It's impossible to climb because of smurfs

General Discussion
1

I wish I had taken a picture of the 70+ hours I’ve played this season.

I am high plat/low diamond and
Every. Game. Has. Smurfs.
2+ smurfs per team, on average. You will always have at least one person who has a bronze 1 star border or below on each team, which means around 100 hours played. Nobody who just bought this game places in diamond. If this is not the case, then this game has a serious issue of placing people where they should be when they first start.
You cannot lie and tell me, either, that somebody’s “alt account” to try out new heroes isn’t on a similar level to a smurf, as GM game sense will grant you a massive advantage in plat/diamond.

Since the variety of skill in players who have low level accounts is so great, you are basically rolling the dice on who’s team has the better smurfs, or the player who is getting boosted by a GM dps, or who can as a team magically come together to pocket their smurfs the most.

I have played since season 5. I have climbed to masters in season 6 and season 15 as support and tank mains respectively. I have been able to grind and climb until role que happened. Granted, I really like the idea of role que. I vouched for it, I wanted it - because open que was chaotic. But now because of que times at higher elos, they have all created smurf and alt accounts to get shorter que times because it takes far too long for them to get a game in their own elo. It’s destroyed plat/diamond.

A year ago, the game was actually enjoyable because you were for the most part playing against people in your own skill tier. I felt like as I improved, I could actually climb. When I took a break for a few months and decayed back to diamond and wasn’t as good, I could pick the game back up and learn it all over again.

Now, diamond isn’t even diamond. It’s an amalgamation of GM, masters and true diamond players, and how you win is dependent on how many of the higher SR players you get in your match. I’m not actually playing in my skill tier! How can I even climb if I am not leagues and leagues better than the rank I’m supposedly at or trying to attain? I can’t climb to masters if I’m not better than the GM players at my rank. Keep in mind, I am a support player. While impactful on my own, I am less impactful on the outcome of a game than the DPS and tanks on my team, and it’s less likely that the smurfs in my game will be support.

And for those who may want to reply and say, “Well, then your objective should be to focus the smurf on their team, so that your smurf can carry and he has less impact.” That doesn’t exactly work if every other game there are 2-3 smurfs in the game. Which one do I shut down? Who do I focus as brig or ana? Their best one? That doesn’t mean the other 2 aren’t going to be impactful too, and what if our team only has 2 in comparison?

It is entirely RNG who the matchmaking system puts on your team, and you against. It’s a system, that while maybe not intentionally designed to, has planted many people at a rank, in which it intends to create matches that will have a 50/50 outcome, Win, Loss, Win, Loss, to ensure your SR never deviates from around 200 to -200 of the place it originally put you. I have played this season for 70 hours, and one day gradually increase about 100sr, and the next, lose it all again.

The impact my best gameplay has on a match cannot and will not ever, unless they make the support role more solo-oriented and less team based, outmatch the impact that a DPS or tank smurf has on the enemy team.

I supposed I just wanted to vent, and see if anyone else’s experience is the same. I’m just a bit disheartened. I love Overwatch, it’s just not fulfilling as a competitive experience anymore. I like to watch my own gameplay, and improve. I just feel incredibly stifled and out of my means with players who are vastly out of my skill range, and frustrated with the fact that my impact on the game as a support player has been dampened. Maybe I just need a mindset change. If so, please feel free to tell me what I need to hear. Thanks guys.

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Yeah I can agree with a lot of this. I’m some what positive the game will go free to play at one point or another. When that happens the comp level should go to 100. It feels like garbage as a DPS sometimes to go against the level 25 special character name on widow and just lose a lot of motivation to try. Masters is just a trail mix bag of cheaters/smurfs & alt accounts. I guess one positive is I rarely see genuine throwers anymore. It sucks sometimes to play against smurfs, but it’s something you can’t let tilt you. Thanks for venting, I feel the exact same way :]

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it seems like every season gets worse when it comes to smurfing

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I’m curious if the pvp game will go free to play, comp will have a battle pass, or they will actually fix matchmaking upon the release of OW2. It is obvious they are not making any large changes so if they manage to keep the playerbase til the release will be a big decided of how well the game does. Look at destiny with how how content and slow everything has crippled the game. There is just a bad stigma around it even though it is finally getting polished up.

I think the damage has been done to this game and it always have a negative stigma.

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So, how does this smurf become a smurf if it is impossible? Or he had different matchmaking? Kappa.

Cool story bruw, I was on grind that moment, nothing different until now. What you gonna do when you’ve reach top500 or gm+? You will smurf, because sweatting your *** off for no reason is not fun at all. Want to have your fun - get better, want to compete, learn how to be gm in diamond already. (Jokes over, I was hardstuck in diamond at some point, then I felt that masters rank is like plat difficulity and just pass it over in like 1 season.)

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Everybody has already replied to these same nonsense comments you keep making in other posts when it comes to smurfing. You keep ignoring them even though they dismantle what you are saying… so you just go somewhere else and keep repeating yourself instead of coming up with anything better to say! LOL

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i don’t get it why everyone talks about smurfing like it’s an actual issue or something ?

when i was plat i used to get called a smurf even tho i was hardstuck plat for a season or so (not saying i was any good)
and i have a friend now that has 10 accounts in diamond get called for smurfing in diamond
WHEN HE IS A DIAMOND PLAYER
no one likes the idea that someone might be better than them at the same ranking trying to climb ?

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they just can’t accept that the only reason they can’t climb is themselves

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smurf go brrr ruin my precious experience
meanwhile everyone that actually cares about improving they would rather feed in plat to improve and go against smurfs to feed in higher tiers

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would i rather be throwing in my masters+ games playing proj DPS (my main role) due to them being a throw pick as entire subclass, and play against double shield every game, or would i rather play in silver where i can play whoever i want, AND get rein zarya?

if the game is fun to play in high ranks, wouldnt need to play in low ranks

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It’s sad, but the proportionally high amount of smurfs are simply fueled by the devs decisions themselves in addition to the deprived playerbase. We’ve always had smurfs and alt accounts (quit comp because of some back in S5/6 for a while) but now that we’re down so many players considering the fact that they’re usually the most dedicated high tier players their amounts haven’t really diminished so proportionally there’s more of them than regular accounts which makes it seem like there’s a lot of them

Aside from the playerbase and it’s segments there’s also the balancing of the game and the systematic changes like matchmaking leniency that have pushed using alt accounts further. Sigma’s release was so bad due to Sigma 1.0 being the most broken hero, more broken than Brig 1.0 or Mercy 2.0, and it degenerated the meta into double barriers for such a long time. Since most tanks/DPS/Supp were relatively very weak against the meta players would avoid throwing by going to the lower ranks to play their favorite heroes because even if a diamond team pulled off the double shield comp, you could roll them with basic Rein/Zarya if you were 1k SR higher. The devs not balancing ruthlessly around the realistic potential of heroes’ in GM/Top500 environment caused these huge gaps between heroes. Currently there are heroes like Zen, Mei, tanks and other DPS that are suffering from this too

Then there’s the matchmaking side. Since Top 500 now play with regular masters because of the matchmaking leniency changes the luck factor and codependency for your teammates to be better or at least as good as the opponents are at an all time high which is honestly pure toxicity for a competitive game like OW. It poisons and tilts the players with competitive mindset to a degree where even their basic expectations aren’t met. This causes a psychological effect where they find the games unacceptably bad, but at the same time still want to play their favorite game. So they grab the matchmaking by the MMR and buy an alt account for under 12$ and get a new and refreshing experience for days. Considering their own benefit there’s really no reason to do this even if it’s some-what selfish, but considering how selfish stuff like one-tricking is and how they’ve probably experienced it second-handed and lost games because of it while climbing up the ranks, they don’t really feel bad about playing on an alt account because of the principle of hypocricy where they feel entitled to being selfish as others are too

EDIT: Writing this from an alt account, but this is just so I can play the game with my friends without them getting absolutely destroyed by GM players

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it’s usually players at the higher tiers not being able to pick their heroes
like u tell me rn that doomfist is anywhere near playable in master+ ?
just smurf in diamond and have fun with it

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Yep that’s one thing I went through. Same goes for a lot of DPS that aren’t Ashe/Cree/Genji/Tracer/Widow and it turns out that there’s a massive amount of DPS players who don’t want to play these heroes. Same goes for tank players who would like to play Ball/D.va/Hog/Winston/Zarya or Zen or something like that

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Low skill smurfs normally end up in gold or plat after placements but master plus ones normally end up in diamond on new accounts. Thats why it feels like their are more smurfs in high plat/low to mid diamond. Diamond in general is actually four ranks in one. Legit diamond, masters, gm, and top 500. Because when a GM or top 500 wants to practice a new hero they have to make a new account so they don’t tank their main account.

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Check your rank, will be better than keep this nonsense rant. Factual statement is : smurf is not an issue, unless you are low elo player, then issue is your gameplay, not smurf’s. If it still not clear - go check brains, or you think I am here to cure your stupidity. It’s only able to cure while ranking up, until that you are plat chat participant.

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Lol way to ‘‘justify’’ you ruining other people’s games.

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Impossible means there is a 0% winrate when a smurf is against you

I think the term you are looking for is Improbable.

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I mean there are countless videos over time regardless of meta of people doing bronze to GM on fresh accounts and they all started at bronze or dropped to it.

Smurfs don’t block their way. Only the player. It might take a bit longer, but they make it to GM and countless times.

Only the thing is to improve.

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The innate problem with this statement is that “fun” is proportionate per person. You decide what’s fun for you. Where does the problem arise? You’ve decided what’s “fun” for 11 other people.

Smurfing serves no purpose other than pubstomping, and you can try to justify it however you want, but it’s the same answer every time.

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The problem with these videos (outside of the fact that they exist at all), is these players are the smurf. Think of all the people they play against going through their bronze to GM video… hundreds of players affected by 1 GM player. Then multiply that by all the people who do it, thousands of players.

Smurfing used to be a bigger issue; because you never knew what they were going to do, tryhard and carry or throw. Now it’s an issue because they all tryhard, and if you don’t have that “counter smurf” on your team, it’s a loss.

It’s not that they exist, it’s the overwhelming number of them.