The problem that keeps blizzard from acting on throwers (and therefore the problems that stem from throwing) is that it is near impossible to tell the difference from an intentional and unintentional thrower. They can tell when someone is way underperforming, on their own, no reports needed. But the last thing someone on a huge tilting lose streak needs is to be auto banned or even just auto kicked way further down in Sr for “throwing”. Sure, they were underperforming to the point of causing their teams to lose, but the insult to injury would be crazy.
Are they simply playing while tired or intentionally throwing? Are they playing a hero they might think they are better with than they actually are or intentionally throwing? It’s impossible to tell.
So they will act on the completely obvious cases, with help from reports to varify. But they can’t act on anything too grey which still allows those players to either knowingly or unknowingly ruin games.
I just encountered a group of smurfs though at lower rank. They were STOMPING my team. We couldn’t even get out of the spawn. They were all around level 60. Like I said, if they had a better flagging system or cared a little more they could figure out who are smurfing/who are not. Several people all around the same level, always grouped up. It would show in their stats, wouldn’t it?
Though I can see why Blizzard wouldn’t care to enforce these rules too. They are a company after all.
Blizzard definitely do want to help the Smurf problem. Sure, people buying smurfs might make them money in the short run. But as a large company with an extremely long term focused game, they will make allot more money if their game has a better reputation (like from not having a huge Smurf problem) than the small amount they get from smurfs. They want to foster a stable and growing community before any other factors.
The reason why they don’t act on smurfs is because having multiple accounts isn’t inherently bad (like for example the person who litterally never swaps to their mains. They are no different from any other tank or whatever main at that lower level). Then the problems that often come up in smurfs like people being far below their Sr, often playing heroes they suck on while sometimes hard carrying on other heroes, and being a troll/ not carring about comp, can all be done on a person’s main account too.
If they can fix all of these problems individually then the smirf problem will be fixed on it’s own. Or even if they have a real way to reliably punish the Smurf accounts guilty of these things they would do it. They just need ideas of how. Modivation isn’t the problem though.
Well, I appreciate all the insight. I just really hope that Blizzard starts to show that they care about the smurf problem & begin addressing it somehow. Because right now, from my pov. it just seems like they like making money off the sales, and people who don’t buy multiple accounts will keep playing trying to climb in comp. only to keep running into smurfs. So, it will take people like me longer to climb in rank due to unfair matching/smurfs. ( I solo queue ) so its even worse when I run into a group of smurfs. Anyway, eventually people like me will just quit the game if Blizzard doesn’t take any action outside of just saying they don’t approve of smurfing.
No Smurfing is a High level player playing in a lower tier on a different account so that he can feel good about ruining a lower skilled players day and setting them off with having to use little to no effort to win the match and alternately purposely losing matches to remain at the lower level. An Alt account would be a second account that is used to main a different character or play during a suspension or ban on a main account for being mouthy or what not that you still try your best at and play at your actual skill level.
Fine. I use Smurf to refer to any secondary account with a lower rank than a primary. Read my comments with that in mind. If you need to replace the word Smurf with “Smurf or Alt” in your head. These are all made up community words anyways. I just want to convey ideas clearly.
A Master player on a Platinum smurf has an unfair advantage over other players actually at Platinum rank because they have higher tier game sense and experience than the Platinum players do.
According to the in game reporting system, anything that affords an unfair advantage is cheating.
You can’t report someone for playing their plat skill tanks in plat even if they secretly have a master level widow. You also can’t report them for simply playing well.
The only thing you can report smurfs for is throwing if they do that.
If they’re a master player on a platinum smurf/alt/whatever account then, according to the in game reporting system, they’re cheating due to unfair advantage.