In this example, that player I would personally judge to be committing to gameplay sabotage if he refused to use all available assets to the hero to help his team win. It doesn’t matter what his win record was or not. However, if the case was simply choosing to play only/mostly Moira. That is not so much a problem because one-tricking is not against the rules (but highly discouraged).
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You adressed things how they are, but thats the fundamental issue with it which allows smurfing. Its “just” 10-15 games of smurfing, regardless its still smurfing. Devs cant tell you it doesnt matter and tell you its not an issue when people actually encounter smurfs enough to actually experience it as an issue.
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You mean silver portrait border? That is well over 400 hours of gameplay in most cases.
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First understand, my goal here is to present the facts and the developer statements as is, whether you agree with me (or them for that matter) or not is up to you.
From my own personal experience (as a hard-stuck gold/plat damage main), I don’t see smurfing in my games. I see good players who can outplay me at times, and on occasion see them in a later match and I beat them back. I also see myself, yesterday I played a series of competitive matches mostly focused on my best heroes of Tracer and Pharah. There were many matches where I seriously popped off and there were many matches where I could not figure out where I was going wrong and was feeding my brains out.
The reality is that Competitive matchmaking rating (and skill rating for that matter) is number, and forgive me if I sound cruel, but there is a lot of times that we (including myself) get really hungover what our skill rating is. I get the idea of competition, to try to be the very best. I have been playing competitive games of all sorts for years and I have had my ups and downs in many games ranging from the Pokemon Trading Card Game to DanceDanceRevolution. I never really was god-tier at anything, but I have fun playing these games. Overwatch is no different.
I am not asking any of you to have the same mindset that I have, but I seriously challenge every player’s actual perceptions of what a smurf is. More often than not, players in my games are simply not acknowledging their own mistakes that their opponents exploit against.
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Interesting, if that’s the case then I’m sure the smurfing problem isn’t quite as bad as I initially thought. Thank you for informing me.
I am glad I could at least keep you informed, though I always encourage everyone to be vigilant and passionate about wanting a better game.
Now lets be clear, we all want more consistently fun games. Overwatch is not a game (that even in the highest levels of organized play) does very well though. I see the problem not so much about smurfing, but the transparency in the state of the match, and that is something the development team really does need to work on a lot more.
For example, we need better personal performance statistics to learn from. For the most part, personal performance is not used as a factor in skill rating adjustements (there is a minor influence at Platinum and lower ranks), however one can learn a lot from their own personal performance from every match. Back in 2018, some third party software developers began to come up with innovative software that could extrapolate video information from gameplay in games like Overwatch and Fortnite, and translate into really useful statistics that players could learn from. However, because some of that software did cross the line and provided that data in realtime during the course of the match, allowing player significant advantages such as predicting ultimate economy and the likes, Blizzard had no choice but to ban that kind of software. That being said, we need post-game individual match stats in the career profile that can help us identify where our own individual weaknesses are and where we can improve our own gameplay. Sure we have replays now and they are an insanely valuable tool (I spend my time between matches reviewing my replays), but I really do think the game needs to splash some cold water on everyone’s faces from time to time.
Going back to the conversation about smurfing. Yes I do think there are players out there that are abusing the game more than they should, is it really as bad of a problem as many lead to believe, I don’t think as much as others do. But that is my opinion only.
Indeed I mean a silver portrait border.
This would show dedication to want to play in Comp, anyone who had got to this level could not be considered a smurf.
The only draw back I see is that levelling services would exploit this.
You’re going to tell me people have a £500+ pc to play OW but don’t have a phone number?
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Imo, No… it mainly discourages smurfs and if anything gives new players more time to practise and learn the game before playing comp.
That statement just proves what we all knew. They don’t care about smurfs ruining the gameplay experience for others cus money
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Again putting the bar so insanely high up, would just discourage new players overall. Hell, I think level 100 would be too high to be honest. I could maybe see level 50 to balance out things, I understand wanting serious competition in the game, and I believe Blizzard does as well, but it is important to remember that this is still a video game and there needs to be reasonable level of access into each of the core game modes.
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No, I am thinking about those who lesser PCs and those who play on consoles. A lot of minors don’t have cell phones.
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They really should ban Unranked to GM. It was educational for the first time, it is unhealthy for the 1000th time.
Make it so you get the CP reward of your current rank instead of your season high at the end of the season.
Make it so if the player caught on cheating, hacking, smurfing, then every account on that IP gets banned.
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You only present the facts, which is why i said i disagree with the devs, not you in particular. Of course your individual experience could be different, but thats anecdotal and doesnt invalidate the experience others have with the game. I’m not sad about my average rating. My problem are the games where you play a “plat” game and there is an enemy Widow farming our entire team the whole game without the rest of the enemy team having to do anything. Thats just dumb and unfun and ruins the game. This makes you question why even have match making at all since its allowed because “iTs JUst A fEw GAmEs” git gud scrub they deserve the win because they are better than you. Just aim better 4head
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Can you just stop … Just stop.
Stop blowing this way out of proportion.
There is absolutely not ‘multiple smurfs in every single game in QP’
That is a serious exaduration and you know it.
We get it. You don’t like smurfs.
However one thing I did notice is you gave absolutely nothing as a solution to the smurf problem.
Good job with that.
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You could be that level in 4 months easy based on an average of 4 hours a day.
I believe in working for a goal, not just making a new account and being handed it on a plate.
This is true. I myself reached level 600 around that time.
But can you say this for the majority of the playerbase? Yeah there are passionate players like you and me, but I still think that is way too much of a lofty goal for something as simple as a video game.
On a personal note, I believe in strong goals but with something important to be gained by fulfilling them. For me, a lofty goal is getting my degree in graphic design, which is something that this game inspired me to do. By the end of this year, I will fulfill that goal and will unlock a world of potenial in my career. I guess the point I wish to challenge you is spending four months just to unlock access to a game mode in a video game a worthy goal? I personally don’t think so.
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Depends how long you wish to stay with the game I guess, for us, we have been there since the beginning so it’s a non issue. I tend to devote my life to one main game for years. Right now that game is overwatch, before that I did 5 years on WOW, before that about 10 years on counterstrike . I love games with a learning curve, and indeed I am still learning things about Overwatch even now.
Perhaps it may put new players off. Maybe you’re right, perhaps it should be around 1 month of gameplay to unlock.
Similar things happened with WOW, at the beginning we grinded for hours and hours to get to level 60 and the full wrath set. Then they made an expansion, new green gear was better than the stuff we had worked on for months. That was the begining of the end of Wow for me. Although I do have fond memories of rl guild meets and 40man raids.
I’ve digressed, I don’t have all the solutions or even if there is a solution to smurfing. I guess there is a balance of a drop in drop out fun to play game that some people want, and a serious competitive mode that others want. The way I see it right now is the former is spoiling the latter somewhat and that Veteran level players that have put the work in to get where they are should have some form of compensation to prevent new(old) players just making new accounts and ruining their day.
Perhaps a worthy goal for something like contenders.
But a competitive mode for a digital ego? Nah.
Lock the number of accounts per device to one. Blizzard can hardware ban people if there’s proof they’ve committed violations on multiple accounts, so they could apply the same concept to the number of accounts per device.
That would get rid of families that play Overwatch though, which is kind of ratchet. And what would happen to the preexisting alt accounts?