People always like to find excuses

No, smurfs aren’t the reason anyone is stuck in “Elo Hell”. Roadhog isn’t broken he is just able to exploit every comp besides double shield and has a one shot this makes him seem broken but he is more just unfun the play against… This may be Xbox only but smurfs are few and far between in lower elo most are in masters. I Have friends that i vod review and maybe 1 out of 6 games have smurfs that perform like the forums portray them as. Yes, they are and issue but not a major one. I feel for some of the players on the forums because balance at lower sr is pretty bad most of the time but i climbed and i suck at everything so you can too.

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I get an account under lvl 50 in every single match with very rare exceptions.

yeah, “not serious” issue at all. xD

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From personal experience you are over blowing this issue. If we entertain that 90 percent of your matches do have smurf how many of these are just alts or diamond/plat smurf who just kinda suck overall.And again this is only my experience on xbox this could be completely different on PC

My experience is different form yours. And even if they suck they still affect the match quality because they are not in the correct rank.
Not to mention throwers. I have seen people deliberately suiciding into the enemy team pretending to be bad.

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I play on console, my games should be inundated with smurfs with the way people go on about it on here, yet I do not agree at all that smurfing is an issue to care so much about.

9/10 of the fresh accounts I see are not good players. A few may be new players, but most of them are already playing in exactly the same level they belong in. These people, by definition, are not smurfs.

Once again, the problem here is arrogant people unwilling to admit to their failures. Their problems with the game are in their head.

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Throwers are an actual issue smurfs who throw to stay in low elo are very bad issues and overwatch is terrible at identifying them.

I love this argument. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are players in the game that are fine being at low ranks. It’s not a failure at all. The issue is that it isn’t fun when you are playing a game way out of your league while in the bracket you belong.

Imagine how a Masters feels when he has a boosted bronze on their team floundering around all match. It’s not fun for the masters. It’s not fun for the bronze. It’s like telling the masters they are a failure because he can’t play like a bronze; completely illogical and hypocritical.

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Most people I see downplaying the issue of smurfs are people trying to defend the fact that they have smurf accounts.

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I have 3 smurf accs all in masters. Im not trying to defend smurfs i see no issue with alt accounts and most developers dont either. I have an issue with people who derank to play in low sr that is ban-able and they should be hardware banned bc they obviously are not good players.

As I said - most people on fresh or alt accounts are not smurfs. They are already playing in the ranks they usually play in. They are not good enough to carry games, but they live rent-free in some people’s heads because they are apparently smurfing.

Most people don’t really care all that much that they’re stuck in the rank they’re at. They just want to have enjoyable matches and not get stomped by a smurf or have games thrown by either smurfs deranking or new accounts that are clearly from previously banned players.

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How would you know that unless you were a low-rank player playing in the bracket you belong? How can you speak about something in which you probably have little or no experience dealing with??

I will see these people in QP, I will see these people when I watch my friends play ranked. They are not special - they are human and are very beatable.

How is that relevant? You have no experience dealing with it, so you have no say in what it feels like, imo. Being beatable isn’t the issue. The goal isn’t to win. It’s like you don’t understand. Perhaps you are incapable.

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But they are not diffrent to just a decent player in comp. I only recently climbed i was gold/plat from season 12 or 13 up untill season 22. I did experience this and I very rarely went against a smurf that cause an issue maybe 1 out of 7 or 8 games that we lost because of smurfs.

You have to be plat or above to smurf in gold. A silver can smurf in bronze. Would you say it’s logical to assume bronze has quite a few more smurfs than gold? Now add that there are less players in bronze than gold, due to bell curve, and you begin to see the issue and why so many players complain all the time.

On paper yeah that looks like there are millions of smurfs in bronze. But does it make sense to think after 25 level of quickplay mmr and 5 placements a silver or gold or plat or diamond player will be place more then 150 sr or above their rank. My smurfs have never been ranked lower then diamond. Throwers are another issue.

I have experience - I’ve seen these people, and as I’ve said before, they are already playing in the rank they belong in.

Again, these people are not smurfs. They are beatable because they are already a similar skill to you. If & when this is the case - arguments of these people ruining competitive spirit, or other aspects of fun (whatever those are), are void.

The issues these accounts often bring to the table, such as swearing or harrasment, are not symptoms of smurfing. These people will do this regardless of what account they play on. This is a completely separate issue.

I do understand that the other people like cheaters and throwers exist but i still don’t think that the impact games when they are rare.

I get what you are saying. You are saying a lot of good players in low ranks are mis-identified as smurfs. That much we can agree on.