Please try harder to do something about smurfs

Do you also feels like this when there is smurf in your team and you will get free sr or do you feel like this only when smurf is in enemy team?

You don’t see how you contradict yourself, do you?

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Of course he doesn’t. People like him only complain about issues like this in order to feel as though they didn’t deserve to lose their last match and/or deserve a higher skill rating. Well, take out all his games in which there was a smurf, and guess what, the amount of games he’s played with smurfs on his team and on the enemy would pretty much cancel out and he’d be at relatively the same sr.

If you want to make the argument that your issue is with the quality of the game, then smurfs aren’t the issue. The only way for a smurf to get to a lower tier is to either throw or play at a level lower then they actually are. If it is the former, then you aren’t against smurfs you are against throwers, and throwers can get and do get reported and banned. If it is the latter, then they are just going to get placed at the level they played at and there should be no problem.

If they decide that they are going to tryhard every game from thereon, then that is just called climbing, and you run into players playing well and winning every match. If they decide that they want to return to their previous elo at that point, the only way to do so would be to play at a level below their current rank, aka throw, at which point, like I said, they can get and are reported and banned.

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If they can’t compete at their own rank then clearly they don’t belong in that rank and would just naturally lose sr lol.

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Yeah no. Smurfs are still an issue. If it’s just an alternate account then fine who cares. But the disposable nature of accounts where someone can throw to play on the lower ranks just for the “luls”. That takes most of the enjoyment out of a match for most players no matter who’s team they are on. For me smurf implies that they are deliberately playing below their real rank. Whether by throwing or buying low rank accounts.

Yes that account eventually can get punished for throwing but what do they care? They just go get another one.

Of course they can still compete at (or at least slightly below their rank) but guess what? The toxic players who deliberately smurf below their rank, (once again not the ones who just have a second account and try at all times) don’t do it because they can’t compete. They mostly do it because they want to bully weaker players. We need to start calling these people what they really are. Bullies that ruin games for people whether they beat up on them and scream “git gud lol” or if they are on their team and berate their teammates for being “hardstuck trash”.

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Jeff recently admitted that smurfs are a problem and said they’re working on a solution.

That’s an old topic at this point. There are videos you can find where they talked about several topics with content creators, including this. Jeff literally said that they do not have a problem with people having multiple accounts but they hate when people manipulate sr/the matchmaker.

Please at least go watch/use those videos before you keep posting this same reply. At this point it’s just spam.

It is not. It is still relevant because Jeff noted that the solution won’t be coming until Overwatch 2 or later.

It’s not spam to alert people to something the lead game developer has said to expect from Overwatch in future.

How about, instead, you stop trying to be a forum moderator.

It is when there is a more relevant/recent version of those statements but it’s not in the forums so I guess that’s too much effort for you.

It is spam when it’s the exact same reply word for word. Less people are taking you serious each time you post it.

How about instead come up with something original?

So as far as solutions go we have the following broad categories:

  • Ladder reset. Cheap bandaid solution. You could pop this in next season. Signal/Noise ratio is recalibrated. Warps people back to the middle for a second chance and better incentivizes them to carry on. Unlocks mobility for some accounts. People settle in new ranks (not necessarily their exact old ones), because of the reset effects. The smurfing issue continues, and the ladder gets reset once more. Reset fixes a lot of side issues unrelated to smufing (like low pop sparsity, non-transitive sr trading, and silver tanks in plat games).

  • Ladder protocol rework/redesign. Better algorithms that are robust against adversarial performance manipulation. Solves smurfing by making it ineffective and unviable. Includes better scoring functions for psbr/soloagency. Presumably goes hand-and-hand with reset to fix all the other issues. Requires a lot of work. Not viable until OW2.

  • Uniqueness Methods. Hardware/Build ID. Unique account per unique client install per unique hardware. You could still smurf on your other account on the other PC. Phone/SMS type protection - you could still use your mom’s phone, etc. Discourages and mitigates alternate accounts but not necessarily smurfing behaviour. Probably not viable until OW2 or Bnet platform update.

  • Prestige/Priority Mode. Paid subscription model for a cleaned up ladder. More agents to police bad behaviour. Stricter punishments. Paywall encourages serious behaviour. Offsets lost revenue from burner account sales. Should come with added perks like faster tickrate servers and shorter queues. Also not viable until OW2.

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I think most people. Whether they think smurfing is an issue or not. Would welcome a ladder/matchmaker change/redesign.

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Well that’s part of it. The overall ladder redesign should happen for OW2. Better matchmaking, different ranking algs/system to reward solo agency and performance, and robustness to sabotage.

The only real viable solution is to just pull the plug next season and give us a kind of soft (or hard) reset to get the ball rolling. That takes almost no dev resources and should solve more problems than it creates.

Literally just take the time to watch this. It has the response he had when asked more recently and it’s much different than you in your hatred for anyone who even thinks of getting a second account would want to hear.

I’ve had to say it several times. But OW2 is not a separate game as far as the multiplayer is concerned. I could see them changing the ladder further into it, but I don’t think it’s coming at launch.

How about instead I just put you on ignore since I’m sick of you making false claims about my posts and telling me what to do.

Right back at you idiot. I made no false claims yet you won’t keep up with what any dev says unless it’s part of the forums. Go ahead and keep parroting the same arguments and see how more people start to ignore you. Not that you’ll mind since you only want to hear people you agree with anyway.

I get that OW2 is “redefining a sequel” i.e. Expansion pack PvE/Campaign DLC.
But it’s a catchall timeline/gate for all kinds of QoL improvements. That’s why I bin all the wishlist stuff with that release cycle.

May I ask what exactly is the difference between throwing on your main account and throwing on a smurf account, as it pertains to you? Nothing. You’re against throwers, not throwers who just so happen to be playing on another account.

Sure you may argue that since it’s not their main account or since they could just buy another if it gets banned, they won’t care much for winning and may be more inclined to throw, but still, the problem lies with the throwing itself. The motive or reasoning doesn’t really matter because to you, someone is just ruining your game and that’s the main problem.

Again, throwing is still the main issue here. Buying low rank accounts should not be allowed, sure, but how exactly do you plan on preventing it?

Ok and what are you proposing? Getting punished for throwing isn’t enough? Do you think that Blizzard should hunt these players down and bring them to justice or something? How can Blizzard know if someone has bought another account for someone? Or better yet, why in the world would Blizzard want to prevent someone from buying their game again? XD

If you’re proposing some other kind of ban besides an account ban, then what? An IP ban? If they do that then we’re back at our previous dilemma lol. That would simply prevent players from buying more accounts from Blizzard meaning less cash for them. Put simply, not going to happen.

Well that isn’t exactly what the other guy said lol, but sure.

And how exactly did they get to these lower ranks? That’s right, throwing. That is the real problem and what makes games unfun. Simply buying or playing on a smurf, secondary, alternate (whatever you wanna call it) account is not the issue in and of itself.

I just don’t think the chaos that a reset would bring would be worth it. Doesn’t solve anything major really and might just make people quit the game.

If anything I’d like to see the mmr instead of being based off of your entire history of playing the game, be based on only recent data. (Last 2-3 seasons, 1-3 months or last 200 games something like that.) That way it could better adjust to trends of improvement or people getting worse (is disprovement a word or would it just be unimprovement?).

This actually makes sense because on Console it doesn’t require you to buy the game again to play on another account. This most likely just proves that smurfs on PC aren’t going away any time soon since it literally requires that you give Blizzard more money to play on another account.