Under the description of what is and isn’t cheating according to Blizzard, they write that, “engaging in any activity that grants an unfair advantage” is acceptable reason to be reported for cheating.
When higher level players purchase a smurf account and play comp games far below their actual rank, they are actively engaging in an activity that grants them an unfair advantage over the opposing team.
Blizzard, by your own words the act of smurfing is cheating. Please figure out a solution to this, because it’s ruining this game for your average players.
I’ll even give you some ideas:
Lock an IP or MAC address to a specific account. Any new accounts purchased under the same IP or MAC get automatically placed in the same rank as the main account.
Allow players to have a “parent” account, and give them an option to buy “child” accounts underneath the primary. Anything they do in their “child” accounts is isolated, however the rank on their main account remains a benchmark. If their rank suddenly falls far below or shoots far higher than this benchmark, it’s an obvious sign of cheating the system.
I’m not a developer, but I can’t imagine a solution to this problem - because it is, in fact, a problem - is that hard to find. You can still make your money, but at least give us average players a break.
I think it is reasonable to assert that it is. Only because they designed a matchmaker system to rate your performance and place you among your peers. If you circumvent that for easy games, that’s cheating. To say it’s only cheating if you intentionally throw games is a bit narrow of a definition that still ultimately brings you to the same place - a player ROFLSTOMPING other players where he ought not be because he circumvented the proper methods employed by Blizzard to rate his or her performance and place him in proper matches accordingly.
The entire point is that “lines” shouldn’t exist. Only grey areas. Fortunately, you mention a few hundred SR…shouldn’t make a difference in the average games you play in. Sure, if you’re like a thousand below where you ought to be, that’ll make a difference. But 200 SR? You can recover that in a handful of games anyway. And it’s all based on averages, with wild variations in what teammates’ and enemies’ levels are. Chances are that with a 200 SR variation, you’d still be playing with the same people you were with before. The few comp games I play, I see everything from mid-silver to high-gold.
As for what the difference is…again kinda grey areas there. If you want to learn a new hero…one can argue that you should go to QP to learn the basics at least. If you chose a hero in comp, you should already have the basics of that hero down to a science. The advanced stuff and getting great come later with practice and time, but you should have a baseline ability to play a hero before using them in comp. It can be argued that selecting just a random hero you’ve never played before, and losing, is soft-throwing, even if you tried your best. Because you were irresponsible in your hero picks and let your team down.
So if I play in high plat and your idea was implemented, my daughter’s account would be banned because she’s in bronze. According to you either everyone in a household plays in the same rank or only one person gets to play. Solid logic.
On that note it sure would be fun to have people be forced to play in a rank that’s drastically higher than they belong just because of “preventing smurfs”. The people crying about smurfs would be the same ones crying that their games are ruined because someones kid/girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife had to take a nosedive from master or something like that because of the SR of someone else in their house lol
people cant distinguish whos a smurf and whos not tho…i was accused of being a smurf multiple times and i’m level 900+ .
Think of it this way, smurfs bring money, blizzard likes money, blizzard chooses to ignore smurfs in exchange for money.
I get it, it’s not a good spot to be in. But…Blizzard is the one who made matchmaking with skill tiers. They are the ones who gave players the expectation that all players in a match are supposedly to be roughly comparable to one-another.
And in practical terms, there’s no functional difference between your bronze daughter de-ranking you by playing extensively, and someone else purposefully throwing games to de-rank for future easy games. Both have consequences in the games they play, for the teammates that are let down by those circumstances.
Plying for being reasonable “given circumstances” reminds me of orientation at every job I’ve ever been at. They announce you’re not allowed to be on your cell phone at work, unless there’s an emergency. Suddenly everybody’s grandmother is in the I.C.U.
-the point of my post is that a line should only exist at hard throwing and actual cheating
-personally i notice a (on average) difference of about 300sr, but yeah thats a ymmv thing
-tbh if you dont understand the basic mechanics of every hero in the game, regardless of how you learned them (qp or not) you’re soft-throwing in my book. I dont mean in a report kind of way, but if you join comp you should have a solid grasp of how every hero in the games kit works.
-qp will only teach you so much especially with someone like myself who uses it to relax staying in low mmr. In qp i normally play against silver/gold players where as comp i play support at ~3400.
Let’s fix Jeff’s quote then, with some well placed quotation marks…
If you start a new account and play normally, the matchmaker determines your skill level “very quickly” and matches you with similar players.
In that supposed, “very quick” time, they ruin 6 people’s games per round on their way up. And that doesn’t include if they are throwing to stay low. The very definition of cheating is having an unfair advantage, which a smurf does. Blizzard just wants to make their own definition.
So in another words, they should fix their matchmaking first before puting all this faith in it. Because so far it dont work right from what i see in my games.
And im not just talking about smurfs, but in general difference between players plaing in one match is to big. Left alone problem with putting lower elo tanks in matches where they need one.
Ignoring people who deliberately throw to derank as that is obviously a separate issue, how can we determine that people being in an incorrect rank for a few games as the matchmaker does its “magic” is an actual problem in the long run? For all we know the average player is only in a game with one of these people .1% of the time.
Well, only they have the data to accurately determine that.
I was just relaying their stance.
Well, if you put in one match person with 20% accuracy and on other team snipers who one shoot half of other team every time before team fight then there is something wrong with that match making in my eyes