Smurf culture makes overwatch much worse for most players

Competitive Discussion
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Hi folks,

Older player here who learned enough of overwatch to climb out of bronze to silver. At this point, most games go either one of two ways:

  • A fun, even match between two teams filled with silver-level players, where I usually have silver or gold in all the relevant categories. Sometimes my team wins these, sometimes we lose, but it feels like a fair matchup.

  • A smurf or hacker carry where our team is rolled, or we are carried for easy SR.

The ratio currently at bronze / silver is around every 3 or 4 games is a carried steamroll.

Imagine this kind of structure in any other sport. Imagine playing baseball on a casual but competitive team. You watch baseball on TV, and even practice mid-week, but you have other things going in life. You enjoy the league, and compete in tournaments, but you’re playing against other people generally at your level.

Imagine every 4th game, someone from MLB or baseball juniors is randomly assigned as the pitcher on either your team or the other team. If its the other team, you lose. If its your team, you win, but it doesn’t really feel like a win.

First, the major leaguer would be embarrassed to play in this league. A win would be an embarrassment. Of course they won. They are one of the best players in the world, playing against people who are literally learning competitive play.

Second, the amatures training would simply quit this kind of league.

Recognising this, I’m quitting Overwatch. I really like the game, but climbing SR is not based on skill - it is instead a game of two fair opportunities to step forward, one random dice roll for a plat+ player who will shut down the game.

The constant refrain from the Overwatch community is “Get good. Quit if you don’t like it.”

Fair point. I’m quitting today. I just wanted to post as to why. This game simply isn’t fun under the current algorithm, even if the base game is incredible.

If I could make any suggestion to Blizzard corporate HQ:

At some point, a calculation has been made to either a) further restrict smurfing, or b) leave things as they are.

I would guess that there was a calculation at some point that cutting down down on smurfing would reduce multi-copy Overwatch purchases from a small subset of players. This value is probably in the x00,000s to x,000,000s per year (e.g. somewhere between 5,000-50,000 additional, incremental copies of the game per year), though likely not more than this, and potentially less. So, significant, but not massively significant.

I believe a calculation has been made that the longevity of the low-SR (sub 2500) user base is less important than this additional yearly revenue. To Blizzard Corp HQ, I would argue the following:

  1. If you are looking to capitalise on the $1b esport investment you have made to push SC2 and Overwatch competitively, you need more casual players playing the game at sub-2500 SR. You are cannibalising a massive potential audience that are frustrated with the current algorithm and are abandoning the franchise.

  2. Once people have purchased multiple copies of overwatch, they can use it each season for alternate smurfs. Therefore, I would guess that over time the amount of revenue received from multi-account high-SR smurf whales diminishes over time.

Bottom line: You are trading short-term small value to hamstring the ROI on the esport market. Furthermore, I would guess you have extracted most of that short-term value already.

Change the algorithm and I would love to return. I’ll be back for Overwatch 2, when there is a flood of new players to dilute the smurf base a bit.

But for now, I’m retiring at 1800 SR.

Good luck to the rest of you.

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i admire your effort.

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Well you went wrong when you started talking about medals.

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Blizz does not care.

If they did, the entry level to comp would not be 25.

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I’d be happy to play with you. I regularly play with people much higher and lower than yourself and we have a blast. I even got receipts to admit that he had fun, even if he will not admit it to anyone else.

I’m currently hovering around the 1700sr mark and I can tell you that the problem with smurfs is heavily outweighed by the amount of leavers.

But as a final statement: The only reason to actively play Competitive over quick play is golden weapons. Nothing more. If your concern is smurfs just play QP and enjoy the game. They tend to take things more seriously in that mode tbh.

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I usually stop reading right there when people start mentioning medals :smiley: but I understand the OP’s point of view.

I’d argue that “casual but competitive” is a bit of an oxymoron, but I get it.

I remember this match a long time ago when there was a Smurf on the enemy team calling everyone bad and “how bad this elo is and how everyone sucks”, and then some guy on my team wrote “let me suck in my own elo in peace”. I understood what he meant.

I know that technically it might be hard to do, maybe would even split the playerbase a bit, but there definitely should be some sort of comp environment for people who simply just want to play in their own elo with other people who are in their elo.

Not everyone wants to rank up. Some people play this game 2-3 times a week or less, and that is fine, and they should not be compelled to play Arcade or QP because it is “for casuals”. Everyone should be allowed to play Comp against people of their own skill.

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But which target audience should then play quickplay or even classic quickplay / arcade?

If competitive is for “everyone” that wants to play “anything”?

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That was not my point.

There should not be any “player target” for QP, Arcade or basically any of the modes provided. The reason why there are so many modes is to give a variety to different type of players.

The majority of low elo comprises of people who want to play Comp like QP, play what I want, how I want it, the way I want and when they get “schooled” then it is not so fun and then they cry.

I was merely talking about some kind of a Utopian setting for OW Comp. How those people who want to play like that in Comp and do not want to rank up or improve should have their own little Comp environment so they can play it like they play QP and still be eligible to earn Comp points for Golden guns and other rewards one gets for playing Comp.

There is nothing wrong for wanting to play the way you have been playing since you bought this game with your Plat border account without having better people ruining your games. And no matter what I personally believe in I still think that everyone deserves to play in their own elo with and against people of their own skill.

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Might just be lucky but if there’s a smurf on one side there’s normally one on the other too. You can also zone them out with hard counter picks because 9 times out of ten they’re on that account to play for example widow and will not swap off no matter how much they’re getting mulched.

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People do not notice Smurfs on their team because their gamesense is too low to notice even when your supports are down and how you should wait for a regroup let alone to notice when somoene on your team is Smurfing. Killfeed tutorial needs to start to be mandatory, imo, not only for new players but everyone else as well, especially in low elos.

I agree with you, but it is definitely hard to get people to play as a team in order to “take down the Smurf on the enemy team”. The majority just loses the will to play anymore and they start to throw just for the match to finish asap.

I personally had both, had people who actually were willing to work as a team to stop the Smurf and I’ve won some of those matches (I also lost some, which is normal) and had those who simply gave up and decided to never leave spawn. It is basically a roll of the dice at this point when it comes to stopping the enemy Smurf.

Your only bet is you trying to take them down on your own, where you will fail if you are not better than them or try to get your team to help you which they will not in 50% of cases or in the other 50% they will and you actually manage to win.

Nowadays when there is a Smurf on the enemy team I always try and coordinate a team attack on the said person. If it works it works, if it does not, I try to do it on my own. If I fail, I fail, was not good enough. If by any chance I happen to kill them and make space for my team then goody on me.

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This is a good thread, but it is missing a mention of Match Making Rating (handicapping), the biggest reason for smurfing which also makes a mess of player ranking. More information:

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I completely agree with everything posted here. I have played since the game has come out, all 27 seasons of Overwatch. I peaked in Season 8 with something like 2800 SR. I can barely stay platinum now and mostly fall in gold because I kid you not, every other game is just smurfs, trolling teammates, or some kind of combination like that. It’s sad to see this game fall this low, I use to really enjoy it. Now I just get frustrated when I play. The community is overall pretty awful. Sad to see it go down like this, especially as a long term fan.

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I get what you mean but it’s sad this has to be suggested as some alternate comp. What you’re asking for is the whole point of the ladder, mmr matchmaking, tiers, etc. This should be default comp for any game.

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I’m not really playing other shooters at the moment. Is it just as bad elsewhere? Just as a comparison.

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I am not asking for it personally. I do not have a problem with the current System.

I was merely suggesting it for everyone else who simply keeps complaining about having better players than they are in their elo. People want to get to the next rank by simply beating other people who are of their own skill.

I do not understand how beating an Ana who keeps missing her sleeps over and over again is going to help you defeat an Ana who does not miss her sleeps once you get to such a rank.

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