Since smurfs are running wild in this game and I dont have a problem with them as long as they play on their own rank or in quickplay I do have a problem with them in competitive. They either play for themselfs or (even worse) play with friends to carry them.
Now I’ve carefully read the report options and figured smurfing does fall under the category “cheating”. It states cheating is any action performed that grants an unfair advantage. Smurfing definetly counts as unfair advantage.
Its one of the main reasons why comp is joke, but i dont think anyone will do anything with it. Its money for blizz (acti) and money > quality of the game.
Worst thing is, they dont even have to throw. Fresh account can place Diamond at highest (few managed to get low masters on fresh account after placements). Then they que with diamond friends and boost them, destroying tons of games in proccess. And they are 4300 on their main for example. All this without risking any suspension.
skill is not an unfair advantage
Skill against low elo player ? Is that a joke ?
It’s a game, if you don’t play well you lose. And because too many cry that they don’t win enough, blizzard already implemented a system for that so everybody wins 50% of the time.
Even if you play well.
Just saying its not the players fault, don’t hate the players, hate the system.
No, smurfing does not fall under the category of cheating. Being better at the game is not an unfair advantage, if it was you could report the entire enemy team every time you lose. As long as they are not throwing games the matchmaker should deal with them and they are doing nothing wrong.
But if someone who is playing at gm lvl just wants to wreck some lower skill players… it is some kind of cheating. Ofc. “skill” is not unfair adventage… but trying to cheat MM… it is abusing. Matchmaking is a way to pair players at similar skill lvl, smurfs are trying to abuse that system by making fresh accounts. That way MM becomes “broken”. Imagine playing without any kind of MM, just pairing randoms all the time without any range of skill etc… sounds like fun way to ruin gameplay for everyone.
Yesterday I played against players in my rank and dominated every game for about 2 hours. I beat those players as if they were playing in bronze or for the first time. Nevertheless, I also lost games because you can only win as a team.
If the matchmaker wants you to lose then you will lose!
One exception to this are groups with 4 or more players who deliberately lose to be able to play against worse players.
Intentional losing can be reported.
Smurfing is literally pay 2 win.
How can you prove somebody is a smurf, though, to the point where action could be taken against them? That’s the issue. It’s not enforceable. That aside, while smurfs do exist, more often than not, people are just good and get labeled as a smurf for having less than like 3 stars on their nameplate. How would we stop false reporting for people who really aren’t smurfs but get accused of it every time they make a few shots?
Well, usually Smurfs use throw picks to tank their mmr, and climb with a hero of their choice.
You could see it in their profiles:
E.g. winston 7% winrate over 4 hrs and mcree 92% winrate over 3 hrs.
That was solid evidence. But thanks to private profiles, our strongest claim is just “they played very good for their rank” and might confuse them with legit good players.
Seemed to work perfectly fine for every single game ever for years.
As for smurfing being cheating, I need to win low rank games to get to “my sr”. Whether I take that path on my 1st or 3rd account doesnt matter. If the game let me set my sr to 4k straight away I would
The only thing that is objectively disruptive to the game is if said smurfs throw games and sabotage matches to artificially stay ranked low, otherwise they won’t stay at the lower tiers long enough to be a problem. Multiple accounts is a viable preference and as they say “water finds its level”.
Also if you come across a player that seems too skilled for their rank, it could be that they are horrible at team coordination and just spent time practicing solo-play skills. For example: Someone can have amazing aim with widow, but if they don’t know how to work with the team (e.g. they don’t coordinate picks to shift flow of battle or stall pushes, or won’t switch when countered by divers and shields) then they tend to lose matches and stay low ranked.
Yeah because a master player smurfing in bronze is a fair match. It is the players fault aswell for ruining comp on purpose. People choose to smurf.
That’s circumstantial evidence, though, unless they’ve been witnessed throwing. In those cases, the throwing itself is entirely reportable. That should get them in trouble long before smurfing does. People usually don’t take the time to report, though.
Smurfing sadly is not a bannable offense, though. I mean, it should be, but alas…
Blizzard should just change the wording in their description of cheating to read as: “Using a means to gain an unfair advantage … unless we’re making money off of it. Then it’s totally fine.”
We just need to convince blizzard that if they ban smurfs, they’ll just keep buying accounts and they’ll get more moneys. Everyone wins!
What do you mean by that ? As I know most of the pvp games are using some kind of MM balancing based on MMR etc.
It matters. Due that time “you get ur SR” you are destroying other players matches. You dont have to do that but you decided to.
Ehh… or they just should make game better instead. Smurfs are just one of the dozens OW issues which makes peoples less interested in playing it.
And usually have names like IMainMercyOnly