So I haven’t put enough thought into this, but this concept occured to me while playing Apex and I think could possibly be used to battle the ongoing smurfing issue.
Apex has a system that rewards Kills, which multiply the amount of RP gained. Blizzard could use a similar performance based SR gains that amplify the amount of SR gained. It also doesn’t allow the player to derank, once you’ve achieved the rank, you can no longer derank.
Alternatively, Blizzard could create a system that would look for patterns associated with smurfing, such as detect certain statistics; final blows in comparison to players on both teams or a large performance gap between games (throwing). Once it has enough data to confirm that player is smurfing they could apply a temporary deranking debuff on the account, so that player can no longer derank (throw).
performance based sr is already a thing dude.
if you want to make changes to the system that already exists then you cant really base it around elims. if you completely dominate on a 2cp map then you can win the round within 2 fights on attack, thats 12 elims if you did damage to every player on the enemy team.
potentially even less on defence if the enemy team backs out after you get 1 or 2 picks
how do you implement this without making throwing inconsequential?
this could already be part of performance based sr. we dont know though.
this arguably makes throwing a bigger issue, it just means they will have to throw more games to achieve the same result
That’s the point, they can’t. Even if they throw they can’t derank with the debuff applied.
Have you played Apex before? It’s impossible to throw to a lower rank in competitive. Once you hit that rank you can no longer go back to the previous rank.
These are just my thoughts. Please feel free to contribute, it’s a solution Apex uses to combat smurfing.
I guess its less of an issue in solos but if you cant de rank then does that not just create a cesspool of boosted players and throwers that cant go any lower?
That’s the thing, it might do for a season, but then the seasons reset. So blizzard would have to also have a soft reset.
You would have to consider whether the amount of current smurfs and throwers are worth the offset.
This system would change the current dynamics. Instead of having throwers and smurfs at the lower ranks you would have slightly more boosted accounts at the higher ranks.
I personally like the idea of a soft reset but it doesnt solve the smurfing issue.
assuming the reset drops said smurf, it just makes smurfing easier.
it would make rank boundaries awful for those who actually belong there.
lets say you put in the effort and managed to hit 4k or 3.5, you get punished for improving by being forced to play with either boosted accounts or throwers that cant go any lower.
the push into gm is massive, and you’d get rewarded with an objectively worse experience.
This is true and actually there could be an easy fix for this. It would be very easy for blizzard to detect, but remember the suggested solution above was a debuff that was added when a smurf was detected.
When it comes to console it is an easy fix just console ban the smurf account why therefore would also ban people main accounts most wouldnt want to rusk that
Yea, if only such a system existed. You have to tread lightly around here with these ideas, though. Most people consider PBSR to be some evil mechanism that sucks the joy out of the ranked experience for some reason.
So you say, that I can boost a client, and he will not drop down after that? You know what it will cause? The rank he got boosted to, will have actual pepega forever.
The only way to get rid of smurfing is to make those smurfs busy on their main accounts, but now there is nothing to do on it, there is no incentive, you stuck into boring meta, there is tank as defining factor in most cases, so you have a choice to play 1 or 2 heroes each role cause of meta and depends on what those tanks will pick or do.
Going to plat to see actual Rein-zar comps, holly sheesh there is alive bastion down there in gold! Wowie! Oh I can play whatever I want and nobody tells that I am throwing? Oh wait a sec, 1 min q time for tank instead of 10 in my 4400+ games?
There is no way that blizzard will fix all of that, unless they will actually pay you for maintaining your rank. Let’s say $150 per season for 500 players in top500 will not kill their economy completely. That way lower elo smurfs would also tend to climb in their diamond/masters games, where most of smurfs came into metals.
Or the actual solution, how about you don’t let others ruin your experience by getting better in the game instead of casual play? Never thought about that? Lets say, you force yourself to complete the ladder once up to GM, flat 4k, then you free to go into plat/diamond ranks to have good experience, cause you can diff other smurfs and establish “REVENGE!”
that could work but youd have to be able to tell a thrower/boosted player from someone who is having a bad week. you’d also have to consider the affect on queue times.
it might be negligible, i don’t know but they would have to consider it.
That’s the thing, I already addressed this above. It’s a debuff that can be added or removed after so many games depending on performance. It would theoretically make it harder for smurfs to throw to a lower rank.
This suggestion is of course theoretical, but it’s something, even if it’s not flawless it is better than Blizzard taking no action.
The Beta Season of Overwatch Competitive Play worked a lot like this, but was replaced with the up-and-down system when the game released in order to make the ranked ladder “More Competitive”
According to a past quote from former game director Jeff Kaplan, Blizzard already does a lot of looking into those boosting accounts and will remove them from the game.
Removing the boosted accounts or the players performing the boosting? Do you have more information about this because just now I had a conversation about a streamer doing exactly this: grinding an unranked or gold account to GM for content to generate subs and donation only for the account to disappear and never to be seen again once it is at 4k. It’s pretty likely that these streamers just sell these accounts for double the profit. Rinse and repeat.
Blizzard actually punishing people that buy their product seems unlikely to me.
That is not boosting, but using an alternate account and that behavior is technically acceptable. As long as they are not throwing matches to lower their ranking. That is technically permitted and if they are as good as they say, they should reach their true skill level and rank within a handful of matches.
Boosting is taking an account below the actual skill of the player and trying to raise it. Mostly done to sell accounts or boosting services.
TL:DR:
Alternate Accounts = Acceptable
Boosting = Not Acceptable
Throwing = Not Acceptable
Smurfing = A slang term that has variable definitions by the community
The only problem I have is clients, its insane that they dont get banned when they are blatantly boosted and throwing higher games cause they are basically diamond or lower playing in masters or GM but they can lose 20 games in a row and nothing happens.
I mean that’s usually what happens when someone buys a GM account. That particular streamer has also played higher border accounts to GM, so I am not exclusively talking about fresh accounts.
This is not what I am talking about.
Watching this streamer, all we see on stream is an unknown account being played to GM. The starting SR varies from being unranked to gold/plat. After he plays the account to GM for content, the account just disappears, and I assume he either sells the accounts or was being paid to boost them in the first place.
This way, the streamer profits twice, it’s actually a pretty clever business model, but obviously against TOS. Of course, it’s only conjecture but since you said blizzard is looking into this, i was curious what you know about their method.
Yea, i am not sure how my initial reply to your post was so unclear that you felt the need to clarify that to me lol
If he is selling the account he is violating the EULA there. But if he is playing an account to GM and stopping, that is not against the EULA or the Code of Conduct.
