God-level smurfs in EVERY placement match. Zero wins this season too. Thanks, Blizzard!
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…Thanks, Blizzard?
Isn’t the whole point of Smurfs to mis-use the matchmaker?
They are playing the game in an unintended way, practically hiding their skill… and it’s Blizzard’s fault that people are people?
You’re either taking a jab at humanity for existing or at Blizzard for not fixing a problem that’s hard to fix.
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its blizzards fault for allowing smurfs to run rampant, it is their game, they control it, they hold the power to stop it by banning smurf accounts…
so yes “Thanks blizzard” is appropriate
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low entry level person suggests this to upper management…LOL pack your bags kid, you are done.
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You shrug it off as if it’s an easy feat.
Ban smurfs?
Easy, though how do we detect them?
How do we make sure they aren’t mistaken for new players that are good, or those whose skill can vary throughout so many matches?
Maybe increase Customer Support personnel, that way they can check every single report a user makes (of which 50% probably are people assuming they are smurfs whilst being wrong)
Make it efficient or just rough so it’ll work ASAP.
Obviously this is the task of a company to do, though you cannot expect it to be just snap done like that.
Even when something is being done, you’d still complain so we’re not really getting anywhere.
That’s like blaming the Gov for the existence of criminals, just purely because it’s hard to work against them doesn’t mean they aren’t doing anything.
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Im willing to pay that none of those “God-level” smurfs are plat or above
get a grip will you man
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Algorithmically, of course. You really think the performance of a smurf and a “really good” new player are similar? That their skill-to-time-played ratio would be similar to someone who’d spent thousands of hours playing the game at a high level? That their hero pool would be the same, or their accuracy, positioning, kills to death ratio, general stats, etc. all of that would be similar? Shroud, one of the best fps players in the world joined OW and topped out at platinum.
If you’re suggesting that some of the most skilled technical devs on the planet are clueless when it comes to ideas about detecting smurfs, you don’t know about software engineering. Offer them stock options for successful completion of this project, and it gets done in less than a month.
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I doubt designing such systems are within their expertise, unless Blizzard is willing to hire more people.
There’ll always be someone hit in the crossfire, though it’s worth trying if we’re careful.
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Wow. The same people who built literally every aspect of this game – from scratch, from nothing – including the ranking system and all the complex code and statistics and advanced mathematics behind it, are incapable of discerning any difference between new players and smurfs.
What’s the reasoning behind this doubt?
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Because not having implemented such a system despite having such experts on the team would bedumb, and i’d like to give them a pass on this.
Though it wouldn’t be surprising if that were the case.
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This is incoherent.
20 chars
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Smurfs are an EASY fix. There are many ways to deal with it, because you only have to solve the problem for RANKED play. All other modes aren’t an issue.
The easiest way to deal with this will significantly reduce ranked smurf play – two factor authentication via actual phone number. There are databases that allow you to match a mobile number with any carrier, and filter out free IP-based numbers like Google Voice. It’s super easy, barely an inconvenience.
How many smurfs will get an additional phone line or two or three…just so they can pick on bronze players? Very, very few. Significantly fewer than we have now.
Ta-da! You’re welcome blizzard.
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If you’re legit bronze/silver just go kill supports? Forget the Smurf. Go kill supports. Supports are very rarely smurfs, and while it might not win you every match you’ll get more value doing that than trying to kill the Smurf. A plat DPS in silver is not going to be able to carry a match with no heals.
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Well they certainly can in bronze…
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A very hard thing to do. Telling from experience.
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I don’t think detecting them is the problem, but rather what you do after having them identified.
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Really comes down to either a cynical cost benefit analysis or making a principled decision about how smurfs should be handled. This is where things like “integrity” and “corporate culture” and “mission statements” come in to play.
The smurf problem is far, FAR worse on console where accounts are literally free (and here I’m defining “smurfs” fairly loosely: anyone who’s clearly better than other players at that rank – not the occasional player popping off, but categorically better).
Because they’ve done literally nothing about smurfs for the last 6 years.
Of course, could be down to laziness rather than lack of ability.
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why would they ban smurfs when smurfs are the ones buying new Overwatch licenses? sounds pretty counterproductive to me when you consider Blizzard probably doesn’t give a damn about the skill discrepancies in matchmaking.
if you know what you’re doing you can get as many phone lines as you want, that’s how people hog multiple T500 spots when they made it so only accounts with 2FA were eligible for a spot.
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Let’s put the current implementations aside. What would your ideal system look like to combat smurfs. Higher PBSR? Putting smurfs against smurfs? Increasing ladder mobility for them but not others?
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