This entire absurdity that is the “smurf” theory is just ridiculous. Time after time high level accounts are getting rolled by “smurfs” or low level accounts. Sometimes the other team is full of level 20 accounts that are steam rolling your team, sometimes you’re on a team with a bunch of low level accounts that steam roll the other team would have probably done so if you were AFK. It’s time to let go of a ridiculous theory that exhibits no practical purposes at all.
Exactly what is the fundamental reasoning behind the belief that these low level “smurf” accounts are just really skilled players with alternative high level accounts that roll and reroll new accounts to crush new players?
Problems with the “smurf” theory:
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Why would only the best of the more experienced players be rolling smurf accounts? Obviously that’s the theory because they’re roflstomping the non smurf high level accounts who are supposed to be their peers. So why are the mediocre high level players not interested in smurfing? Seems like they would benefit the most.
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If they’re the better “high level” players then why are they the ones that are rerolling? Shouldn’t they already be dominating on their primary accounts?
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What do they get out of rolling new accounts and playing against players of a much lower skill level? The fun is? All the most skilled players are “bullies” that don’t enjoy a challenge? I’ve never known anyone to get good at anything if they didn’t enjoy challenge. That’s generally how you get good at something by challenging yourself lol.
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If they enjoy playing against players of a much lower skill level then what good does smurfing do? Match making isn’t level/rank based. It uses other parameters for matching you with players of similar skill. So even if you’re level 10 you’re still going to be matched up against players of your skill level after just a few games.
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If #4 wasn’t true then all the low level ranks would just be full of “uber” smurfs all the time meaning the smurfs would be going up against people of their own skill level anyway. So there’s no point in smurfing either way.
They’re cheater accounts people. They cheat. They get banned after a month. They roll a new account. They cheat. They’re allowed to cheat for an entire month before getting banned so it’ll be worth it for them to keep buying these new accounts. Rinse and repeat. Corporate greed and “tolerance” of craptastic people are why the “smurfing” problem has not gone away and will still be a problem in Overwatch 2.
Overwatch had Skill based Match-Making, so the people they play against on their main would be about the same skill as them. Smurfing isn’t just a thing in OW, people do it in a lot of games for the reason of stomping less skilled players and/or getting easier matches. Smurfs can still cause problems for higher level players though as their skill may not have been properly placed by the system, meaning that the game may mistake them for being worse than they are, even if by only a few hundred SR, which can tip matches in their favor that were meant to be 50/50.
5 Likes
You’ve entirely misinterpreted what a Smurf is.
A Smurf is a player who uses an alternate account to intentionally play in a lower SR bracket than their main account is.
A Diamond player would make a new account, then try to place in gold by intentionally hard or soft throwing matches.
It’s really quite simple to place an account in low SR. Basically make it your goal to never be on fire while leveling your account and you’re bound to place in Silver.
Aside from all the streamers who inform how SR works, an old friend of mine had 8 accounts, his main being 3700 on DPS, then 3 alts in plat, 2 in gold, 1 in silver, 1 in bronze.
He made all of these to play with different friends in different ranks, as well as avoid the eternal queue times he faced as a mid-Masters player in an odd time zone.
Despite his reasons, he 100% was smurfing and ruining matches. He’d often solo queue and throw if an account got too high. He took two of his three plat accounts to Diamond at various points in time, but would constantly throw back down to plat solo to play with friends and then carry.
Everything he did was quintessential smurfing. He carried games with friends because he was playing in matches below his skill level. But more importantly he was throwing matches with randoms to stay in low SR.
So you don’t think any of this is a problem?
6 Likes
LVL is not the experience, rank is the experience. Smurfs are usually being put into handicapped teams as their winrate goes above 65%. If I see lvl 25 dps account vs me in ranked with high winrate, I already know that his tanks and supports would be full pepega. Or we both have bad tanks and supports and matched each other. That is why hard toggling widows still lose their matches and can not climb above masters even with an aimbot. But that is not the only reason.
Oh absolutely I think it’s a problem. My post wasn’t to indicate that “smurfing” isn’t a problem but to illustrate why I doubt and why in my experience the typically accepted definition of “smurfing” is widely misused or misunderstood. I believe there is far too much smurfing taking place I just don’t believe that the majority of it is made up of the situation(s) you detailed. I think it’s more traditional cheating and rolling new accounts like Call of Duty Warzone is experiencing, etc.
"LVL is not the experience, rank is the experience. "
Have you guys played any Quickplay or Classic lately? Even the leisure matchmaking is overrun with “smurfing” which is what I mean by “experienced”. There’s people that have played the game for 4 or 5 hundred levels getting rolled by level 20s constantly. And that’s what I mean by #1 in my original post. I doubt there is a specific reason that the most talented Overwatch “veterans” are the only ones smurfing leaving matches to end up being mediocre veterans on their primary account versus the MVP veterans on smurf accounts.
I appreciate and agree with your dislike of Blizzard but think it’s also important to acknowledge that making new accounts to play in lower skill brackets and get easier games is a concept that existed before Overwatch and will exist in any game with a competitive scene/ladder. The exact nature of smurfing and how bad smurfing is for a game actually changes based on what game your talking about. Cheaters definitely use new accounts, but regular smurfs also definitely exist in Overwatch, and I’m certain there are more smurfs than cheaters because smurfing doesn’t come with nearly the same amount of punishment. I mean, smurfs aren’t punished at all really, so.
But yeah, smurfs are 100% in Overwatch and much more common than genuine cheaters.
In this i whole heartedly disagree. I think cheat accounts are more likely than smurf accounts because I think smurfing is a really inefficient way to achieve the outcome that a smurf would want. But either way, Blizzard isn’t going to do jack crap about it as long as they’re benefiting financially from it.
Not to mention Blizzard and battle.net has a reputation for having the absolute worst, toxic, cheating, scamming, population of garbage people of any online community that I can think off right off hand and I’ve been playing online since the 90s. It’s like all the degenerates go straight to Blizz games.