How to avoid smurfs?

“Things that are not cheating:
Playing extremely well”
It’s funny you mention what is labeled under cheating, but specifically ignore the first thing that is stated as not cheating

Not ignoring it at all.

It obviously does not apply in this case because a higher tier player will always play better than lower SR players because of the aforementioned unfair advantage they have.

Keep reaching.

According to blizzards rules, it does. It doesn’t say “playing extremely well isn’t cheating sometimes”, it outright says it isn’t cheating.

I’m not the one trying to change what blizzard said

I’m not changing anything.

It’s pretty obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that a smurf will always “play well” because they’re playing against people at a lower SR than their main.

They have an unfair advantage over those lower SR players. That’s an irrefutable fact. And, per the reporting system, that’s cheating.

Keep trying to spin it to your advantage all you want but the rules are crystal clear.

But it specifically says playing well isn’t cheating :thinking:

This is literally what you are doing

And, again, you cannot take that comment just by itself. You need to consider it alongside everything else that the reporting system states, and that includes the unfair advantage comment.

Not at all. See above.

You’re trying to state that one comment trumps the other; however, that’s not the case.

When it’s literally the comment afterwards, saying that it is not considered cheating, how else are you supposed to take it?

It’s a clarification, so yes

You are conveniently ignoring the fact that a high tier smurf will always “play well” against lower tier players just to support your flimsy argument.

It’s cheating. No two ways about it.

It’s literally stated as not cheating :thinking: ???

Except it’s not because you’re taking that one comment as an absolute certainty rather than taking the other comment into consideration as well.

Your logic is flawed.

This may be crazy to you, but that other comment, that’s their to let you know how it doesn’t apply. It’s purpose is so people don’t try to make the claim that you are about it being cheating.

Smurfs are far more than just “playing well”.

You know this yet refuse to acknowledge it because it doesn’t support your flawed argument.

But my argument isn’t flawed, all they are doing is playing well. If they are throwing, that’s another category of reportable offences.

Aka not cheating

It absolutely is because you’re ignoring certain comments and focusing on the one that supports your argument.

You know very well it’s not that simple.

They’re playing against players lower than them. Of course they’ll “play well”.

If they were playing against players around their own SR and playing well then of course that’s not cheating.

But they’re not. They’re playing against players lower than them. In many cases several tiers lower.

That’s far, far more than just a simple case of “playing well”.

A Diamond player does not just “play well” against Silver players.

A Master player does not just “play well” against Gold or Platinum players.

Incorrect.

But you keep on trying to convince yourself otherwise. I’m done trying.

As I said before, anyone with an ounce of common sense knows the situation.

You’re just conveniently ignoring facts and trying to spin things to support your stance but your stance rests on false statements and flawed logic.

So what about players that are from console, or have experience from other games and bring them to overwatch? Are they cheating?

There may be some basic skills that can be transferred from game to game (console to PC or vice versa is a different matter entirely due to the differing control systems and differing hero balancing), but it still doesn’t compare to a player who has Master level gameplay knowledge of and skill at Overwatch taking that knowledge into a Gold match and absolutely dominating because of their superior knowledge and skill.

That is far, far more than just “playing well”. That’s taking their advantage of playing Overwatch at a high SR and using it to dominate players at a lower SR who aren’t as knowledgeable or skilled.

That’s unfair, and that’s cheating.

And all the people who come over at least a diamond level? People who are GM by level 100? It’s real and it happens. And when they initially start they will be lower and have much higher skill.

It’s playing extremely well no matter how ya say it. You can call it cheating all you want, but Jeff Kaplan has even stated smurfing isn’t an issue

I’ve stopped caring about smurfs and alts so much. It’s one game, it will go by, and I’ll regain any SR that I lost in my next game.

That being said, I only really have one minor annoyance with them. Many of them who create alt accounts say they do it to try new characters, but the majority of them play Widow.

Today I lost to some 69 420 69 with Xs dude (I think it’s a copied name of like a Dafran smurf though obviously it’s not actually Dafran). Anyways he was 3800 a season ago. But somehow was 2200 this season. Of course he absolutely crushed us playing Widow and Tracer. I called him out on deranking on chat and he added me after the game. He invited me to a group and said “let’s play together”. I guess he felt guilty. I told him I don’t want to be carried to a SR I don’t deserve and logged off.

Pretending you’re doing anyone a service by destroying them on dps or hard carrying them with dps is a joke. I can vaguely remotely possibly see arguing you can usefully teach people playing main tank or support where your positioning and decision making will be a huge chunk of your skill. But just trouncing teams by taking a couple good perches and clicking heads or having top 2 percentile tracking? Absolutely no one is learning anything from that. Don’t pat yourself on the back for it.

The same is mostly true for tank and support play though. There’s tons of resources for people to learn the game better. There’s discord groups with dedicated and free high level coaching, scrim lobbies, guides by top 100s/pros and streams every hour of the day by players leagues better than you that people can watch from a first person view with real time commentary and learn from.

Deranking is selfishly ruining games for an ego trip. At least be decent enough to not pretend you’re doing anyone favours by ‘teaching them how to play better’. No one learns from getting stomped or getting hard carried, and if they did it’d be 1/10th as much as they could have learned from just watching an actually pro level player use that hero in a stream. On the flip side obviously no one learns or legitimately benefits from you when you’re deranking whether they’re playing with you or against you. It’s just a trash game for everyone in it.

Btw I didn’t care about my loss very much. It’s just more random noise in the system like throwers or rage quits. What I object to is you thinking you’re helping people by doing this. Realistically stuff like this is probably deteriorating the playerbase - so you can take a tiny partial credit for that if you like. But all that people like the guy that was 3800 dropping to 2200 so he can stomp garbage was teaching anyone was that Bliz doesn’t care about intentional losing/deranking.

they HAVE to be throwing to be detectable as smurfs right?

No one is going to complain about an alt which is at their true rank.