How to Fix the Smurfing Issue

Competitive Discussion
1

Smurfs have been a problem in the game since they were a thing.
They ruin games by throwing, boosting, cheating or practicing new heroes (which I’ll get to in a moment).
In my opinion, smurfs are the single largest problem in the game, even more than hero balancing, because hero balancing is a matter of opinion.
Smurfs, on the other hand, are not a matter of opinion.
For me, at least, most of the time I have a smurf in my game, they rather throw or boost or cheat, which all of the listed things aren’t actually allowed in Overwatch.
At least 90% of the cheaters are smurfs (from my experience), half of the throwers are smurfs and most of the time someone is boosting, they do it using a smurf.

Throwing: Throwing in Overwatch isn’t a new thing at all. In fact, about 25% of my loses are because of throwers (not saying that it’s never my fault) and most of the throwers I have are smurfs.

Boosting: This isn’t also a new thing. Boosting in games is a thing in any game that has a competitive ladder. But still, most of the people who boost are smurfs, and this is an issue because smurfs are at a much higher lever than their smurf account. They usually play with someone that is “Hard Stuck” (Not necessarily a bad thing to be, because you can’t judge someone’s skill in a game just by the level), but still, the smurfs are much better than them. This makes an unfair matching system that’s not even the system’s fault.

Cheating: No need to explain. Cheaters are becoming more and more popular in Overwatch now, and a lot of them are smurfs, and for a simple and good reason. They don’t want to be banned from their main account, so they use an alternative one to cheat.

Practicing new heroes: This might appear at first as not so bad, but it is. Practicing new heroes isn’t a bad thing at all, but people who have smurfs can just log on to them and not lose SR on their main account. This causes a problem that is almost pay to win. You just pay for the smurf, practice and get better on your main account without losing SR. This can also cause a smurf look like he’s throwing, even though he isn’t.

Solution:
This simple solution(s) might make some people (especially the ones with smurf accounts) rage, but it will make competitive much better.

  1. Block all smurfs who has another account at a higher level (from the same IP address) from playing competitive games if their SR gap is more than 500 (or 1000. whatever). This will make the matching system not “fail” in getting fair games.
  2. Apply the 1st solution to ranks lower than Master (Master not included), because most of the smurfs claim to be Master or higher (most of them claim to be 4200).
  3. Get a better anti-cheat and an anti-VPN in case they’re trying to cheat from accounts that have close SR to each other or trying to bypass this using a VPN.

Please read all of the article BEFORE commenting, and don’t comment things like “I stopped reading here”.

4 Likes
2

the devs dont care.
its more $$$ cause they are buying more accounts.
they dont care.
smurfing & alt accounts are fine
devs have said so.
just accept it

2 Likes
3

I agreed with the first half, why do you have to destroy it?

4

because nothing we say or do will matter.
its wasted time & energy thinking about it

5

You know what also wastes time & energy? Playing with a smurf in the game.

3 Likes
6

dude getting rid of smurfs is ez you just gotta stopm from smurfing.

7

Are you playing on game console?
What rank are you in?

I have almost never seen a smurf?
I see lots of boosted players though that should not be in my matches.

Multiple account doesn’t have anything to do with smurfs. I can smurf with only one account. I can derank to bronze without problem. Having multiple accounts even increase the chance your account SR is right (if you play 1 hero on each account). I have seen lots of players who flex and because of this play often below or better the SR of their account. (it happen to my main account where i flexed on a lot. Its SR rating is now all messed up, and when i play my main on it i am often able to 1vs6, so it is kind of like smurfing)

An anti VPN??? does this exists?

Smurfing is not the real problem. The problem is the SR /matchmaker failing in putting people faster in the rank they should be in. And most games will have at least 1 player that is not playing on the same level as the rest.
It feels(and probably is) that good players that are to good for a rank are kept in that rank by placing them together with players who are to bad for a rank. So everyone has a 50% win rate, even if you are clearly better or to bad for the rank you are in.

If we would have hero based SR and a good match make system that is able to place you in the right rank a lot faster. So you play most matches with players of your same skill level. Then smurfs will have a hard time staying in a low rank or even deranking. And you can clearly see if someone is down-ranking (now you can easily drop ranks just by playing a hero you are bad at → nothing illegal about this. With hero based SR/MMR your MMR should be stable most games)

8

Just don’t smurf 4head

1 Like
9

I think smurfs are good for the game, because they help low rank players improve by playing against high rank players. Doesn’t matter if that’s wrong, smurfing is just a matter of opinion because I said so.

10

This is 100% not true lmao. If a smurf is completely destroying the enemy team, and allowing his own team to spawn camp the enemy team the entire time, there’s nothing to be learned there. It’s not fair in the slightest.

1 Like
11

Thank you for reading between the lines.

12

Your suggestion can’t be applied, first if you’re suggestion goes through you just banned innocent players that happen to be siblings/family members/roommates and play under the same IP address.

Your suggestion also shut down Overwatch in all internet cafes which hold a large number of players daily.

13

A smurf can be shut down by playing counters.
A smurf can only make easy kills if the team isn’t working together.
The biggest problem of low ranked players is they cant focus down a target. They all chose their own target and play their own game. And most even do their best to avoid the main threat and go for the easy kills instead of helping with the main reason you are loosing.

Smurfs down rank because they know they can find easy duels and kill targets one by one. Without having to worry the rest of the team will help the target of the smurf.

So yes you can defiantly learn something from a smurf. It forces you to work together. Even if this idea of working together, or swapping to a counter , is to hard for most.
Only reason i don’t like smurfs is they destroy lots of games by throwing when they are down-ranking.

14

An anti-VPN does exist, as far as I know. I tried to log in to a Minecraft server 3 year ago and I was using a VPN, but I couldn’t, and I got a message saying that I can’t log because of my VPN.
I am a mid - “high” plat PC player BTW

15

Wierd, i almost never have seen a smurf.
Maybe it is the 50% win chance system? I got many times very good stats and cards like you did 60% of team damage. But lots of my games feel like i am playing with and against boosted players, who don’t belong in this rank.
The system probably places me with players with very low MMR to make sure i only win 50%.
Maybe this ‘fair’ system also is the reason you play with so many smurfs?

16

Smurfs can ruin a game, but they have NEVER stoped someone from climbing to the rank they deserve.

I know my comment is the completee opposite of what people in silver and below claim. But they are silver and bronze so… I’ve seen that rank, played that rank, there is virtualy no excuse you can’t climb out of it even if you lose a game or two.

High plat has alot of boosted players on the other hand… Which is a completle different issue, but even they don’t bother me tbh (unless they aren’t in voice chat)

Yea lets stop people from palying the same game in the same house. Borthers and sisters, husbands and wives, boyfrineds and girlfiends, roomates… pliz

17

Lots of internet providers use dynamic IP addresses. So the people who use these providers can have different IP addresses everything something (like a modem or a server) got a reset.
So it is kind of a VPN. Maybe the minecraft server refused people from different countries(Or only USA)? And your VPN gave you an IP from one of these countries.
Lots of people in europe use VPNs to watch things like Netflix. Instead of using the netflix of their country with delays(for new seasons / episodes /movies) they just use the usa netflix.(it refuses ip of none usa countries)

18

I’d wager they’re actually just good at the game. It may seem like cheating, but I’ve seen so many lower rank players accuse smurfs of cheating when they simply had very good aim.

I never actually see hard throwers, unless it’s the end of the season. I only see people tilt and throw, but I’d say less than 5% of games are people who throw outright from the beginning.

Not really. I queue with my friends on my smurfs at least 50+% of the time, if not more. I always see smurfs that I would consider to be roughly my skill level, or more smurfs of lower skill to balance it out. The system determines your true skill level by your stats etc (we don’t really know exactly) and matches your with players of inflated MMR. There might be smurfs, but unless it’s a level <30 account, its MMR will probably be accurately calibrated. Matches will be balanced accordingly and the win probability will generally be around 50% or so. Again, this is contingent on whether they throw or not or purposely play badly to lower their MMR, but I don’t usually see this in my games. Again I mostly play plat+ soo.

That makes sense. Eventually it’ll become an alt account/higher than their main so I don’t that’s a “smurfing” issue as such.

I’d rather they did this than on their main. If I was queueing with a mercy main who was practising DPS I would tilt extremely hard. I don’t want someone to play a plat soldier in my master’s games. That same mercy main playing a plat soldier in plat is fine on the other hand.

I mean my main is 3.5k and my smurfs are all above 3k. I can still stomp diamond games easily. You’d probably want to tighten that to about 250 for diamond and above. That being said, a smurf on your team is generally a smurf on theirs. The matchmaker does usually do a good job of balancing smurfs, or failing that, getting them out of the elo. I’d like to see harsher bans on throwers because I do feel blizzard is too lenient on that front.

A 4200 player would destroy 3500 players if not balanced properly. Apply it to all ranks.

Never heard of anti vpn, but their anti cheat works quite well from what I’ve heard. They’ve even implemented match cancellations if they determine cheating in the lobby.

19

JUST DON’T BRING KIDS 4HEAD.
Now, seriously, Overwatch can make a thing such as a “licensed cafe” if they want to get money from it and don’t want to have smurfs. Still, someone can play on his smurf there but if they won’t let them open a new account, it’ll be good.
About family members, you can see if they play at the same time, and the game can use the PC address or something to check it.
About siblings, it’s the same as boosting if they share the same account, isn’t it?
I really can’t come up with a better solution to it.

20

Unfortunately 1. will not work, Me, my Dad, my brother and sister all play Overwatch on different accounts same internet connection, same IP, what if we all got good enough how would you differentiate that we were not the same player?