Let’s forget about the intricacies of correctly identifying smurf accounts and whatnot – not interested in splitting hairs about methods and processes (let’s assume they can be reliably identified through one method or another). I’m more interested if people have any thoughts on how smurf accounts should be dealt with, if at all. It’s often been said that smurf accounts are a revenue stream for Blizzard so they’re not interested in addressing the issue. Hard to speculate on what happens when revenue considerations butt up against community enjoyment. Thoughts welcome.
Start so full of hope
A new Overwatch Winter
Smurfs arrive quickly
Hasn’t Jeff said something about the smurf issues in one of the recent dev updates?
I recall him saying something though don’t remember, might be wrong.
And yes Smurfs should be treated differently in my opinion.
Smurfing can result in MMR in general shifting around and being unbalanced.
Not to mention most Smurfs throw to get in lower rankings, and of course that is not okay to do.
1 Like
Well intricacies, details and context aside, no they shouldn’t.
The smurfing “issue” can be solved quite easily by simply reporting throwers.
1 Like
The fact that new accounts cost money is already the ideal way to deal with smurfs.
If the smurf hates Overwatch so much that they buy accounts just to soft throw games, then they have to look in the mirror and ask themselves, “why am I still throwing $20 bills at Blizzard?”
If the smurf understands this, then they won’t buy new accounts, so they will just play the accounts they already have. This allows Blizzard to monitor for hard throwing. If they never hard throw, then they will gain more SR from hard carrying, than they lose from soft throwing. If they never hard throw AND never hard carry, then they are just indistinguishable from people in the rank.
He did, but they’ve been “talking” about this issue for a long time. Seems to me that this is not so incredibly complex that having already been on their radar for years now, they still find themselves searching for answers. Is it safe to assume that if this were really a priority, they would’ve done something by now?
1 Like
Personally, I think the best idea is to identify smurfs (easier said than done, right?) and then place them all into matches together.
Basically, segregate the normal population from the smurf population.
That way, if they want to smurf, they can smurf against other smurfs.
And those who just play the game normally, can play with others that do the same thing.
But it all comes back to – how do you unerringly identify a smurf?
Yes. There’s a lot of different kinds of smurfing, most of it not good.
Many smurfs are boosting accounts to sell.
Others throwing accounts to sell - yes people will buy pre-bronzed accounts.
Or they’re boosting others’ accounts for money.
Account manipulation in all kinds of ways for money is a big problem.
Alternatively they’re deliberately griefing games for their own thrills.
People will talk about ‘practice’ accounts but they simply don’t exist. Self imposed limitations don’t make it okay, and people will break them when they feel they can justify to themselves it just as easily as they can their knowing what they’re doing is harming the matches they play in.
2 Likes
Disagree that charging for additional accounts is “ideal.” That’s not really addressing the smurf issue, it’s just the default requirement for any new account. It would be like saying the solution to too many guns, is that guns cost money. Plus, that doesn’t solve the issue on console. A policy change concerning the way smurf accounts are handled fixes the problem no matter how the account comes into existence and no matter which platform it’s on.
Smurfs are not a real revenue stream. The cost of the game is very little, and even less when on sale which is when a lot of smurf accounts are bought. Smurf accounts are also VERY unlikely to buy cosmetics whereas a normal account would. When you look at it in that respect smurfs are a revenue loser for Blizzard, but the problem as the OP mentions is how to detect and address it.
1 Like
Yes of course they should, they should as a base have the same sr as their old account. Which means the can place more accurately.
I suggest every so often making a stop by LFG and reporting groups labeled as throwing, account buying/selling, smurfing, boosting, or asking for their name reported for inappropriate group names. If you report those who are ruining the game that way, it’s very easy to get accounts banned.
It obviously isn’t an imposition when the accounts are bought and sold on precisely for the rank and levelling that’s been done for them.
The smurfing alone isn’t the only bad behaviour associated with those using multiple accounts. Doubtless people smurf on older, high level, second hand accounts where they can hide it better.
no… only if they break the rules
Well i think it’s fair to complain about them not having implemented any measures yet.
Though it’s fairly hard implementing a fix for smurfs without a downside to normal stuff allowed by rules.
Yes. They should receive the same SR as their main and make a smurf only comp que so if they throw to derank they can’t ruin the game for everyone else.
It’s as simple as instituting authentication, telling the players, and letting matchmaker handle it all behind the scenes. We don’t even need an extra button on the select screen, if you’re a smurf it’ll know and drop you into a smurf game.
1 Like
Since human review is likely out of the question, it would have to come down to metrics. Smurf accounts do not, from a data set point of view, operate like normal accounts (if they did, we wouldn’t be discussing them, because there would be no discernible difference between smurf accounts and regular accounts and there would be no problem to discuss). These accounts do behave differently, and that’s identifiable in the data. If you took 100 “regular” accounts and 100 smurf accounts and tracked every aspect of the way those accounts behave and the numbers they generate, it’s a guarantee that the datasets between the two groups would be different. They’d have to be (again because they are literally behaving different as they’re being used by different people with different objectives, and with different skill sets – there’s no way those factors produce no statistical differences). I assure you a run of the mill computer programmer/data scientist could algorithmically identify smurf accounts.
i think its pretty obvious that a practice account is just an alt where used for practice. the self imposed limitations used on practice accounts (use the heroes you want to practice) aren’t wrong or bannable lmao. Idk how you think that harms matches any more than off meta mains.
Either they all should be banned, or the matchmaking should pair all of them with each other after the system knows those accounts are smurfs. And let’s be real, those smurf accounts arent used for practicing, that’s just an exploitable loophole.
Because you’re sure as hell not playing to win, just playing ‘practice hero’ through a loss you know is coming but are treating as a ‘learning experience’. A loss that wouldn’t be inevitable if you’d switch.