I guess because of some Netflix show, DOTA 2 are going to ban smurfs. I hope to God they bring that over to this game. I tried to post the link but the forums kick back “Sorry, you can’t include links in your posts.” I’m not sure why I can’t post a link to an article, but whatever. So, unfortunately, you’ll have to find it on Google. If you can post the link from METRO gaming or from the DOTA 2 press release, that would be great. In the meantime, I’ve quoted the relevant part from their release today (3/25/21):
BANNING SMURFS
Even the most fairly-matched games of Dota can spiral out of control. And no one wants the extra burden of playing against smurfs. In the past, we leaned heavily on attempting to detect smurf accounts and move them to their correct MMR more quickly, which has helped somewhat but still causes damage along the way in cases of extreme smurfing.
Starting today, smurfing will be a bannable offense. We will primarily focus on new accounts created after today for which we have high confidence in their smurfing and game-ruining behavior. Moreover, we will also occasionally manually ban old pre-existing accounts that are clearly game-ruining. Furthermore, if you are found to be selling accounts, boosting or engaged in similar game ruining behaviors, your primary account may also be subject to a ban. To go along with this, we’ve recently increased our ban rate for boosters and purchased accounts.
For cases where we don’t have extremely high confidence, but do have cause for smurf suspicion, those accounts are more likely to play with other suspected smurfs until we gain confidence to judge one way or the other.
If you do suspect someone of smurfing in your game, use the new post-game report option included in this update to flag them. This will help us track legit offenders and gather data used to inform our anti-smurf efforts moving forward.
What are your thoughts? Would you want this system in Overwatch? Why or why not?
While I would be only up for this, Dota2 is f2p while OW is not. Activision would never bite their own hand and ban players from buying more game copies.
Is this the one with the hot dude that’s nude sometimes? I feel like Overwatch would need something similar to get rid of smurfs. I expect a Netflix show filled with hunky fan service on my desk by next week, thank you.
That’s interesting. The game already has very aggressive matchmaking like what I’d see for this game. Like if you go 14-0 several games in a row it’ll thrust you into a way higher bracket to gauge if that’s where you belong.
It is a free game with an influx of new accounts that people are boosting to sell.
Selling to people who think “hard stuck” is a thing, amusingly enough. Wonder how account buyers reconcile their inevitable drop to where they belong? Probably their team’s fault, eh?
Banning smurfs and alts will increase the value of the game in other ways that may not be quantifiable.
The competitive experience will be better and taken more seriously and that attitude could spread to e-sports viewership, decreased Q times, and more tank players.
I have 10 smurfs across both PC and Console at this point, and I genuinely want smurfing to be bannable. It ruins literally, countless games, and discourages regular players from playing Comp at all.
I wish them the best of luck in determining who is and is not a smurf with “high” confidence. I would suspect though that anyone who has played a MOBA, but moved onto DOTA, would fall into that “high” confidence category
True activision will not implement this. They will just let Smurf’s continue to ruin the game and then once it is no longer profitable ditch the game or sell it off.
Activision is not smart enough or morally conscious to understand the problems in this game.