Honestly, despite all the educational content some of the nice streamers (Yeatle, ML7) have made, I can’t justify smurfs anymore.
I’ve literally gotten so many toxic, racist, throwing (usually for me playing off meta stuff that I’m good at) smurfs. Just had one that made fun of me for having a platinum border in plat (I genuinely don’t understand how that’s an insult still), called me poor for not having multiple alts, and proceeded to tell me that he just trash talks and is super racist on his alts. He also admitted how he threw games to be further down in plat. Genuinely sick of this toxic community. /hidechat and playing outside of team chat for the win I guess.
I don’t understand why Blizzard allows this anymore. Anything to get their hands on extra money I guess.
Anyone who think new accounts make blizzard a noticeable amount of money are just wrong.
But where is a piece taking apart what is in the annual statements…
"Consolidated net revenues on the last annual statement were $6.489 billion
$4.514 billion of that was from “Subscription, licensing, and other revenues” So on-going in-game purchases and stuff.
$1.975 billion - “Product sales” - that is sales from the Blizzard store, so includes t-shirts and new accounts.
So new accounts would be a percentage of that $1.975 billion, based on the expenses I would say no more than 30% of that.
So new accounts, at a best estimate accounts for $590 million of $6.489 billion (ie about 9%)
This is factoring in all games as they don’t split it by game, just division. they do however mention a few times that MAU’s (monthly active users) for Overwatch are down over the year (shock)
In short, new accounts don’t actually do much for their bottom line in the current model."
I believe this was in discussions about why they would go F2P (a smart business idea in my books).
Smurffing is a thing on every video game. Hey, I dont like it either!!
But I do think that Blizzard COULD curtail the problem by SHUNTING the issues with the pool of players that do this OFTEN. Just with using the level system as a PLAYED time to reputation factor.
Smurff = (This):
High elo level 1 player. High ELO level 60 player. = 90% chance they are a smurff.
Someone that bought another account because their last one (or 10… or 20) were BANNED due to bad behavior. (Their main account is no longer valid).
more.
Someone creating ANOTHER account hoping to get out of being Hard-stuck in comp, only to find out they are NOT much better than they were (or are).
Someone that plays masters, Diamond, or high platinum and wants to boost their FRIENDS from Bronze, silver or GOLD so they can join them (they only hope). in their highest rank.
That is pretty much what a SMURFF IS.
What smurffs Do is this:
Plays a series of Competitive matches POORLY. But pretends to do well. and occasionally goes “Super saiyan” if they are tunneled enough.
always bossing everyone AROUND in chat. and cursing at them for poor performance. IF they are trying to CLIMB again.
always abuses everyone in chat, to demoralize the team. just so it becomes a loss and their ELO can fall.
Resorts to CLIFF DIVING and FEEDING the enemy team. In order to ruin their MMR and ELO.
It’s not half the player base. It just seems like a lot in Bronze/Silver because that rank has a lower population, and a lot of smurfs like to troll there.
Someone with an alternate account that is much lower rank than their main account. Someone who intentionally plays at a lower level to game the system so they can stomp on lower skilled players.
Having a secondary account isn’t smurfing. As long as your accounts are close to the same rank.
When we talk about smurfing, we generally mean masters+ players (maybe even diamonds) who play in Bronze/Silver or even Gold.
A platinum player playing in Gold, or even high silver isn’t smurfing generally. They’ve just had a streak of bad luck. Has happened to me before.
It should be a bannable offense for sure. It’s just hard to prove with an algorithm and ensure no false positives. Below average players should not be subjected to high level players. The only way you’ll be more or less immune to smurfs is to play in Mid-Gold/Platinum where most of the players are. Large population makes it less likely, lower populations make it more likely, especially the lower skilled ones.
Not saying it’s impossible to run into smurfs in Gold/Platinum. But the average rank is more of a melting pot of different skills melded together. Some have better mechanical skill, but horrible game sense (trait shared with most cheaters). Some have bad mechanical skill, but better game sense. With that in mind, you could have really good mechanically skilled dps on one side with bad game sense, while having really bad dps mechanically on your team.
You can say with more confidence there are smurfs in Bronze/Silver because of the low population statistics, but also that no one in those ranks have any sense of good mechanics, so when you get completely obliterated it’s pretty obvious.
One of the more frustrating things is when I do use LFG, I constantly see 2 or 3 deranking groups. Which sucks for anyone in those ranks because with such a low population, solo players are going to be paired against those groups when they decide to try hard.
And therein lies the problem. Throwing isn’t black and white, it’s a spectrum. You don’t have to hard throw to derank. You can slow down, shoot less, and actually get eliminations and not play your best on purpose to lose. It’s not difficult. But it is also hard to prove.
Mechanics and game sense are the most commonly talked about aspects of higher ranks. But one that often goes undiscussed is APM (Actions Per Minute). The pace a higher ranked player can aim, react, and make decisions is much higher. So in order to derank, they just need to lower that just below someone of that rank would do, while still “contributing”.
You could say “OK well, measure that then”… But even I will have an high APM to start, and then after a few hours of playing and fatigue my APM will drop. Although I would guess that a smurf’s throwing APM is much lower from min/max than a normal players fatigue. It would have to be heavily researched and tested.
That’s true to a point. You have to make an effort to detract and discourage it, and right now Blizzard is doing nothing. Despite Blizzard’s best efforts, a few will slip thru the cracks. But if they made an effort, they could decrease the number quite a bit. It will never be perfect, but it should be fine tuned to not ban legit players who are not smurfing. Better to let a few smart people slip thru than ban innocent people. At the moment, the game is wide open.
It would have to be more than performance. It would have to include links to another accounts with high rank. And/or wildly different APM and other performance statistics that are well out of the norm. Which could also indicate account sharing, but that is also not allowed anyway.
Depending on the sensitivity, you’ll end up flagging people who are innocent in one direction, or letting a few slip thru in the other direction. I would say letting a few slip thru is probably best as right now we have no deterrent at all.
