, though. We’re talking about smurfs who are NOT using their best character on purpose. By definition, they would definitely be able to handle most situations in lower ranks better with their main, because their main is ranked significantly higher to begin with.
So a smurf who doesn’t swap is effectively “throwing” in order to stay with a weaker character for practice.
Well it would be ok except that 99% of smurf are DPSONLY or DPSONETRICKS.
You get matches with 9/12 players locking in DPS, 3 are DPS instalockers, 3 are Smurfs that don’t switch, and 3 are just tilted AF players who can’t take it anymore.
But of course a role-q would create a worse environment /s
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As much as people complain about smurfs, when I’m on my alt account my teammates beg me to tank/heal when I mention I main those on a diamond account. So people only complain about smurfs not on their team. They’re quite hypocritical.
Someone suggested locking heroes that would be considered smurfing on an account, and I would love that. Unfortunately it would also allow more toxic behavior because everyone would just lock all tanks/heals so they justify instalocking dps.
Alt accounts probably do skew the curve a bit down because they have the awareness and aim of higher ratings, putting more accounts in the higher ratings. But smurfs are a wild card in every game. They can’t solely determine the outcome of a game but they can greatly influence it more than the other 11 players.
I could see that, but that is already a thing in LFG. You can form a small group, have roles locked, and never be allowed by the game to pick anything other then the role you queued for… even when matched up on a team with randoms.
I think if they made it so you were forced to leave at least 6 heroes unlocked, then there wouldn’t be an issue or be any more game breaking then the LFG system they gave us.
I mean, you could view comp that was as being a mode where you can only play your best heroes.
But then reality called and actual people play the game. If you force everyone to be on their best hero, then when the matchmaker puts the team in a situation where people need to play suboptimally in order to win… you kinda throw the whole logic out the window. If a GM widow decides to play their Gold level Rein in GM on a widow map because the team needs a barrier tank and maybe even the rein main decided to play widow this game… is that considered throwing? No. How would it be any different?
Maybe the guy just wants to play Rein… you will call him as throwing if he chooses Rein in GM over the Rien OTP and refuses to swap for the OTP. But if he was to do that in gold where he would properly place as Rein, where would the problem be? What makes him different and “throwing” because he wants to compete in a fair game on Rein? Just because he could play widow at GM? What matter is it if they are on an alt account, or widow is locked, to get down to a lowe SR to find a fair match for everyone involved.
This of course assuming he is a gold rein playing in gold… and not a GM rein playing in gold. You have to acknowledge people have different skill levels on different heroes and that the pretty number we have is only indicitive of our playtime… not the avg of all our hero skills.
Actually, it would be considered throwing by lots of people. The way that I would see this is as a fundamental flaw and failing of the ranked system as a whole. Unless you are at the absolute top or the absolute bottom of the players online on every conceivable character, you can either play to win, or you can play to get better–and not both. The vast majority of us have strong characters and weak characters, but SR is not designed to take that into consideration–either your entire team wins or your entire team loses.
No smurf placing in a lower rank can ever have a fair match in a lower SR. People hardstuck at any SR are hardstuck there because they legitimately don’t know what to do to get better and/or lack any options which they can take to turn a lost game around. Someone who is smurfing does not have that problem unless they deliberately handicap themselves; if they choose to stay only as Reinhardt and do not know how to win this game as Reinhardt, they are still not in the same position as someone who is a true Gold Reinhardt who is absolutely stumped as to what is going wrong. It is no different than someone who’s a Diamond Mei staying stuck in Bronze because they choose to only use right click and no other abilities. By design, they are playing this rank so that their original account’s SR will be safe while they learn to play within a specific handicap.
Again, I can speak from experience on this.
I can agree with this part. I actually think the SR system is designed to break off on individual heroes, but the UI doesn’t show us this.
They can if the SR system is accurate and the smurf continues to play the same way with the same handicap. It appears that you think that the system should be able determine skill based off data points that it hasn’t been given?
No one is hard stuck. They are limited by some form of personal handicap if they don’t climb. Much like the smurf who got to a low rank did so… again… if the SR system is actually a good indication of “skill” at the game.
Remove the handicap and someone climbs. For the smurf, it might be… getting them off a controller, or on another hero. For the person who isn’t smurfing… it could be just improving their mechanics, gamesense, or even… finding a different hero that suits their playstyle and personal skillset.
You can’t distinguish a person who started out playing say, Mercy because they wanted to heal… but then while playing other heroes they had never tried before, found out they were the best at Symm, despite how much they liked mercy. Then when the player starts playing Symm full time, shoots up the ranks. (Which btw, really happened to me when I first started playing)
Exactly. So what is the problem? It is human nature to want to protect the achievements you have already received. People also want to be able to play the game in other ways.
Ok… what you haven’t addressed is what will happen if by some magical method, Bliz is able to tie every account into a real person and mandate that each person is only allowed one account in Comp.
So you have someone try hard up to say Diamond on their “best hero” but then find themselves being restricted by their hero pool. So after spending a lot of time in QP, they bring their play up to about a gold/silver level.
They start playing the new hero/s in comp… and start losing because they are not good enough to be playing those heroes at a diamond level. This is ruining games for Diamond people. Playing to win and their best… they drop down to low plat… still playing badly with their new hero.
They get insulted on the forums when they come in and complain about something and get motivated to try hard again.
So in plat… they are just wrecking face in some games when they play their main, but basically throwing when they fill to team needs on their gold heroes. That then makes EVERY game they play in plat a horrible experience for someone in the game depending on which team our player gets and if he has to fill or not.
Player is not smurfing, he’s not throwing, he’s legitmately playing the game to win and doing what he feels is the best to try to win. But because he is trying to do everything on one account, the system has absolutely no idea what to do with him and how to match him.
Now, you give this same player two accounts. One where he plays the new hero… and the other where he plays his main. Both accounts as long as he limits himself to only those heroes he will be matched in the game with his skill peers (all of this assuming the MM is actually good). Everyone has good games.
Problems only occur when said new gold account… the player then plays his main and stomps everyone… either because the guy gets tilted like has been said… or simply he might not be able to pick the hero he was playing on the low account… or maybe he just uses it to play with his friends because of the range cap.
It becomes obvious that a player that is not being purposefully nefarious that there is a solution to be found in indiv hero SR and self locking heroes before queuing. It encourages only having one account and allows a player to fairly step around all the roadblocks and restrictions in comp to do just normal desires in the game without jeopardizing the SR system’s attempt at having fair and even matches for competition.
To ignore the desires of the player base to play more and a varied hero pool in comp… to play with friends… and to have fair, equal, fun matches… is like sticking your head in the sand.
I understand your desire for everyone on your team to be playing their best in comp. However, we all know that it isn’t possible and is even outright toxic to force people to play the way you want them to. Maybe the 4000 mercy main is sick and tired of playing mercy. But you are going to force them to compete on mercy because well, they are one of the best Mercy mains? It is against the spirit of the game and that attitude is what made the developers slap us with private private profiles.