To be fair a good UR2GM that’s meant to be educational will not just smash their way through ranks. They’ll explain what and why they’re doing as they’re doing it, and won’t abuse their mechanical skill too much.
ML7’s videos helped me many years ago when I was learning Ana. He could have just decimated the gold and plat lobbies by himself but he held back and played more in line with how players in those ranks would, and emphasized good decision making and positioning over mechanics.
With that said, unfortunately those cases are somewhat rare and most UR2GM “challenges” are just to milk mediocre content.
As far as I understand, the distinction between a smurf and a simple alt account is, are they playing the game normally, and trying to reach top 500? That’s an alt. So long as they’re following the rules, not sabotaging or trying to needlessly ruin the experience for everyone, than they’re playing the game as intended.
Now, if after reaching top 500, they start going into matches and intentionally throwing in an effort to drop back down to bronze, that is smurfing. The intent being to continually face ever lower ranked opponents.
I had two friends in OW1 that would smurf. They hit top500 early on, and got sick of not just super sweaty matches, but waiting an eternity for a single game. So what they’d do, is go into a match, play their best and essentially stomp the enemy team, but then at the very end they’d relent and still let the enemy come back and win. Basically a show of “we could’ve won if we felt like it”.
For some reason, somewhere along the way, the term ‘smurf’ was conflated to mean “losing to an opponent who I can see (or in many cases, ‘feel like’) is better than me” which is not the case.
Why wouldn’t they? They sure encourage it. That’s the whole reason it went free-to-play - so the player numbers look bigger. Just yesterday I had a Genji tell me to “find myself” and “eat his donkey” because he clearly didn’t care, since he knew it’s just a smurf.
It’s only smurfing if he’s throwing to go against lesser players.
Unranked to GMs suck for the other players for a few games, then the matchmaker figures out the player is really good and quickly moves them up the food chain. It’s nowhere near as predatory as smurfing.
From the devs themselves.
One-trick accounts, unranked to GM, whatever, they’re all considered alt accounts.
Blizzard considers an account throwing to stay at a lower level to be smurfing, such as bronze to GM accounts. There’s a reason why you’ll see bronze to GM streamers get accounts banned mid-stream and never unranked to GM streamers.
Agreed. People can play multiple games in the same genre and it’s ok. The problem with OW is the other similar games are not the greatest and do not compare that well. Marvels is fast paced, has similar abilities and play styles but is refreshing unlike OW which has become very stagnant.
I agree I do not hate the OW but it definitely needs good competition to incentivize better updates from the team.
I thought I was the bad guy for making new accounts after hitting gm with Lucio so I could avoid xim users. If I just record it, post the games to YouTube and call it “educational” then I guess I’m not a bad guy
I’m really not trying to be pedantic or needlessly argumentive here, but if we follow the above definition, then aren’t we all smurfing at one point or another, whether or not we mean to?
For instance, you might go on a hot streak of wins that temporarily ranks you up from gold to plat. But your first plat game, there are a few silver ranked players on the enemy team and you stomp them. Would it be correct of those silver players to call you a smurf?
Or lets take the inverse, you go on a loss streak and drop from gold to silver. In your first silver match, there are bronze players on the enemy team and you’re destroying them. If they told you you’re a smurf, are they right?
I guess the bigger question is, is smurfing something you do or something you are?
In other words, does creating a new account and jumping into a game make you a smurf (something you are)? Or does continually throwing games to ensure you always play people of a lower level smurfing (aka something you do)?
If I have the criteria mixed up, I’m willing to admit that. But in my mind, smurfing is an intentional action you take with a specific goal in mind. Throwing a match here or there? That’s just throwing. But repeatedly throwing matches over and over to ensure you’re always against lower ranked opponents is more egregious. But hey, maybe I’m just splitting hairs.
Look, if you want to know even where the term came from, here is a quick google serarch
“The term “smurf” originated in the game Warcraft II when two skilled players created new accounts under the names “PapaSmurf” and “Smurfette” to avoid being played against by other players. The term “smurfing” is now used to describe when a player creates a new account to play against lower-ranked players, or when a player uses multiple accounts”
This is from google AI (which is sometimes wrong) but in this case is correct.
It’s when you are a higher ranked player, purposefully playing against players that are much lower ranked than you are.
Smurfing is both something you do and are. If you are smurfing, you are playing against lower ranked opponents. You are a smurf.
You can throw to make that happen, but that is called throwing, not smurfing.
With that in mind, I genuinely have no problem with people creating new accounts and playing to T500, given they’re playing the game the way it’s meant to be played, and I’m just speaking for myself on that one… not making a declaration of whether it is right or wrong.
In order to be a Smurf you must take some explicit action to force yourself into games lower than you belong either by throwing or leaving or buying a used account (don’t do these). Making an account and playing it normally is not a Smurf.
