Please try harder to do something about smurfs

No.

Throwing is relative. Do you call someone a thrower if he c9s once? When do you define one as a thrower?

We decide whether one is throwing or not on the overall balance of his actions. If this supposed Genji player doesn’t play the objective and does nothing all game, then he’s a thrower.

Unfortunately at lower rank players don’t know that a true smurf is throwing because this Genji constantly lighting up the killfeed at the wrong times.

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Exactly. I can play as a widow or Genji smurf (though the hero specifically isn’t as relevant) for example, fool around and just barely “miss” my shots until the rest of my team is dead then kill five of the opponent before “whoops they got me” or “damn I just can’t get that last guy.”

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u got it on the money. Real Smurfs do this. When ur his teammate what can u say? “Widow ur throwing” but… he just killed half the enemy team. he can always turn it back on you by asking “wtf r u doing? I just killed 5 guys”

Ow is a game by design that allows such behavior to exist. Both killing and playing the objective matters. Its not like other games such as csgo or cod where if ur getting kills ur most likely doing the right thing

It’s not even just playing the objective. If the Genji dashes in 1v6 and kills 5 and dies, but it was on the objective, he can argue “I was contesting but you’re all bad”. The game above all else requires playing together, coordination, and cooperation, smurfs mostly ignore that whether they are trying to win or not.

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Matter fact is Smurfs are the biggest problem in the game. This is not just low rank but all the way up to 4.1-4.2. Yes even at low GM. The amount of contender and owl players that hide behind a smurf to mess around in low gm is ridiculous… I know this is true because I have multiple alt accounts in low gm. I don’t try my hardest. I go for unnecessary 1v1s against enemy brig. I go for widow duels against hackers. I go for sneaky shatters knowing enemy rein has shatter. I solo grav pharahs because it pisses them off. I might win I might not but am I throwing ? Not really considering I can always flex my gold medals and peak rank on that account that instantly shuts up the team.

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very true. lol u must be a smurf u have the smurf mentality pinned down 100%

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Actually I’m not. Although I technically have two accounts for overwatch, one is pc the other is Xbox and both hover around mid gold. Haven’t even touched my Xbox account for comp since I wanna day like season 17 or something either.

I just play with or against enough of them and see enough of them trying to defend themselves/make themselves appear to be the good guys on the forums to guess how they operate.

may the ow gods bless you.

I am personally a culprit for smurfing. I’ve been banned many times on Smurfs. But guess what on my main people think I’m a positive pma player. I admit smurfing is a problem but it’s so damn fun. First because everyone loves to bully. Second because teammates confusion and reactions are always gold.

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I’d love to see some way to force/incentivize players to link all their accounts together, keeping them and the ranks separate but admitting that they are owned by one person. They can be allowed to be at multiple ranks or whatever since, not only do people make accounts to practice heroes they don’t play yet but still try as hard as possible, but the matchmaker/mmr are not always consistent to say the least.

That way people get to keep the good reasons for having extra accounts while people who smurf/throw/act like toxic people in general because of how disposable alternate accounts are can be forced to risk their shiny main account if they want to do that.

I’ve even played with and against smurfs that were genuinely good people and did not ruin the experience as much as others do, though that does not make the inherent smurfing that they do excusable at all.

yes Smurfs can be good people. It’s just really dependent on their mood.

Im not sure ur proposal would work. I don’t see Smurfs agreeing to reveal to the world who their mains are.

That’s the issue really. Like I said I’d love to see some sort of system be able to do it, but unfortunately there no real way to do it or even target smurfing any way other than reactively without negatively impacting the rest of the player base or labeling players who may just be inconsistent as smurfs.

Was a Tracer smurf in one of my games a few days ago and other than the obvious which was annoying, my team kept flaming us DPS because we couldnt kill her. FFS she was godly and butchered us, wtf could we do…

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I said it once and I’ll say it again. there are much less smurfs than what most the people think. the main problem with the MM system is that it is based upon the elo system. elo is a mathematical model that was designed for 1v1 duels, like many things in math, once you move it from it’s original design it has flaws. elo system has a lot of flaws when it comes to team duels. you are facing much more players that should be ranked higher than their current rank than actual smurfs. and the reason why is that those people are better, just not as good to get a consistent amount of wins to evolve from their rank, and even when they have the skill it takes a lot of time. MM system that it based upon elo system for team duels will ultimately fail, it doesn’t matter if you are the better player who wants to reach higher ranks, or if you are the one that is suffering from the skill gaps, the only thing you can do is actively carry your games, because as of this moment it doesn’t seem like there is a better model than the elo.

You clearly don’t play on console…

First of all.

Why do you think smurfs exist?

Well of course there is the reason: “To wreck noobs”

But there are other reasons too:

  • To escape hero pools
  • To escape those long queue times

Sure, it’s common that smurfs try to wreck games in lower rankings.
Though they also have their fair share of issues on their side.


Now let’s move over to how we would fix this issue.

Does anyone have ideas that can detect these smurfs?
(Something that can’t easily result in false-positives)

This system if implemented could potentially result in false positives yes, but if votes are weighted properly based on players who show a lack of bias when voting and a decent appeals system is implemented then this would at least be a step in the right direction while also being able to generally address throwing and hacking as well. It wouldn’t be automated but nothing effective would be.

Doesn’t matter what issues they have on their side. They should do what they can to address those issues within their own rank. Just because their rank isn’t the perfect environment is not an excuse to go make other ranks worse for everyone else.

that is true, I play on pc. however I believe the situation is the same on console, read my whole reply.

this system was used in cs go and ultimately failed, I believe the result will be the same for OW.

Does not mean it is not worth trying.

The unfortunate thing is that there’s no way to proactively deter/punish hackers/throwers/smurfs or just generally toxic players. The only way to really do it is reactively and compensate players affected fairly.

I don’t know if you actively play csgo but I do not. Even then, if it did fail for csgo doesn’t mean it failed because of its basic concept, the idea could still be salvaged or worked a different way to make it better. The point is and I think a lot of people would agree with me here, to just try something. If it doesn’t work try something else. Just going with the status quo will only lead to stagnation or worse, decline.

Low tier players rarely actually realize when there are smurfs/throwers. they’re far more likely to just blame their teammates (if the enemy has a smurf) or assume that theyre just good enough to steamroll (if they have a smurf or the enemy has a thrower)

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