Make smurf bannable,

Competitive Discussion
101

The only people that disagree with this are people who smurf. Please do something about it. I’m sick of commenting “wow, another game of smurfs” and everyone telling me to “get gud gold border plat”. I was master once.

Make it so that people with SMS protect turned on can only play against other people with SMS protect turned on. Blizzard doesn’t care about its players that have been improving. Blizzard cares about people willing to spend money on different accounts.

Change something. we have been asking for so long. For the love of god.

1 Like
102

Nothing about the playerbase is decreasing if people can only play on one account at a time.

103

Now this I would actually be okay with, or at least maybe a toggle option for that. I’ve said before SMS protect wouldn’t work for limiting one account per person, but letting people filter who they play with and/or against by only having it be people who did SMS or some other verification would be nice.

104

And if a player’s account gets incorrectly flagged as a smurf account and banned? Bet most people won’t appeal or buy another. They’ll just move on to another game.

105

I don’t frankly care what they do

The point is that people with SMS protect should only play against SMS protect. Perhaps if they get reported blizz can look into their IPs. But I would imagine it’s hard to pinpoint that. The main point is to prevent people from playing on 6 different accounts for fun.

106

You should. The more players that drop the game from being falsely banned the closer the game gets to actually dying. IP even wouldn’t work either, too many houses with multiple people trying to play the game, report one of them and by your logic 2-5 players could get banned and never come back.

107

I’m not really saying that smurfs should get banned at all though, I’m saying that people with SMS protect on should have the option to play in lobbies with only others that have SMS protect on.

It would not stop all smurfing but right now there is nothing to keep it in check. I bet this would eliminate a lot of it. I’m not saying they should police people with SMS protect on; obviously they don’t care about t500 players with multiple t500 accounts, as there are people that openly stream getting t500 on multiple accounts.

108

I agreed with you on that point dude. I’d be all for that, or at least letting people say “only pair me with SMS accounts.”

109

Yeah, like make it a toggle that is on by default. I’ve thought a lot about this issue and it’s the only rational solution I can come up with.

110

Honestly the only rational one I’ve heard too. It allows for people who can’t SMS for some reason to still play, allows those who want an alt account to actually try on to have them, and can also help control quality.

The one thing I may say is allow people to SMS multiple accounts with the same number, but link them all and hold each one accountable for the actions of the others. That way if I want a second account to have higher quality matches I can do that but if either account throws or does anything to be suspended then both get hit.

It would give a way for the punishments on second+ accounts to mean something, in exchange for better quality matches on the extra accounts.

111

It’s easy to play like a lower level player my friend.

1 Like
112

At the very least they need to put a system in that will give smurfs and only smurfs opponents that are smurfs

113

Not to blizzard. They are on record saying they do not feel its a problem requiring punishment.

114

They actually dont and are on record in these forums saying as much.

A basic google search would have saved you this post.

1 Like
115

I’ve not seen any such post from Blizzard saying not to report smurfs.

I have seen a post from Jeff himself saying it’s a problem and they’re working on a fix.

And, as I noted, it is reportable for cheating as it falls under Blizzard’s definition of same, specifically “unfair advantage”.

116

Comix, you’re someone i respect on these forums, so i won’t troll you the way i’d troll a rando.

Google “Jeff Kaplan Smurfs”

That is the stance on smurfing for this game from the highest level. Anything else is pure narrative.

And, for the sake of argument, “that interview is old”

What actions have they taken to suggest their stance has changed?

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117

They do. They are ok with making alt accounts and playing as you should. They are not ok with smurfing, but they have practicaly no tool to determine who is and who is not smurfing. Smurfing = playing bad on purpose to be lower ranked.

1 Like
118

Easy fix. Make it so having an Overwatch account requires a linked mobile phone number. Then whoever wants another account will also have to get ANOTHER PHONE HAHAHA

119

And what about already created accounts?

And btw it wont stop smurfs anyway.

2 Likes
120

Those 2$ for a new number will hurt real bad.

I didn’t even notice a smurf in the past month or so (and I’ve played a L O T), how is this such a big issue?