Smurf’s are the sole reason that everyone says the matchmaking now is so unbelievably horrible. It was never perfect I agree, but NOW it’s crazy how many they are. In 99% of matches in silver and gold on console. (Not talking about PC)
They are the reason the matchmaker is out of whack. They form groups when they get to platinum to throw back down to bronze and they also make new accounts constantly where they throw their placements and maybe a few after that and end up in low SR only to (sometimes try) and when they do they destroy the enemy team and make the people who actually deserve to play in silver/gold feel like there is no hope to rank up and they leave the game.
Smurf’s also stick together, they sometimes do this all at once to play all in silver and make a team to destroy the enemy team. Then when they rank up they rank down again together. At least 1 Smurf is in every one of my matches on the enemy team sometimes with a mercy pocket and it is so blatantly obvious.
This really needs to be addressed by Blizzard. They will never rank out of silver and gold because this is where they want to play.
they want to play in silver, and you want to play in silver, cant see a problem. Climb out of silver to not have smurf issue in silver, then repeat each rank further up. Climbing is fixing your smurf issue like piece of cake.
4+ years of a no-reset season, 2/3 of roles being burner roles, most players having 3+ accounts by now, etc etc. All things that deteriorate ladder integrity.
They need to full reset. Then, see how smurfing impacts a fresh ladder with everyone treated as “new”. Yes the best players will be diamond playing with plats, but those are literally the nearest neighbors by rank activep population (fewer people are online most nights than all of masters rank). You can’t even have balance discussions using OB data because everything is so outta wack.
But somehow they won’t reset? Probably because there are washed streamers who’s dedgame content keeps their bills paid. And a reset would bury them. Then again this engine is such a workshop of dda/rigging they probably whitelist those guys anyway.
no it wouldnt They need to rewqork the SR System. Giving SR based on your performance is ok, but only added. So they should use a system a bit more refined than apex, but it works really good. And the fear of only grinding brings you up isnt right. Though it needs adjustments for ow, like top healing in game: 5+ SR, Top Damage in game 5+SR, Top Elims, 5+SR (if more than 1 has this, +2SR if more than 3 have it, 0SR Added). And so on.
And each win gives you 20 SR, each loss -20 SR. As soon as you got gold elims and dmg you get only -10SR. You could do many more things and it needs to be tested what works and what is too much, but it would be transparent.
It’s an insanely massive issue on PC as well, can’t imagine how bad it is on console where people can just keep making new accounts for free (as far as I know).
There really needs to be some sort of authentication in order to even queue for competitive on both PC and consoles. At least a phone number or something would be a start.
The thing is, Blizzard could easily implement something to discourage smurfing. They have proven that they have great ideas to deal with this game’s issues. They are just not willing to address smurfing because it makes them a lot of money.
And making arguments like “well they will just climb quickly because they are so good” are not helping because the amount of games they ruin in the process is considerable and there so many of them that it’s just a very regular occurance to have a once sided game with a smurf in it. And once they climb high enough that they can’t stomp people anymore, they will either soft throw back their way back low ranks or make yet another account.
Blizzard won’t implement any system to discourage smurfing on console because if they did, they would have to implement it on PC as well and that would mean losing money. Unfortunately, smurfs will be a huge part of this game forever.
I’m still completely amazed at people buying multiple accounts to play the same stupid game lol. How did Big Daddy Jeff manage that? The marketing for game has died for over a year now, people are STILL buying multiple accounts. Do people do that for other games?? This has to be some kind of new mental illness.
This isn’t about silvers, this is about Smurf’s who are 3000 and above sometimes I’ve seen 4400 drop down to silver gold over and over and over to play in that Elo to make silver and gold games horrible.: and sometimes they get a whole group at that level that threw over and over to just troll. So explain that?
a full reset isnt going to fix a dead ladder. The ladder is dead cause most of hte casuals are gone and casuals are what keeps the system working. Hate to say it but in order for a ladder to be healthy you needs lots of fish in the waters and that means minnows too. You get rid of all the “bad” players and you get what you have now. Silver being completely overrun with washed up plats and plat plus smurfs.
Truth is games need incentives to keep the masses queing. Right now there are zero incentives.
Reread that statement and realize you actually stated the problem. You should not have above average players in below average brackets… It creates really big problems. I play in high silver. Skill variance has always been bad there. It’s getting worse each day and some days you are like how the hell is this person not at LEAST in plat. Underrated players are frustrated and they are frustrating for people who have to face them.
A reset buffers away much of the lowpop feeling. It also brings players back because you actually have a new season (i.e. reason to try) - which we haven’t had since 2016. Gaps of 700sr are being filled in by the MM and shipped into the same match. That’s sparsity. And constant smurfs make “weird and corrupted matches” much worse than the 5-6 weird ones you’ll get during initial reset.
A reset will consolidate everyone back in towards the middle and let it splay out from there. Faster matches, 5-6 weird ones while the mixing is tightly coupled, and provably better match quality from there on out (c.f. Virial theorem, minmax the disruption). Faster queues via a skillcurve pdf that is renormalized by %players remaining.
I cant see how mixing in silvers and diamond and masters players into the same game will do anything.
If you are goign to do a reset you need to also heavily incentivize the casuals to come back to the game and that is going to be hard.
As it is right now the smurf problem in silver in just beyond atrocious and there is clearly a flex que throwing problem going on. I have lost 600 SR via the damage role in the last 2 weeks. Some games go fine and some games I am literally having double deaths to elims. Something is clearly wrong here.
They need to rewqork the SR System. Giving SR based on your performance is ok, but only added. So they should use a system a bit more refined than apex, but it works really good. And the fear of only grinding brings you up isnt right. Though it needs adjustments for ow, like top healing in game: 5+ SR, Top Damage in game 5+SR, Top Elims, 5+SR (if more than 1 has this, +2SR if more than 3 have it, 0SR Added). And so on.