My god there are soooooo many alt/surfs, just played a game with 5 out of 10 people were alts 2 on mine and 3 on the other (console so private profiles doesn’t stop me from seeing their psn) guy bragging how on his main he’s GM3 (ashe 18k in 9 mins) For 3 seasons ive been taking clips of people standing still all game, bragging with their profiles open, psn accounts with 300hrs on OW with no other game play named something dumb like “widowonlyGM” as their psn name, clips of people destroying 1 round then AFK the next 2. ive got the video up to about 30 minutes from just a few second clips. i know i know “get good.” Just throwing this out there to anyone who feels bad when they get stomped buy a default skin with gold gun with 3k hours in low ranks
This is why the matchmaker is impossible to fix.
That new player in a Plat match could be a GM smurf shredding the enemies, or a new player who can’t hit anything unless their GM smurf friend is there to pocket them.
The matchmaker cannot reliably know the difference.
no joke my first game after posting this i had a ball type AFK then spry “well played” on the wall and stand there all game while the widow on the other team had their profile open and they were high masters all of OW2 and now high gold
The matchmaker can’t solve that kind of issue. Smurfing will only end with an HWID ban.
In other games like Valorant, certain bans are HWID-based, meaning that if a player tries to bypass a ban by creating a new account, it gets instantly banned.
An F2P game without HWID bans is like locking the front door while leaving the windows wide open.
Now to be fair, that one could simply come down to the rank resets knocking people out of Masters.
Agree 100%, but Blizz unfortunately won’t risk its player numbers on this.
If Blizz were to somehow limit accounts to one, the # of active accounts would be cut in half instantly. Then the number of active players at peak times would drop even further as high elo players would not play their mains much more except in QP with friends.
I just wish they did. Cheaters are impossible to stop in the current model.
this game is doomed, with the current projection it is going. With the mass amount of smurfs and cheaters running utterly rampant in qp and comp it’s not even worth the time of playing casually anymore either.
The only “saving” grace of this game is playing with friends and even then theres so many better games now out even marvel rivals that just do “better” over all.
i dont like to be a doomsayer or anything but the lack of care from the dev’s as well… is just sad to see when they used to care so much about players, player experience, and game polish. this company is a SHELL of once a great company.
I honestly wont be back, not that people care of course but I am sad to see this game in the state it is… it truly does suck seeing it be left to rott outside of skins, and its cash shop.
Do you mind explaining if this was the new 6v6 or 5v5? I noticed a striking amount in 6v6. Its almost impossible to play 6v6 because of it. I don’t mind the format and actually enjoy it but the smurfing is crazy in that mode
I had a game last week where I backfilled as support and the dva on the other team ended with 39 elims and the next highest was 10 or 11.
I called them out as smurf and of course I got the “it’s only QP” and “can’t smurf in QP” and their team laying into me about crying. The DVa wasn’t duo so they were just an alt I guess.
its both, i just played a game where the guy unlocked ranked in 5 hours with like 0 losses 50 games in ranked high masters in support and damage, now this season low gold and just stomped a match pretty much by himself
Is this just a mainly console issue it’s not that bad on pc. I can’t remember if it’s still a thing but you can share xbox live/psn plus with new accounts you make on console which lets you avoid the pc issue of requiring a number. Sure it’s a small barrier of entry, but most people are too lazy to do that.
Unfortunately, smurfing is an issue on PC too. Phone requirements do little to prevent cheating or abuse. Burner numbers can be bought online for less than 25 cents. The only real solution is HWID bans, though even that isn’t 100% effective.
I agree they’ll probably never implement it for the reasons already discussed in this thread, but I think that’s a massive mistake. Even if HWID bans cause a short-term drop in player numbers, the long-term benefits of fewer cheaters and smurfs would lead to a healthier matchmaking environment and likely attract even more players back to the game.
The only concern I have with HWID bans is the risk of false bans. And given Blizzard’s track record with customer support, that’s not exactly reassuring.
They don’t have to limit accounts to one per player to get use out of HWID. Simply being able to flag multiple accounts as (likely) belonging to the same player can help them:
- Crack down on ban evasion, especially for hackers and other serious offenders.
- Keep more accurate count of reports and actions against a player when they use multiple accounts.
- Establish at least bare minimum smurf detection by comparing a player’s highest ranking account to their lowest ranking account.
It’s not Smurfs. It is hacks and bots. Guesstimate how many bots and hackers you figure you may play with on any given play session. Now TRIPLE that number. It’s so much worse than people realize and blizzard does nothing. They just push it under the rug. It’s not match making. It’s not Smurfs. It is CHEATS. People need to wake up
Smurfing is too rewarded with faster queues, worse enemies and calibration modifiers that boost you up to high ranks. It’s horrible.
The only way they could mitigate this issue at this point is to suddenly pull down free account creation and make new accounts spend 40 dollars minimum on an account and never put them on sale again.
The whole “inflated number of players we have” thing is what they like though> Because it means job security. As well as it generates fake boosted numbers so they can lie to shareholders telling them that their game is a worldwide success. Despite they may only see 28-33 thousand players online at a time.
That is why you see things like “1.5 million accounts banned for cheating”. etc etc. Its just alts and alts and more alts that were simply culled by the same people that make new accounts over and over again.
Smurfs are out of control this season…