How to Solve the Smurf Problem and Save This Dying Game

Competitive Discussion
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Do you think smurfs are a problem? If no, then have you ever had the issue of dealing with smurfs? If no, then this topic isn’t for you.

This topic is about deranking smurfs, NOT winning. Deranking in comp games makes the match not fun. Yes, there can be fun losses and unfun wins.

Scroll to SOLUTION below if you’re impatient

Let me first get some context out of the way:
Smurf - A player who is playing on an account with a rank/MMR significantly lower than the player’s actual rank (e.g. Diamond player playing in silver).
Thrower = someone who intentionally tries to lose a game
Deranker = Someone who throws multiple games

People say if a Diamond player buys a new account and gets it placed in bronze, the only way that could happen is if they throw. The MMR from the lvl 1-25 QP matches + placement matches should be the MMR of a Diamond player. Instantly, there’s a problem.

Other smurf issues come from people paying for boosting/borrowing accounts. If a high ranked player buys a new account and does NOT throw to achieve a lower rank, then there is NO problem, and if they perform at a high level, they should rank up and go back to where they belong, however that is not the case most times.

99% of the time when smurfs are encountered, it’s because they throw. Master player throws to bronze, climbs up, throws down, climbs up.

SOLUTION

Blizzard needs people (even just 1 person) to spectate or play in games (probably spectate since smurfs exist in all elos) to watch for smurf behavior, check profiles, and take severe action. If caught throwing, instant lifetime ban. If highly questionable, maybe suspension? One issue I really had with private profiles is you can clearly see throwing behavior on past seasons. No one goes from T500 to bronze to T500 to bronze over and over. Why are these players not banned already?

What to look for:

  • Competitive seasons with great gaps between (1000+ SR).
  • In-game suicide
  • Playing off role (e.g. Battle Mercy)
  • Trolling team (e.g. walling off as Mei, standing in front of friendly Bastion to obstruct sight)
    -Feeding (e.g. playing tanks like Hog/Ball to feed enemy ults and stagger team)
  • Other common themes such as Shanghai Dragons player icons, smurfy names like Genjimain, Ineedhealing, the names with the weird characters, etc.

Hell, I know like 50 smurfs as is but even if I reported them, Blizzard wouldn’t take any action. I’d even submit evidence of throwing behavior for free, but does Blizzard even care?

Side note: “Git gud scrub” isn’t applicable. Climbing isn’t the solution and isn’t the problem. The problem is games are predetermined, ruined, and frankly zero fun when your team gets destroyed and your team has like a 15% chance of winning and that’s if people don’t tilt and can coordinate like they’ve never coordinated before.

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it’s a convenient scapegoat to explain that they did not have any responsibility for losing the game that they just lost. Sure, there are smurfs. But there are smurfs, then there are “smurfs” - people who belong in that elo that just had a good game. I’ve been called a smurf in the ELO I’ve peaked in, because I wanted a second account for support-only heroes. People just want something besides themselves to blame.

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Thank you for making me laugh.

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That’s not my point. I don’t care about ranking up. I care about fair and fun games. Games can be plenty fun when losing, but frankly getting stomped isn’t.

This isn’t a “wah wah I can’t rank because teammates suck”.

Glad to see though this community is so great though.

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They can’t even spectate actual hackers so yeah, there’s that.

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There’s literally billions of games being played. Impossible to spectate them all.

I did propose a video submission system. Submit a clip, time stamped where blatant throwing occurs.

Reporting system doesn’t work. I still remember a thrower 3 stack named “Throw4pron”, “Throw4cash”, “Throw4booty” or somesuch in a game.

They’d all dropped 700-1000 sr in 2 days and did nothing apart from 1 sweet potg just to rub our faces in what they could have done for us if they weren’t throwing.

I reported them, but nothing happened of course. Never heard of any reports I’ve made being followed up on, and it’s been a dozen blatant throwers.

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Not literally billions. Thousands maybe. But when you ban player after player, they’re not coming back. Eventually the numbers will go down. But it’s so easy to find them. Like I said, I know at least 50 if not more.

And also like I said, I’d do it myself. Of course there’d be a process for submitting evidence and making sure not to abuse power but this is a simple solution. There are applications (idk about games) where the community moderates. This would be no different.

This is Blizzard’s game. They can do whatever they want. But they don’t care.

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so then id be a smurf??? lol you must not know that everyone gets a free name change.

also dont blame smurfs for you not being able to climb, i dont think ive seen a smurf in about 2 months. maybe my team has had smurfs or faced smurfs but if they are smurfs then i must be a god.

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They’ve sold 40 million copies. Assuming at least 100 games per account that’s 4 billion+ games played…

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Yeah but not all at once. 4 billion games over time sure. What they can do is make it a more robust feature too. Mark accounts who are clearly not throwers so an admin looks at a lobby, sees players premarked as safe, and can go observe another game. Don’t even have to do that. Stat track players and look for trends like 50 games lost in a row.

No, that’s just a smurfy name, Jesus. And yes everyone gets 1 free name change. If you read the post, you’d see that I said this is about the playability of the game, not ranking up.

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i mean with that logic, if you lost the amount of sr that you did this season, id mark you as a smurf for throwing lol

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What logic? How much did I lose? What are you talking about?

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Not exactly a solution mate. Do you have any idea the amount of resources it would take to have even one person sit in or spectate on EVERY SINGLE GAME. It’d cost blizz hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to implement something like that, then hundreds of thousands if not millions more to maintain it. Not exactly a reasonable solution. Especially considering the odds of getting a smurf in your game are still extremely minimal compared to actually getting matched against someone of your own rank.

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you said for throwing, well there is no way to truly track throwing except for sr loss

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No, there are other indicators. Either way, just look for players with significant SR drops (e.g. Master to Bronze). Anyways, you can observe players who tilt in games (who aren’t necessarily smurfs deranking like when someone decides to tilt and jump off the map all game or go afk in spawn.

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It’d still take more time and resources than would worth spending to fix this problem. There’d be no point. Blizz would lose millions of dollars.

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PMSL, there it is, I need another account to play heros I don’t want to play on my main, omfg, really…

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no the best way to fix the smurf problem would be to use their sms protect system and make it so that only those accounts can play ranked. but again it would lose them so much money because the amount of smurfs and would ruin the game for those who have learner accounts

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i mean do you want a person who has played tank or dps the whole time to play healer and ruin your game?

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so lets buy another account and use the excuse of its for other heros, omfg, if you want to believe that, go hard, I have one account, flex on dps/tank/heals, can hold my own… I suppose, some people cant do more the one thing at a time
The games are already ruined, what one more equation to add to it all.

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