It’s a plague and it needs to be dealt with.
The sheer number of smurfs I’ve seen today is staggering.
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100%, made a second acct to “Learn” on (what i mean is need to get those stomp content clips for YT/TTV) ban them, you do not need 2 accounts.
As for the ones who throw to lower their rank those ones should just be ban from microsoft’s gaming platform period. ban all hardware id’s tied to that ip.
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Lol no
Smurfing is most of the game’s content and the anti smurf system is too aggressive for smurfs to be a problem. What’s more likely is the rank reset is letting you play with whoever so the matches aren’t balanced. Not smurfs.
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IP addresses are dynamic and get reused, and in many cases a single IP can represent multiple users.
Hardware bans generally dont work because you can spoof most hardware IDs, and it also has enormous implications on many markets (e.g. third party hardware resale, computer/gaming cafes, etc).
I would love to see them put more pressure on smurfing, but neither of the things you suggested are really feasible. If IP and hardware bans actually solved the problem without causing numerous other issues they would’ve done it long ago.
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Only match smurfs with other smurfs.
Yeah, I’m sure the base-skins only, endorse level 1 account Widow/Genji stomping a lobby with Diamond/Master players is totally just a new player and not a smurf.
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Define smurf in your context - are we talking anybody who makes a new account, or the people who purposely throw to play at lower ranks?
The former already has some amount of logic in the matchmaker to adjust their MMR quickly, but it’s not like it’s something you can just check a box to know. It’s not like the account is linked to a main account and has “IsSmurfAccount=true” as an attribute in the account somewhere.
The latter is very difficult to detect unless they’ve made a very obvious behavioral change on their account - e.g. yes the top500 player who’s now in bronze is pretty obvious. But there’s a lot of reasons people may drop a rank or two that are legitimate reasons and you can’t just label them all as smurfs. And if the smurfs are not new accounts, it’s incredibly difficult to tell someone is intentionally throwing.
If the larger issue at play is just that the matchmaking is bad (e.g. putting a GM player vs a bronze player) then that’s not smurfing and they just need to fix the matchmaker to generate better and more balanced matches.
People who make new accounts constantly to stomp on lower ranks or boost friends/people who pay them.
It’s obscene how many fresh accounts are stomping their way up through diamond.
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Metal ranks are plagued with smurfs all around I see
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Wasn’t there a rank reset?
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Soft reset.
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Supposedly, I got put in the same ranks though. Not really complaining to be honest. I actually enjoy seeing the new progress bar. I still prefer the old SR system though.
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The new progress bar is nice.
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Actually, I’d love that.
I don’t hide the fact that I smurf, but I at least do it to play with friends. I don’t have a single smurf that was created for any other reason. Facing other smurfs would give a real challenge, which is always fun.
Why are the only two options new players and smurfs? You’re seriously underestimating the amount of players that use default skins. I see defaults all the time across all ranks. And stomping Diamonds isn’t exactly hard.
Again, what’s more likely is that placements are creating unbalanced games. None of this sounds like blatant smurfing to me.
EDIT: Also, I think a lvl 1 endorsement looks more like an old account than a new one by a smurf. Smurfs accounts tend to rack up endorsements pretty quickly for obvious reasons, while old accounts get silenced frequently because of the toxic playerbase. Just some food for thought.
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I mean, didn’t they try that with the phone number thing? And people cried bitter tears about it.
Only base skins and endorsement level 1. Bit of a giveaway.
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I addressed both of these.
They’re really not as much of one as you’d think.
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I do not like smurffs, cheaters. but IP bans do nothing.
1 ) Stop watching CSI. Consumers have what is called a “dynamic IP address” which means that the IP is never static (assigned permanently). so it changes.
MAC ID bans do NOTHING.
- Mac spoofing.
- Simple, change the Card.
2 ) hardware bans. Again. 2 issues. People trade motherboards, RAM, graphics cards, cpus all the time. you would have a lot of issues with doing this.
The only thing that may potentially work is having a new check where Operating system product keys are cross-referenced with the Microsoft Database on System keys that are activated and sold. If they are found to be cheating, Microsoft and blizzard can now work together (if they wanted to) to iniate a product key ban. It takes more work to alter a product key and re-authenticate it with Microsoft to look “legit”.
Finally, they just need to flatout take the one approach, which is charging 35-40 dollars PER account. so at least they make money off of smurffs and cheaters. and it provides a “speed bump” to cheaters. to a degree.
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warden has access to a system mac address though
Only explanation for base skin, profile, and endorsement level 1
- Smurf (obvious to see by in-game performance)
- Freeloader (no purchases to worry about)
- Toxic (probably not their first time)
Either answer these accounts are most likely throwaways in the end
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it can have access. But it doesn’t solve anything if the end-user simply plugs in another ethernet card and does it all over again. or goes into the firmware of the card and changes the reporting of it.
basically 15 dollars for a new card. or just run down to an electronics junk store and buy a box of them for 10 bucks with about 50 of these cards laying around.
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