Depends on your deifnition. Most people do not consider alt accounts as smurfs (in fact the opposite). It’s why they’re commonly distinguished by calling them alt accounts, not smurfs.
Yes I know, and agree 100%. People who throw should be hard banned.
“Smurfs” throw matches, and continually ruin matches in every match they play. Alt accounts only ruin matches up until where they stabilize. Someone actually trying will typically stabilize quickly. For high GM it’s probably a few dozen matches, most of which in higher ranks like masters and low GM. Most of these accounts have stabilized MMR from quick play and their placement matches often already start them in mid diamond at least.
The problem isn’t really 1 single person on a new account coming from console as much due to the massive SR gains used for first time placements. That’s a fairly limited and self-correcting problem. That player isn’t soft throwing (or hard throwing) his placement games to avoid the SR bonuses so he can stay at a lower SR than he belongs.
The problem is when an existing player keeps making accounts over and over and over. We’ve all had that one guy in our match that is playing hammer only Torb and being toxic and you ask why and hear “this is my 8th account, it’s hammer Torb only!” or you have the top 500 ladder with one person’s alts in the 1st-10th spots and you realize that top 500 is really top 200 or top 300.
That one person making multiple accounts has 8 or 10 times the impact of that one guy that’s just coming in from console. And usually worse, because bad behavior tends to follow when someone has more Overwatch accounts than they have clean underwear.
Deranking is not bannable. It’s incredibly easy to make it look like you’re just bad, and without being able to see your match history players have no way of seeing the patterns in your performance.
And queueing up with players who are better than you isn’t bannable either, so you can totally get boosted and, again, nobody can prove that you did it on purpose.
Well, yes. Shooting over the enemies heads or just charging/running in a bunch of enemies.
But some (lazy? ) derankers (I met a few ) don’t really try to hide their intentions. An emoting or ‘Ionlyshootanddietonotgetkicked’ D.va here, a walltrolling Mei there…
Not trying to be rude here but it’s you that doesn’t understand. Here is my quote again.
If you’re having trouble understanding that wall of text
TLDR: Alts and smurfs have one important thing in common, they change the outcome of the game. Changing even 1 result creates a “domino effect” on EVERYONE’S sr. This utterly destroys competitive integrity (there is none) so nobody truly knows what rank they’d be if smurfs or alts didn’t exist.
Not only is it morally wrong to alt or smurf, it is also cheating. It damages a system and damages everyone’s SR. Finally you hurt yourself by not learning the hard way, and you hurt others by playing in ranks you shouldn’t. It hurts everyone.
Exactly. 15 games are 15 games ruined by one single person. Now factor in that a lot of people have several smurf accounts and new ones are being made daily. That’s a lot of ruined games.
This is actually, entirely “his fault”. The disagreement seems to be fairly simple; GM players belong in GM, any other rank they play in is widely considered an unfair gameplay advantage. Buying a new account and playing with lower ranked players fits this description perfectly.
Again, flip the situation; place a bronze or silver in GM matches and see what transpires there. Is your opinion still the same?
All in all, smurfing, and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even alt accounts, need to go. Revenue can be and is generated in other ways.
A single smurf or alt is playing to stabilize. It takes roughly 15 games. Each one of those 15 games is played with 11 other people randomly from each elo. At a maximum, this affects 165 other people right? Wrong. Each one of those outcomes is considered “rigged”. Which means people who may have won the game had the smurf/alt not been there, are now moved down, instead of up. Which then places them lower, effectively multiplying the affect by the number of smurf/alts in that elo. (potentially it can push someone from mid-plat to mid gold, depending on a multitude of variables) This now causes players who aren’t smurfing or deranking or alting, to be placed in matches against people above their skill level (and rush to the forums to hunt smurf heads).
The cascade effect of a single alt/smurf is astronomical compared to what most people “think” it is.
I know the saying “don’t attribute malice to that which you could stupidity” (or however it goes), but there’s far too many not stupid people involved in running these companies/games. It’s purely because there’s money to be made in the short term and because of how fast the turnover these games have, there’s just no incentive to keep players around cos by the time the next one comes out they’ll just repeat the cycle again (ie COD/BF style).
Dota is doing this because there’s no intrinsic value to someone creating another account and getting people invested into the game with other casuals is good for them as it gets them into the micro transactions/skins, viewing the tournaments (which valve are relatively hands off with), etc. They (probably… I hope <_<) can’t just make a dota3 and sell it for $80 every couple of years ($110 for the pre order bonus that actually gets you the full game rather ).
Id personally rather them at least work on shoving detected smurfs into a really high rank/more really fast rather than just ban, ban, ban. It’s a 1st step.
But I am not the giant billionaire gaming company.
I do NOT like smurffs either. But there CAN be flaws in the system. SOME, but not all accounts are actual players that HAVE talent and can pick up ANY game, play well and just STOMP everyone.
The honor system that would be most feasible is the one we have BUILT INTO THE GAME already. Called the player LEVEL system. It isn’t perfect. And it doesn’t reflect SKILL . But the time played on the original account. I mean, you would think someone with 200 hours or 300 hours on their account is someone you would want in a COMPETITIVE match. VS someone with 10 or 12 hours. or just 25 hours.
If Blizzard would take the SIMPLE approach to this. It would CURB some issues.
I don’t think they should ban them. I think they should just move their account to another “phase” for lack of a better term. Or “server”, so that all the smurfs and and other troublesome-type accounts play together, versus ruining the game for the majority of players.
) derankers (I met a few 
) don’t really try to hide their intentions. An emoting or ‘Ionlyshootanddietonotgetkicked’ D.va here, a walltrolling Mei there… 
).