I mean, Blizzard intentionally gave away tens of thousands of free accounts just to boost active player numbers. And it hasn’t helped game balance. So what do you think would happen?
6 Likes
Ok, i missed something there, can someone explain it to me ?
About account gift
50000 accounts were recently given away.
2 Likes
Agreed. But, you know, they can’t really criticize Overwatch’s terrible matchmaking system and smurfing issue because they have a special forum title and text color. But when you have so many people complaining about smurfing, it should be looked into rather than mentioned (by Jeff Kaplan himself) that it isn’t an issue after all.
Surely people who often play competitive modes for example, are not that dumb that they cannot easily judge or assess when somebody on their team, or an opponent of theirs, doesn’t belong in that ranking. It’s extremely easy to tell that if anything, Blizzard staff are the ones who are oblivious by just ignoring the issue.
7 Likes
Just a word of advice. Do not mention or criticize the development team at all. I had an account get silenced because I warned someone not to name a developer, and I accidentally quoted their post which had the developer’s name in the post. That’s how militant they are about it these days. They take it very seriously.
2 Likes
Criticizing or giving constructive feedback here on the forums is acceptable, but what is not acceptable is unconstructive insults or having a topic title trying to call out Blizzard inappropriately.
I warned someone not to call out developers by name, and I was silenced because I quoted them in my post. That’s pretty sad and not in good faith IMO.
1 Like
And I’m sure everyone loves how they can’t tell if Blizzard even cares about what they’re saying on these forums. Of course if they can’t tell, the only reasonable assumption is that they don’t. So that’s nice.
6 Likes
Oh, they care. Remember, this is the same company who BANNED someone from tournaments for daring to call for freedom in his country. They care, and they’ll silence anyone who disagrees with them.
3 Likes
I most recently spoke with Community Manager Josh Nash, and he assures me they work very hard to accumulate feedback from the forums, reddit, and social media. Yes they do collect feedback from signficant content creators, Overwatch League, pro players, and even me to an extent (I save my direct feedback/communication for game-breaking critical issues or promotion problems like how Mercy Contenders skins weren’t dropping for a lot of players), but in the end, they are tracking the feedback on these forums and work to continue to deliver on solutions to improve the game as a whole. Looking-for-Group, endorsements, Avoid as Teammate, increased leaver penalties, etc. are all steps toward that goal. They do consider how much disruptive behavior is out there and how much of it is coming from persons who own multiple accounts.
If in the event, they feel that simply owning an alternate account is wrong, then they will do something about it. However considering it specifies in the End User License Agreement itself that it is acceptable to have multiple accounts, I doubt they would put a stop to alternate account use entirely.
Lol, I don’t need to look at the license agreement to know they don’t care. Actions speak louder than words and their history of ignoring smurfs is evidence enough. And seriously, of course people are going to try and attach their own explanation to why Blizzard doesn’t care about smurfs. To my knowledge Blizzard has never said why they don’t care about smurfs as a problem, so no matter how insane or conspiratorial of a reason people think smurfs are around, I can’t even blame them. They’re working with incomplete information and Blizzard isn’t exactly helping to fill in the gaps.
That actions speaks louder than words thing goes for other parts too. We can have all the “assurances” in the world. It won’t matter if the changes being implemented are in complete contradiction to things that a large majority of the people here agree on (yes, those do exist). All that does is it makes people here feel ignored. Yeah, I get it. Balancing is complicated business. That’s why they get paid for it and what we paid for when we bought the game.
5 Likes
I can’t remember the last time I saw a smurf.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
I ran into a legit smurf… almost 2 ******* years ago in a comp match. I was getting KO by a Widow with exceptional aim so I and my duo (in our greatest of noob mind) concluded that he was a smurf.
Oh wait, you are talking about NOT encountering one? Well, I mostly play QP nowadays where I can get match against master level and up players all the time. Does that count? QP MM is extremely laxed anyway and most of these guys are “Master in one rank but Silver in the others” players anyway.
I also don’t have knee jerk reaction to players who are clearly better than I am. Except in Destiny 2, so many cheaters
It’s pretty rare I see anything I could call a smurf in QP. I see plenty of obvious alt accounts, but for the most part they are appropriately placed.
The vast majority of rolls I see are due to better teamwork on one side.
It’s not perfect, and never will be, but nothing even remotely close to what I see talked about the on the forums.
Smurf, or Alt Account? Smurfs are in low ranks, Alts are in high ranks.
See smurfs all the time. Soldier 76, level 2 (i.e. no stars and a 2). 26 kills against a team of 2,3, and 4K players. Watched his play. His knowledge of the venues, aim, reaction, was way over his level. Just plain not fun to play against. Can change the whole game dynamics. It would be pretty easy for Blizzard to pop in an algorithm to flag this. I have no problem getting my butt kicked by a better player, That’s how you learn and get better. But it’s a waste of time when a low level player dominates the game. It’s a total joke when there are two or three in the game. I’ve gotten to the point where I will bail from those games. Just don’t have the time to deal with it.
7 Likes
Pretty much this. I see throwers far more often than I see “smurfs.” Or maybe they are smurfs, trying to derank. But I rarely come across games where someone on the enemy team, or my team for that matter, is so good that it’s just laughable. I HAVE had it happen, but it’s a rare occurance.
…I should mention I play on PC though.
Oh yeah I get towing the company line, I understand ~ but that doesn’t mean WyomingMist needs to show up with a smartalek remark about how it’s just the OP’s fault because they can’t tell what a Smurf is or isn’t. In my book that’s just presumptive and rude, and it’s a personal choice if you want to be that.
8 Likes
I don’t play DPS that often so I figure I get about as many Smurfs on my own team as on the other team - thus evening out the effect of them.
Cool, what rank are you?
3 Likes