Now, I’m not affected by the changes, but I still think it’s a bit silly to suddenly not be able to play a game you’ve had for years just because you don’t have the right phone plan.
If you’re just trying to prevent cheaters and toxic players (and maybe smurfs) from easily creating new accounts after getting kicked out, then couldn’t you just require newly-created accounts to use this system while older accounts that already exist don’t have to worry about it?
It would seem like a fair middle-ground to me. Long-time players still get to play regardless of their current phone plan, but if a player gets banned they would still have a harder time getting back in to ruin others’ experience.
It’s a nice thought, but I can go home tonight and make 500 OW accounts with one disc and one PSN account.
I’m no GM+, but I could definitely ruin a Silver/Bronze match.
Grandfathering in all existing accounts means the existing smurfs are all accessible in OW2.
The cell phone thing they have going isn’t ideal, but neither is letting existing pubstomp accounts slide through.
That deafeats the purpose nearly. If smurfing was so much of a problem that they want to address it, allowing the thousands of smurf accounts that already exist to stay doesn’t help much.
i dont get why people are so sure this is actually going to achieve that
its probably frowned on to show these but if you have access to a seach engine im prtetty sure a simple4 word search will furnish you with enough evidence this is already a fail on that front.
We can’t just allow Cricket Wireless numbers in the SMS check? I find this issue odd; I have never ran into an issue like this before, and will likely never run into it again, so what’s going on here?
Right? I have used Cricket for 7-8 years now and use my phone number to verify plenty of other sites and apps. Shouldn’t be any real reason I can’t verify.
Bruh this ain’t going to seriously deter say YZNSA from using any of his Army of Accounts from playing OW2. Such only stymies the peasants whom cannot & couldn’t ever afford to keep buying OW repeatedly just to go from Bronze to GM overnight.
Such is aimed against you, me and our next door neighbors the common Joes. Certainly doesn’t seriously phase anyone w/ enough Money to circumvent & game the System itself.
Such is setup for obvious Corruption to exist. Everything about it is morally unethical inadvertently by Default.
Considering legitimate players are already having issues and workarounds aren’t widespread enough that we don’t have people upset over it I’m inclined to agree with the it’s doing something crowd.
Obviously it’s a case of wait and see to what efficacy it’s doing anything. I’m not deluded enough to think it’ll end smurfing, I could easily get at least 1 additional account even with the need for SMS, but added difficulty isn’t unappreciated. It would be best if Blizz did have an alternative for prepaid phone users though.
Typically, Smurfs throw at times to maintain their low ranking.
Alts legitimately climb out and continue out until they reach their intended rank. Smurfs try to stay underrated so they can continue pubstomping.
Then Report them & be done w/ it + assuming Blizzard’s in game Cheat Detection is up to the task everything will be just fine minus Phone # acquisition.
Such doesn’t really stop YZNSA from ever owning all the 1-10 slots in Top 10 ever again. The only thing stopping him is he himself from doing such knowing ppl can & will Report him for such. Certainly not Blizzard owning Phone #s
People dismissing this because of existing smurf accounts aren’t thinking it through.
you could simply apply the 50 game requirement on existing accounts as well as new accounts and it would have the same impact on smurfing in rated whether you require SMS or not.
as someone pointed out in one of the other threads, some smurf accounts intentionally de-rank and only need one or a small number of alt accounts that they can just keep re-using for a long time. In the case of these accounts, the SMS system will not stop them at all. It will not be difficult for them to get a number for an alt account if they really enjoy smurfing.
people who do need new accounts because of cheating or getting banned will be able to start a new account more cheaply than they could in OW1.
So forcing SMS onto all existing OW1 players will likely have minimal impact on cheaters and smurfs. This also seems to be the case in other F2P games that have used SMS as an attempted barrier to entry. People’s play experience isn’t going to be better than it was in OW1 in terms of cheating and smurfs. You’re screwing over a ton of existing customers for little benefit. You’re generating bad PR and ill-will with long-time fans and for what? The delusion that this will magically stop smurfs?
A month after launch when smurfing and cheating is still as much or more of an issue than it was in OW1, what will people say then? It will be too late to undo the damage you’ve done to existing OW1 players, but it will be highlighted that you did that damage and didn’t even accomplish anything in the process. You threw a bunch of current players in the trash for nothing.
The issue is, playing the game better then the game thinks they should play it is the only evidence of a smurf.
That’s not reportable.
If I get a player with years of FPS experience under their belt new to OW playing against me and stomping me with S76 I’d see no difference than a GM+ player on a fresh account, one might be a smurf one definitely isn’t. There’s nothing reportable unless they start like, walking off cliffs throwing.
Which they won’t do, they’ll lower their accuracy shooting walls, or around players, pick a single enemy to go after and not engage in any other way, back out of easily winnable fights to make a loss look legitimate if they need the loss.
