I perform very differently on both PC’s so I have two different mmr / sr’s to reflect this.
I do not intentionally derank to destroy lower ranking players
I do not intentionally play or do anything to be a troll to my team.
Not everyone with more than 1 account is a smurf.
Also while we are on the subject.
I welcome smurfs on the other team.
I’m a firm believer that you don’t get better at the game playing against people your own rank ( or lower obviously ). I’d rather play against people that are better than me.
With the only exception to this rule being a solo queue player put against a 6 stack. This should never happen!!
To contribute, the term “smurf” is extremely ambiguous and really does not pin down a specific disruptive behavior (just like the term toxicity). Again in my personal opinion, the concept of smurfing is greatly exaggerated among the community.
I think it is more important to define actual disruptive behaviors.
Throwing/Deranking - Any account used to deliberately play below the actual skill of that player. This can be done to either troll other players or attempt to find matches faster to just play the game. However, deranking for any reason is a considered Gameplay Sabotage and a violation of the Blizzard Code-of-Conduct.
Boosting - Either accessing another account that you do not own or grouping up as a new account to boost another player to a higher rank. Both of which are violations of the Blizzard Code-of-Conduct.
Bronze to GM Challenges - This means throwing to first go all the way down to Bronze then play seriously to work their way back up the ladder. Since it involves throwing to some capacity, it is a violation.
Unranked to GM challenges - Starting a new account and try to get to GM as quickly as possible. This is more gray area and I think this issue should be addressed by Blizzard. For example, “drunk unranked to GM” or “One-trick-pony unranked to GM challenges” I would consider to be gameplay sabotage as you attempting to play in a compromised matter.
Simply playing on an alternate account - As long as you are playing at your best to your known skill, you should be fine.
Realistically, what could Blizzard even realistically do to stop or deter alternate accounts, that doesn’t make it difficult for new or existing players to play? I have heard things like raise the XP level, but that makes it more annoying for new players and really would not solve certain issues for existing alternate accounts. I have heard ideas like IP or hardware bans, but there are lots of legal questions that come up. The only effective idea to reduce impact would be to wrap Competitive in a season/battle pass moneygate, and I don’t think the community would be happy about such an idea.
i would be surprised if this post is still up because people on the forums get so mad when you talk about smurfs in general. When people complain about smurfs its just a defense mechanism for “i can’t get good so lets find a way to put the blame on something else”.
It is. But the most common use for “Smurf” in this context is someone on an alt account either trying to ruin the experience for others with a lack of care for the consequences or someone deranking to outright destroy the other team’s less skilled players without remorse.
Ngl, every smurf is just potentially a normal alt, unless you specifically see someone deranking, or specifically see someone in bronze/silver playing too good, they could just be doing their starting placements onto whatever rank they belong in.
And yet people say smurfs exist in qp and arcade, despite those people being normal alts.
Not to mention you could have an alt for any number of reasons.
Practicing a hero you don’t play-doesn’t count as smurfing
Ranking up to your real rank in another account-doesn’t count as smurfing
Come from a different platform-doesn’t count as smurfing
List goes on and on.
That way smurfs thought me so hard in mid diamond, so I felt masters rank is like a second plat for me. But our low elo hardstuck pepegas don’t want to improve, they want their own sandbox where they’ll play forever, griefing at low ranks, and they don’t even realise this is the same way as smurf does.
This is mostly not applied to “smurfs”. Smurfs, in general, are low level/new accounts in a game performing well above their intended performance, such as showing above average mechanical skill, aim, ability/resource management, etc.
This description that you’ve listed, best fits to alts, which are not the same as smurfs.
There are some very legitimate purposes to having an alternate account. For example, my alternate account is strictly used for testing purposes to learn and re-learn about key features of Overwatch from a new account perspective. I also use it when I need to control the game from two positions (such as when I am building a custom game and need to test a few things to make sure it works correctly).
Once again, I say the term “smurf” is ambiguous. It is often perceived to mean too many different things from different points of view. Just like when I said “Anakin, the good man that was your father was destroyed” was true from a certain point of view.
So it is important to identify what is considered disruptive to the game and maintain balance in the Force.
(Sorry for the Star Wars meme, but I couldn’t resist.)
