It’s a Blizzard game, man.
Have you not learnt from the 20 years nearly of WoW expansions saying “XXXXXXXX will fix it”
They do not care about you, they do not care about your enjoyment, they do not care if you play the game, they do not care if you like the characters, they do not care to deal with your issues, they do not care to fix obvious wrongs with the game.
They care that you buy it. After that, you’re trash to them.
Learn from history, man. Overwatch 2 wont fix anything. It’ll just be the exact same antiquated system, but with 1 less tank… Then they’ll appear with a smiley face at Blizzcon telling you how much fun everybody had with the game (When nobody actually did).
No. They won’t care. Smurfing sells alternate accounts, and it sells big. There are many players with lots of alternate accounts, who buy the game just to have fun and demolish others while their victims scream. Toxicity of smurfing sells better than the actual gameplay (if you know what I mean).
They HAVE to reset MMR and SR for all players across the board. You cannot in good conscience have it be the same with 1 less tank role. If they don’t reset everything, then we know that they literally have no idea what they’re doing moving forward and can definitely skip OW2 esp if the comp will be a farce at that point.
My point being is that smurfing won’t be a thing because no one will need it. Everyone will start from scratch.
Well, this is the only thing that was mentioned by the former Game Director Jeff Kaplan regarding smurfs in Overwatch 2 which is specifically for console version on how that version players are able to create as many accounts as they want for free (except for Nintendo Switch) and they would like to address that but that’s mainly on Microsoft and Sony since that isn’t an Overwatch only issue it’s happening across all games on those platforms.
The devs officially did say that they now considered Smurfing as a problem and that they were looking for ways to combat it years ago at this point, but there has been no further development.
Judging by the financial aspect of it all, no, I don’t think anything will change.
Smurfing is their only revenue stream for the game right now.
There’s loads of derank to bronze groups in lfg. There’s streamers producing content where they stomp bronzes and lol about it.
There’s no effort to combat smurfing at all. Blizzard are just lying when they say they are. What’s their incentive? Game is 95% dead anyway, and smurfs are the last gasp revenue that they’re getting.
Maybe if ow2 moves to a $$ skins, or other repeat purchase model, they might deal with smurfs to help player retention.
I’m saying so many people, in competitive gaming, suffer from Dunning-Kruger, that, they wouldn’t know a real smurf from an above average player 90/100 times.
Can you point to the source for this? I don’t recall an official statement saying that smurfs are a problem. The last I remember is Jeff kaplan saying that they DIDN’T think smurfing was a problem due to MMR being able to pinpoint someone’s skill rating fairly quickly.
Whether they do or not will have nothing to do with player satisfaction or quality of life. They’ll run the numbers, and if it’s in their best interest to carry on with this issue as they have been, they will. I don’t think there’s any way to tell at this point.
This is hyperbole I guess, because if you mean it literally there’s no reason to believe what you’re saying is true. What’s the logic behind claiming that people cannot tell the difference between players two players of vastly different levels of skill?
You’re also probably using “smurf” more narrowly than most. Given that matches will have a 1000 SR difference between players, which can represent massive variances in skill, and people observe one player wiping the floor with everyone else (especially if it’s a new account), what difference should it make what the player is called? The result is the same, the matchmaker has shipped a match where they’re being dominated by someone who categorically better than everyone else and they don’t like it.
And this match was shipped by design – not pure luck. And this is not a rare occurrence. Why wouldn’t people complain about this?
Actually, its quite simple really. If the system works and is accurately placing people where they belong, people are in the rank they should be. If that is the established fact, then if we experience players steamrolling us, then obviously they do NOT belong in our rank because they are way better than said rank. Above average players do not result in a steamroll. Smurfs do.
Romulus was making the point that people don’t know whether they’re playing against smurfs or just much better players. My point was that officially allowing 1000SR gaps between players can ship matches with players so much better that they dominate matches, and unofficially, we know players can easily be 500 to 1000 SR off their true SR/skill rating which can mean shipping a match with an effective 2000 SR skill gap or more; so it doesn’t matter that it’s not a GM dominating their game, there’s still someone in their match dominating the match, effectively smurfing.
I think people use the word smurf differently. To a bronze or silver player, a sandbagging high gold player may appear to be a smurf (especially if they’re popping off hard); in that scenario it doesn’t have to be a GM on smurf wrecking everyone, turning the match into a stomp, where things seem really unfair. Because many of these accounts are new people have no idea what their true, final SR would be, they just know they’re categorically better than everyone else in the lobby.
tbh i think they’re making smurfing easier because in addition to hidden profiles it seems like they’re also removing the level border (maybe even hiding the level?). You won’t know anything about other players except the rank. Good luck detecting smurfs. Honestly i wish they change something. Comp shouldn’t be practicing range for high rank players.
It’s always been a farce.
They didn’t reset anything for hero limits. They didn’t reset anything for role queue. They aren’t going to reset anything for the OW2 update.