Smurfing is still a BIG problem, CHANGE MY MIND

Isn’t that what the new placement gotta be?

To anyone who thinks smurfing is “not a big issue,” just check out Kabaji’s unranked to GM Tracer only stream.

Anyone who thinks that letting a multi-season top 500 Tracer run amok in games that are two and three ranks below him is ok doesn’t understand how detrimental smurfing can be.

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I would go even further to say we should just stop watching those content altogether, the viewships is part of what encourage them to do it. It make them feel it’s alright because there are profit to be made making those kind of content, youtube/twitch money.

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Its not enough. They need a massive reset. People enterring the new system with 3500 sr start placements centered around 3500. Same for 1000sr. Some friends and I tested it. Then we got several discord servers to test it, for science.

We had a smurf widow in our discord stream her placements where she obviously won with complete dominance. She went in at 1100 sr or something and came out 1410 like hello? I can hear some annoying middle aged female voice saying “if you work hard enough you can be good enough for silver…keep grinding honey!”.

They need to reset everyone and everything since its a new ladder format entirely. No more grandfathering and anchor stat/season bias. Its more disruptive initially but will create much better ladder integrity, fairness, and inclusion after 30 games or so.

im about to end this mans whole career… Just Get Good

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My anchor stats always place me around 2600 to start on new accounts.

When I placed on PTR, I obviously placed maybe 15 SR shy of 2600, but each win was netting me 120-150 SR until I got to very high Platinum, where it dropped off to +- 50 per game

Yes you did, Im on my bed crying to OW God that I can flick 180 on tracer like there’s no tmr

are you… mad? lol it’s from a meme

I’m mad, Coz I’m bad, I’m Jake from the Houston outlaws

A 60% win rate isn’t about revealing where you belong. If you are 1200 right now, and belong at 2300, your win rate is going to be WAY higher than 60%, and the PBSR is going to be giving you way more than 24 SR per win.

A 250 game “grind” involves actually getting better along the way and gaining new skills.

Last season, I played 73 games, had a 61% win rate, and climbed from 812 to 1340. There were critical gaps in my play that were corrected over those 73 games. That was definitely not just a matter of me needing 73 games to get to what SR I already belonged.

Turns out one of the most critical factors was using too large a monitor, but still. If you’re helping people get out of Bronze, ask about ALL the hardware they’re using, not just Mouse EDPI…

Do you have that documented in a spreadsheet or written down in any way, or are you just going from memory?

The smurfing problem is REALLY bad sub 800 SR, but I’ve noticed it improving dramatically at between there and 1000 SR. I have all of my games recorded, and I use Basilisk’s Overwatch Performance Tracking spreadsheet to figure out which map types I need to focus on getting better at etc. I write notes every time I think I’ve run into smurfs or leavers, and it’s way fewer than that from 812 - 1340 SR.

My %s based on my records were 9% leavers, 7% Throwers, and 26% games with even suspected smurfs.

Jeff Caplan says they tried a reset internally, and it went as badly as they’ve always said. Match quality goes completely to hell and no one has any fun whatsoever. Reset is very bad.

Placements at the beginning of every season is too often for me. Especially since they don’t even adjust you more than normal games. It’s just 10 games of hiding your SR adjustments. Placements for someone who has already played more than 50 Comp games is a waste of everyone’s time.

You can climb out of bronze. Record videos, get kind people to review them, and work on your biggest weaknesses.

This season I’m up to 1582, I made it to silver!

Good luck, don’t get discouraged.

I used to use that but after a while cba. I maintain my own spreadsheets with notes about the match. I even clip a twitch vod when its clear there is a leaver/thrower/smurf for video evidence to go along with any reporting I have to take care of.

My numbers weren’t far off: nearly 40% of matches are documented as blatantly corrupted by something on one team or another, with 60% of the negative ‘corruptions’ being on my own teams.

Tonight I did games at 900sr to try and rank up and had a significantly negative win ratio. The smurfs were out and I was expected to do the lion’s share for my throwing (or garden vegetable) team. Don’t tell me I’m 800sr (because not winning at 900 means I deserve to drop rating, right?).

800sr would put someone in the bottom 2%) of the playerbase in terms of combined skill (gamesense like cooldown usage, ult tracking, map control, as well as raw mechanics). I play this game 2 years straight 6+ hrs/day and 200 hrs/season. My alt accounts go plat/diamond and have some of the easiest games. Even if I just got lucky on those accnts, or were just steaming trash, and still made totally noob rookie mistakes, I doubt I’d actually be locked into 800sr. I honestly just can’t find the win conditions for efficient gains at those ranks since I’m not a widow/genji trick.

I never get those ‘unloseable’ games people talk about - where 1/3 are unloseable, 1/3 unwinnable, and 1/3 are in your direct influence. Its hard carry 3-4 games then backpressure from better smurfs on the other team and/or throwers/leavers right back to 50/50 win rate…at sub 900sr.

222 and loose placements aren’t saving that account. You would have to be selectively queue sniping/dodging and have Dafran/Kephrii like carry ability to rank up efficiently.

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People act like it’s so hard to just throw and derank “tHe Sr SyStEm PlAcEs ThEm WhErE tHeY bElOnG” No it doesn’t and after they ruin some games by carrying a bit, they ruin even more by throwing. On top of that smurfs on console are FREE and Blizzard refuses to do anything about it, probably because they literally couldn’t care less about console players.

I don’t really want to change your mind because you aren’t wrong.

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It’s not. There’s a Chicago server, an LA server (technically Irvine iirc), and then a South American server that I forget where it’s located. That’s the entirety of the ‘Americas’ region.

There are, however, very large differences in the experience on different days and different times of day. E.g. 3am on a Tuesday is completely different from 9pm on a Saturday.

It seems like the role queue will adjust SR even faster than the current queue, give it a chance.

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So, let’s distinguish between a smurf and an alt account. I see most people use those interchangeably, but there is a distinction.

Smurfing is like you point out, a high rank player either intentionally deranking or purchasing a low rank account with the purpose of destroying lower ranked players. This is quite frequently done as the bronze to GM challenge. It should be bannable (if it isn’t already). And it definitely ruins games. It isn’t in the spirit of the game, and even high rank players like Seagull have spoken out against this.

Alt accounts are when someone (anyone) purchases a new account because they don’t want to play on their main account. Maybe they want to try a different hero, or role. Maybe they don’t want to be recognized if they are popular. For whatever reason, this is actually fine. It’s not a problem. It does cause some games to be bad, but they have a right to do that to get around the problems they have with being locked into a main hero/role at high rank where they can’t play an off role without people complaining.

Blizzard has done several things to help people not need alt accounts. The first thing was implementing the ability to have hidden profiles. So, they could hide that they were a Reinhardt main when they wanted to play Soldier without getting yelled at. But we all know how people reacted to that. The second big one is actually 2/2/2. Because now you can have 1 account and 3 roles each with their own SR. So, previously you needed 3 accounts, now you need 1. But again, we see how people are reacting to that solution.

Blizzard has taken some steps to make legitimate alt accounts unnecessary. And as for actual smurfing, I’m fairly certain the ways people use to get down to Bronze are actually bannable.

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Here the problem between smurf and alt account is important. Alt accounts get placed where they belong, quickly.

Intentionally throwing doesn’t just get fixed by PBSR. Fortunately, Jeff Kaplan has said in his interview with Seagull that they have a whole team preparing to break out the ban hammer for throwers.

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Which is why I believe they have been putting more effort on influencer marketing because they understand the thought leaders on twitch or youtube are the biggest factor when it comes to shaping the community culture. Counting on people to react positively to a certain new feature they put in is just too passive.

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lol dude why dont you just get good and kill the smurf 4head looool :ok_hand::joy:

You know why I am not getting good - spending too much time whining on the forum lol

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