Attempted to make a megathread (there are simply too many posts, respond with a link to yours if you like if it’s not listed here) but hopefully there will be an Andy response or dev one that isn’t “it’s fine”.
Smurfing infects all the modes and ranks, ruining just a massive number of games. It’s been a problem forever, regardless of what the devs say about the confidence of their matchmaker. Why can’t we limit who we play with/against once we hit silver level??? Why is this game constantly on sale? What has been done or is being done? Why in the ing hecc are you cannibalizing your most faithful playerbase and driving new players away?
KINDLY EXPLAIN.
Say you’re Acti-Blizz and money comes first before the devs or community. Fine. Say the only real way to keep making $ in OW (since you decided a content drought was the way to go and you potentially prematurely squandered OWL into the ground through interfering with the pro scene yourself versus supporting its natural formation, AND say you encouraged sexual abuse for decades all the way to the top bcuz broz make games, yo, but you gotta fa$e the music for that choice now) is for people to buy new accounts. Alright… Why are you forcing everyone to contend with those accounts, considering some of us started playing in 2016? Why hasn’t the competitive minimum requirement changed!?
Potentially the first post about smurfing (was an issue on console, first):
Yeah I’m pretty much done playing. Every game is 8 bronze borders and 4 real players. I’ve dropped from diamond to gold in one month because there literally aren’t any real players left and the matchmaking means absolutely nothing anymore.
the fact that people defend blizz at this point is astonishing to me. they went for years letting people sexually harass women, they literally are letting their company die because bobby isnt stepping down, and even worse, the head of the ow team LEFT because he couldnt stand to watch the community he built crash to the ground. like, seriously.
If you dropped from Diamond to Gold that sounds like a tilt problem rather than smurf problem. And by your logic, only the enemy team is getting those…smurfs. Which is just statistically impossible.
As it stands now, having fun in OW is hoping the team of smurfs you’re on is better than the team of smurfs making up the other team. In a way, the playerbase has already made borders a non-issue. Everyone is a smurf.
its mostly due to the population dwindling that its breaking the matchmaker. maybe they should tighten the ranking system to less ranks lol since the matchmaker is confused as hell. of course it would happen to a game thats old and less popular
i dont think they know what to do. there in the money making business so they arent gonna stop selling the game for a cheap price.
totally agree that tilt played into it. but you’re underestimating how broken the matchmaker is. i was in a lobby of all golds except two people. I had already dropped to 2550 at this point, so I was plat nearing gold. The enemy team also had one player who wasn’t gold. HE WAS DIAMOND. How am I supposed to do this? The game just isn’t fair anymore and it makes me not want to play more than 3 matches, just long enough to remember I’ve begun to hate it again the way I did during doubleshield.
My favourite is when the enemy smurf is a doom, and my team is ignoring me instead of supporting me when I’m tanking every punch and trying to make sure he kills no one. In a plat game, I win that game because I eat doom for breakfast. In a gold game I get zero heals because why pay attention to the person peeling for you and saving you from oneshots, better shoot full health rectangle man instead.
Sure, not every bronze border is a smurf. But the real gold players I’m with can’t deal with the smurf dooms and smurf echos we run into. And they’re too dimwitted to realize that helping me would help them, because I can deal with them if I get a little help.
If Blizzard would PROPERLY handle their matches. It would go something like this:
RULE 1 ) Any player whom is NOT in Q with another player UNDER level 100, or is 100+ would be in a General Population pool.
Rule 2 ) Any player whom IS or is with a player that is below level 100 would be in a Starter Account pool, regardless. With as many smurff accounts that are constantly created. This doesn’t become much of an issue. Most smurffs are people trying to manipulate their MMR, They had to buy the game again due to their last account being banned or lost.
Rule 3 ) any player that is a solo player would NOT be Placed in a match where there are 2 or more players grouped together in a Party.
I do not believe for one moment that this would be that drastic of an impact on Q times. Since people generally leave matches for these 3 reasons.
Disruptive New players.
Coordinated assaults against individual -Q players.
5-stack teams that abuse their 1 solo Q player, over petty matters.
As for competitive. It could be fixed with Cross-season bans and Playtime requirements being much greater (70 hour mark), before a person can unlock the Competitive mode.
It doesnt matter what op defines it by. Blizzard defines a smurf as someone who manipulates their mmr in competitive play so they can gain an illegal advatage.
That being said. De-ranking accounts are smurfs. You could have lv 1200 smurfs. Not all new accounts are smurfs. Most people and i mean the VAST majority buy new accounts to reset their sr. And see if theyve improved, or theyre trying to climb out of elo-hell. You cant define a smurf as “a low level account”
You seem to not understand the roots of smurfing. They need to fix the game first and establish the correct Effort to Value ratio between heroes and synergies, so ppl would like to play at high elo more. Now, mid-masters to high GM games are a complete mess about who got luckier with the matchmaker. I don’t want forced double shield or hog+ball comps to decide my skill rating and experience of this game. I’d rather go and clap pepegas in low elo to feel how my skill is relevant, than fight for nothing in this messy matchmaker. And I bet many high elo players realized the same. Smurfing is the only way to have some sort of fun in this game. The sad news is that 90% of players play casually and want to have the same fun w/o actual work (warming up, learning, improving). But you are unable to have fun in this game if you don’t have the skill to smurf. My advice is to get multiple accounts 1000 SR below your actual SR and play there without bothering.
And before you claim something about “ruining other’s games”, make sure you understand the concept of your own responsibility about your in-game experience. So you have the right to do anything that you want to increase your own value in this game to have fun besides using 3rd party software given UNFAIR advantage. Skill advantage is fair because you have it naturally.
Your second part alludes to what I’m getting at. Far too many people lose to a low-level account and cry out “Smurf!” without looking into the nuance of the situation.
And as long as that keeps happening, blizz will more than likely turn a blind eye to it because at the end of the day, they still get money. So until the players have a more cohesive message other than simply “make it stop”, they can’t hope for much lol
ing hecc are you cannibalizing your most faithful playerbase and driving new players away?