Jesus 
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Perhaps that is true, but lets be clear “smurfing” is not a very clear term. So lets break down key terms that matter:
- Alternate Account - A second Blizzard BattleNet account owned by an individual who has a previous one. Doing so is not a violation of the Blizzard End User License Agreement (see section 1-D-i-2-a)
- Boosting - This is the practice of using an alternate account to manually boost another account by grouping up (violation of EULA 1-C-iii) or by accessing an another players account to boost it (violation of EULA 1-A-ii-2).
- Tanking - This is the practice of deliberately losing matches to lower your internal matchmaking rating. (violation of EULA 1-C-xi-2, see Blizzard Code of Conduct Behavior rules)
To further clarify, I pulled up the post for Jeff Kaplan clarifying his definitions of Smurfing here:
I apologize for the screenshot as I do not have this post archived yet in my archive website since the old forums closed.
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There is no way to link accounts. The development team claims (see my image in the post above) they can quickly identify the MMR of an experienced player.
I truly wish alternate accounts were against the rules, but I suppose we’re past the point of no return on that one.
As for Jeff’s statements on MMR, I have complete faith they’re true. Yet SR is not MMR, and we’re being matched by the former. SR adjusts much slower and has a strong tendency to start lower than it should.
Obviously they dont. “Quickly” in my book would mean they know hes a GM player before he gets to lvl 25 to start comp matches. But you see many GM players placing in gold/plat.
Also i dont see how its impossible to link accounts. They have the means to detect banned players buying new accounts and black list them.
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The problem with this is, what is playing “normally”? I had someone in a game yesterday who was on a smurf to only play DPS Moira, he would heal sometimes but mostly when there were no enemies around, if not he would go to their spawn. He was very clear about it and when asked he said that he won 5 games previously doing the same thing so it couldn’t be a problem. Would this person have done the same on their main? Unlikely, so it’s hard to define what normal is.
This, No comp until silver level.
Never say never, we do know that Jeff Kaplan doesn’t like the idea of “smurfs” for consoles (players can create infinite accounts for free on those platforms).
Actually, according to the devs, matchmaking is matched based on your internal hidden MMR, not your simplified skill rating value.
Source: Old Overwatch Forum Archives
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Competitive and Quick Play MMRs are separately tracked and separately used in each mode’s matchmaking.
It takes around 15 competitive games for MMR to be aligned and then more for the skill rating to catch up.
There is some matter of detection to identify another account on the same hardware or IP address of an account that has been banned. But that is not as effective because there is the assumption multiple accounts from multiple players exist in the same household.
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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